Why become a historian? For Simon Sebag Montefiore (author of many works of dazzling history, including one of our picks of the year, The World: A Family History), it was the addictive, exotic worlds conjured by historical fiction that tugged him towards the past. From gut-spattered battlefields to gorgeous and gossipy royal courts, these are his all-time favourites.
Fire from Heaven by Mary Renault (1969)
Mary Renault was a prose stylist of almost poetical beauty, but she also researched like a scholar, powerfully reimagining the pagan ancient world of Alexander the Great. In Fire from Heaven — the first in the Alexander Trilogy — then The Persian Boy and Funeral Games, she wrote without judgment or tedious Christian ethics about Greek culture, its cruelty, its cults and same-sex love. In her hands, Alexander the Great and his mother, Olympias, become living beings again. The love affair between Alexander and the Persian eunuch Bagoas in the second book is heartbreakingly touching, told through the boy’s eyes. Renault has inspired Madeline Miller and other lesser emulators, but her novels are timeless, shining as brightly today as the day they were written.
All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren (1946)
Quite simply the greatest novel of democratic politics yet written. This Pulitzer-winning tale of the rise of a cynical populist is based on the true story of the demagogic Louisiana kingpin Senator Huey Long, who dominated his state and at one point seemed to be a candidate for American dictator until his assassination in 1935. Willie Stark, “the Boss”, as seen through the eyes of the narrator, his spin doctor, is a captivating and repelling character.
The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa (1958)
The Leopard, written by the last Prince of Lampedusa, who died the year before it was published, can stake a claim to being the greatest modern Italian novel. It recounts the crisis of a 19th-century Sicilian aristocrat, living in his palace with his wife, family and mistresses, during the Risorgimento. The coming unification of Italy will inevitably overthrow the old order, embodied by the Prince of Salina.
The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas (1844)
Alexandre Dumas, the son of a mixed-race revolutionary general, wrote two of the greatest adventure novels, The Three Musketeers and the ultimate revenge story, The Count of Monte Cristo. Both are gripping tales with unforgettable characters that catch astonishing moments in French history. Musketeers recounts the court intrigues between the guards of Louis XIII, including the duelling young d’Artagnan, and the serpentine king’s minister Richelieu. It also features a fascinating antiheroine, Lady de Winter.
Advertisement
Byzantium Endures by Michael Moorcock (1981)
Michael Moorcock is one of the greatest British postwar novelists. Impossible to categorise, he was a pioneer of fantasy and science fiction, but has also written amazing historical novels. The Brothel in Rosenstrasse is written as a memoir of the libertine German aristocrat who takes refuge from a 19th-century war in a brothel. However, his captivating Pyat Quartet, starting with Byzantium Endures, is even more outrageous. It follows the country-hopping life of the appalling Colonel Pyat, a mendacious, coke-snorting, vicious Kyiv-born antisemitic Jew, during the interwar years.
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens (1859)
This rare Charles Dickens historical novel is, I think, one of his greatest, telling the story of the Terror in the French Revolution and the shameless cynicism of Sydney Carton and his final redemption. It has the best first line in fiction: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity . . .” And the best last line too: “It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.”
Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy (1985)
Blood Meridian, a shocking study of evil and cruelty, follows a posse of atrocious scalp hunters in the 1840s. The men take delight in their murder of Native Americans, whom they hunt across the Mexican-American borderlands. Its dark star is the psychotic Judge Holden, who remains with you long after you finish the book. It shares its place with the other great novel of the conquest of the American frontier . . .
● 25 best history books of 2022
Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry (1985)
Set in the 1870s, this is the tale of two tough pioneers, the retired Texas Rangers Woodrow F Call and Gus McCrae. They set out to drive a herd of cattle from Texas to the new Montana Territory, a journey of great danger and adventure. Gus is one of the most loveable characters in American literature, but the story — the first in a sequence of four novels — brings to life an entire period of US history.
Count Belisarius by Robert Graves (1938)
Robert Graves recreates the history of the 6th-century Byzantine court of Emperor Justinian. It tells of the emperor’s jealousy of his brilliant top paladin, Belisarius, whom he needs, but persecutes. It’s a novel of family, power and murder narrated by a eunuch slave, and complements Graves’s other masterpieces I, Claudius and Claudius the God, which recount the variously able, ambitious, murderous and demented Julio-Claudian dynasts Augustus, Tiberius and Caligula through the eyes of the crippled stammering scholar Claudius, who becomes emperor himself.
Master and Commander by Patrick O’Brian (1969)
Advertisement
This is the first in the finest series of historical novels. Set during the Napoleonic wars, these 20 novels feature the naval adventures of the simple-hearted but wildly brave officer Jack Aubrey and his best friend, the saturnine, fascinating spy and doctor Stephen Maturin. Each novel is exciting and gripping, illuminating the bloodspattering ferocity of naval combat. But above all they celebrate one of the great male friendships in literature (Keith Richards, who loved the novels, said it reminded him of his relationship with Mick Jagger).
Nana by Émile Zola (1880)
This is just one of Émile Zola’s cycle of 20 novels about a single family in the Second French Empire of 1852-70. Nana is decades ahead of its time, a heartbreaking, brazen and sometimes erotic story of a beautiful girl who rises to become one of the rich and notorious courtesans of the Paris of Napoleon III. Her rise to fame and wealth and subsequent downfall tracks the fortunes of the empire. Zola researched it by interviewing courtesans.
Radetzky March by Joseph Roth (1932)
A study of the transience and accidental nature of life and success, this is a portrait of the Trotta family in the declining Austro-Hungarian empire. Lieutenant Trotta knocks Emperor Franz Joseph off his horse at the 1859 Battle of Solferino, but in one of those odd quirks of life is appointed a baron as a reward for saving the imperial life. His rise ultimately leads to his family’s downfall, reflecting the decline and senescence of the empire. Joseph Roth’s lesser-known masterpiece Hotel Savoy (1924) recreates the chaos and fear of the postwar collapse of empires through the lives of the adventurers and mountebanks staying in a hotel in Lodz. Both are brilliant.
Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman (1980)
This is the Soviet Union’s War and Peace, secretly written in the 1950s by a leading war reporter, but not published until 1980. Vasily Grossman used his experiences to create this vast, morally nuanced novel of war and death set during the Second World War. Thanks to the conflict in Ukraine, Life and Fate has become horribly relevant again.
A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel (1992)
Although Hilary Mantel is better known for the Wolf Hall trilogy, she perfected her way of recreating the past in A Place of Greater Safety, an up-close look at a coterie of radicals during the French Revolution. We follow Robespierre, Danton, Desmoulins and many others in their rise from the provinces to supreme power, then vicious rivalry and death. I was dazzled when I read this; it’s arguably even greater than Wolf Hall.
Restoration by Rose Tremain (1989)
Advertisement
Robert Merivel is a lusty fellow and doctor who finds favour with Charles II, whose wild, vicious, delicious court is superbly portrayed by Rose Tremain. The usual problem with historical novels is that the real figures can overshadow the invented characters, but that is not a problem here; the fun-loving Merivel even manages to outshine the swaggering Charles II. Wonderful.
Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2006)
This modern classic tells the story of the Biafran civil war in Nigeria through the intricately intertwined lives of the twin sisters from a privileged family, a professor, a servant and a British expat. As a study of the chaos of war, as well as a portrait of love and family, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s novel is hard to beat.
Last and perhaps greatest of all . . .
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (1869)
A family saga, a war novel culminating in Napoleon’s invasion of Russia and the battle of Borodino, a study of the workings of history starring a huge cast of invented characters, as well as Boney and the wily old General Kutuzov, War and Peace is for some the greatest novel yet written. For those who have already read it, Leo Tolstoy’s novella Hadji Murat (1912) is worth discovering. It is an outstanding story of betrayal and conflict set during Russia’s mid-19th-century attempt to tame the Muslims of the Caucasus. It features a withering portrait of Nicholas I, the tsar who most resembles Putin. Once again it is especially timely.
Simon Sebag Montefiore’s latest book is The World: A Family History. He is also the author of the Moscow Trilogy of historical novels
