Our Favourite Historical Fiction

Patrick O'Brian was a master of historical fiction. His thrilling tales of the sea battles of the Napoleonic Wars have captivated even the most confirmed landlubbers. And at last, fifteen years after the first volume appeared, the second and final volume O'Brian's biography is being published, so we've been chatting about our favourite historical fiction. Here are 11 modern classics of historical fiction and five we have loved recently. We hope you'll find some good recommendations.

The classics

Fire from Heaven by Mary Renault (1969)
The first in Renault's trilogy about the life of Alexander the Great. The young Alexander has already attained a heroic stature as he cuts his teeth on the battlefield… and in bed.

The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber (2002)
A downright indecently readable take of a wily young prostitute's ascent to the heights of Victorian society via an affair with a perfume magnate. Come for the filthy sex scenes, stay for the rattling plot.

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller (2011)
Speaking of sex scenes, Madeline Miller's novel about the murderous Achilles discovers the lover underneath the fighter. Achilles' passion for Patroclus is a homoerotic tour de force.

The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles (1969)
Fowles's tale about the fraught relationship between the gentleman naturalist Charles Smithson and the governess Sarah Woodruff. It's animated by Fowles's deep knowledge of Victorian literature, whose conventions he challenges.

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel (2009)
A brilliant character study of Thomas Cromwell, a butcher's son turned master politician who plays for the highest of stakes at Henry VIII's court.

Fingersmith by Sarah Waters (2002)
Another excellent modern reimagining of a big, plotty Victorian novel. Orphan Sue Trinder is dispatched to help ne'er-do-well Richard Rivers seduce a wealthy heiress. But then Sue falls in love with her mark...

The Siege of Krishnapur by JG Farrell (1973)
A superb retelling of the British siege of Lucknow. Victorian ideals fall apart amid the horrors of war, the insects, the heat and the terrible rations.

I, Claudius by Robert Graves (1934)
Graves's imitation of Roman prose strikes some as dry at first, but persevere and you'll soon discover a masterpiece. The trials and eventual triumphs of stammering Claudius, who is dismissed as an idiot, but triumphs as emperor.

Golden Hill by Francis Spufford (2016)
The book that Sunday Times literary editor Andrew Holgate can't stop talking about (it's a running joke here). A picaresque tale of young Mr Smith's adventures in 18th-century New York.

The Grand Sophy by Georgette Heyer (1950)
A Regency romp. Sophy Stanton-Lacy arrives in Berkeley Square just in time to untangle her cousins' disastrous love lives. Our visual arts editor Nancy Durrant promises it contains the best depiction of drunk young posh men trying to be helpful in the whole of literature.

Flashman by George Macdonald Fraser (1969)
The funniest, most rollicking historical adventure going, featuring one of the great comic antiheroes: the cowardly, lecherous opportunistic Flashman, whom George Macdonald Fraser pulled from the pages of Tom Brown's School Days.