Sunday 28 June 2026, 4.00pm
Layer Marney Tower, Layer Marney, Near Colchester, Essex, CO5 9US

Prize-winning journalist and acclaimed author of The Escape Artist Jonathan Freedland tells the thrilling true story of one of the most dramatic episodes of the second world war. With deep moral resonance for our own time, he asks what kind of person it takes to risk everything and stand up to tyranny.

Tickets: £14 (includes entrance to Layer Marney Tower and gardens)
Or all 3 events for £36
Box Office: essexbookfestival.org.uk or Mercury Theatre 01206 573948

The History Books Ticket Deal

Make an afternoon of it with our History Books ticket deal – £14 per event or all 3 events for £36
Discount automatically applied at checkout when tickets for all 3 events are booked:

12.00pm – Tony McMahon, Downfall of the Templars
2.00pm – Emily Hauser, Mythica
4.00pm – Jonathan Freedland, The Traitor’s Circle

The History Books at Layer Marney Tower, Sunday 28 June.

Event Information

💬 The event will include an audience Q&A session.
📚 Copies of the book will be available to purchase on the day.
🖊️ After the event there will be an opportunity to get the book signed by the author.
🪑 Seats are unallocated.
📸 We will be filming and taking photos at this event.
☕ Layer Marney Tea Room will be open from 11am serving refreshments, lunches and snacks.
🚗 There is free parking at the venue.
♿ The venue is wheelchair accessible. There are disabled facilities on site.

Jonathan Freedland

Photo of Jonathan Freedland © Philippa Gedge

Jonathan Freedland is the author of the Sunday Times bestseller The Escape Artist which was shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford, Rathbones Folio and Waterstones Book of the Year prizes and in April 2025 was named by Kirkus Reviews as one of the Best Books of the 21st Century . It was translated into twenty one languages and appeared on numerous Book of the Year lists.

A Guardian columnist, Freedland has won awards for Columnist of the Year and Commentator of the Year and is a past winner of an Orwell Prize for Journalism. He is the presenter of BBC Radio 4’s contemporary history series, The Long View, and the author of twelve other books, three of them non-fiction, including his first, the award-winning Bring Home the Revolution. Among those books were nine thrillers, eight of them under the name Sam Bourne, including The Righteous Men which was a No. 1 Sunday Times bestseller and has sold over 2 million copies worldwide.

The Traitors Circle

The Rebels Against the Nazis and the Spy Who Betrayed Them.

The new thrilling non-fiction from the bestselling author of The Escape Artist.

A thrilling true story of courage, resistance and, ultimately, betrayal in the Third Reich by internationally bestselling author and prize-winning journalist Jonathan Freedland.

The Traitors Circle tells the true, but scarcely known story of a group of secret rebels against Hitler. Drawn from Berlin high society, they include senior army officers, top government officials, two countesses, an ambassador’s widow, a young heiress and a former model – all of them meeting in the shadows, whether hiding and rescuing Jews or plotting for a Germany freed from Nazi rule.

One day in September 1943 they gather for a tea party – unaware that one among them will betray the rest to the Gestapo. Pursued to near destruction by a cruel, calculating detective – a man with the blood of thousands on his hands – theirs is a story of rare heroism, sacrifice and inspiring endurance in the face of the most brutal regime in history.

In another page-turning work of nonfiction, Jonathan Freedland, acclaimed author of The Escape Artist, sheds light on one of the most dramatic episodes of the second world war, telling a story with deep moral resonance for our own time, one that asks what kind of person it takes to risk everything and stand up to tyranny.

‘An astonishing true story of courage, love and betrayal, told with the verve of a thriller. Freedland is a master at weaving spellbinding entertainments drawn from forgotten corners of history’

– Mick Herron

‘A story of unlikely rebels who had much to lose from resisting the Nazi regime, which so many of their peers supported. What made them trade personal safety for moral rectitude? Freedland’s answer is as tense as a thriller yet perceptive, thoughtful and

thoroughly researched. It made me think long after I’d turned the last page’

– Katja Hoyer, bestselling author of Blood and Iron

‘The Traitors Circle rivals Freedland’s superb The Escape Artist. A revelatory account of heroism and treachery in Nazi Germany, it based on original research and reads like a thriller. Totally gripping and timely’

– Jonathan Dimbleby

Photo of Layer Marney Tower © Red Carpet Video

The post The Traitor’s Circle appeared first on Essex Book Festival.

Sunday 28 June 2026, 2.00pm
Layer Marney Tower, Layer Marney, Near Colchester, Essex, CO5 9US

Award-winning classicist and historian, Emily Hauser, will take us on an epic journey to uncover the true story of the real women behind ancient Greece’s greatest legends – and the real heroes of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey.

In Mythica, Dr Emily Hauser tells, for the first time, the extraordinary stories of the real women behind some of the western world’s greatest legends. Following in their footsteps, digging into the history behind Homer’s epic poems, piecing together evidence from the original texts, recent astonishing archaeological finds and the latest DNA studies, she reveals who these women – queens, mothers, warriors, slaves – were, how they lived, and how history has (or has not – until now) remembered them.

‘Bold and intellectually thrilling . . . rigorous scholarship and dazzling feats of imagination.’

– Tom Holland, historian and co-host of The Rest is History podcast

Tickets: £14 (includes entrance to Layer Marney Tower and gardens)
Or all 3 events for £36
Box Office: essexbookfestival.org.uk or Mercury Theatre 01206 573948

The History Books Ticket Deal

Make an afternoon of it with our History Books ticket deal – £14 per event or all 3 events for £36
Discount automatically applied at checkout when tickets for all 3 events are booked:

12.00pm – Tony McMahon, Downfall of the Templars
2.00pm – Emily Hauser, Mythica
4.00pm – Jonathan Freedland, The Traitor’s Circle

The History Books at Layer Marney Tower, Sunday 28 June.

Event Information

💬 The event will include an audience Q&A session.
📚 Copies of the book will be available to purchase on the day.
🖊️ After the event there will be an opportunity to get the book signed by the author.
🪑 Seats are unallocated.
📸 We will be filming and taking photos at this event.
☕ Layer Marney Tea Room will be open from 11am serving refreshments, lunches and snacks
🚗 There is free parking at the venue.
♿ The venue is wheelchair accessible. There are disabled facilities on site.

Emily Hauser

Photo of Emily Hauser © Faye Thomas

Dr Emily Hauser is an award-winning classicist and historian. She read Classics at Cambridge with Mary Beard, where she received a double first with distinction and won the prestigious Chancellor’s Medal for Classical Proficiency.

She has a PhD in Classics from Yale University, and was a Junior Fellow at the Society of Fellows at Harvard University. She is now Senior Lecturer in Classics and Ancient History at the University of Exeter, and teaches and researches on women’s writing, ancient and modern.

Mythica

Award-winning classicist and historian, Emily Hauser, takes readers on an epic journey to uncover the true story of the real women behind ancient Greece’s greatest legends – and the real heroes of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey.

Contrary to perceptions built up over three millennia, ancient history is not all about men – and it’s not only men’s stories that deserve to be told.

In Mythica, Dr Emily Hauser tells, for the first time, the extraordinary stories of the real women behind some of the western world’s greatest legends. Following in their footsteps, digging into the history behind Homer’s epic poems, piecing together evidence from the original texts, recent astonishing archaeological finds and the latest DNA studies, she reveals who these women – queens, mothers, warriors, slaves – were, how they lived, and how history has (or has not – until now) remembered them.

A riveting new history of the Bronze Age Aegean and a journey through Homer’s epics charted entirely by women – from Helen of Troy, Briseis, Cassandra and Aphrodite to Circe, Athena, Hera, Calypso and Penelope – Mythica is a ground-breaking reassessment of the reality behind the often-mythologized women of Greece’s greatest epics, and of the ancient world itself as we learn ever more about it.

Order a copy of the book from bookshop.org.

Lucy Hughes-Hallett

Photo of Layer Marney Tower © Red Carpet Video

The post Mythica appeared first on Essex Book Festival.

Sunday 28 June 2026, 12.00pm
Layer Marney Tower, Layer Marney, Near Colchester, Essex, CO5 9US

Why were the Knights Templar brutally crushed after years of courageous service in the Crusades? Were they framed for being heretics, sorcerers and traitors? Do the Templars still exist today? Broadcaster and author Tony McMahon investigates the links between the trials of the Templars and the witch hunt mania that was about to grip Europe.

Tickets: £14 (includes entrance to Layer Marney Tower and gardens)
Or all 3 events for £36
Box Office: essexbookfestival.org.uk or Mercury Theatre 01206 573948

Event Information

💬 The event will include an audience Q&A session.
📚 Copies of the book will be available to purchase on the day.
🖊️ After the event there will be an opportunity to get the book signed by the author.
🪑 Seats are unallocated.
☕ Layer Marney Tea Room will be open from 11am serving refreshments, lunches and snacks
📸 We will be filming and taking photos at this event.
🚗 There is free parking at the venue
♿ The venue is wheelchair accessible. There are disabled facilities on site.

Tony McMahon

Photo of Tony McMahon © Tony McMahon

The author, Tony McMahon, is a regular face on history and science documentaries on TV. He is one of four Truthseekers on History’s very successful three season series as well as Secrets of the Royal Palaces on Channel 5, William Shatner’s The UnXplained, Forbidden History, Strange Evidence, and many other shows.

Tony McMahon appeared with Tony Robinson and Steve Tibble at the Battle of Evesham Festival in August 2025 to talk about his trilogy of books on the Templars. Downfall of the Templars is the second book. The third, focusing on the Freemason/Templar link, will be published in late 2026.

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@tonymcmahon_historybear
The Templar Knight blog: https://thetemplarknight.com/
Substack: https://tonymcmahon.substack.com/
Tony McMahon on TV: https://tony-mcmahon.com/

Downfall of the Templars: Guilty of Diabolic Magic?

The Knights Templar – Europe’s first Witches?

New evidence from TV historian Tony McMahon proves that the trials of the Knights Templar between 1307 and 1312 foreshadowed the witch trials about to engulf Europe for over 300 years. Many of the alleged crimes of the Templars mirror the charges brought against thousands of witches. Illicit kisses, demon worshipping, and desecrating the crucifix.

Tony McMahon explains:

“It’s been overlooked that when the Knights Templar were being tortured and executed, the king of France was also burning a group of women called the Beguines. He accused a bishop of murdering the queen using magic potions. And he was trying to put a dead pope on trial for diabolism. Something was happening in medieval society. This was the beginning of the notorious witch trials.”

Plus, while the Templars were on trial – others were being accused of sorcery including a bishop and a dead pope. This was part of a new elite obsession with sorcery and necromancy. The disturbing late medieval trend that would claim the lives of so many is investigated by TV historian Tony McMahon in Downfall of the Templars: Guilty of Diabolic Magic? (Pen & Sword publishers).

Most historians assume the Templars were destroyed by the King of France, Philip IV, eager to grab their fabled riches. But author and historian Tony McMahon shows that the Templar trials between 1307 and 1312 were part of a new and sinister wave of prosecutions against alleged sorcerers and necromancers.

Society was sliding into superstition and darkness. The Templars fell victim to this trend. As our own time sees an onslaught on science and reason, the terrible fate of these knights is an object lesson we all need to learn. And with increased interest in witchcraft, this is a timely book set to provoke widespread interest.

Downfall of the Templars also investigates whether the knights really did have enormous treasure that they successfully hid away. And it sheds light on organisations today that claim to be modern Templars.

Order a copy of the book from bookshop.org.

The post Downfall of the Templars appeared first on Essex Book Festival.