Historical Fiction Recommended by Historians
Last updated: September 29, 2024
Historical fiction is a genre that has a complicated relationship with history, so complicated, indeed, that Hilary Mantel (1952-2022), author of the Wolf Hall trilogy—a work of historical fiction told through the eyes of Henry VIII's henchman, Thomas Cromwell—dedicated her Reith Lectures to the subject. "Some readers are deeply suspicious of historical fiction. They say that by its nature it’s misleading," she said. “History, and science too, help us put our small lives in context but if we want to meet the dead looking alive, we turn to art.”
Two of the Wolf Hall books won the UK's more prestigious literary prize, the Booker Prize, but they also appealed to Oxford historian Diarmaid MacCulloch, author of a 500+ page biography of Cromwell. In the introduction he writes, "To call them 'historical novels' does them an injustice; they are novels which happen to be set in the sixteenth century, and with a profound knowledge of how that era functioned."
The fact is that, when they're done well, historical novels are a really exciting way to learn about history, because they combine the emotional involvement of fiction with the narrative of events that took place and details of how life was lived in the past. For that reason, we're always excited when a historian chooses a work of historical fiction as one of their expert recommendations. Below, we've listed all the historical fiction that’s been recommended by historians (or other experts) as shedding light on their area of expertise.
“Manda Scott wrote several novels about Boudica, following her life story. We tend to over-rationalise the events of the distant past. Manda Scott very much thinks about Boudica as somebody who’s deeply influenced by her beliefs in the spirits of the landscape. What I particularly liked about Manda Scott’s novels is the way she brings these mythical, spiritual things to the story. I think it’s very difficult for archaeologists to understand how Iron Age people saw the world…as a work of archaeology or history, we can’t interpret those things. They’re too complex and too obscure to us. But I think art is a way of looking at issues like that. Writing a novel is a way of thinking about issues that we can’t understand from a historical point of view.” Read more...
Richard Hingley, Classicist
“Vidal has clearly read the historical sources. He must have looked at the art and architecture. The story is crafted so carefully. The realia, the indicia of daily life, is echoed so well. But also, the bigger questions, the big what-ifs of Persian history are handled so beautifully, too. He’s also aware of things we talked about earlier, that the Persians didn’t craft their history in ways that we do in the West. He indulges in that, he delights in that, of storytelling within stories. It’s a really fantastic book in its evocation of Persian life.” Read more...
The best books on The Achaemenid Persian Empire
Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones, Historian
“There are quite a lot of novels about Alexander and I think that, of them all, Mary Renault’s is the most readable and the most entertaining. It’s the first of what’s called the Alexander Trilogy, although it’s a slightly odd trilogy and the third volume, Funeral Games takes place after Alexander’s death. Mary Renault really knew her sources. She really understands the material. She has another particular interest and that’s in homosexuality. So, both in Fire from Heaven and in the second volume The Persian Boy, there’s quite a lot of focus on Alexander and male lovers.” Read more...
The best books on Alexander the Great
Hugh Bowden, Historian
Imperium: A Novel of Ancient Rome
by Robert Harris
If you like history, Robert Harris is one of the best historical novelists around. Pompeii (about the eruption of Vesuvius), An Officer and A Spy (about the Dreyfus Affair), even Archangel (set in Soviet Russia) are fabulous thrillers that bring the past alive. But when it came to Marcus Tullius Cicero, the Roman statesman, Harris really went to town and wrote an entire trilogy about him: Imperium, Lustrum and Dictator. The reason Harris was able to do this with a degree of accuracy is because Cicero wrote so much—indeed we have Cicero to thank for large chunks of our knowledge of the Latin language. The trilogy is just a wonderful evocation of what it was like to be an ambitious person in the days of the late Roman republic, as it fell apart and became an empire.
Do remember, though, that this is fiction, told from Cicero’s point of view, and (for example) Julius Caesar may not have been quite as bad as he is portrayed by Robert Harris. According to Classics teacher Olly Murphy, in his interview on the best Classics books for teenagers, Harris “does put in things which now we might say are controversial or we’re not sure about but, for the most part, his portrayal of what it would have been like for a senator going about his daily business is absolutely spot on.”
The Shadow of the Galilean
by Gerd Theissen
Even if you’re an atheist, it’s hard, as a historian, not to be interested in Jesus. The Christian religion he gave rise to dominated events in Europe—and other places—for close to two millennia and has more than two billion adherents today (just under a third of the world’s population). The Shadow of the Galilean is an absolutely fascinating (and sympathetic) fictional account of Jesus’s life as an itinerant preacher by the German theologian Gerd Theissen. Though you never actually meet Jesus, you feel you’re absolutely there with him, in the dusty desert, hearing about his ministry to the poor.
War Trash
by Ha Jin
☆ Shortlisted for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction
War Trash by the Chinese novelist Ha Jin was recommended by Bruce Cumings, Gustavus F. and Ann M. Swift Distinguished Service Professor of History and the College at the University of Chicago and one of the world’s leading authorities on the Korean War. He says, “I just thought that it was a very clear-eyed and true account. It rings very true when you know what is in the archives, even though he didn’t do archive research at all.” War Trash also won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and was a finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction.
“Ha Jin’s novel is obviously based on either his experience or his father’s experience of the Korean War. There are some very stark and striking descriptions. He didn’t have access to South Korea, but he has this wonderful ability to treat everybody fairly and to listen to the songs of women guerrillas that were captured by South Korean prison camps and enjoy listening to them. He does the same thing with North Korean and Chinese soldiers and the civilians who were caught up in the battle” Read more...
The best books on The Korean War
Bruce Cumings, Historian
“Life and Fate…is probably the most important work of fiction about World War II. But, in fact, it is more than just a fiction because it is based on very close reporting from his time with the soldiers. It is a deliberate act of literary homage to Tolstoy as one can see in the title. It is definitely the War and Peace of the 20th century.” Read more...
The best books on World War II
Antony Beevor, Military Historians & Veteran
“His central detective character is Yashim, an Ottoman eunuch in 19th century Istanbul, a very clever man who solves crimes – which are ingeniously done. Goodwin can tell a good story, and it’s remarkable what he knows about the Ottoman empire. He knows it better than I do, in the sense that he can tell you about cooking and that kind of thing, or the layout of the old Istanbul streets.” Read more...
The best books on Turkish History
Norman Stone, Historian
Gates of Fire: An Epic Novel of the Battle of Thermopylae
by Steven Pressfield
In the history of war and heroism, few events loom as large in our imagination as the epic defence of the Greeks at the Battle of Thermopylae. Defending a small spur of land between mountains and the sea, 300 Spartans were able to hold off the invading Persians long enough for the Greek navy to defeat the Persians at sea and save Greece. You can of course read about Thermopylae in Herodotus’s Histories, or….you can read about it in this well-researched historical novel, recommended by historian Andrew Bayliss of the University of Birmingham in his interview on the best books on ancient Sparta. It may be fiction, but it also doesn’t hide the darker side of the Spartans and their heroism.
The Alienist
by Caleb Carr
Crime detection has become more and more sophisticated since the discovery of DNA, but how was it in the days when fingerprinting was a newfangled method and forensic psychology regarded with extreme suspicion? The Alienist, by historian-turned-novelist Caleb Carr, explores the early days of criminology. Set in New York at the turn of the 20th century (when Teddy Roosevelt was Police Commissioner), the novel is about the hunt for a serial killer and is so thrilling it’s even been turned into a Netflix series, The Alienist.
The Town House
by Norah Lofts
The Town House by Norah Lofts is the first book in her Suffolk House trilogy (books 2 and 3 are The House at Old Vine and The House at Sunset). The books, together, tell the history of England, through the eyes of each generation of the owners of a medieval house. The trilogy starts in 1380—giving a real feel for what it was like to be a serf in medieval England—and goes through to the 1950s. The trilogy comes with the highest possible recommendation from Alison Weir, one of Britain’s bestselling historians: “If you read them all as one book—and you can—it is the most outstanding historical novel that I have ever read,” she says.
Boxers and Saints
by Gene Luen Yang
Boxers and Saints is a graphic novel about the Boxer Rebellion, the anti-foreign, anti-Christian revolt that shook China from 1899-1901, not long before the last Chinese dynasty fell in 1911. Famously, the Boxers believed that they were invulnerable to bullets. The two volumes need to be read one after the other, as they tell the story from different sides.
The General
by C S Forester
C.S. Forester was a historical novelist, though this book, The General, may not count strictly as a historical novel because it was set in a period he himself lived through, the First World War. It was recommended to us by the late and great British military historian, Sir Michael Howard, as “a book that has been largely forgotten but which I very strongly recommend to anybody who wants to understand the First World War.” An added bonus is that it’s also reasonably short.
Be Like the Fox: Machiavelli's Lifelong Quest for Freedom
by Erica Benner
Be Like the Fox by Erica Benner is a brilliant book about the life of the Italian diplomat Niccolò Machiavelli. Although it’s written as a novel, it reads more like nonfiction than fiction. If you’re interested in Machiavelli and his thought, and the tempestuous country and times he lived in, you’ll find it unputdownable. It was one of our 2018 editors’ picks.
The Red Badge of Courage
by Stephen Crane
The Red Badge of Courage is a novel set in the American Civil War by the novelist and poet Stephen Crane (1871-1900). It’s not strictly historical fiction—which, according to some definitions, has to be written at least half a century after the time period the book is set in—but Crane did not himself participate in the Civil War, so it is certainly a work of fiction. It’s been recommended several times on Five Books.
“With Wolf Hall, I was right there in the Tudor era. Thomas Cromwell—or her version of Thomas Cromwell—really came alive for me. You live with him and his family. You have sympathy with him and his life and the way he operated. That’s what I want from books: that they take me into another world and immerse me in it…I forgot that she was a contemporary writer. I could have been reading something that was a journal of the times, it felt so real. It’s so clever how she uses the language. You’re not bogged down with the way they might have talked, but you have the rhythm of the language.” Read more...
The Best Historical Fiction Set in England
Lesley Thomson, Thriller and Crime Writer
Shōgun
by James Clavell
Shōgun, a 10-part mini-series, started streaming on Disney+ on February 27th, 2024. It’s excellent so far (and a big improvement on the 1980 mini-series)
“I was 15, I think, when I read it. I couldn’t believe that no one had ever written other books like it. I remember going to my English master at school and saying ‘What else is like this? I want to read more books like this!’ I can’t remember what he recommended, but I can remember picking them up and thinking they were nothing like Shogun. I was so entranced by the world of the 16th century he created that I’ve really had a fascination for it all my life.” Read more...
The best books on Life in the Tudor Era
Ian Mortimer, Historian
Red Plenty
by Francis Spufford
Red Plenty is, yes, a historical novel about economics. It’s not even about economics that works: it’s about the Soviet Union’s attempt at a sophisticated planned economy, based on math, which we all now know failed in the end. But in the 50s and 60s, when this novel is set, nobody knew it would turn out that way. It’s a brilliant, quirky book which, according to political scientist Henry Farrell in his interview on the politics of information,” has acquired kind of a cult following among social scientists.”
“This book is set during the siege of Badajoz. It is the retelling of a true story of Harry Smith, who was an officer at Badajoz, who saved a 14-year-old girl and eventually married her. In fact, in later life he becomes the governor of the Cape Colony and he founds the town of Ladysmith and names it for his wife. It is a sort of nostalgia for me. It is what I grew up with, under the bedclothes in the middle of the night.” Read more...
The best books on The Regency Period
Stella Tillyard, Historian
Wolf Totem
by Jiang Rong
Wolf Totem by Jiang Rong is perhaps one of the least historically accurate books on this list, but has been recommended twice on Five Books, suggesting it nonetheless carries an important message. It was a huge bestseller in China. As China expert Isabel Hilton put it, “Wolf Totem contains certain things that have universal romantic appeal: wolves, tribesmen, and so on. But the message that central Chinese policies have been catastrophic for the people who were China’s neighbours – and who are now incorporated into China – very much needed to be said.”
American Pastoral
by Philip Roth
American Pastoral is one of the historical novels (admittedly set in the fairly recent past) by the great American novelist Philip Roth. Set in the 1960s and early 70s—during the Vietnam War protests and the Watergate scandal—it evokes the America of half a century ago. It was recommended by author Lawrence Kaplan, in his interview on American military intervention overseas: “It’s a beautifully written book and I would suggest it for anyone interested in why American foreign policy matters.”
“It’s the classic Pompeii disaster story everybody replays when they write about Pompeii. When he went to Pompeii it was a ruin. These days they’ve done a lot of work on it. What Lytton did was build it up layer by layer. And what you get is a fantastic reconstruction of the ancient world. Christians who are going to escape, the nasty priest of Isis, the sacrifices and the gladiators. The cultural backwash that came out of it was extraordinary. The characters, statues, movies.” Read more...
The best books on Ancient History in Modern Life
Mary Beard, Classicist
Winter Quarters
by Alfred Duggan
Winter Quarters by Alfred Duggan, set at the time of Julius Caesar, follows the story of two Gauls who enlist in the Roman army, and comes extremely highly recommended by Stanford University ancient historian Adrienne Mayor. “This book is a wonderful way to get a sense of the vast sweep of this rising Roman power—the lives and incredible adventures and exotic fights—in one individual soldier’s lifetime,” she says. “It came out in 1956, and it’s my favourite.”
Stone’s Fall
by Iain Pears
Stone’s Fall, by the popular historical novelist Iain Pears, is a page-turner set in Europe in the decades before World War I. It was recommended by Ruth Harris, Professor of Modern History at Oxford University, in her interview on the Dreyfus Affair and the Belle Epoque. One caveat she mentions: “I’m going to confess right away that this is a novel written by my husband. The reason I chose it is that I know it so well and that he would be the first to say that much of it was taken from ideas that I have been thinking about for the last 25 years, and which he had rendered in fictional form.”
“It’s set in Saxon and Viking times, in the tenth century, at the corrupt court of King Edgar of England, long before the Norman Conquest. It’s based on the obscure legend of a saint.” Read more...
Alison Weir, Historical Novelist
“Hilda Lewis is my third favourite novelist of all time (you’ve got the other two in the list). She wrote a wonderful series of historical novels. This one is based on the famous poisoning of Sir Thomas Overbury in the Tower of London, in the early 17th century. It has a rich cast of rogues and royal characters at the Jacobean court. It’s a tour de force, and you could actually rely on it as history. They just don’t write them like that now. It’s a page-turner that has everything – witchcraft, sex, scandal and murder.” Read more...
Alison Weir, Historical Novelist
“It’s wonderful, absolutely wonderful. I can’t recommend it highly enough. I know Mavis Cheek, she’s a fantastic author and her books have me creased up with laughter. It’s about Anne of Cleves’ portrait coming to life, intertwined with a story of a woman who’s been widowed—but is actually a merry widow because she’s so pleased to be rid of her boring old duffer of a husband. She sees the portrait and feels a kinship with Anne, who nightly talks to the other woman in the portraits in the room.” Read more...
The Best Tudor Historical Fiction
Alison Weir, Historical Novelist
“It’s based on the life of the Anne Askew, who was burned at the stake for heresy in 1546, and is about how ordinary people suffered quite genuinely for their faith. The detail in the book makes you feel like you are really there. Not every book stands the test of time. But I went back to The Heretics after many decades and I thought, my goodness, it is so well done. It ought to be better known.” Read more...
The Best Tudor Historical Fiction
Alison Weir, Historical Novelist
“This was published in 1967. It’s a wonderful book, an evocation of what it was like to be a nun dispossessed when the monasteries were dissolved by Henry VIII. It’s set in the 1530s and is a beautifully told story. I remember loving it when I was young, and I managed to get a copy a couple of years ago after it was republished. I couldn’t put it down and really recommend it.” Read more...
The Best Tudor Historical Fiction
Alison Weir, Historical Novelist
“This was the first novel I read on Anne Boleyn, in the 1960s, and it’s excellent. It really sums up Anne. It’s so beautifully written that you can forgive the inaccuracies in it. There’s a fictional nurse in it, who gives her poppy juice in difficult times—but that’s one tiny detail. Norah Lofts is my favourite author. I have all 63 of her books.” Read more...
The Best Tudor Historical Fiction
Alison Weir, Historical Novelist
“But what is so good about Wallace Breams Eagle in the Snow are the action sequences. He wrote really good battle scenes. And, although his main character may be a bit anachronistic, he’s interesting and conflicted.” Read more...
Historical Fiction Set in the Ancient World
Harry Sidebottom, Classicist
“I think it’s key theme is the impact of Christianity, it’s in many ways is deeply anti-Christian novel. And at the heart of that is a protest against the way Christianity altered the sexuality of the ancient world.” Read more...
Historical Fiction Set in the Ancient World
Harry Sidebottom, Classicist
“Now this is one of the very few books that actually changed my life. What’s so good about Alfred Duggan’s novel, indeed, all Alfred Duggan’s novels—he wrote an awful lot of them, nonfiction too—is that, although he didn’t really engage all that much with contemporary scholarship, he did read all the primary sources and thought about them.” Read more...
Historical Fiction Set in the Ancient World
Harry Sidebottom, Classicist
“John James’s Votan, published in 1966, for me is an object lesson of how the quality of a book has absolutely no bearing on its success whatsoever. I think John Jones is a brilliant writer, I think Votan is a great book. And it is completely and utterly forgotten.” Read more...
Historical Fiction Set in the Ancient World
Harry Sidebottom, Classicist
“This may be up there in my top three novels of all time…It’s told from the point of view of a young boy who is only 16 years old. He’s called Bagoas. He is a courtesan in the Persian court, to King Darius, the hugely powerful leader of the Persian empire at the time. Alexander conquers that great empire and takes Baghdad. Bagoas is now in the hands of the invading army…To use Bagoas as her central character is brilliant because he’s an outsider. Outsider narrators are a wonderful way to bring you, the reader, into the story because they are discovering it on your behalf. He’s been used and abused since he was just a boy. He was sold as a slave. He was castrated. It’s so visceral and so grim. You’re deeply invested in him as a character. You want him to be okay. You want him to be looked after. You don’t want him to have to go through any more grim times. He has considerable antipathy for these people when they first turn up, because he’s been inculcated in the court, but after a while, like the rest of us, he is won over by Alexander’s charisma. You fall in love with Alexander through Bagoas. To write charismatic characters is a really hard thing to do, but my God, she’s good at it. You absolutely feel that Alexander the Great is that incredible, young, charismatic leader that he clearly was. The heartstrings are so pulled when Bagoas falls in love with him…You get all that amazing, epic scenery, and events, and visceral violence, and then you get all the tender stuff as well. It’s a masterpiece of historical fiction.” Read more...
Historical Fiction Set Around the World
Jane Johnson, Historical Novelist
“I love this book. I was absolutely bowled over by it. There’s a lot of mystery to it. A group of people convene in Kent for a house party in the 1960s. It turns out they are all reincarnations of people who lived in Tudor times, in the reign of Edward VI. You have to work out who was who in a previous life, with all the dramas and tensions of their earlier existence being played out in the modern world. It’s a brilliant book. It’s also got one of the best descriptions of Wyatt’s Rebellion that I’ve ever read in history or fiction.” Read more...
The Best Tudor Historical Fiction
Alison Weir, Historical Novelist
The Best Tudor Historical Fiction, recommended by Alison Weir
The Tudor dynasty, which ruled England from 1485 to 1603, has been the focus of extraordinary public attention in recent years, thanks to the success of books like Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall and the lavish television drama The Tudors, starring Jonathan Rhys Meyers. We asked Alison Weir, the author of many bestselling factual and novelistic books on the period, to recommend her favourite works of Tudor historical fiction.
Historical Fiction Set in the Ancient World, recommended by Harry Sidebottom
The ancient world offers an excellent canvas for historical fiction but too many books fall victim to anachronistic thinking, says Oxford ancient historian Harry Sidebottom, author of two series of historical novels set in Ancient Rome. Here he recommends some of his own favourites, all written during the golden age of classical historical fiction half a century ago.
