Medieval

During last week’s by-election in Oldham and West Royton, commentators criticised the apparent inability of a large number of constituents to speak English. In the lead-up to the poll, the Guardian’s Northern Correspondent tweeted: A dismaying number

Being both a historical novelist and a professional historian, I’m often asked how I manage to combine ‘fictional’ and ‘real’ history – and even whether they can be combined, or will forever be mismatched bedfellows.

Some 868 years ago today, on 24 October 1147, the city of Lisbon fell to a combined force of besiegers from England, Scotland, Germany, Holland and France. Thanks to a surviving report written by an eyewitness

On Monday 12 October, BBC Radio 4’s Start the Week featured an impassioned debate between novelist Jane Smiley and historians Niall Ferguson and Gabriel Gorodetsky on the value of historical fiction, and to what extent

According to the morning headlines, today Pope Francis is set to announce an overhaul of the rules governing marriage that apply, in principle anyway, to the world’s one billion Catholics. The intention is to make

Last weekend, Republican Presidential Candidate Hopeful Donald Trump caused outcry in America, when he stated in an interview with CNN that Megyn Kelly, one of his interviewers for the Republican Hustings on the previous Thursday