This week Matthew Harffy and Justin Hill are joined by Sunday Times bestselling author Elodie Harper — journalist, classicist, and one of the most exciting voices writing historical fiction today.Elodie's Wolf Den trilogy brought the women of Pompeii's infamous brothel roaring back to life, and her stunning new standalone Boudicca's Daughter follows Solina — the unnamed, overlooked daughter of Britain's most iconic warrior queen — from the chaos of the Boudiccan rebellion to the glittering, treacherous court of Nero's Rome.

We talk about what it means to write from the perspective of history's silenced women, the surprisingly complex historical record behind the Iceni rebellion, and the fascinating question of what we can and can't know about Celtic Britain. Elodie also reveals why she chose Tacitus's single phrase — that the ancient Britons "made no distinction between the sexes when choosing commanders" — as a window into an entirely different world, and why she included human sacrifice despite her sympathies lying firmly with the Iceni.

Plus: the spark for The Wolf Den (courtesy of historian Dan Jones), the emotional experience of visiting Pompeii's only surviving purpose-built brothel at dusk, the craft decision to write Solina's sections in first person present tense, and why even the villain of the piece — Roman general Paulinus — ended up being surprisingly sympathetic.Boudicca's Daughter is out in paperback on 23rd April.

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