The best books that bring european history vividly to life

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.

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.

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.

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. 

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!