Samson’s account of the sinking of the King’s warship, the Mary Rose, in Hearstone is unforgettable. Sansom renders it real, compete with rats frantically clambouring over the netting as the ship sinks into the water with the trapped men beneath. This is what Samson is so good at; history so vital and compelling it makes […]
Top Five Historical Fiction
Bring Up The Bodies by Hilary Mantel
Wolf Hall is very good, but Bring Up The Bodies is even better. Ridiculous to be reading about Cromwell and Henry’s courting of Jane Seymour and the trial of Anne Boleyn as if you don’t know what happens next, but Mantel makes you live through those times instead of just knowing about them. She’s so good, you […]
Imperium by Robert Harris
Imperium rocks. It’s the first book in a trilogy about Cicero and his life in Ancient Rome, narrated by Cicero’s secretary/slave, Tiro. If only history were always this sensibly written and accessible. Love it. The following two books in the trilogy are not quite as gripping but still very readable.
Dissolution by CJ Sansom
The first novel in a series of six, Dissolution immerses us in the world of hunchback lawyer Matthew Shardlake, the thinking woman’s crumpet. He’s an intelligent, compassionate man with the misfortune to be born during the rule of Henry VIII. His physical deformity makes him an object of almost constant sniggering and ridicule yet he plods […]
Fall of Giants by Ken Follett
When Follett is good (as in this and The Pillars of The Earth) he’s very, very good. In this novel, the first in the Century trilogy, he moves the lives of five families around the chessboard of the First World War with a masterly touch. You don’t even realise how much history you absorb as […]