Richard Lee founded the Historical Novel Society in 1997 after trying to join it, only to find it didn’t exist. The society has since developed in many unforeseen ways, following the enthusiasms of the active membership, with Richard trying to keep as light a hand on the tiller as possible. It is with bemusement but great pride that he regards the society’s robust health twenty-six years on.

Richard has been involved with the organisation of many HNS conferences, set up the HNS New Novel Award and the HNS Indie Award, co-hosted the Cambridge History Festivals, and ran author talks for two years at English Heritage’s flagship Kirby Hall re-enactment event.

He has been a judge of the CWA’s Ellis Peters Historical Dagger, the RNA’s Elizabeth Goudge Trophy and the RNA’s Romantic Novel of the Year Awards. Richard studied English at Merton College, Oxford, and has worked for many years bookselling with WH Smith and Waterstone’s. One day he will finish his novel of the Crusades.

Tracey Warr is writing historical fiction set in early medieval Europe and centred on female protagonists. Almodis: The Peaceweaver is set in 11th-century southern France and Catalonia. The Viking Hostage is set in 10th-century France and Wales. Her Conquest trilogy - Daughter of the Last King, The Drowned Court, and The Anarchy - deal with the turbulent life of the Welsh noblewoman, Nest ferch Rhys, and the Norman king, Henry I. Tracey is currently working on a new medieval series about a female troubadour sleuth. She is a member of the HNS UK 2024 organisation team and of the HNS Author Interview team. She was born in London and lives in south-west France.

Rebekah Simmers is the author of the Metzlingen Saga, which includes her first novel The King's Sword. In addition to being a military spouse and special needs parent of five children, she is a member of the HNS UK 2024 organisation team and the HNS Author Interview team. She loves research of all kinds, and has been trotting the globe since birth. She has recently moved with her family to Italy (her twenty-first move).

Katherine Mezzacappa is Irish but lives in Carrara, Italy. Writing as Katie Hutton, she is the author of The Gypsy Bride, The Gypsy’s Daughter, Annie of Ainsworth’s Mill and The Maid of Lindal Hall, published by Bonnier Zaffre. Writing under her own name, The Virgin of Florence, will be published by Fairlight Books in 2024 and The Ballad of Mary Kearney is in press with Addision & Highsmith. Her historical short fiction has been published in Aspects of History, Erotic Review Magazine, The Copperfield Review, Turnpike Magazine, Asymmetry Magazine amongst others, and, as Katie Hutton, in Yours and My Weekly. Katherine has been awarded residencies by the Irish Writers Centre and by the Danish Centre for Writers and Translators (at Hald Hovedgaard). She is an assessor for The Literary Consultancy, London, a committee member of the Irish Writers Union and a regular reviewer for the Historical Novel Society. She holds degrees from University of East Anglia, Durham and Canterbury Christ Church. Katherine is represented by Annette Green Authors’ Agency in the UK.

Bernard Cornwell was born in London in 1944 – a ‘warbaby’ – whose father was a Canadian airman and mother in Britain’s Women’s Auxiliary Air Force. He was adopted by a family in Essex who belonged to a religious sect called the Peculiar People (and they were), but escaped to London University and, after a stint as a teacher, he joined BBC Television where he worked for the next 10 years. He began as a researcher on the Nationwide programme and ended as Head of Current Affairs Television for the BBC in Northern Ireland. It was while working in Belfast that he met Judy, a visiting American, and fell in love. Judy was unable to move to Britain for family reasons so Bernard went to the States where he was refused a Green Card. He decided to earn a living by writing, a job that did not need a permit from the US government – and for some years he had been wanting to write the adventures of a British soldier in the Napoleonic wars – and so the Sharpe series was born. Bernard and Judy married in 1980, are still married, still live in the States and he is still writing Sharpe.

A Slice of Medieval Podcast co-hosts historian, Sharon Bennett Connolly and historical fiction author, Derek Birks interview a panel of three authors who write historical fiction set across the medieval age. The focus will be on how each author writes stories set in the middle ages and how they attempt to create an authentic medieval world and present its beliefs and values – especially regarding the roles of women - which is accessible to the modern reader. The authors will offer some insight into their writing process and how their work might transfer to the screen.

Panellists:

Elizabeth Chadwick (pictured), David Gilman & Matthew Harffy

Elizabeth Chadwick is a UK million selling historical novelist with 28 novels in print translated into 18 languages between them. She won a Betty Trask award for her first published novel The Wild Hunt and the RNA prize for Historical fiction in 2011 with To Defy A King. Her novel The Greatest Knight is a New York Times bestseller and has been optioned for film and TV together with several others in the same series. Specialising in the medieval period, she occasionally lectures on the academic circuit and gives talks on historical tours. Elizabeth is also a member of The Royal Historical Society. When not writing, Elizabeth enjoys sharing historical discussions with readers.

David Gilman lives in Devon. He was a firefighter, soldier, photographer, then award-winning screenwriter and writer of an acclaimed adventure series for young readers, before turning to writing his much-loved and bestselling Master Of War series full-time. Head of Zeus have sold more than 700,000 copies of David Gilman’s novels in English, and his work is translated into more than a dozen languages. The Master Of War titles featuring Thomas Blackstone has been widely reviewed as a must-read for Bernard Cornwell fans, with more than half a million copies sold in English. Titles have featured several times on the Der Spiegel bestseller lists in Germany, where sales by 2022 stand close to 300,000 copies. The Last Horseman, a standalone novel following Irish involvement in the Anglo-Boer War, was shortlisted for the Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize and his new contemporary thriller series, The Englishman, starring ex-Foreign Legion soldier Dan Raglan, was longlisted for the Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize as well. He is also the author of a popular WWII espionage thriller, Night Flight To Paris. The Englishman: Resurrection, the third title in The Englishman series was published in 2023, with the 8th Master of War title, To Kill A King, to be published in February 2024. AGC Studios have optioned The Englishman for development as a feature film in the vein of the Jason Bourne franchise with an excellent scriptwriter and director attached.

Matthew Harffy lived in Northumberland as a child and the area had a great impact on him. The rugged terrain, ruined castles and rocky coastline made it easy to imagine the past. Decades later, a documentary about Northumbria's Golden Age sowed the kernel of an idea for a series of historical fiction novels. The first of them is the action-packed tale of vengeance and coming of age, The Serpent Sword. Matthew has worked in the IT industry, where he spent all day writing and editing, just not the words that most interested him. Prior to that he worked in Spain as an English teacher and translator. Matthew lives in Wiltshire, England, with his wife and their two daughters.

Co-hosts:

Sharon Bennett Connolly is an historian and the best-selling author of four non-fiction history books. Sharon is the author of Heroines of the Medieval World, Silk and the Sword: The Women of the Norman Conquest and Ladies of Magna Carta: Women of Influence in Thirteenth Century England. Her fourth book, Defenders of the Norman Crown: Rise and Fall of the Warenne Earls of Surrey, telling the story of the Warenne earls over 300 years and 8 generation, was released in May 2021. A Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, Sharon has studied history academically and just for fun – and has even worked as a tour guide at a castle. She writes the popular history blog, www.historytheinterestingbits.com. Sharon regularly gives talks on women's history; she is a feature writer for All About History magazine and her TV work includes Australian Television's 'Who Do You Think You Are?'

Derek Birks was born in Hampshire in England but spent his teenage years in Auckland, New Zealand, where he still has strong family ties. Derek taught history at a secondary school for many years before taking early retirement to write.

He writes action-packed historical fiction which is rooted in accurate history and his debut book, Feud was the first of the successful Wars of the Roses series. More recently, he has written the bestselling Last of the Roman series set in 5th century Britain. Derek has also produced many non-fiction podcasts on medieval history for those interested in the real historical background to his books. Apart from his writing, he enjoys walking, archaeology and travelling – sometimes, but not always, to carry out research for his books.

The Slice of Medieval Podcast

Sharon and Derek started the Slice of Medieval Podcast in Autumn 2022 and have since interviewed many leading historians and authors of historical fiction. Their brief is to present medieval history and historical fiction in an informal, but historically robust, way. Guests have included: Bernard Cornwell, Michael Jones, Ben Kane, Elizabeth Chadwick, Michael Jecks and Anne O’Brien – amongst many others.

Free history is free in the sense that free verse is free of all the rules that traditionalists placed on poets – that their work must rhyme, must balance, etc. History that is written according to rules, like poems that have to rhyme, is less able to conjure up the essential meaning of the past. Form is given priority. Educational objectivity is a mantra that drowns out the meaning.

Considering different perspectives on the past, for example, present-tense approaches, fictive as well as fictional approaches, subjective approaches, metaphorical approaches. Ian states: 'We break things too neatly into the extremes of fiction and non-fiction whereas there is a whole gamut of different perspectives in between those two poles, and really no hard-and-fast line between them. Absolute ‘historical fiction’ is impossible – just as complete ‘historical non-fiction’ is impossible (unless one is talking about a single, isolated, well-evidenced fact) and there is a great degree of shading from one into the other.'

Dr Ian Mortimer is the Sunday Times-bestselling author of the Time Traveller's Guides to Medieval England, Elizabethan England, Restoration Britain and Regency Britain, as well as four critically acclaimed medieval biographies. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 1998. His work on the social history of medicine won the Alexander Prize in 2004 and was published by the Royal Historical Society in 2009. He lives with his wife and three children in Moretonhampstead, on the edge of Dartmoor.

Dartington Hall was a social experiment of kaleidoscopic vitality, set up in Devon in 1925 by a hugely wealthy American heiress, Dorothy Elmhirst (née Whitney), and her Yorkshire-born husband, Leonard. It quickly achieved international fame with its progressive school, craft production and wide-ranging artistic endeavours. Dartington was a residential community of students, teachers, farmers, artists and craftsmen committed to revivifying life in the countryside. It was a socio-cultural laboratory, where many of the most brilliant interwar minds lived or visited, testing out their ideas about art, society, spirituality and rural regeneration. This talk will focus on the people behind the early years of the experiment, on their vision for a transformed society, and their experiences trying to turn these dreams into a reality – all illustrated by some of the sumptuous pictures from the Dartington archive.

Dr Anna Neima is a historian and the author of The Utopians: Six Attempts to Build the Perfect Society and Practical Utopia: The Many Lives of Dartington Hall. She is currently a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the University of Warwick. She lives in London, but her heart remains in Devon.

Kate Quinn is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of historical fiction. A native of southern California, she attended Boston University where she earned a bachelor’s and master’s degree in Classical Voice. She has written four novels in the Empress of Rome Saga, and two books in the Italian Renaissance, before turning to the 20th century with The Alice Network, The Huntress, The Rose Code, and The Diamond Eye. Her books have all been translated into multiple languages. Kate and her husband live in San Diego with three rescue dogs.

Novelists rarely make the transition to screenwriting. Even if they are optioned, very few get the right to adapt their own work because producers don’t trust novelists to be able to write a coherent script, and also don’t want the author of the story interfering with their version—which is often very different. Yet who knows the work, its characters, themes and subtexts better than the person who originally created them? Is adaptation simply a matter of learning a new grammar and applying it? Can that be harder than writing the novel itself? Join Diana Gabaldon (pictured), whose Outlander series has been so successfully adapted for television, and who indeed writes scripts for the show, and Chris (C.C.) Humphreys who adapted his novel Shakespeare's Rebel for the stage and saw it produced at a major Canadian theatre company—with mixed results! Come hear the war stories, as well as the frustrations, the joys and the many pitfalls that lie between the initial creative spark... and Hollywood calling!

Diana Gabaldon is the author of the award-winning, #1 NYT-bestselling Outlander novels, described by Salon magazine as ‘the smartest historical sci-fi adventure-romance story ever written by a science Ph.D. with a background in scripting “Scrooge McDuck” comics’. Her books have sold 50+ million copies in 39 languages and 114 countries, and she was given a Thistle Award in 2019 by VisitScotland for ‘services to Scottish Tourism’. In addition, Sony/Starz have created a popular original television series based on the books, also called Outlander—filmed in Scotland and presently sold in more than 187 territories. Season 7 premiered in 2023. There will be an eighth and final season, and also a prequel show, dealing with Jamie Fraser’s parents, Brian and Ellen. Diana is a Consulting Producer for the show and has written several scripts. (Gabaldon is pronounced (in English) GAA-bull-dohn—it rhymes with ‘bad to the bone’. If you’re speaking Spanish, it’s gah-vahl-DOHN.)

Chris (C.C.) Humphreys is an award-winning novelist, playwright, actor and teacher, Chris Humphreys has written 22 novels, including The French Executioner - runner up for the Steel Dagger for Thrillers, UK; The Jack Absolute Trilogy; Vlad–The Last Confession, and A Place Called Armageddon. Chris adapted his 12th novel, Shakespeare’s Rebel for the stage and it received its premiere in 2015 at Bard on the Beach, Vancouver, Canada. His novel Plague won Canada’s Arthur Ellis Award for Best Crime Novel in 2015. Chasing the Wind follows the daring adventures of 1930s aviatrix, Roxy Loewen. His novels for young adult readers include, The Runestone Saga Trilogy published by Knopf, as well as The Tapestry Trilogy. His latest novel is Someday I'll Find You, a WW2 epic romance, published by Doubleday. His novels have been translated into thirteen languages. He holds a Masters in Fine Arts (Creative Writing) from the University of British Columbia, has been keynote speaker and Guest of Honour at several conferences, including the HNS North American Conference in Denver 2015. A busy audiobook narrator, as an actor Chris has performed on stages from London’s West End to Hollywood.

A conversation about bringing Roman historical fiction to the public based on experience at public events, especially Roman festivals, library talks, and social media. The session aims to broaden the view of ‘Rome’ beyond battles and ‘the Classical period’. Ideas for bringing the Romans to the public beyond Gladiator, I Claudius, Britannia and HBO’s Rome will be discussed. We will look at ways to increase the use of video and visual media.

A ‘Roman nut’ since the age of eleven, Alison Morton (pictured) writes award-winning thrillers featuring tough but compassionate heroines. Former army captain, city worker and translator with an MA in history, she turned to writing twelve years ago. In her ten-book Roma Nova series, Successio, Aurelia, Insurrectio and Julia Prima have been selected as Historical Novel Society’s Editors’ Choices. Successio was also picked by The Bookseller as Editor’s Choice in its inaugural indie review. Alison lives in Poitou, France, where she is writing the sequel to Julia Prima. https://www.alison-morton.com

Ruth Downie (pictured) is the creator of Roman Army medic Gaius Petreius Ruso – a man whose desire for a quiet life is thwarted by unwanted murder investigations and by his British partner, Tilla. Medicus, the first book in the series, was a New York Times bestseller and has been followed by a further seven novels and a novella. Absolutely none of the medical advice in the Ruso books should be followed. Roman and Greek doctors were very wise about many things but they were also known to prescribe donkey dung and boiled cockroaches. Ruth spends the occasional joyous week grovelling in mud with an archaeological trowel. https://ruthdownie.com

Kate Quinn is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of historical fiction. A native of southern California, she attended Boston University where she earned a bachelor’s and master’s degree in Classical Voice. She has written four novels in the Empress of Rome Saga, and two books in the Italian Renaissance, before turning to the 20th century with The Alice Network, The Huntress, The Rose Code, and The Diamond Eye. Her books have all been translated into multiple languages. Kate and her husband live in San Diego with three rescue dogs. https://www.katequinnauthor.com

Jane Johnson is from Cornwall and has worked in the book industry for 30 years as a bookseller, publisher and writer. For many years she was responsible for publishing the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, and later worked on Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movie trilogy, spending many months in New Zealand with cast and crew (she wrote the official visual companions to the films). The authors she publishes include George R.R. Martin (creator of A Game of Thrones), Dean Koontz, Robin Hobb, Stuart MacBride, Mark Lawrence, Raymond E. Feist and S.K. Tremayne.

She writes historical fiction set mainly in Cornwall and Morocco. Her novels include The Tenth Gift, The Salt Road, The Sultan’s Wife, Pillars of Light, Court of Lions, The Sea Gate, The White Hare and The Black Crescent. While she was in Morocco in 2005 to research The Tenth Gift, she met her soon-to-be husband Abdellatif, a Berber tribesman from a village in the Anti-Atlas Mountains. Returning home, she gave up her office job in London, sold her flat and shipped the contents to Morocco and they were married later that year. They now split their time between Cornwall and Morocco, and Jane still works remotely as a Fiction Publishing Director for HarperCollins.

Uncover the secrets of bringing historical characters to life in audiobook form with this spellbinding conversation between narrator Christine Mackie and author Helen Steadman. Join us for an hour-long discussion as these two creatives reveal the magic behind The Widdershins Trilogy audiobooks. From the imaginative side of character creation and narration to the practical processes of auditioning, production, and audio-proofing, you'll learn everything you need to know about bringing historical fiction to life on the page and in the studio.

If you are a fan of listening to historical fiction, or want to find out how to turn your own story into an audiobook, this event is sure to bewitch and inspire. With plenty of time for Q&A at the end, you'll have the chance to learn from Christine and Helen and get your own burning questions answered.

The Widdershins Trilogy was inspired by the little-known Newcastle witch trials, where fifteen women and one man were hanged for witchcraft on a single day in August 1650. Together, Widdershins, Sunwise, and Solstice tell the story of three women's struggle for survival in a hostile and superstitious world.

Christine Mackie has been an actor for over 40 years, working extensively in theatre, TV, and radio. Her best-known roles include Daphne Bryant in Downton Abbey and Mrs Harvey in The Grand. For the last ten years, she has played genial Weatherfield GP, Dr Susan Gaddas in Coronation Street. Christine recently played the title role in King Lear at the Shakespeare North Playhouse. She has also written two plays, Best Girl and Kin, and she has recorded a number of historical audiobooks. https://christinemackie.com

Most of Helen Steadman's books are set in the seventeenth century. Alongside the Widdershins Trilogy, her novel The Running Wolf follows the adventures of the real-life Shotley Bridge swordmakers who defected from Solingen, Germany in 1687. For The Widdershins Trilogy, Helen trained in herbal medicine at Dilston Physic Garden and went on to grow, harvest and make her own remedies. For The Running Wolf, she trained in blacksmithing, which culminated in making her own sword.

S.G. MacLean (Shona) (pictured) was born in Inverness and brought up in the Scottish Highlands. With an MA and PhD in History from the University of Aberdeen, she started writing historical fiction while bringing up her four children. She is the author of both the Alexander Seaton and the Damian Seeker series of historical crime, and the standalone thriller, The Bookseller of Inverness, Waterstone's Scottish Book of the Year, 2023. She has twice won the Crime Writers’ Association Historical Dagger.

Lisa Highton joined Jenny Brown Associates as an Associate Agent in 2022 and represents S G MacLean. In 2023 the agency held its inaugural Debut Novel Over 50 Award with over 1,700 entries. Until 2021, Lisa was Publisher of Two Roads, an imprint of John Murray Press/Hachette where she published authors including Kirsty Wark, Sally Magnusson, Monty Don, Ruth Hogan and Janet Ellis. Over a long career in publishing both in the UK and Australia where she was publishing director of Doubleday, HarperCollins and then Hodder, Lisa has published many bestsellers. Her passions are distinctive storytelling (often historical) finding those hidden stories with emotional heart and then connecting those stories with readers.