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
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.
“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
“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
Life and Fate
by Vasily Grossman and translated by Robert Chandler
Life and Fate, a novel set in World War II by Soviet writer Vasily Grossman, is one of our most recommended books on Five Books (including by historians). Modeled on Tolstoy's War and Peace, Grossman brought into it his experience as a journalist, accompanying the Red Army at major battles, including Stalingrad and Berlin. He was also among the first to enter Treblinka and witness firsthand the horrors of the Holocaust. Sadly for Grossman, the book was considered too harmful to be published in his lifetime.
Life and Fate is a long novel. If you want to listen to it as an audiobook, there's no unabridged version, BUT there is a dramatised version of Life and Fate, starring Kenneth Branagh and David Tennant, that lasts a manageable 8 hours.
(Stalingrad is the precursor to Life and Fate, translated into English for the first time in 2019 and also well worth reading)
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.”
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.
Fire from Heaven
by Mary Renault
Fire from Heaven is the first book in Mary Renault’s Alexander the Great trilogy. The novel starts when he’s a young boy and takes us through to the point when his father, Philip of Macedon, is assassinated. The book was recommended to us by Hugh Bowden, Professor of Ancient History at King’s College London, as one of the best books about Alexander the Great. The other two books in the trilogy are The Persian Boy and Funeral Games, which is set after Alexander’s death. If you like the first, you’ll probably want to read them all.
War Trash
by Ha Jin
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.
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.
Wolf Hall
by Hilary Mantel
***Winner of the 2009 Booker Prize***
Now we’re at Wolf Hall, the first book in historical novelist Hilary Mantel’s trilogy about Thomas Cromwell, henchman to King Henry VIII, who spearheaded the Reformation in England. It’s a very, very convincing depiction of life in 1530s England and it’s hard not to completely believe in—and sympathise with—the Thomas Cromwell character she creates. Given this book also won the Booker Prize, Wolf Hall scores highly both as history and as fiction.
The other books in the trilogy are Bring Up the Bodies, which won the 2012 Booker Prize, and The Mirror and the Light, published in 2020.
“Hilary Mantel possesses an extraordinary historical imagination and her recreation of the world of the 1530s through the eyes of Thomas Cromwell is, I think, utterly convincing.” Read more...
Thomas Penn, Historian
Shogun
by James Clavell
The story told in Shogun, the 1975 blockbuster by James Clavell about an English sailor who ends up living in the Japan of 1600, was based on a real person: Will Adams of Gillingham in Kent. The book was recommended to us by historian Ian Mortimer, in his interview on Life in the Tudor Era. “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,” he said.
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.
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.”
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.”
The Last Days of Pompeii
by E Bulwer Lytton
The Last Days of Pompeii was a 19th century bestselling historical novel recommended to us by Cambridge classics professor and TV personality Mary Beard. “What you get is a fantastic reconstruction of the ancient world,” she says in her interview on books about ancient history in modern life.
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.”
Avalon
by Anya Seton
The remaining two works of historical fiction on this list were both recommended to us by bestselling British historian, Alison Weir, so focus very much on her speciality, English history from medieval through to early modern times. Avalon by Anya Seton is based on the legend of an obscure saint and brings to life the 10th century in England, when Viking raids were a constant threat and Eric the Red was exploring Iceland and Greenland.
“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
“What it does superbly well, and makes it stand out from almost any other historical novel, is the way it recreates not just one ancient culture, but two because you’ve got the Macedonians viewed through the eyes of a Persian. It works. Both are utterly convincing.” Read more...
Historical Fiction Set in the Ancient World
Harry Sidebottom, Classicist
Green Darkness
by Anya Seton
The story is based around the actual discovery of a skeleton walled up in a fourteenth-century house called Ightham Mote in Kent. This book is about how the skeleton came to be there.
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.
