• The Best Historical Fiction: The 2023 Walter Scott Prize Shortlist - These Days by Lucy Caldwell
  • The Best Historical Fiction: The 2023 Walter Scott Prize Shortlist - I Am Not Your Eve by Devika Ponnambalam
  • The Best Historical Fiction: The 2023 Walter Scott Prize Shortlist - The Sun Walks Down by Fiona McFarlane
  • The Best Historical Fiction: The 2023 Walter Scott Prize Shortlist - Ancestry: A Novel by Simon Mawer
  • The Best Historical Fiction: The 2023 Walter Scott Prize Shortlist - The Chosen by Elizabeth Lowry
  • The Best Historical Fiction: The 2023 Walter Scott Prize Shortlist - The Geometer Lobachevsky by Adrian Duncan

The Best Historical Fiction: The 2023 Walter Scott Prize Shortlist, recommended by Cal Flyn

Every year, the judges for the Walter Scott Prize highlight the best new historical fiction. In 2023, the shortlisted books include a slow-burn mystery set in colonial Australia and a thrilling new novel from the author of Fatherland. Cal Flyn, our deputy editor, takes us through the seven books that are set 60+ years in the past and yet speak to the present.

  • The Best Historical Fiction: The 2022 Walter Scott Prize Shortlist - Rose Nicolson: A Novel by Andrew Greig
  • The Best Historical Fiction: The 2022 Walter Scott Prize Shortlist - News of the Dead by James Robertson
  • The Best Historical Fiction: The 2022 Walter Scott Prize Shortlist - Fortune by Amanda Smyth
  • The Best Historical Fiction: The 2022 Walter Scott Prize Shortlist - The Magician by Colm Tóibín

The Best Historical Fiction: The 2022 Walter Scott Prize Shortlist, recommended by Elizabeth Laird

Every year, the Walter Scott Prize highlights the best new historical novels. In 2022, the shortlist comprises four fantastic works of historical fiction that immerse the reader in the past—from 16th-century Scotland to 1920s Trinidad—while confronting universal human dramas we still struggle with today. Elizabeth Laird, one of the judges, talks us through their choices this year.

  • The Best Historical Fiction: The 2021 Walter Scott Prize Shortlist - Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell
  • The Best Historical Fiction: The 2021 Walter Scott Prize Shortlist - The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel
  • The Best Historical Fiction: The 2021 Walter Scott Prize Shortlist - The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams
  • The Best Historical Fiction: The 2021 Walter Scott Prize Shortlist - A Room Made of Leaves by Kate Grenville
  • The Best Historical Fiction: The 2021 Walter Scott Prize Shortlist - The Tolstoy Estate by Steven Conte

The Best Historical Fiction: The 2021 Walter Scott Prize Shortlist, recommended by Katharine Grant

The Walter Scott Prize seeks to highlight the very best of historical fiction—and in 2021, we find the shortlist dominated by Australian writers. Katharine Grant, the acclaimed novelist and chair of the judges, returns to Five Books to discuss the cream of this year’s crop, and the art of transforming the historical record into a creative exercise.