Historical Musings #82: HWA Crown Awards 2023

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Welcome to my not-quite-monthly post on all things historical fiction! This month, I want to highlight the HWA Crown Award longlists which were announced last Wednesday by the Historical Writers Association. There are three separate awards – one for debut novels, one for non-fiction and the other (the Gold Crown) for authors who have previously published. The shortlists are announced in October and the winner in November. I have no plans to try to read all of these books, but thought it would be interesting to look at what I’ve read so far from each list.

Gold Crown Award 2023 longlist

River Spirit by Leila Aboulela
Bad Relations by Cressida Connolly
Trust by Hernan Diaz
The Colour Storm by Damien Dibben
The Weather Woman by Sally Gardner
Spear by Nicola Griffith
The Walled Garden by Sarah Hardy
The Dance Tree by Kiran Millwood Hargrave
The Great Reclamation by Rachel Heng
The Chosen by Elizabeth Lowry
A Wild & True Relation by Kim Sherwood
Dark Earth by Rebecca Stott

I’ve only read two of these – The Colour Storm and The Dance Tree – and although I liked them both, neither of them are favourites. Of the others, The Chosen is already on my TBR after it appeared on the Walter Scott Prize shortlist earlier this year, but the rest don’t really appeal.

Non-fiction Crown Award 2023 longlist

The Treasuries: Poetry Anthologies and the Making of British Culture by Clare Bucknell
The Siege of Loyalty House by Jessie Childs
Woman’s Lore: 4,000 Years of Sirens, Serpents and Succubi by Sarah Clegg
Courting India by Nandini Das
The Captain’s Apprentice by Caroline Davison
China After Mao by Frank Dikötter
Command: The Politics of Military Operations from Korea to Ukraine by Lawrence Freedman
The Age of Uncertainty by Tobias Hürter, translated by David Shaw
After the Romanovs by Helen Rappaport
Super-Infinite by Katherine Rundell
The Holocaust: An Unfinished History by Dan Stone
The Dress Diary of Mrs Anne Sykes by Kate Strasdin

I haven’t read any of these – in fact, apart from the Helen Rappaport, I haven’t even heard of them. However, I’ve investigated some of the titles and I like the sound of The Siege of Loyalty House, about a siege during the English Civil War, and The Dress Diary of Mrs Anne Sykes, which traces the life of a Victorian woman through her textile scrapbook.

Debut Crown Award 2023 longlist

Clytemnestra by Costanza Casati
The New Life by Tom Crewe
Theatre of Marvels by Lianne Dillsworth
Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus
Weyward by Emilia Hart
The Lost Diary of Samuel Pepys by Jack Jewers
The Secret Diaries of Charles Ignatius Sancho by Paterson Joseph
The Secrets of Hartwood Hall by Katie Lumsden
Death and the Conjuror by Tom Mead
The Circus Train by Amita Parikh
River Sing Me Home by Eleanor Shearer
Bonny & Read by Julie Walker

I’ve read five of these and particularly enjoyed Clytemnestra and Death and the Conjuror (I’m hoping to read the sequel to that one soon). Again, the Paterson Joseph came to my attention through the Walter Scott Prize and I’m interested in reading The Circus Train and Bonny & Read.

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Have you read any of these? If not, are there any you would like to read?

The Appeal by Janice Hallett

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I loved Janice Hallett’s most recent novels, The Twyford Code and The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels, so I was looking forward to going back and reading her first book, The Appeal. I know Hallett’s style is not one that works for all readers (to be honest, I’m very surprised that it works for me), but if you enjoyed either of those other two novels, I can almost guarantee that you’ll enjoy this one as well.

The Appeal begins in the small English town of Lower Lockwood where the members of an amateur dramatics society, The Fairway Players, are preparing for their upcoming production of All My Sons by Arthur Miller. The Players are led by Martin Hayward and his wife Helen, a couple who also own the local golf club and are highly respected within the community, as well as members of several other prominent Lockwood families. On the fringes of the group and desperate to be accepted into the Haywards’ social circle is Isabel Beck, a young nurse who convinces her new friends Sam and Kel Greenwood to join the Players.

Before the group even begin rehearsals, disaster strikes: Martin and Helen’s two-year-old granddaughter, Poppy, has developed a rare form of brain cancer which is unlikely to be cured with conventional chemotherapy. Poppy’s parents have placed all their hopes in a new experimental treatment which is not yet available in the UK. Determined to obtain this very expensive new drug from America, the Haywards and their friends launch a fundraising appeal, ‘A Cure for Poppy’. At first, everything seems to be going well, but when one of the Fairway Players is found murdered, questions are raised not just regarding the killer but the appeal itself. Does the doctor responsible for obtaining the new treatment really have Poppy’s best interests at heart? Why did Sam leave her last nursing position in Africa so suddenly? And who is the mystery donor who promised a large sum of money then changed his mind?

Roderick Tanner QC has set his two law students, Femi and Charlotte, the task of looking through the documents associated with the Lockwood case. Someone has already been sentenced for the murder, but Tanner believes they are innocent and he wants the students to confirm his opinion as he prepares to appeal the decision. The novel is presented entirely in the form of emails sent to and from the various characters involved in the case, as well as several WhatsApp discussions between Femi and Charlotte as they try to make sense of the evidence. As I’ve said, this is probably something you’ll either love or hate, but for me it’s very effective – I find that the short length of each email makes the book very immersive and compelling as it’s easy to think ‘I’ll just read one more!’ It also allows a lot of misdirection as every character could be considered an unreliable narrator; we can never be sure who they really are or how they really feel because all we see is the way they choose to present themselves in an email or on social media. Some suspension of disbelief is required, though, as most people aren’t sending constant emails to each other all day long!

The weakest aspect of The Appeal for me was actually the murder mystery. The murder doesn’t take place until late in the novel and then we learn that Tanner has been withholding information from us, which makes it very difficult to solve the mystery for ourselves. I also wasn’t sure why he wanted help from Charlotte and Femi, as he already seemed to know everything anyway. Apart from that, I enjoyed following the progress of the Poppy campaign and correctly guessed some of the twists in that storyline! There’s a large cast of characters to get to know, but I found that most of them had their own very distinctive personalities – from needy, eager to please Isabel to practical, no-nonsense professional fundraiser Sarah-Jane – so I had no problem keeping track of them all.

Of the three Janice Hallett books I’ve read, this is my least favourite, but it still kept me entertained from beginning to end. I’m looking forward to reading her new novella, The Christmas Appeal, coming in October!

Top Ten Tuesday: Books on my Autumn TBR

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This week’s topic for Top Ten Tuesday (hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl) is “Books on My Fall 2023 To-Read List”.

I have a lot more than ten books I’m hoping to read this autumn, but here’s a selection of them:

For the Read Christie 2023 challenge:

1. Endless Night by Agatha Christie

Some possible reads for the upcoming 1962 Club:

2. The Wolves of Willoughby Chase by Joan Aiken
3. The Nonesuch by Georgette Heyer

Books from my Classics Club list:

4. The Elusive Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy
5. Fire From Heaven by Mary Renault

Some NetGalley review copies:

6. The Winter Spirits: Ghostly Tales for Frosty Nights by various authors
7. The Devil’s Flute Murders by Seishi Yokomizo
8. Tom Lake by Ann Patchett
9. The Fake Wife by Sharon Bolton
10. Water by John Boyne

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Have you read any of these? Which books are on your autumn/fall TBR?

Henry VIII: The Heart and the Crown by Alison Weir

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Henry VIII: The Heart and the Crown is the second book in Alison Weir’s new Tudor Rose trilogy: three novels exploring the lives of Elizabeth of York, Henry VIII and Mary I, three generations of the Tudor family. It also works as a companion to her earlier Six Tudor Queens series, which told the stories of Henry’s six wives.

This novel is quite unusual because it’s the first I’ve read by Weir to be written from a male perspective. So many of today’s historical fiction authors are choosing to focus on historical women, particularly those who have been forgotten or neglected, I feel that famous male figures like Henry VIII are currently less ‘fashionable’ subjects. As there’s also been so much written about him in the past, I wondered whether this book would have anything new to offer.

The novel takes us through Henry’s life in chronological order, beginning with his childhood and his unexpected change in status after the death of his older brother and then moving on to look at his six marriages, the religious changes that took place during his reign and all the political intrigue of the Tudor court. His relationships with advisers such as Cardinal Wolsey, Thomas More and Thomas Cromwell – and his court jester, Will Somers – are covered, as well as his rivalry with King Francis I of France and finally his declining health and his death in 1547.

I remember mentioning in some of my Six Tudor Queens reviews that Weir’s depiction of Henry was surprisingly positive throughout that series. All six of his wives are shown to have some genuine love and affection for him and his cruel actions are usually excused as being the fault of somebody else. She portrays him in a similar way in this book, showing how easily he is manipulated by people around him and trying to make him a more sympathetic character than you would usually expect, while not ignoring his obvious flaws – his jealousy, insecurity and hot temper. Weir does a particularly good job of showing how important it was to Henry to have a legitimate heir to carry on the Tudor dynasty founded by his father and the panic that he felt every time he suffered an illness or accident, knowing that if he died he would be leaving the future of his kingdom at risk.

Another unusual thing about this book is that I somehow found it both too long and too short at the same time! I read it on my Kindle, but the paper version has over 600 pages, so it’s a big book and not one that can be read very quickly. On the other hand, the six novels in the Six Tudor Queens series were all nearly as long and this single book on Henry has to cover a lot of the same information, so I felt that it didn’t really have the same level of depth, particularly where Henry’s later wives were concerned. About half of the book is devoted to Henry’s marriage to Katherine of Aragon and the ‘Great Matter’ that arises when he attempts to have the marriage annulled so he can marry Anne Boleyn. This means his relationships with his other four wives are squeezed into the remainder of the book, along with major events like the sinking of the Mary Rose, which is covered in just a few paragraphs.

Overall, I found this an interesting read, if a bit dry at times, but I don’t really feel that I learned anything new from it – and, as I’ve said, a lot of the material is repeated from the earlier six novels. If you don’t have much knowledge of Henry VIII and the Tudors, though, I think this would be a good alternative to non-fiction to start you on your journey and introduce you to this period of history. Be aware that the US title of this book is The King’s Pleasure: A Novel of Henry VIII – I don’t want anyone to buy the same book twice!

Thanks to Headline Review for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

This is book 39/50 for the 2023 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge.

He Who Whispers by John Dickson Carr

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He Who Whispers is one of John Dickson Carr’s Dr Gideon Fell mysteries, originally published in 1946 and recently reissued as a British Library Crime Classic. I read another in the series, The Black Spectacles, earlier this year and loved it, so I had high hopes for this one.

The book is set in the aftermath of World War II and is written from the perspective of Miles Hammond, a Nobel Prize winning historian who has just inherited his uncle’s estate, which includes a house in the New Forest containing a large collection of books. As the novel opens, Miles is in London looking for a librarian to assist with his uncle’s collection, and while there he accepts an invitation to attend a meeting of the Murder Club, a group who get together regularly to try to solve true crime cases. On arriving at the venue, Miles is surprised to find that nobody else is there apart from a young woman, Barbara Morrell, and tonight’s speaker, Professor Rigaud.

Despite only having an audience of two, Rigaud proceeds to tell them the story of a crime which took place in France before the war and is both unsolved and seemingly impossible. It involves the murder of a wealthy Englishman, Howard Brooke, found stabbed with his own sword-stick while apparently alone on top of a high tower with witnesses on three sides and the fourth unreachable as it overlooks the river. Fay Seton, Brooke’s secretary, is suspected of the crime for the dubious reason that she is believed to be a vampire – and only a creature that can fly through the air could have reached the top of the tower!

Miles is intrigued by Rigaud’s story and when Fay Seton turns up in London, he offers her the job of librarian so that he can find out more. Heading for his uncle’s house in the New Forest with Fay and his sister Marion, Miles finds that he is becoming increasingly fascinated by the suspected vampire – but when Marion has a terrifying experience while alone upstairs in her bedroom, does this mean Fay has struck again or is there another explanation for the strange occurrences? Luckily, Gideon Fell arrives that same night and begins to investigate!

I enjoyed He Who Whispers, but not nearly as much as I enjoyed The Black Spectacles and I’m not really sure why this particular book is considered one of Carr’s best (apparently even by Carr himself). Yes, the solution is very clever, but I felt that we, the reader, are given very little chance of solving it ourselves, particularly as we don’t really see any of Fell’s thought processes during the novel. He reveals everything in the denouement at the end, but until then we’re as much in the dark as Miles Hammond. There was also too much focus on the vampire storyline for my taste; I thought the mystery was interesting enough without the supernatural element, but I expect other readers will love that aspect of the plot.

Carr captures the feel of post-war Britain very well; a surprising number of 1940s crime novels barely refer to the war at all, but in this one it’s an integral part of the story. Several of the characters in the novel have served in the war, there are mentions of rationing and bombed-out streets and of the effect all of these things have had on people’s mental health. There’s quite a small cast of characters and Carr takes the time to flesh each of them out, but I never really warmed to our protagonist, Miles – he has two possible love interests throughout the novel and although his final decision could have gone either way, I felt that he made the wrong choice in the end!

I want to read more of the Gideon Fell mysteries, so if you’ve read any of them please let me know which ones you particularly enjoyed.

The Ionian Mission by Patrick O’Brian

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I’m continuing my very slow journey through Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin series and have now reached book eight, The Ionian Mission. As usual, I seem to have let a gap of about three years go by since reading the previous book, completely unintentionally! Fortunately, I always find it easy enough to get back into the story even after a long break – O’Brian often recaps some of the most important plot points in the first chapter and if not I can refer to the very detailed summaries of each book on Wikipedia to help refresh my memory.

The series is set during the Napoleonic Wars and follows the adventures of Captain Jack Aubrey of the Royal Navy and his close friend, the ship’s surgeon and spy Dr Stephen Maturin. If you haven’t yet read the first seven novels, be aware that the rest of this post could contain spoilers you would prefer to avoid!

The Ionian Mission picks up the story from The Surgeon’s Mate, which ended with Stephen marrying Diana Villiers at sea. They are now at home in London, but although they seem happy with their relationship, it’s certainly not a conventional marriage and the two are already living separately. Anyway, they don’t have long to experience married life before Stephen is off again, accompanying Jack on a mission in the Mediterranean, blockading the French fleet at the port of Toulon. It’s a boring, tedious job and Jack is unimpressed with the ship he has been given, HMS Worcester.

Because of the nature of the blockade duty, there’s a sense that, for a large portion of the book, we and the crew of the Worcester are just passing time, waiting for something to happen. The lack of any real naval action gives O’Brian a chance to explore the various ways the members of the crew attempt to amuse themselves while at sea, such as rehearsing an oratorio, holding a poetry contest and trying to stage a performance of Hamlet. However, none of this made for particularly gripping reading and I was pleased when the tedium was relieved for a while by Stephen going ashore to carry out his spying duties.

Later in the novel, Jack is transferred to command of his old ship, his beloved HMS Surprise, and is sent on a new mission to the Ionian Islands where he must decide which of three Turkish rulers would prove the strongest ally for Britain in that region of the Mediterranean. I found this part of the book, where political intrigue comes to the forefront, much more interesting and I enjoyed the descriptions of Kutali, the place Britain hopes to use as a naval base. Unfortunately, this all came too late in the book to change my overall impression of it as one of the weaker entries in the series so far. I was also sorry that we saw so little of Diana, after she had played such a big part in the previous few books, and nothing of Jack’s wife and children either.

Although this one hasn’t become a favourite, I’m still looking forward to moving on to book nine, Treason’s Harbour!

This is book 38/50 for the 2023 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge.

A Lady’s Guide to Scandal by Sophie Irwin

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I loved Sophie Irwin’s first novel, A Lady’s Guide to Fortune-Hunting, which I read last year and was looking forward to reading her new one. Despite the similar title, A Lady’s Guide to Scandal is not really a sequel as it features completely different characters, but both books are set in Regency England and I think if you enjoy one of them you’ll probably enjoy the other.

Eliza, Countess of Somerset, has just been widowed at the age of twenty-seven and has inherited her late husband’s fortune – on the condition that she avoids becoming the subject of any scandal. Eliza didn’t love her husband – the man she had really wanted to marry was his nephew, Oliver Courtenay, whom her parents dismissed as unsuitable ten years earlier – but she obediently dresses in black and prepares to observe the traditional period of mourning, living quietly in Bath with her cousin, Margaret. Of course, now that’s she financially independent for the first time in her life, the temptation to go out and enjoy herself is very strong…and grows even stronger with the arrival of the roguish poet Lord Melville and his equally unconventional sister.

As soon as the charismatic Melville appeared on the scene (a character who must surely be inspired by Lord Byron) I thought I knew how the rest of the novel would play out. However, it’s not long before Oliver Courtenay, who has now inherited his uncle’s title of Lord Somerset, also turns up in Bath. It’s clear that Eliza still has feelings for Oliver – maybe even still has hopes of the marriage that was denied them all those years earlier – so the story is not as predictable as it seemed to be at first. I knew which man I wanted Eliza to choose but there are enough twists and turns in the plot that I couldn’t be completely sure she would make the right choice.

Although I found Kitty Talbot in Fortune-Hunting more fun to read about, I did enjoy watching Eliza’s character develop throughout this book. When we first meet her at the reading of her husband’s will, she has spent her whole adult life trying to be a good wife and daughter and conforming to society’s expectations, but through her friendships with Melville and his sister Caroline, she begins to find the courage to make her own decisions and live her life the way she wants to live it. At the same time, her actions are still quite believable within the context of the Regency setting and she doesn’t feel too anachronistically modern. As well as the lively Melvilles, there are lots of strong and memorable secondary characters including Somerset’s awful relatives, who have their eye on Eliza’s fortune, and her cousin Margaret, who becomes involved in a secret romance of her own.

Like the first book, this is very reminiscent of Georgette Heyer’s novels and also has some similarities with the plot of Austen’s Persuasion. However, Irwin does have her own style and is not just imitating other authors. I’ll be looking out for her next book, whether it’s another Lady’s Guide or something else!

Thanks to HarperCollins for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

This is book 37/50 for the 2023 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge.