# Most and Least Realistic Historical Fiction
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-and-least-realistic-historical-fiction/322052
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Created:** [September 16, 2005, 11:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-and-least-realistic-historical-fiction/322052 "2005-09-16T23:06:05Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Mississippienne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mississippienne)
#### Post date: [September 16, 2005, 11:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-and-least-realistic-historical-fiction/322052/1 "2005-09-16T23:06:05Z")
Sharon Kay Penman’s novels of medieval England (_Here Be Dragons_, _Time and Chance_, _Falls the Shadow_ to name a few) are immensely popular, but her characters never struck me as actually inhabiting the world she puts them in. They think and talk like people living hundreds of years later, as though she took characters from a modern novel, dressed them in SCA gear, and dropped them into the 13th century.
Colleen McCullough could never be accused of being an incredible author (her prose is rarely more than workmanlike) but her _Masters of Rome_ series is fascinating in that her Romans absolutely sound, act, and think like Romans. They’re concerned about Roman things, have Roman values and Roman prejudices. She succeeds in capturing some of the alienness of the culture, a culture that feels so familiar to us but was really very different. Mary Renault and her novels of ancient Greece and Alexander the Great is another example of expressing the authenticity of a time period, and she has the gift of making things like the nudity and homoeroticism seem completely commonplace.
I much prefer the sense that I’m reading about not only historically accurate fiction, but also historically _realistic_ fiction. Unfortunately, that’s hard to find. What are your views and opinions on the most and least realistic historical fiction?
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### Author:  [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)
#### Post date: [September 16, 2005, 11:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-and-least-realistic-historical-fiction/322052/2 "2005-09-16T23:19:56Z")
Realistic - There are none better than George Macdonald Fraser’s _Flashman_ books. GMF drops Flashy into the middle of most of Queen Victoria’s little wars, and the books are stunningly researched. In fact, I sometimes use them for reference when teaching Victorian England. Flashman interacts with most of the most famous soldiers and bounders of the period, and fits right in.
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### Author:  [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)
#### Post date: [September 16, 2005, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-and-least-realistic-historical-fiction/322052/3 "2005-09-16T23:20:20Z")
Patrick O’Brian’s Royal Navy novels set during the Napoleonic Wars.
Certainly technically accurate, and to the best of my knowledge culturally so.
“They can’t help it, they are only foreigners.” 🙂
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### Author:  [@Scissorjack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scissorjack)
#### Post date: [September 16, 2005, 11:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-and-least-realistic-historical-fiction/322052/4 "2005-09-16T23:35:12Z")
Bernard Cornwell is best known for his excellent **Sharpe** series, but his other historical novels - the unfinished Starbuck series of the American Civil War, the Grail Quest series, his new King Alfred series - are as always meticulously researched and beautifully written: the characters never feel jarring or anachronistic.
I have to concur with **Silenus** , though, that Fraser is the main man when it comes to historical fiction: the breadth of research for a book like **Flashman and the Redskins** is simply astonishing, and yet he never falls into the trap of being overly didactic - Flashy’s racy, breezy first-person narrative is the perfect vehicle for imparting a _lot_ of edjamacashun. Shame the last one was a little disappointing.
His other historical novels aren’t too shabby either, especially **Mr American** and **Black Ajax** - and **The Pyrates** , while a comedy, still remains the best book about pirates ever written.
**Mississipienne** , where do Gary Jenning’s novels fit in? 😉
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### Author:  [@AuntiePam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AuntiePam)
#### Post date: [September 17, 2005, 12:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-and-least-realistic-historical-fiction/322052/5 "2005-09-17T00:03:53Z")
> [@Mississippienne](#):
>
> Sharon Kay Penman’s novels of medieval England (_Here Be Dragons_, _Time and Chance_, _Falls the Shadow_ to name a few) are immensely popular, but her characters never struck me as actually inhabiting the world she puts them in. They think and talk like people living hundreds of years later, as though she took characters from a modern novel, dressed them in SCA gear, and dropped them into the 13th century.
Word! I liked the ones you mentioned, but they definitely feel modern. Her medieval crime series could be filmed as Lethal Weapon I, II, and III. Witty, sarcastic banter and flip comments – aaargh.
At the risk of being stoned, I’d put Diana Gabaldon in the least realistic category too. Those books are thinly disguised bodice rippers. There’s nothing wrong with that, but they could have been more.
**Barry Unsworth** seems to do a good job getting the sensibilities right, especially with **Morality Play**. It illuminates the influence of the church, which other books don’t do. Religion is a minor plot point in much historical fiction, because it restricts characters’ behavior.
That’s what methinks anyway.
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### Author:  [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)
#### Post date: [September 17, 2005, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-and-least-realistic-historical-fiction/322052/6 "2005-09-17T00:11:48Z")
For least realistic, I challenge anyone to top Jean Auel. I win.
For most realistic, I have to second the nomination of Patrick O’Brien’s work. But let us not forget James Clavell, whose Far Eastern fiction is quite dependent on his skill at putting you in the minds of those characters.
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### Author:  [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)
#### Post date: [September 17, 2005, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-and-least-realistic-historical-fiction/322052/7 "2005-09-17T00:29:28Z")
> [@RickJay](#):
>
> For most realistic, I have to second the nomination of Patrick O’Brien’s work. But let us not forget James Clavell,
You are obviously a Gentleman and a Scholar, but regarding Clavell; doesn’t getting paid per word make him lose points? 🙂
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### Author:  [@Mops](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mops)
#### Post date: [September 17, 2005, 12:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-and-least-realistic-historical-fiction/322052/8 "2005-09-17T00:34:41Z")
Thirding Patrick O’Brian for realism. Like the instance where Stephen Maturin choses a particular piece of rag for bandaging Jack Aubrey’s wound _because it is already dirty_.
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### Author:  [@Mississippienne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mississippienne)
#### Post date: [September 17, 2005, 1:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-and-least-realistic-historical-fiction/322052/9 "2005-09-17T01:30:11Z")
> [@AuntiePam](#):
>
> Word! I liked the ones you mentioned, but they definitely feel modern. Her medieval crime series could be filmed as Lethal Weapon I, II, and III. Witty, sarcastic banter and flip comments – aaargh.
You know what I don’t like about Penman’s novels? Her medieval world isn’t dirty. Penman’s characters are prettily-dressed actors parading before a painted backdrop. You don’t see dirt on people’s faces, the sweat on men’s brows, the scent of leather and horses, the smell of burnt wood that clings to people who cook over campfires. Camping out in the woods for a couple of days will teach you how impossible it must’ve been to keep anything clean, and how _dark_ the night would’ve been without electric lights.
Anya Seton’s novel _Katherine_ is a romance, albeit of somewhat higher quality than your average bodice-ripper, but she gives a much earthier depiction of medieval England. Her characters walk chilly corridors in castles, peer into a night lit by candlelight, eat and drink and inhabit a world that feels very real.
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### Author:  [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)
#### Post date: [September 17, 2005, 1:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-and-least-realistic-historical-fiction/322052/10 "2005-09-17T01:44:43Z")
> [@tschild](#):
>
> Thirding Patrick O’Brian for realism. Like the instance where Stephen Maturin choses a particular piece of rag for bandaging Jack Aubrey’s wound _because it is already dirty_.
Cool, ts, but I don’t remember. Which novel?
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### Author:  [@AuntiePam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AuntiePam)
#### Post date: [September 17, 2005, 1:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-and-least-realistic-historical-fiction/322052/11 "2005-09-17T01:59:51Z")
> [@Mississippienne](#):
>
> Anya Seton’s novel _Katherine_ is a romance, albeit of somewhat higher quality than your average bodice-ripper, but she gives a much earthier depiction of medieval England. Her characters walk chilly corridors in castles, peer into a night lit by candlelight, eat and drink and inhabit a world that feels very real.
That’s a favorite.
Not strictly historical, but I got the same authentic, cold, dirty feeling from **Doomsday Book** by Connie Willis, and the movie **Flight of the Navigator** (or was it just The Navigator, I can never remember).
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### Author:  [@Mississippienne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mississippienne)
#### Post date: [September 17, 2005, 2:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-and-least-realistic-historical-fiction/322052/12 "2005-09-17T02:19:22Z")
Ah! Just remembered Steven Pressfield’s _Gates of Fire_, featuring the most heterosexual Spartans ever known to man.
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### Author:  [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)
#### Post date: [September 17, 2005, 5:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-and-least-realistic-historical-fiction/322052/13 "2005-09-17T05:07:39Z")
> [@RickJay](#):
>
> For least realistic, I challenge anyone to top Jean Auel. I win.
Actually, _Clan of the Cave Bear_ had its moments, I thought. After that it descended into increasingly laughable soft core porn as Ayla invents trigonometry and the cross your heart bra while teaming up with Sully from _Dr. Quinn_.
Gore Vidal creates very vivid well researched ancient worlds, but unfortunately they never come “alive”. (I think the old queen has a serious detachment disorder that affects his depiction of emotions.) Even so, I really liked his _Lincoln_ and _1876_, and to a lesser degree _Julian_ and _Creation_.
Robert Graves created delicious mindsets and characterizations and I’d recommend him thoroughly (in addition to _I, Claudius_ & _Claudius the God_ he wrote novels set in Byzantium, ancient Greece, Judea and other times/places).
I haven’t read all of it yet, but what I’ve read of Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle I like (it jets from Cromwell’s England to Ben Franklin’s childhood to WW2 with several points in between).
My absolute least favorite historical fiction writers:
Danielle Steele- I was majorly fascinated with the robber barons for a while and read ‘Thurston House’, a novel set in San Francisco at the time of the Big Four- total frigging dreck that was basically ‘Dynasty’ with trains instead of oil.)
Ken Follett- his ‘Pillars of Wisdom’ came heavily recommended to me as a medieval novel and I thought it used every cliche ever devised (see the SCA analogy in the OP).
John Jakes- the man couldn’t write a grocery list and name drops constantly. The bellman who handles the luggage will always turn out to be a young John Brown or they’ll sit next to Mark Twain on a train or whatever.
Jean Plaidy/Victoria Holt (and other pseudonyms)- literary vomit in period dress. I read the first paragraph of a novel my aunt gave me by her when I was about 15 and chucked it across the room. It was about the wife of Charles I and described her “tall handsome husband”- he was damned near a dwarf and notoriously ugly.
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### Author:  [@Curate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Curate)
#### Post date: [September 17, 2005, 5:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-and-least-realistic-historical-fiction/322052/14 "2005-09-17T05:38:03Z")
I thought _Sarum_ by Edward Rutherfurd seemed realistic in its depictions of its characters. A few weeks ago I picked up _Gettysburg_ by Newt Gingrich and William Fortchen and was pleasantly surprised. I don’t know if the personalities they attribute to the persons in the novel match their real-life counterparts, but they do seem to think like 19th Century soldiers.
I agree with the praise of Patrick O’Brian. My interest in that period came form the Hornblower series, but my enjoyment of Hornblower has been permanently impaired by Aubrey and Maturin. I seem to recall reading somewhere that Forrester intentionally wrote Hornblower as a 20th Century man in a 19th Century setting, and to me that is the flaw in the series.
I haven’t progressed very far into _An Instance of the Fingerpost_ by Iain Pears, but so far it seems to fall into the “realistic” category as well.
Curate
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### Author:  [@First\_Lady\_of\_Infinity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/First_Lady_of_Infinity)
#### Post date: [September 17, 2005, 6:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-and-least-realistic-historical-fiction/322052/15 "2005-09-17T06:40:31Z")
Nominating Persia Woolley as an author who seems to capture the time and place she’s writing about. Her trilogy _Child of the Northern Spring, Queen of the Summer Stars_, and _Guinevere: Legend of the Autumn_ may never be considered top-quality literature, but Woolley seems to capture the flavor of Dark Ages Britain, as viewed through the eyes of a woman born in the noble class.
I’ve never read any of Ken Follett’s novels except those set in WWII, but I must say that Follett captures the WWII era fairly well. I personally think that Leon Uris is much more vivid in his portrayals of WWII, though: Less romantic, more realistic, at least within the very specific framework in which he wrote. In both cases, though, the writers didn’t have to reach too terribly far into the past to portray that specific era, so it might not be such a great accomplishment as capturing a time prior to living memory.
Like **Auntie Pam** and **Mississippienne** , I like Anya Seton’s _Katherine_ for its fairly straightforward depiction of a less romantic, more realistic vision of medievel England. Personally, though, I think that Umberto Eco’s _The Name of the Rose_ may be among the best modern depictions of the earthiness and the mindsets of many Europeans during the Middle Ages.
I also think that the late Shelby Foote did a marvelous job of portraying time, place, attitude, and background in his novel _Shiloh_.
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### Author:  [@AuntiePam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AuntiePam)
#### Post date: [September 17, 2005, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-and-least-realistic-historical-fiction/322052/16 "2005-09-17T16:08:34Z")
> [@Curate](#):
>
> I haven’t progressed very far into _An Instance of the Fingerpost_ by Iain Pears, but so far it seems to fall into the “realistic” category as well.
>
> Curate
Oh yeah. I think his characters put him in the Most Realistic column. He doesn’t spend a lot of time with window dressing. The characters are the most important.
In **The Dream of Scipio** , Pears gives us with characters from three widely different time periods, and does a hell of a job.
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### Author:  [@Gorsnak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gorsnak)
#### Post date: [September 17, 2005, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-and-least-realistic-historical-fiction/322052/17 "2005-09-17T16:34:10Z")
I’ve recently discovered that Patrick O’Brian’s novels are even more realistic than most people realize. I’m reading a biography of one Thomas, Lord Cochrane, 10th Earl of Dundonald. The chapter on Cochrane’s first independent command is identical down to the minutest detail to the plot of _Master and Commander_. Except that the _HMS Sophie_ in reality had the rather more ridiculous name _HMS Speedy_. But everything else is the same. Everything, with one minor exception, namely, Aubrey gains the enmity of the commandant at Minorca because he’s sleeping with the commandant’s wife whereas Cochrane’s problems with the admiralty stemmed from the fact that he was disliked by none other than Admiral Jarvis, Earl of St Vincent himself because Cochrane was a mouthy, insubordinate prick.
Gah. Now I’m torn. I’ve only read the first Aubrey book. Do I stop reading the Cochrane biography so I don’t spoil the subsequent novels? Judging by dustjacket blurbs, the stories diverge before too long, but I don’t know when. Or do I continue reading the Cochrane biography so that it isn’t spoiled by having read the Aubrey novels. I must confess that the pleasure of reading about Cochrane’s exploits was diminished by the fact that I’d read it all before.
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### Author:  [@Miss\_Purl\_McKnittington](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miss_Purl_McKnittington)
#### Post date: [September 17, 2005, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-and-least-realistic-historical-fiction/322052/18 "2005-09-17T17:38:22Z")
The Catherine LeVendeur novels by Sharan Newman are pretty realistic. They’re set in 12th century France, and there’s a lot of detail on everyday life. Though the plots are extraordinary, because mysteries by their nature start with something out of the ordinary, the characters are all very human and the things that happen to them are the sorts of things that would happen to someone in the twelfth century. There’s also a lot of interaction with Jews, which freaking rocks because the majority of historical fiction ignores them completely. The emphasis on religion is really nice.
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### Author:  [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)
#### Post date: [September 17, 2005, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-and-least-realistic-historical-fiction/322052/19 "2005-09-17T18:05:42Z")
> [@Curate](#):
>
> A few weeks ago I picked up _Gettysburg_ by Newt Gingrich and William Fortchen and was pleasantly surprised. I don’t know if the personalities they attribute to the persons in the novel match their real-life counterparts, but they do seem to think like 19th Century soldiers.
You’re _surprised_ that Newt Gingrich can think like a 19th century Southerner? You haven’t followed his career too closely, have you? 😉
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### Author:  [@Huerta88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Huerta88)
#### Post date: [September 17, 2005, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-and-least-realistic-historical-fiction/322052/20 "2005-09-17T18:26:04Z")
> [@Case Sensitive](#):
>
> I have to concur with **Silenus** , though, that Fraser is the main man when it comes to historical fiction: the breadth of research for a book like **Flashman and the Redskins** is simply astonishing, and yet he never falls into the trap of being overly didactic - Flashy’s racy, breezy first-person narrative is the perfect vehicle for imparting a _lot_ of edjamacashun. Shame the last one was a little disappointing.
My only problem with Fraser is that the series takes on a little (a lot?) of a Forrest Gump vibe when he finds a way to insert Flashy in **every single** significant historical episode of the era (and, of course, he has to jigger the plot so as to give Flashman a leading (but hitherto unreported) role that is somehow consistent with the reported history).
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