Historical Fiction

In 1815, Mount Tambora in Indonesia erupted, impacting the weather throughout the world. The Year Without Summer imagines its impact on six separate lives, thousands of miles away. They include a fenland farm labourer, a soldier returning from Waterloo, author Mary Shelley and painter John Constable. Laura McMillan talks to author Guinevere Glasfurd about her ingenious and poetic novel, The Year Without Summer.

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Inspired by an amazing true story from World War II, a young woman with a talent for forgery helps hundreds of Jewish children flee the Nazis in an unforgettable historical novel. History Hit's Rob Weinberg talks to author Kristin Harmel about her engaging and evocative new novel The Book of Lost Names, a testament to the resilience of the human spirit and the power of bravery and love in the face of evil.

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In 1166, the King of Leinster in Ireland is forced into exile and throws himself at the mercy of Henry II to help regain his kingdom. His biggest bargaining tool in getting England’s support is his teenage daughter Aoife who has caught Henry’s eye. Author Elizabeth Chadwick talks to History Hit’s Alice Loxton about The Irish Princess, a sumptuous, journey of ambition and desire, love and loss, heartbreak and survival, which takes the reader from the royal halls of scheming kings, through Welsh border fortresses, to the wild green kingdoms of Ireland.

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Artist Agnes Pelton lived through the early days of modernism in America. Fame seemed inevitable but the shy and retiring Pelton retreated to a contemplative life in the California desert where she produced scores of deeply spiritual, abstract paintings. History Hit's Rob Weinberg talks to author Mari Coates about her new novel The Pelton Papers – 20 years in the writing – which creates a vivid picture of an unusual woman living through a remarkable period in history

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Have you ever thought about writing an historical novel? Perhaps you fancy setting it in Ancient Rome? But how would you start researching, for example, what the different classes of Roman would be wearing, or eating, or talking about, at different times in Rome’s history? A Writer's Guide to Ancient Rome is a new book that will help you get your facts straight. Tristan Hughes has been talking to author Carey Fleiner to find out more about the resources out there to help you get your Roman history right.

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What would happen if the identity of the unknown warrior, entombed in Westminster Abbey, was ever uncovered? This new novel tells the story of Sarah Harding, who discovers letters from the trenches from a British Tommy, and the 1920 diaries of Captain Peter Harding, tasked with the secret mission to bring a body back for interment in Westminster Abbey. Rob Weinberg asks author Robert Newcome whether the secret identity of the unknown warrior should ever be revealed.

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The Deep gives an eerie, psychological twist to the sinking of the Titanic, and the fate of her sister ship the Britannic. The American novelist Alma Katsu spent 35 years as an intelligence analyst for the US government, but after six acclaimed novels, she’s now known as the Queen of Disasters, taking real events and re-imagining them – with added supernatural elements. In this edition of Historical Fiction, Alma Katsu talks to Rob Weinberg about how she turns real life tragedies into supernatural fiction.

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Cleopatra was one of the most famous women of all history. For centuries she has been presented by writers and artists as a seductive temptress, a femme fatale, the tragic lover of Julius Caesar and Mark Antony. But who was the real Cleopatra? How true to life are the countless representations in plays, books and films? History Hit’s Rob Weinberg has been along to Shakespeare’s Globe to find out more about the last Pharoah of Egypt from Farah Karim-Cooper, Head of Higher Education and Research at Shakespeare’s Globe, and Diana Preston, author of Cleopatra and Antony.

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Set in 1940, The Secret Guests speculates what would have happened if the young Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret were sent to a remote stately home in Ireland to get away from the Blitz on London. When a dead body turns up, it takes every effort to uncover the truth and stop the girls’ identities coming to light. In this edition of Historical Fiction, Rob Weinberg talks to the Irish, Booker Prize-winning novelist John Banville about penning historical crime novels under the name of B.W. Black, and the endlessly challenging work of being a writer.

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In the winter of 1617, the sea around the remote Norwegian island of Vardø was thrown into a reckless storm. The men of the island, out fishing, perished in an instant and Vardø became a place of women. Eighteen months later, a sinister figure arrives. Summoned from Scotland to take control of a place at the edge of the civilized world, Absalom Vardø as a place flooded with a terrible evil that he must root out at all costs. History Hit's Alice Loxton speaks to Kiran Millwood Hargrave about her novel, The Mercies, a story about how suspicion can twist its way through a community.

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