Nick Rennison, a British writer, publisher and bookseller, has compiled a list of the 50 best and most popular historical novels he thinks everyone should read. Rennison regularly reviews historical prose for the Sunday Times and the BBC History Magazine. The novels cover historical eras from ancient Rome to WWII, some of them were filmed as films or short series.

It’s up to you to read them all, or at least some of them, but above all, there’s plenty to choose from.

1. Peter Ackroyd “Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem” (Victorian London).
2. Margaret Atwood “Alias ​​Grace / … She is” Grace “(the action takes place in 1843 in Canada).
3. Beryl Bainbridge “Master Georgia” (on the British experience of the Crimean War of 1853-56).
4. John Benville “Doctor Copernicus” (the life story of the eminent scientist Copernicus).
5. Pet Barker “Regeneration” (novel about post-traumatic stress disorder after World War I).
6. “The Narwhal’s Journey” by Andrea Barrett (a novel about exploring the Arctic in the mid-19th century).
7. Thomas Berger “Little Big Man / Little Big Man” (the story of how a white man was raised by a tribe of Indians, filmed with Dustin Hoffman in the title role)
8. William Boyd “An Ice-Cream War” (historical novel in the genre of dark comedy about the East African countryside during World War I).
9. Melvin Bragg “Creed” (an epic story about a young Celtic princess who is torn between devotion to God and love for the prince of the land of Regeda, located in 7th century Britain).
10. Geraldine Brooks “March” (narrated from Louise May Elcott’s “Little Women” from the perspective of a protagonist absent from the father of the original heroes).
11. John Bucken Twidsmoor “Midwinter” (a novel about the events of 1745 during the Second Jacobin Rebellion and the political ambitions for the royal throne of Charles Edward Stewart).
12. Antonia Bayette “Possession” (postmodern novel bordering on historical prose and metafiction).
13. Caleb Carr “The Alienist / Psychiatr” (The events of the novel take place in 1896 in New York, among the characters are many famous personalities, for example Theodore Roosevelt. The main character, the psychiatrist Dr. Laszlo Kreitzer tries to investigate on murders using fingerprints. and psychology).
14. Villa Cater “Death Comes for the Archbishop” (the story of how a Catholic bishop attempted to conquer ecclesiastical authority in New Mexico).
15. “Divine of a Pearl” by Tracey Chevalier (the story of the painting by famous Dutch artist Jan Vermeer, became the basis of the famous film adaptation with Scralett Johansson in the title role).
16. James Clavell “Shogun” (historical epic novel about an English sailor who ended up in Japan in the 17th century).
17. Bernard Cornwell “Sharpe’s Eagle” (the events take place during the wars of the Pyrenees, and in particular during the Battle of Talavera in 1809).
18. Lindsay Davis “The Silver Pigs” (historical detective, set in the 70s AD in Rome and Britain, immediately after the Year of the Four Emperors).
19. Charles Dickens “A Tale of Two Cities” (historical novel about the time of the French Revolution).
20. Edgar Lawrence Doctorow “Ragtime” (the novel is set between 1902 and 1912 in New York, the story depicts the United States before the outbreak of World War I).
21. Arthur Conan Doyle “The White Squad” (on the adventures of an English archer in the 14th century in England, France and Spain during the Hundred Years War).
22. Alexandre Dumas “Les Trois Mousquetaires” (the world famous adventure story about D’Artagnan and his friends).
23. Daphne Dumour “Jamaica Inn / Inn Jamaica” (a spooky story set in 1820 in Cornwall, inspired by a real Jamaican hotel).
24. Dorothy Dunnett “Niccolo Rising / Path of Niccolo” (a series of novels about the mid-15th century, the era of the European Renaissance).
    
25. Umberto Eco “The name of the rose” (postmodern detective story, set in 1327 in one of the Italian monasteries).
26. Robert Edrick “Le livre des pïens” (1897, isolated from the world station in Belgian Congo, a white man is convicted of murdering a local child, while the official investigation continues, his friend launches his own).
27. Thomas Eidson “St Agnes’ Stand” (1858, Nat Swanson with a bullet in the leg crosses the desert after a chase in West Texas, he killed an alien, protecting a woman he never met until ‘now escapes to California, where he shines the only hope of salvation).
28. George Eliot Romola (a story about 15th century Florence and its cultural, religious and social life).
29. Michael Faber “The Petal Crimson and the White” (a novel about two very different women in Victorian England).
30. James Gordon Farrell “The Siege of Krishnapur / Blockade of Krishnapur” (the story of the period of the Indian revolt against imperial power in 1857).
31. Patricia Finney “Firedrake’s Eye” (16th century Tudor story in England, the main plot of the novel is the planning of the assassination of Queen Elizabeth by the Catholic madman Tom O’Bedlam).
32. Penelope Fitzgerald “The Blue Flower / Blakitna Quitka” (the life story of one of the most prominent representatives of German Romanticism – Novalis).
33. Ken Follett “The Pillars of the Earth” (12th century, English Civil War, events take place somewhere between the sinking of the famous White Ship and the assassination of Archbishop Thomas Bucket).
34. Ford Medox Ford “The Fifth Queen” (a series of historical novels about the life of the fifth wife of King Henry VIII of England – Catherine Howard).
35. Cecil Scott Forester “The Happy Return” (the first novel in a series about Hornblover, the captain of the ship, where he went to the coasts of Nicaragua, in the yard in 1808).
36. John Fowles “The French Lieutenant’s Wife / The French Lieutenant’s Wife” (a parody of a Victorian novel, set in the mid-19th century, the author offers three alternative endings to the story).
37. George MacDonald Fraser “Flashman / Flashman” (Adventures of Secret Agent Flashman in Afghanistan in the 19th Century).
38. Charles Fraser “Cold Mountain” (novel about the American Civil War, best known for the adaptation with Jude Law and Nicole Kidman).
39. Margaret George “The Memoirs of Cleopatra” (detailed biography of Cleopatra VII, Queen of Egypt).
40. William Golding “Rites of Passage” (the first book in Golding’s marine trilogy, a young man travels from England to Australia, hoping to find new life).
41. Robert Graves “I, Claudius / I, Claudius” (a novel in the form of an autobiographical memoir of Claudius, the Roman Emperor, born in 10 BC and killed in 54 AD).
42. “The Queen’s Fool” by Philip Gregory (part of the writer’s Tudor series, which takes place between 1548 and 1558 on the life of Queen Mary I Tudor and her half-sister Elizabeth from the perspective of a fictional person ).
43. Keith Grenville “The Secret River / Secret River” (early 19th century British sent to Australia for theft, a story about the colonization of Australian lands where aborigines lived).
44. Robert Harris “Pompeii / Pompeii” (the novel tells of the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD).
45. Georgette Hare “A Civil Contract” (1814-1815, an impoverished viscount marries a rich woman outside his circle of convenience).
46. Peter Ho Davis “The Welsh Girl” (romantic love story at the end of WWII in North Wales).
47. Victor Hugo “Notre-Dame Cathedral” (the famous story of the hunchback Quasimodo, who fell in love with the gypsy Esmeralda, and all this in the setting of a unique cathedral in Paris).
48. “The Far Pavilions” by Mary Margaret Kay (novel by an Anglo-Indian writer on the life of a British officer in British India).
49. Thomas Keneally “The Playmaker” (1789, Sydney, in an isolated British penal colony, the prisoners decide to stage a play).
50. Alison Louise Kennedy “Day” (novel about a Lancaster bomber pilot during WWII).