Thursday 19 July 2012

Historical novels, and what they can do for you


Middleham Castle
I’m not very good at ruins.  I always think I should be – history’s one of my things, right? – but always find it hard to get past the bare stones to picture the building with roof and floors and hangings on the walls.  

I like those information boards that give you pictures showing what it might have looked like, but it's impossible not to walk around and wish you could go back and see what it was really like ...




Short of your very own time slip, the best way to get that sense is to read a really good historical novel.  I was at Middleham Castle last Sunday, and what might have been just an impressive ruin came to life thanks to Sharon Penman’s The Sunne in Splendour.  

(This was the book that literally changed my life.  I read it in Australia in 1986, and loved it so much that I decided I wanted to go back to university and study medieval history. While scratching my head about how I was going to pay for a PhD, I lit upon the bright idea of writing a romance, because everyone knew they were dead easy and made lots of money very fast ... er, wrong!  But that’s another story…)

Statue of Richard III at Middleham
The Sunne in Splendour is the story of Richard III, and if you ever want to be convinced of who really killed the princes in the tower, I suggest you read it.  I absolutely loved the way Penman takes the complex history of the 15th century and brings it to life. Of course a historical novel can never be totally authentic but when I’m reading a story I’m prepared to sacrifice history for engaging characters.  I want to feel as if I’ve been transported to another world which feels true and which helps me imagine what life was like in the past.  As a reader, I don’t want to puzzle over a document or marshal my statistics. I want the author to do the research for me and then show me in a way I can understand and remember.

Philippa Gregory does this brilliantly in her novels based on real historical characters.  The facts about Anne Boleyn are rehashed endlessly in documentaries, but the story Gregory tells in The Other Boleyn Girl is the one that rings truest for me because it’s the only one that touched me emotionally.  Only a novel can do this, I think.


Another of my favourites is The Road to Avalon by Joan Wolf. As you might guess from the title, it’s the story of King Arthur, but this is not the legend.  The story is absorbing and utterly persuasive. I defy you to read The Road to Avalon and not think at the end: Of course that’s how the legend must have started.  I’m always taken so completely into the world of Wolf’s Dark Age Britain that tears run down my face at the end, no matter how often I read the book.

This is what a good historical novel can do.  It can make you believe that’s how it was, even if every instinct as a historian says that there’s no way people in the past would have thought and spoke and acted that way.  Wolf’s The Edge of Light, about Alfred the Great, is also wonderful.

Are you a fan of historical fiction?  Do you like ‘faction’ or straight fiction?  Or do you like your history mixed up with romance or crime or (dare I say it?) the time slip fantasy?

13 comments:

  1. I loved the Penman novel, too, Jessica - not read the Wolf, but will add that to my list :) I prefer straight fiction to faction (with the exception of Elizabeth Chadwick - loved, loved, LOVED The Winter Mantle, but also she gets the details right, and as it's partly set in my home city I'm a bit nitpicky about that - she passes with flying colours). I like historical crime, particularly Lindsey Davis and Susanna Gregory. I also enjoy time slips (and I am SO looking forward to Time's Echo, because (a) I like your writing style and (b) I know you're going to have your facts right!).

    Have to admit to being a ruins fiend. Luckily my lot are very indulgent and don't mind being dragged off to see them, as long as there are steps and a spectacular view :)

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  2. I love Lindsey Davis's Falco novels too, Kate, although confess I eventually ran out of interest in the series. The Silver Pigs is still my favourite. Haven't tried Susanna Gregory, but should as her book Murder in the Minster is York's Big Read this year. Am not, on the whole, a fan of historical crime, although have really enjoyed Ariana Franklin (Mistress of the Art of Death and The Death Maze).

    Re facts, have had to add an author's note to Time's Echo about liberties taken with them, so be warned!

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  3. I love Historical novels, and the earlier the era the better. I started out when I was a child with Rosemary Sutcliffe and went from there. I still think her (adult) novel Sword at Sunset is the best Arthurian novel I've read. I haven't read The Road to Avalon though, so I'll look out for that. As for faction or fiction, I don't really mind. What matters to me is whether the author manages to bring the past to life.

    I'm a sucker for time slips, too, so I'm really looking forward to Time's Echo :)

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  4. It's amazing how many great books there are out there that I've never heard of. I'm off to look up Sword at Sunset!

    Juliet Marillier is also wonderful on the Celtic period. They're fantasy novels as there's always an element of magic, but it doesn't spoil the historical feel for me. Daughter of the Forest is the first and still my favourite.

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  5. Anya Seton's marvellous Katherine. Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall. And on a less serious note, Brother Cadfael.

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    1. Oh, yes! How could I not have mentioned Katherine? John of Gaunt ... the ultimate alpha hero.

      I admired Wolf Hall as beautifully written, but I spent a lot of time trying to work out who 'he' was. Also am sick of Henry VIII. He was a monstrous bully AND he had piggy eyes. I don't like him at all. Can't understand why he is constantly glamourised.

      As for Cadfael ... I read one. Will say no more!

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  6. Like Tora, I started out young with historical novels and though I loved Rosemary Sutcliff, Henry Treece was my blow-me-away author — books written for children with nothing childlike in them. Marvellous stories. I still regularly chill audiences of adult writers with a passage from The Green Man. As you would gather from the title, Treece wrote about the early Britons.

    I think that's why, unlike so many of my school friends (and some contemporaries even now) I never thought of history as "stuffy" -- to me it was always full of ripping good yarns.

    I moved on from him to Georgette Heyer, who is still my favorite comfort read. And I remember reading the Sunne in Spendour, too, and I love Lindsay Davis's Falco, and Ellis Peters Cadfael, who I first read in London, and her other books she wrote as Edith Pargeter, and I loved Pauline Gedge's The Eagle and the Raven — also about the romances coming to Britain, and I have read all of Cornwell's Sharpe books and most of his other historicals and then there's the beautifully creepy Fingersmith by Sarah Waters and ... well, I'll stop here because I could go on forever.

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  7. I know what you mean about going on forever, Anne, but it's always so interesting to hear what other people read and will defend 'buckle and thong', as one of Georgette Heyer's heroes said (Black Sheep?) I started early with historical novels too. My favourite was The Woolpack, by Cynthia Harnett and at primary school my teacher used to read Theras the Athenian Boy, which I loved.

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  8. LOL I just noticed "the romances coming to Britain" - um, that would be Romans.

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    1. Context is everything, Anne - we knew what you meant!

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  9. Can I plug my own The Bone Thief, set in the year 900, (and reviewed here http://www.globalcool.org/lifestyle/book-review-the-bone-thief-by-vm-whitworth)? Available now in hardback and e-book, and it's coming out in paperback mid-August.
    Victoria Whitworth
    (You knew me at the CMS as Victoria Thompson)

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    1. I have pre-ordered the paperback, Victoria! Looking forward to reading it. And belated congratulations!

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  10. Thanks for the great recommendations! I love historical fiction and I’m currently reading “Turkoise” by Joan M. Sargent. If you go to her website, http://jmsargent.com/, you can find out more about her and the book. It’s truly captivating, and I highly recommend it! I’ve been searching for another book for when I’m finished with this one and you've provided a great list to pick from! Thanks again!

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