I’ve been fascinated by social history since childhood, although I didn’t know that was what it was called, back then. When I did a postgraduate Masters in Folk Life Studies, it helped to confirm my love of books that, in skilfully fictionalising historical events, allow us to see them through the eyes of people most closely affected by them: ordinary people leading their lives throughout difficult and dangerous times or finding themselves in extraordinary relationships. It’s what I try to do in my own work, fiction and non-fiction alike. My book recommendations here are the kind of books I wish I had written.
I wrote...
The Last Lancer: A Story of Loss and Survival in Poland and Ukraine
The product of years of research, The Last Lancer is the story of my Polish forebears, an eccentric family torn apart by successive occupations and wars. The Czerkawskis lived in a part of Eastern Poland that is now Ukraine. The ‘last lancer’ of the title is my flawed but generous and charming cavalry officer grandfather who died long before I was born. It’s a tale of heartbreak, loss, and – for my beloved father – survival against the odds. The book sheds light on all that was lost, people and places, while offering some understanding of what was, for my family, as for so many others, a much loved but troubled homeland.
Kidnapped was the first novel to make me understand how a talented writer could turn historical events into an entertaining story.
Written in 1886, it is set in 1751, just after the Jacobite Rising of 1745. As a young writer, I dramatised it for BBC Radio, fell in love with Alan Breck and still find him the most attractive man in literature. "A man I would rather call my friend than my enemy" as Stevenson describes him. Kidnapped is a romance as well as an adventure or, more accurately, a bromance between young David Balfour and irrepressible, dangerous, honourable Alan Breck.
It highlights the differences between highland and lowland Scottish culture, differences that persist to this day. If you love history and Scotland, I defy you not to be captivated by it.
Robert Louis Stevenson's classic, swashbuckling novel about a young boy who is forced to go to sea and who is then caught up in high drama, daring adventure and political intrigue.
Part of the Macmillan Collector's Library; a series of stunning, clothbound, pocket-sized classics with gold foiled edges and ribbon markers. These beautiful books make perfect gifts or a treat for any book lover. This edition is introduced by Louise Welsh and features black and white illustrations.
Headstrong David Balfour, orphaned at seventeen, sets out from the Scottish Lowlands to seek his fortune in Edinburgh. Betrayed by his wealthy Uncle…
I came across this novel when I was researching my book, although I had been aware of author Neal Ascherson’s expert writing about Poland and Ukraine for many years.
This is a big, engrossing piece of fiction, based on real events, moving deftly between wartime Scotland and Poland, skilfully portraying the complexities of conflict. As well as an engrossing story, it is one of the best evocations I have read of the unholy muddle of war, where so much that happens is down to fallible human beings trying to cope with appalling situations.
For me, it also made sense of so much that I had found hard to understand about my Polish family history but I suspect anyone whose forebears were refugees might find it enlightening and moving.
A STORY OF SABOTAGE, BETRAYAL AND THE TERRIBLE SADNESS OF EXILE.
'Remarkable'The Times.
'A magnificent novel'The Times.
'Gripping'The Spectator.
Scotland, 1940: The Fronsac, a French warship, blows up in the Firth of Clyde. The disaster is witnessed by three locals. Jackie, a young girl who thinks she caused the explosiong by running away from school. Her mother Helen, a spirited woman married to a dreary young officer; and their lodger, a Polish soldier whose country has just been erased from the map by Hitler and Stalin.
All their lives will be changed by the death of the Fronsac.
I’m a huge fan of Dickens but this was a serendipitous Covid discovery.
In 1841, Dickens set his tale at the time of the 1780 Gordon Riots. I hadn’t realised how virulently anti-Catholic they were, nor how violent, the most destructive in the history of London. Barnaby himself, a vulnerable ‘innocent’, is sympathetically drawn. Above all the descriptions of the riots are so real that I found myself wondering if Dickens had spoken to somebody who had witnessed them in his youth – which would have been perfectly possible.
This is as vivid a depiction of what it feels like to be caught up in violent insurrection as you’re likely to find anywhere. You’ll also find out the origin of the ‘Dolly Varden hat’ along the way.
'One of Dickens's most neglected, but most rewarding, novels' Peter Ackroyd
Set against the backdrop of the Gordon Riots of 1780, Barnaby Rudge is a story of mystery and suspense which begins with an unsolved double murder and goes on to involve conspiracy, blackmail, abduction and retribution. Through the course of the novel fathers and sons become opposed, apprentices plot against their masters and anti-Catholic mobs rampage through the streets. With its dramatic descriptions of public violence and private horror, its strange secrets and ghostly doublings, Barnaby Rudge is a powerful, disturbing blend of historical realism and Gothic melodrama.
I visited the Catalan city of Barcelona last year, and it was a case of love at first sight.
The city is deservedly known as the ‘great enchantress’ but long before my visit, I had been enchanted by this novel, because it is also a city with an ancient, troubled, and violent past. Zafon writes about the power and magic of books and of love: a genuinely epic tale of a city like no other. My Barcelona was full of sunshine and beauty.
Beginning in 1945, but swiftly carrying us back into a troubled past, this is, by contrast, a shadowy, Gothic tale of fear, murder, madness, demonic presences, and doomed young love. It’s ‘over the top’, but I couldn’t stop reading it. And when I fell asleep, it invaded my dreams.
"The Shadow of the Wind is ultimately a love letter to literature, intended for readers as passionate about storytelling as its young hero." -Entertainment Weekly (Editor's Choice)
"One gorgeous read." -Stephen King
Barcelona, 1945: A city slowly heals in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, and Daniel, an antiquarian book dealer's son who mourns the loss of his mother, finds solace in a mysterious book entitled The Shadow of the Wind, by one Julian Carax. But when he sets out to find the author's other works, he makes a shocking discovery: someone has been…
This was another novel I came across while researching a book of my own.
Galt’s novel is written in the voice of the minister (i.e. priest) of a rural kirk. It is observant, moving, and at times hilarious, the story of a lowland parish and its inhabitants from 1760 to 1809, as seen through the eyes of the minister. It is also an account of a life well lived - ‘douce’ would be the Scots word for the sober and sedate narrator - crammed with interesting, gossipy, everyday details.
I’ve lived in a similar village for many years and it made me realise how little has changed here in rural Ayrshire over the 200 years since The Annals was written!
The Anno Domini one thousand seven hundred and sixty, was remarkable for three things in the parish of Dalmailing.—First and foremost, there was my placing; then the coming of Mrs Malcolm with her five children to settle among us; and next, my marriage upon my own cousin, Miss Betty Lanshaw, by which the account of this year naturally divides itself into three heads or portions.
Neuroscience PhD student Frankie Conner has finally gotten her life together—she’s determined to discover the cause of her depression and find a cure for herself and everyone like her. But the first day of her program, she meets a group of talking animals who have an urgent message they refuse to share. And while the animals may not have Frankie’s exalted human brain, they know things she doesn’t, like what happened before she was adopted.
To prove she’s sane, Frankie investigates her forgotten past and conducts clandestine experiments. But just when she uncovers the truth, she has to make an impossible choice: betray the animals she’s fallen in love with—or give up her last chance at success and everything she thought she knew.
Frankie Conner, first-year graduate student at UC Berkeley, is finally getting her life together. After multiple failures and several false starts, she's found her calling: become a neuroscientist, discover the cause of her depression and anxiety, and hopefully find a cure for herself and everyone like her.
But her first day of the program, Frankie meets a mysterious group of talking animals who claim to have an urgent message for her. The problem is, they're not willing to share it. Not yet. Not until she's ready.
While Frankie's new friends may not have her highly evolved, state-of-the-art, exalted human brain,…
