Cost: £59 (£49 before August 31^st) – Please send cheques, payable to
The Historical Novel Society, to:
Richard Lee, Marine Cottage, The Strand, Starcross, Devon, EX6 8NY,
or email r ichard@historicalnovelsociety.org for details of online payment.

The conference will be our usual friendly affair, and there will be plenty of
opportunity to meet and talk with authors. Most of the society ‘staff’
usually attend, and it is an enjoyable opportunity to put faces to names.
See below for details on the programme.

Programme and Timetable:

9.15-10.00	Kingdom of Heaven – Tom Harper talks about his series of murder mysteries set at the time of the First Crusade, and points up the differences between the cultures of east and west – Franks, Byzantines and Saracens. Tom Harper, Knights of the Cross, Random House, 21^st April 2005
10.15-11.00	Finding New Talent – Talent scout and ex-publisher Hilary Johnson offers advice to new and established novelists. (www.hilaryjohnson.demon.co.uk)
Break
11.30-12.30	In the Shadow of Nelson - Panel - Julian Stockwin, Miranda Hearn, Edwin Thomas Nelson and his navy have formed a distinct genre of historical fiction ever since the first Hornblower novel. Three contemporary authors discuss the way they have approached the subject. Miranda Hearn, Nelson’s Daughter, Hodder Headline, 28^th February 2005 Julian Stockwin, Quarterdeck, Hodder Headline, 28^th March 2005 Edwin Thomas, Chains of Albion, Transworld, 4^th July 2005
Lunch
2.00-2.45	Presentation: Short Histories Prize 2005 (Fish Publishing) Clem Cairns and Jock Howson of Fish Publishing talk about the world of short fiction and how to win competitions. They will also announce the £2000 winner of the 2005 Short Histories Prize.
3.00-3.45	British Holocaust – Anne Harries on women, concentration camps and the Boer War Ann Harries, No Place for a Lady, Bloomsbury, 1^st August 2005
Break
4.15-5.00	The Time of Spies – Martin Stephen on his series of murder mysteries: Gresham and arch-spy Thomas Walsingham, and the threat of the Armada Martin Stephen, The Galleon’s Grave, Time Warner , 17^th Feb 2005

The New Cavendish Club

The New Cavendish Club is elegant and comfortable, and very central (nearest tube station: Marble Arch, 3 minutes walk). The Club has recently been refurbished, with sound proofing and air-conditioning installed in the main lecture room.

The Club was created in 1920 by Lady Ampthill to provide a meeting place for women who had served with Voluntary Aid Detachments. This organisation was started during the Great War to provide ancillary nursing services in military hospitals, with those who joined performing such tasks as driving ambulances, running canteens and undertaking general war duties. The VAD Ladies’ Club was established in Cavendish Square with an initial membership of two thousand five hundred. When it moved to Great Cumberland Place in 1959, its name changed to The New Cavendish Club and its membership has expanded.

More about the authors and their works:

The Galleons’ Grave

HENRY GRESHAM AND THE SPANISH ARMADA

Martin Stephen

£10.00 hardback 17 February 2005

The Galleons’ Grave is the third book in Martin Stephen’s series featuring the courtier and spy Henry Gresham. In The Desperate Remedy Henry Gresham became embroiled in the Gunpowder Plot, while in The Conscience of the King he uncovered the corrupt world of Jacobean theatre. Now Henry Gresham faces the battle of the Armada.

It is 1588 and King Philip of Spain has assembled the greatest fleet and the most powerful army in the world. It is envisaged that the Armada, commanded by the brave and chivalric Duke Medina Sidonia, will crush the English and bring an end to the reign of Queen Elizabeth.

One man who has inside knowledge of this event is the young Henry Gresham. Caught up in the intrigues of Elizabeth's court as its inhabitants jostle for power and favour, he begins to realise that are many there who resent his youth, wealth and good looks. His position as a spy for Walsingham further endangers his life - and when he finds himself sailing on the Armada in order to spy on Sir Francis Drake, who is deemed suspicious of working for the Spanish, he's not entirely certain where the real threat lies…

Martin Stephen’s first novel, The Desperate Remedy was short listed for the CWA Ellis Peters Historical Dagger Award 2002. He has also written fifteen books on English Literature and military history. He is currently High Master of St Paul's School. In 2004 he has taken on the role of Chairman of the Headmasters and Headmistresses Conference. He is an experienced broadcaster and journalist who writes regularly for the broadsheets, the Daily Mail and the Evening Standard. He lives in London.

PRAISE FOR THE DESPERATE REMEDY AND THE CONSCIENCE OF THE KING:

‘Considerable effort has gone into the mucky detail of early 17^th-century London, and the tale is moved on at high speed by Gresham’s well-timed revelations’

TIMES

‘Terrific … the first of a long series, we must hope’

Spectator

'Breathtaking plotting and delightful characterization in a Jacobean tale of murder and political intrigue - a pyrotechnic, explosive rocket of a book'

JENNI MURRAY

‘Henry Gresham is a hero for all seasons and The Desperate Remedy is a dashing delight’

VAL MCDERMID

'Rollicking good fun, a moving romance and satisfying, well-rounded account ... characters to savour.... Stephen knows his milieu intimately.'

MANCHESTER EVENING NEWS

'Intrigue, high-life and low-life are brilliantly interwoven… the historical details are utterly convincing.'

LAWRENCE JAMES

2005 marks the bi-centenary of the Battle of Trafalgar.
There have been countless biographies and histories
of the man and the fight,
but how did it feel to be his daughter?

NELSON’S DAUGHTER

MIRANDA HEARN

Publication date: 28 February 2005 Price: £16.99

What must it have been like to be the daughter of the most famous man for generations; to learn who he was only when he was dead; to not know and then never to accept who her mother really was?

To be dragged from one place to another by a woman she believed to be her godmother; to be thrown in prison with her, and then into exile, and eventually to watch her drink herself to death in a strange place?

And behind all the glory, the celebrity and the glamour, what might Nelson have been like as a man, and Emma as a woman?

In Miranda Hearn’s brilliantly imagined novel an intimate portrait emerges of Nelson and his passionate affair with Emma but it is the complex relationship of a mother and daughter that forms the heart of this elegiac novel and offers a vivid and beguiling vision of Nelson’s most personal legacy.

Praise for A Life Everlasting

‘Hearn keeps up an invigorating pace in an atmospheric slice of capital history reminiscent of Rose Tremain’s Restoration.’ Guardian

‘She has a beautiful and distinctive style, and I think I should read with pleasure anything she wrote.’ Hilary Mantel

‘She does a great thing in making history seem tangible and dense, a sea in which all of time mixes.’ Daily Telegraph

KNIGHTS OF THE CROSS

by Tom Harper

PUBLISHED BY CENTURY

21ST APRIL 2005 AT £10.99

PRAISE FOR TOM HARPER

‘His portrayal of the Byzantine city and the intrigues which threaten its destruction is vivid and convincing’ Sunday Times

‘Harper has captured with words and plot, the colour and excitement of the Byzantine world in all its glory and frail stability’ Crime Time

As Demetrios’s favour with Emperor continues, he is deployed with the armies of the first crusade as they head to Asia Minor, routing all Turkish life en route as they reclaim the land in the name of Christianity.

Demetrios is sent as the Emperor’s eyes.

The bloody and irreverent progress of the army fills Demetrios with disgust. With Sigurd, the skilled Varangian guard at his side to witness the horror, they must at least defend themselves and fight in the name of Christendom. Danger is ever present. While attention is focused on the Turks all may be safe enough between the feuding factions of the Christian army, but on reaching Antioch the advance is halted, the cities defences are strong and the encamped men are forced to face each other. They are bored and hungry. Ancient feuds are still clear memories and the interminable siege against Antioch drags on as the bitter Winter closes in.

As tempers rise, a Norman knight is discovered murdered and Demetrios is charged with solving the mystery. Clearly this is an unenviable honour. He is granted leave to question anyone and to roam freely through the camps, vulnerable to the vitriolic hatred of all but his own men. Demetrios is privy to the open enmity between the Lords who sit upon the war council, he sees the ruthless ambition of Bohemond the Norman Lord, he observes the open and bitter rivalry between him and the Provençal leader Count Raymond, the divine power attributed to Bishop Adhemar legate to the Patriach of Rome and the simpering weaknesses of the other ineffectual leaders of men. Political gambling is at work and Demetrios is caught in the eye of the heist. Inevitably his investigations lead him deeper into this viper’s nest of jealousy, betrayal and fanaticism which lies deep in the heart of the crusading armies.

Tom Harper grew up in West Germany, Belgium and the USA. He read History at Lincoln College, Oxford. He also writes award-winning historical naval fiction under the name Edwin Thomas. Inspired to write about Byzantine history by his Greek in-laws, he and his wife Emma have just moved to York from London, but spend large chunks of their time in Athens. His mother is a vicar and his father is an actuary. He writes the occasional feature for the National Press and is available for interview.

No Place for a Lady

Ann Harries

Published by Bloomsbury in Hardback
Date: 1^st August 2005 Price: £16.99

The thrilling and sweeping new novel from the award-winning author of
‘Manly Pursuits’

It is the turn of the twentieth century and war is razing the Boer Republics of South Africa to the ground. Kitchener’s army has intensified its most barbarous campaign: to burn down the homes of thousands of obstinate Boers, forcing a desperate migration to disease-ridden concentration camps. Yet the vastly outnumbered Boers still will not surrender to the British.

In the midst of these horrors is a group of women, each fighting their own battle. Sarah Palmer is an angelically pretty nurse who arrives from England with her madcap friend Louise. Their relationship is threatened when Sarah falls deeply in love with a sick Colonial trooper of humble origin as Louise cannot help but become painfully jealous of her friend’s natural magnetism and beauty. And then arrives the dynamic Englishwoman, Emily Hobhouse, who has come to bring succour to the destitute and dying women and children and to stir the consciences of Britain over the holocaust of the camps.

As their dramas unfold, so too does the history of the war. It was intended to be a quick annexation of the Boer Republics but it turned in to a protracted, savage conflict. Harries shows a depth of knowledge and compassion in her writing; the involvement of the blacks who were promised the vote if they joined the British side, and the injustices and deep inequalities in South Africa which lie at the heart of the story. ‘No Place for a Lady’ is historical fiction at its finest. Ann harries has drawn unforgettable characters and made the period with all its complexities come vividly alive. This is a thrilling, beautifully written, and utterly compelling novel.

Ann Harries was born and educated in Cape Town, where she worked in township schools and community centres. On moving to England she became active in the anti-apartheid movement. The author of the acclaimed Manly Pursuits, she divides her time between the Cotswolds and South Africa.

PRAISE FOR MANLY PURSUITS

‘History is ingeniously rewritten in this witty and engaging novel.’
J.M. Coetzee

‘Outstanding…Funny, well observed and beautifully written.’
Sunday Times

‘Brilliantly funny and inventive…Enjoyable and vivid throughout… I haven’t turned any pages faster this year than I have turned these.’
Spectator

‘A hugely ambitious novel that takes on an impressive range of themes, from history, colonialism and racism to science, evolution, sexual repression and betrayal…Both an entertaining read and a richly evocative portrait of that era.’
Observer

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