On this episode of the Authors of History Podacast I am joined by Wolfson History Prize nominated historian and author Sara Lodge.

Sara is Professor of nineteenth-century literature and culture at the University of St Andrews. She is the author of four books and many articles: she writes regularly for papers including the Scotsman, the Times Literary Supplement and the Wall Street Journal. She is also an experienced radio broadcaster, whose documentaries have appeared on RTE Lyric FM and other stations.

Her latest book, The Mysterious Case of the Victorian Female Detective was featured on Radio 4 Woman’s Hour, BBC Radio London, in the Guardian, the Telegraph (which gave it five stars and dubbed it ‘a joy to read’), the Sunday Times (which called it ‘a revelation’) and the Scotsman (which picked it as one of the Scottish Books of the Year 2024). It has been shortlisted for the Wolfson History Prize, Britain’s biggest prize for history writing. She’s now working on her next book, The Haunted Causeway: magic, pilgrimage and imagination on the paths to Britain’s tidal islands. She’s also hoping to turn her research on Victorian female detectives into a drama series.

The Mysterious Case of the Victorian Female Detective (Yale University Press, 2024) is out in paperback in August 2025! Telegraph***** 'A new history of female detectives blends academic rigour with vivid and witty storytelling…it’s an ideal mixture and one that makes The Mysterious Case of the Victorian Female Detective a joy to read.' The Sunday Times ‘A revelation…move over, Sherlock!’ The Literary Review 'Lodge has marshalled the treasures of her research with enormous skill and style, producing a book of true importance, a bracing rethink of Victorian history that for the first time shows to what extent females, in life and in fiction, were going about police work undetected.' Brisbane Times “[A] marvellous piece of scholarly detective work.”

https://yalebooks.co.uk/book/9780300277883/the-mysterious-case-of-the-victorian-female-detective/

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On this very special episode of the Authors of History Podcast I talk to the newly announced winner of the 2025 Wolfson History Book Prize, author and historian Hannah Durkin.

Hannah is a researcher in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Black Atlantic history and culture with specialist expertise in transatlantic slavery and its legacies. She holds a Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of Nottingham and a Postgraduate Diploma in Journalism from Leeds Trinity University. Her research has been featured in the New York Times, London Times, NPR, the BBC, and many other news outlets throughout Africa, Europe, and North America.

Hannah's 2025 award winning Wolfson History Book is:

Survivors: The Lost Stories of the Last Captives of the Atlantic Slave Trade (HarperCollins, 2024).

This book tells the stories of the survivors of the Clotilda, the last slave ship to land on U.S. soil when it docked in Mobile Bay, Alabama in July 1860. The individual voices that this book brings together tell an exceptionally detailed and wide-ranging account of the transatlantic slave trade, slavery and freedom from the perspectives of its survivors. Survivors has been shortlisted for the 2025 Wolfson History Prize, the UK’s most prestigious history prize, and the 2024 Historical Writers’ Association Non-Fiction Crown Award. It was named as one of Amazon’s Best Books of 2024, one of the Washington Post’s “50 Notable Works of Nonfiction from 2024,” and a New Yorker recommended book of 2024.

This episode was recorded before the winner was announced.

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On this episode of the Authors of History podcast I am joined by Author, Historian and Podcaster Jane Gulliford Lowes.

Jane is a writer, a historian, and podcaster from the northeast of England. She has been obsessed with history and especially World War II and the social history of the Northeast from an early age. She holds a degree in law and a master's degree in the Second World War studies. Jane was awarded the RAF Museum's Prestigious Academic Award in 2023 for her thesis on RAF Bomber Command Gardening Operations, which is also the subject of her latest book. The Invisible Campaign.

Jane's first book The Horsekeeper's Daughter was published in 2017. It tells the true story of one of the hundreds of women who left the North East mining villages in the 1880s to travel alone to Australia, to start new lives. Her second book, Above Us The Stars: 10 Squadron Bomber Command - The Wireless Operator's Story, focuses on the experiences of a young Bomber Command aircrewman during World War 2, and of the family he left behind in the small mining town of Seaham Harbour.

She has also published 2 ebooks, She Was Only A Coalminer's Daughter - Stories of a Seaham Childhood, and How to Write Your Family History - A Beginner's Guide, both exclusively available on Amazon Kindle.

Jane is also a podcatser, the producer and co-host of the popular Bomber Command podcast, Nevermind the Dam Busters.

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