Rather than identify a genre, I have chosen to focus on the theme of stories that are so powerful they make you feel like you’re in the story with the characters and/or give an insight into how the people within the setting really felt. For me, that is the true challenge of historical fiction – to see inside the heads of historical figures and get a genuine sense of what life was like for both the famous and the common. Here are my five selections of historical novels which are great stories and open a window into the relevant times, inspiring my own desire to open that window for others.
In the year 1060, young Brand Holgarsson’s family is wiped out in a Viking raid arranged by Brand’s treacherous uncle Malgard. Malgard is named thegn while Brand is made outlaw and hunted through the woods of East Anglia by Malgard’s men, determined to extinguish the last possible claim to the thegnship. Aided by a strange young woman, Valla, Brand escapes and is befriended by Harold Godwinson, Earl of Wessex, and the choice of the Saxon nobles to be king after the childless Edward (the Confessor).
Brand nurses his dream of vengeance while sharing Harold’s perils and waiting for Valla who will only return from the “Place of Dreams” if Brand has kept his promise to lie with no other woman. All stories come together at the Battle of Hastings where Harold’s great banner, The Fighting Man, flew above Senlac Ridge in opposition to the papal cross carried by William the Bastard.
Richard Sharpe is one of the great characters of historical fiction, paralleling the true career of Arthur Wellesley (later the Duke of Wellington) from India all the way to Waterloo. The first book in the series introduces us to Private Sharpe fighting in India in 1799. Sharpe is relieved from the tyranny of Sergeant Hakeswill and sent on a secret mission into the fortress of the Tipoo Sultan to rescue an intelligence officer in prison.
With Lieutenant Lawford he pretends to be a British deserter and joins the Sultan’s forces in the heavily fortified Seringapatam. A gripping story with wonderful characters that kicks off an exceptional series. Cornwell is the doyen of historical fiction storytellers and makes you feel like you’re really there.
*The brand new novel, SHARPE'S ASSASSIN, is available to pre-order now*
Sharpe's Tiger is the brilliant beginning of Sharpe's adventures
India, 1799
The citadel of Seringapatam is under siege. Navigating this dangerous kingdom of bejewelled palaces and poverty, Private Richard Sharpe embarks on a rescue mission to save a senior officer from the clutches of the Tippoo of Mysore - and oust the Sultan from his throne.
The fortress of Mysore is considered impregnable, but one of the greatest threats comes from betrayal within the British ranks. And the man to outwit enemies from both sides is Sharpe . .…
If Bernard Cornwell is the doyen of storytellers, Hilary Mantel is the master when it comes to characterisation and authenticity of time and place. Wolf Hall is the first in her Thomas Cromwell trilogy and won the Man Booker Prize. It tells the story of Cromwell’s career, becoming Henry VIII’s right-hand man during the ructions around the separation of the English church from Rome, Henry’s divorce from Catherine of Aragon, and pursuit of Anne Boleyn.
There have been any number of other novels covering these events but what truly sets this writer apart is her ability to get inside Cromwell’s head. The reader is intimately privy to Cromwell’s thoughts in a way that feels authentic and makes for an incredibly rich experience. The second book in the series also won the Man Booker.
Winner of the Man Booker Prize
Shortlisted for the the Orange Prize
Shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award
`Dizzyingly, dazzlingly good'
Daily Mail
'Our most brilliant English writer'
Guardian
England, the 1520s. Henry VIII is on the throne, but has no heir. Cardinal Wolsey is his chief advisor, charged with securing the divorce the pope refuses to grant. Into this atmosphere of distrust and need comes Thomas Cromwell, first as Wolsey's clerk, and later his successor.
Cromwell is a wholly original man: the son of a brutal blacksmith, a political genius, a briber, a charmer, a bully, a man with…
One of those blockbuster airport novels of the 70s which also just happens to be an outstanding piece of literature. The main characters are fictional but squarely based on historical characters and events.
John Blackthorne is the pilot of a Dutch ship which is shipwrecked in Japan a couple of years before the Battle of Sekigahara (1600). Everything about the Japanese is incomprehensible to Blackthorne but gradually he assimilates and becomes an important piece in the political game being played out between the ruthless and bloodthirsty regents presiding over a very precarious peace.
Another wonderfully experiential novel in which – like Blackthorne himself – the reader is constantly shocked by the alien ways of the feudal Japanese.
'Clavell never puts a foot wrong . . . Get it, read it, you'll enjoy it mightily' Daily Mirror
This is James Clavell's tour-de-force; an epic saga of one Pilot-Major John Blackthorne, and his integration into the struggles and strife of feudal Japan. Both entertaining and incisive, SHOGUN is a stunningly dramatic re-creation of a very different world.
Starting with his shipwreck on this most alien of shores, the novel charts Blackthorne's rise from the status of reviled foreigner up to the hights of trusted advisor and eventually, Samurai. All as civil war looms over the fragile country.
This is a novel that divides. It was a work that took Mailer many years to complete and the book that he (apparently) regarded as his masterpiece. It is certainly an incredible piece of work – the product of a powerful imagination in recreating an authentic feel for ancient Egypt with details ranging from cosmology via warfare to street scenes.
Some readers find the strong focus on the sensuality of the Egyptians a bit much. Mailer’s Egyptian world is very sexualised and who’s to say he’s wrong? If you’re not turned off by that kind of thing you’ll be rewarded with one of the most richly detailed and “real” feeling historical novels ever written.
Norman Mailer’s dazzlingly rich, deeply evocative novel of ancient Egypt breathes life into the figures of a lost era: the eighteenth-dynasty Pharaoh Rameses and his wife, Queen Nefertiti; Menenhetet, their creature, lover, and victim; and the gods and mortals that surround them in intimate and telepathic communion. Mailer’s reincarnated protagonist is carried through the exquisite gardens of the royal harem, along the majestic flow of the Nile, and into the terrifying clash of battle. An extraordinary work of inventiveness, Ancient Evenings lives on in the mind long after the last page has been turned.
Another book that divides in these very PC times. This is the first in a series of stories telling a kind of meta-history using mainly historical figures and also historic fictional characters. Some will remember Tom Brown’s Schooldays (published 1857). The villain of the piece was the arch cad and school bully – Flashman – who was expelled for drunkenness at the end of the novel.
More than a century later, GMF began publishing the “discovered memoirs” of Flashman – commencing with his expulsion and recreating his entire army career in which he sees action in many of the famous campaigns of the C19. Despite his celebrity however, Flashman is the first to admit he was the basest of cowards who somehow survived, shrieking with terror, while pursuing his great talents for womanising and feathering his own nest.
Incredibly well researched and brilliantly written. You will learn some detailed history while reading these wonderful (and very funny) books that give amazing insight into the mores and manners of Victorian England.
For George MacDonald Fraser the bully Flashman was easily the most interesting character in Tom Brown's Schooldays, and imaginative speculation as to what might have happened to him after his expulsion from Rugby School for drunkenness ended in 12 volumes of memoirs in which Sir Harry Paget Flashman - self-confessed scoundrel, liar, cheat, thief, coward -'and, oh yes, a toady' - romps his way through decades of nineteenth-century history in a swashbuckling and often hilarious series of military and amorous adventures. In Flashman the youthful hero, armed with a commission in the 11th Dragoons, is shipped to India, woos and…
Benghazi: A New History is a look back at the enigmatic 2012 attack on the US mission in Benghazi, Libya, its long-tail causes, and devastating (and largely unexamined) consequences for US domestic politics and foreign policy. It contains information not found elsewhere, and is backed up by 40 pages of citations and interviews with more than 250 key protagonists, experts, and witnesses.
So far, the book is the main -- and only -- antidote to a slew of early partisan “Benghazi” polemics, and the first to put the attack in its longer term historical, political, and social context. If you…
On September 11, 2012, Al Qaeda proxies attacked and set fire to the US mission in Benghazi, Libya, killing a US Ambassador and three other Americans. The attack launched one of the longest and most consequential 'scandals' in US history, only to disappear from public view once its political value was spent.
Written in a highly engaging narrative style by one of a few Western experts on Libya, and decidely non-partisan, Benghazi!: A New History is the first to provide the full context for an event that divided, incited, and baffled most of America for more than three years, while silently reshaping…
11,000+ authors have recommended their favorite books and what they love about them.
Browse their picks for the best books about
reincarnation,
sieges,
and
London.
