Juliet Gardiner analyses the recent explosion in interest in historical novels
History Today has not by tradition reviewed historical novels, but it’s a position that has seemed increasingly
purblind as more such novels are published. Several respected historians are turning to fictionalise their
subjects and major novelists are delving into the past to great effect. In future occasional reviews of historical novels will appear and this month a series of articles and reviews discuss the genre: why it has come to recent prominence, what insights it might bring, what historical fiction might add to the record, or whether it constitutes a different beast altogether to be evaluated and
appreciated by very different rules.
It is a protean field: novels bring to life the past from prehistoric times to decades that nudge our present one. Apart from the novels discussed below, this autumn sees a departure by Lindsey Davis from her successful Falco series set in the Ancient World (a Companion is promised in 2010) into the English Civil War, with Rebels and Traitors (Century, £18.99); Fiona Mountain’s latest novel, Lady of the Butterflies (Preface, £12.99), is based on the life of Lady Eleanor Granville, a pioneering 17th-century lepidopterist; Mary Hoffman’s Troubadour (Bloomsbury, £10.99) is a ‘story of poetry and persecution’, published 800 years after the crusade against the Cathars; Kate Mosse, fresh from the triumphs of Labyrinth and Sepulchure, moves into the 20th century with a mystical story set in the aftermath of the First ....
