Antonia Senior

Nov 29, 2024 | thetimes.com | Antonia Senior |Nick Rennison

The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there … That’s also true of historical fiction. In this year’s crop of the best, we’ve included a truly original take on the western — the tale of drunken Irish bad boys galloping across Montana in the 1890s told with punchy and poetic verve. Kevin Barry’s gloriously madcap novel jostles for space with Italian glassblowers, Tudor vagabonds and Christopher Marlowe, ill-starred spy, heretic and wordsmith.

Aug 2, 2024 | aspectsofhistory.com | Oliver Webb-Carter |Antonia Senior

In the years just before the First World War, a boy was growing up in Imperial India. He was obstinate and full of life. Still a toddler, he chatted to the servants in Hindustani. His father nicknamed him Kim, after the spy hero of Rudyard Kipling’s novel, who could speak several languages and flit between identities. Years later, when the boy was full grown, his Soviet handler would pick up the Kipling novel and read it from cover to cover. His agent, Kim Philby, was elusive.

Jul 6, 2024 | thetimes.com | Antonia Senior |Nick Rennison

It is 1461. Edward Plantagenet has seized the throne of England from the addled Henry VI. But Edward is just 18 years old; the driving force behind him is his powerful, clever mother, Lady Cecily Neville, who invents and takes the title the King’s Mother. This is the sequel to Annie Garthwaite’s excellent debut, Cecily, which charted her early years and the run-up to Edward seizing the throne. The King’s Mother is better still, as Cecily discovers that taking power is easier than keeping it.

Jun 1, 2024 | thetimes.com | Antonia Senior |Nick Rennison

“Stork” Castell is a farmer, passionately attached to his small corner of England, the village of Alvesdon and its surrounds, near the river Chalke in Wiltshire. Stork flew in the Great War, and as opens in August 1939, he feels a veteran’s dread at the approach of a new conflict. The younger generation of Castells and their lovers and friends are flung into the global conflict. Stork’s daughter, Tess, is working as a secretary for General Hastings Ismay in Whitehall.

May 10, 2024 | airmail.news | Antonia Senior

In 2003 (but really, 1537), a weary, hunchbacked lawyer on the trail of a killer stumbled into our bookshops for the first time and an entire genre of fiction — historical crime — was spawned. The lawyer, Matthew Shardlake, inhabited a vividly re-created Tudor world, investigating, dodging political intrigue and becoming embroiled in questions of faith, heresy and high treason.