Hi everyone,

What is everyone's favourite(s) historical novel?
Mine is "The Memoirs of Cleopatra".
Has anyone else read it?
I also like "The Autobiography of Henry VIII" and "When Christ and his Saints Slept"

"Quo Vadis?" (Henryk Sienkiewicz);

"Julian" (Gore Vidal);

"Nothing Like The Sun" & "A Dead Man In Deptford" (Anthony Burgess - dealing in Burgess's own unique style with the lives of Shakespeare and Marlowe respectively);

"Helena" (Evelyn Waugh);

The works of Mary Renault (e.g. "The King Must Die", "The Bull from the Sea", "The Praise Singer", "The Persian Boy");

"The Voyage of the Destiny" (Robert Nye - the last days of Sir Walter Raleigh);

The Flashman novels of George Macdonald Fraser;

And the book I've already nominated elsewhere as the greatest ever British novel - "Vanity Fair" by Thackeray - set in very recent historical times when it was written, but historical none the less.

Robert Graves' Wife to Mr Milton...

I really enjoyed Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson, and David Balfour. And I love the novel series: Outlander, Dragonfly in Amber, and Voyager by Diana Gabaldon, but I love reading about Scotland. And The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane was really sad, but a very good book on the American Civil War. I enjoy reading books about the Tudors, and I just finished one on King Charles II and the Reformation, but they were not novels.

All of Robert Graves, Vanity Fair perfect, and I've read all of Flashman 47 times. However, the queen of Regency Romances, Gorgette Heyer, totally warped my teenage brain and created a whole lot of false expectations about what I could expect as an adult. She's wonderful, but it's not a good idea to let 14-year-old girls read any of her books.

Although I'm going to have to go back and re-read it, I loved 'Aztec' by Gary Jennings. It was all about the Aztecs just prior to and during the Spanish arrival in Mexico.

That reminds me. If you liked Aztec, you might really like Spangle, also by Gary Jennings. It's about circus life in America and Europe during the 19th century and it's great.

Thanks Dobrov, I will put that on my ever growing reading list.

Cheers

Funny you should bring this up! I am not kidding when I say 'The Australians' by William Stuart Long. Loved the series and learned a lot!
John Jakes who has written about US history. The Kent Family Chronicles, the Heaven and Hell series and now he has another one started.
Dana Fuller Ross has to take top honors in the US history category. The books never stop, and I never stop reading them!
This is an area of writing that I am most interested in reading about. Whether it be fiction or non-fiction, I love it all!

Has anyone else read Edward Rutherfurd? "Sarum' and "The New Forest"? I really enjoyed them although did find it hard to keep all the family connections together as we went from one generation to the next.

Yeah, "Sarum".. brill! Have you read his "London"??
This is quite a good review... http://www.watershedonline.ca/community/bookcafe/bclondon.html

I have much enjoyed Philippa Pearce books, she has recently written the story of the famed gardeners, The Tradescants, Father and Son,who , in the 17th century , planned and stocked the Royal gardens
They also travelled to explore The New World and find plants . They are:
'Earthly Joys"and "Virgin Earth "

They are meticulously researched and beautifully told.

[ 01-15-2002: Message edited by: ren33 ]

Jaffas... Memoirs of Cleopatra by M. George? VERY good... I loved it!

Another good history book is All Quiet on the Western Front.

Corinne

Egypt, Italy, and Me

All Quiet is good..

But for those of you who like Opera/Theatre: Read the opera trio by Barbara Paul. "A Cadenza for Caruso," "Prima Donna At Large," and "A Chorus of Detectives." GREAT books! (Of course, the best is the 2nd one!)

"Berlin Diary", by William L. Shirer. And along those same lines, "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich", by the same author.

Pillars of the Earth, By Ken Follet
a story of a Cathedral and the people/politics that surround it. Great Read.

What makes a novel 'historical'? All novels have to be set in the past, the present, or the future, but as the art historian Alois Riegl observed, 'with every passing moment the present becomes the past'. Btw, are William Shirer's accounts of the Third Reich *novels*?

Shirer's "Berlin Diary, and End of a Berlin Diary" are actually accounts of his experiences in Germany as a journalist during WWII. "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" is a novel. Actually more of a Historical documentary. Both are exceptionally good reads.

"All That Lives" about the Bell Witch.