We asked 12 well-loved authors to each suggest a couple of historical books to give, receive, or treat yourself to for Christmas 2025. There are ideas for history-reading children and teens as well.
Newly-published or classics, fiction and non-fiction, their choices range from Ancient Rome to a history of Black British culture, via the Crusades, the Tudor and Stuart eras, the American War of Independence, Victorian Gothic and two World Wars.
Tracy Borman
The Cardinal by Alison Weir is a compelling tale of one of Tudor England’s most powerful and fascinating men. Henry VIII’s beloved cardinal, Thomas Wolsey, is not an obvious hero. He was scorned by his contemporaries as a butcher’s son who rose well above his station to become the ‘other king’, destroying many of his rivals along the way. But with her instinct for illuminating period detail and dramatic storytelling, Alison Weir gives him the Wolf Hall treatment and by the end of the book you’ll be enchanted and heartbroken in equal measure. With its distinctly festive cover, it’s the perfect gift for the history lovers in your life.
A Christmas Carol* by Charles Dickens. The ultimate Christmas tale, this Dickens classic is a must for the season and will get you in the festive spirit more than mince pies or Mariah Carey. And, worry not, if time is scarce amidst shopping, wrapping, and preparing the festive feasts, it’s short enough to read in the run-up to 25 December. A story of redemption that follows miserable miser Ebeneezer Scrooge as he is haunted by three ghosts who change his life forever, it also vividly evokes Victorian London and its Christmas traditions.
Tracy Borman is joint chief curator for Historic Royal Palaces, a novelist and historian who appears frequently on television and radio, and a regular contributor to history magazines. The Stolen Crown: Treachery, Deceit and the Death of the Tudor Dynasty was published in September. A new novel, The House of Boleyn, is scheduled for 23 April, 2026.
Penny Boxall
Hilary McKay‘s The Skylarks’ War is one of the most beautiful, moving books I’ve read in recent years. It follows a group of children in the Edwardian era who, as they grow up, must come to terms with the realities (personal and political) of war. It’s emotionally complex, beautifully written, and somehow comforting and hope-giving, too. Clarry is an immensely sympathetic character, one who lives and breathes.
Mistletoe and Murder by Robin Stevens is that rare thing: a 1930s-set crime novel for children which feels both authentic and timely. Genuinely intricate plotwork, a proper array of convincing suspects, some cosy panelled college rooms, and visits to the exquisite Fitzbillies café for sticky buns: it’s a page-turner and a glittering evocation of Cambridge Christmases. Delicious.
Penny Boxall is an award-winning poet and writer for children whose work draws on her career in museums. She has held Royal Literary Fund Fellowships at the Universities of York and Cambridge, and is now an RLF Bridge Fellow. Penny’s first novel for children aged nine to 12, Letty and the Mystery of the Golden Thread, was Blackwell’s Children’s Book of the Month for February 2025.
Kate Griffin
Christmas is a time for tales of delicious darkness. Hopefully my suggestions will make for perfect reading beside a crackling fire with a glass of fortified wine.
Firstly, Naomi Kelsey‘s fresh and terrifying gothic novel The Darkening Globe will set your head and heart spinning as she navigates horrors of the Elizabethan era through the eyes of a buccaneering adventurer’s wife. You will never look at a globe in quite the same way again.
Secondly, a book I regularly re-read at Christmas — The Unburied by Charles Palliser (first published in 2000). The unsettling love child of MR James and Wilkie Collins, this multi-stranded story of buttoned-up academics, antiquarian secrets, ghosts and murder set in and around a frigid cathedral in the depths of a Victorian winter is a richly rewarding delight. Pay close attention to every line!
Kate Griffin has an unapologetic passion for the uncanny, as her choices suggest. Her first novels, the Kitty Peck mysteries, were set in Victorian London and were followed by Fyneshade, a loving homage to the gothic (and in particular the sub-genre Governess Gothic). The Blackbirds of St Giles, co-written as Lila Cain with Marcia Hutchinson, was published on 30 January, 2025. Kate and Marcia are working on a sequel.
Louise Hare
Kevin Barry‘s The Heart in Winter is winner of this year’s HWA Gold Crown and a much deserved one, I have already recommended – and gifted — this to so many people. Not only do you get the bleak reality of life in 1890s Montana, and a history of the people who travelled there in the hope of a better life, but it’s an ill-fated love story, written in the sort of language that lets you know you’re in for a treat from the first page.
We Were There: How Black culture, resistance and community shaped modern Britain by Lanre Bakare. As a Black northerner, I’m really looking forward to reading this. I often write about Black history in London, but Bakare’s focus is on everywhere but the capital. From Northern Soul to rugby league, pioneering thinkers and fighters for justice, this is a new social history of Britain.
Louise Hare was chair of the judges for this year’s HWA Gold Crown. Her debut novel, This Lovely City, saw her named by the Observer as one of the 10 best debut novelists of 2020. It was followed by Miss Aldridge Regrets and by Harlem After Midnight, which was shortlisted for the CWA Historical Dagger in 2024. The House of Fallen Sisters will be published on 12 February, 2026.
Rosemary Hayes
There are so many brilliant historical stories for young teens, but I’ve chosen two which gripped me when I first read them and whose characters have lived with me ever since. Raven Queen by Pauline Francis is a brilliantly imagined story based on the tragically short life of Lady Jane Grey. Beautifully written, engaging from the first to last page, with an ending which will make you gasp, it brings the young ‘nine-day Queen’ vividly to life.
My other choice is Witch Child by Celia Rees. When young Mary sees her grandmother hanged for witchcraft she is spirited away by an unknown woman and finds herself sailing to the New World. But old superstitions die hard. Mary herself becomes the victim of ignorance and stupidity and she has to make hard choices to survive. A powerful story with utterly convincing characters, it is tense and engrossing from start to finish.
And a shout out, too, for Jamila Gavin’s historical novels, Coram Boy and others.
Rosemary Hayes has written over 50 books for children and young adults in many different genres, which have won or been shortlisted for awards and several translated into different languages. Her first historical book for adults, The King’s Command, is about a French Huguenot family during the reign of Louis XIV. She is currently working on a trilogy, Soldier Spy — also for adults — set during the Napoleonic Wars. The first two books, Traitor’s Game and The King’s Agent, are already published and the third, Code of Honour, will be out soon.
Michael Jecks
I really think this year has been a hard one to choose new books — there have been so many excellent books out, and trying to select just a couple is… not easy.
However, for non-fiction I cannot recommend Steve Tibble‘s books highly enough. I read Crusader Criminals earlier in the year — brilliant — and followed it up with Assassins and Templars a month or two ago. Superbly researched, these are books which would appeal to those who have real interest in the Crusades, in medieval history generally, or even those who just want a thrilling read. Steve manages to pull the reader in, and doesn’t let go!
On the fiction side, I really have been working so hard on my own books that much of my reading has been research material with a little crime fiction to keep me going. However this year I have been thoroughly enjoying rediscovering John Creasey’s books — I mean to say, it’s really hard to not be fascinated by a guy who wrote over 600 novels in his short life — but I’m also hugely enjoying discovering Ann Swinfen‘s books. They are being republished by Canelo, and just for one example, I recommend The Bookseller’s Tale. It brings the medieval period to life in ways that few other writers achieve. She writes with elegance and concision, but always with enthusiasm. I can’t recommend her series highly enough. Not only because they are fabulous, period tales, but because they are also superb crime stories.
Michael Jecks is the author of 53 novels, mainly medieval crime and mystery but with excursions into Tudor England and 1920s Shanghai. You may know him for his Vintener, Last Templar and Jack Blackjack series. His most recent novel, Pilgrim’s War, is the first in his Holy Wars series and came out on 10 November, 2025.
Vaseem Khan
Imperium by Robert Harris is the first in a bestselling trilogy about the legendary Roman lawyer and statesman Cicero, as told through the voice of his amanuensis, Tiro. Beautifully written and rich in period detail, the book will delight those who love ancient history. The narrative is slow-burning, but I found the depiction of Rome and the portrayals of the empire’s most well-known names – Caesar, Pompeii, Crassus – a delight. This isn’t a thriller in the conventional sense. It’s a book about politics; but in Harris’s hands even politics becomes literature of the highest order.
Alan Parks‘s Gunner brings World War noir to the mean streets of Glasgow, setting a jaundiced eye onto a slice of history rarely explored in crime fiction. Following former-detective and soldier returned from the front in 1941, it tracks his travails as he becomes embroiled in a murder case partly inspired by history.
Vaseem Khan is the author of two award-winning crime series set in India: the Baby Ganesh Agency series, set in modern Mumbai, and the Malabar House historical crime novels, set in 1950s Bombay. Midnight at Malabar House won the Crime Writers’ Association Historical Dagger in 2021. He’s also written Quantum of Menace, the first in a series of mystery novels reimagining James Bond’s Q. The Edge of Darkness, Vaseem’s sixth Malabar House novel, is published on 22 January, 2026.
Chris Lloyd
A new book in the fabulous Oxford Mysteries by Alis Hawkins is always a welcome treat, and in the third in the series, The Hunters Club, Alis has raised an already stratospheric bar even higher. In counter-balance to the delicately nuanced shifting sands of the two powerful central characters, Non Vaughan and Basil Rice, and the fine shades of the social and political mores of 1880s Oxford, this story is much darker and angrier than the first two. Setting its sights on the misogyny, bigotry and social and sexual politics of the era, it reveals the double-standards of the late Victorian period, while casting a sharp light on issues that are still relevant today.
Also third in a series, The Cygnet Prince by GJ Williams is the latest in her hugely compelling Tudor Rose Murders, which is rapidly becoming one of my favourite historical crime fiction series. With a fine attention to detail, intricately plotted and beautifully written, the series is a welcome breath of fresh air in fiction set in this period. Margaretta Morgan, apprentice to John Dee and with a mind to match his and gifts to outstrip those of her mentor, finds herself embroiled in secrets and conspiracies in a complex and intelligent story. A claimant to the throne threatens the Tudor dynasty, and Margaretta walks a very fine line between solving the mystery while remaining in the shadows of Dee and Queen Elizabeth’s court.
Chris Lloyd is the author of the award-winning Occupation series, featuring Eddie Giral, a French police detective in Nazi-occupied Paris. The first book, The Unwanted Dead, won the HWA Gold Crown Award for best historical novel in 2021. His latest, Banquet of Beggars, is the third book in the series (is there a pattern here?). Eddie’s expected back in 2026, probably in May. Chris is a member of Crime Cymru, a co-operative of crime fiction writers with a connection to Wales.
Sean Lusk
The Artist by Lucy Steeds is a beautifully written novel, which draws us into sun-drenched Provence in 1920, where irascible artist Edouard Tartuffe’s isolation, shared with his quiet, selfless niece, is about to be broken by the visit of a young British writer keen to write a piece on Tartuffe for an arts magazine. The descriptions of Tartuffe’s art, the increasing sexual tension between the visitor and Tartuffe’s niece, and the heat of the landscape make this novel deserve all the praise it has received.
The Sleeping Beauty by Elizabeth Taylor (1953, reissued since by Virago). Any reader or writer who has not had the joy of reading one of Elizabeth Taylor’s dozen novels published from the 1940s to 1960s is not only in for a treat, but for a lesson in how to write character and observation. The Sleeping Beauty, like all Taylor’s novels, is about human foibles set against the background of post-war English middle class life. But the precision, the emotional daring and the quality of her writing are close to being unsurpassed. A true writer’s writer.
Sean Lusk is a short story writer and novelist. His Final Score won the 2025 HWA Dorothy Dunnett Short Story Competition and will be published in Historia, probably early next year. It’s also available in the Dorothy Dunnett Society/HWA 2025 short story anthology. The Second Sight of Zachary Cloudesley was his first full-length book, and was followed in 2024 by A Woman of Opinion, which won this year’s Saltire Book Award for Fiction.
Lindsay Powell
My choice for a historical fiction book is Precipice by Robert Harris. A lifelong fan, I had the amazing good fortune to meet Robert this year to discuss our shared interest in Roman commander and statesman Marcus Agrippa (I wrote Agrippa’s biography and he’s writing a fictional autobiography for publication in 2026). In his latest thriller based on real events, set in the summer of 1914 as Britain stands on the brink of war with Germany, prime minister HH Asquith is involved in a clandestine love affair with a much younger woman and top-secret documents are leaked.
On 4 July, 2026, it’s the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, which led to the Thirteen Colonies breaking away forever from the British Empire. Rick Atkinson is an acknowledged scholar in the period, and he appeared throughout Ken Burns’s series The American Revolution for PBS. His 854-page The Fate of the Day: The War for America, Fort Ticonderoga to Charleston, 1777–1780 is the second volume in a trilogy documenting that fateful war; it is essential reading for American patriots and British loyalists alike seeking to better understand the causes and course of that event, which shaped the modern world.
Lindsay Powell is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and a bestselling historian and writer specialising in the conflicts, commanders and campaigns of the ancient world. He is also news editor of Ancient History and Ancient Warfare magazines. The author of 14 non-fiction books, his Tiberius: From Masterly Commander to Masterful Emperor of Rome was published in 2025, completing an acclaimed five-volume series on the dynasty of Caesar Augustus.
Mark Turnbull
A Cruel Corpse by Ben Bergonzi introduces Hayden Gray, a fictional 18th-century soldier with a mysterious side — unbeknown to the garrison of Carlisle Castle, Gray is actually a woman. When scrutiny falls upon her it comes as a result of a murder that leaves Gray as prime suspect. She turns to Jasper Greatheed, a friend who harbours his own damning secret. Blending vivid detail and a well-researched historical narrative, Bergonzi threads disguise, gender, and personal loyalty through a compelling plot.
Gareth Russell‘s Queen James beckons readers to the much-overlooked Stuart era by repositioning the story of King James VI/I around his intimate relationships with male courtiers. The first King of Great Britain’s sexuality is explored with empathy and adept scholarship, vividly taking readers to the heart of the Jacobean court. Against a backdrop of witch-hunts, espionage, and political intrigue, a nuanced study of James’s character and psychology provides a fully rounded assessment that is both witty and revealing.
Mark Turnbull writes historical fiction (the Rebellion series) and biographies with a War of the Three Kingdoms connection. His most recent book is Prince Rupert of the Rhine; King Charles I’s Cavalier Commander. He also produces a podcast, CavalierCast – The Civil War in Words. Mark is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and joint chair of The Battlefields Trust (North Region).
Annie Whitehead
My choice for fiction is suitably wintry, and it’s The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon. This story of 18th-century midwife Martha Ballard is based on a true life character, and is in part a murder story. Three things sum it up for me: the beautiful writing (sharp characterisation, and luscious descriptive passages), the way it highlights the injustice of the world when it comes to women’s lives, health, and care, and the ever-present river of the title, its static state affecting the lives of all the folk who live on its banks, and how focus turns inward — with often murderous intent — when travel and communication are impossible.
For non-fiction, it’s The Word Hoard by Hana Videen. You don’t have to be an Anglo-Saxon history enthusiast like me to enjoy this book. This collection of Old English words and their meanings gives definitions of these wonderfully descriptive words (isn’t weód hóc — weed hook — so much better than hoe?) talks about ideas, beliefs, and daily life, and is also a fascinating insight into how our language essentially came into being. Great to dip in and out of, it’s one of those books that will have you saying “I didn’t know that” multiple times, and will find you telling your friends and family new facts about our words and where they came from. Great for the holidays!
Annie Whitehead is a writer, historian, and Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. She was the first winner of the HWA Dorothy Dunnett Short Story Competition, in 2017, and in 2025 chaired the judging panel for the 2025 HWA Non-fiction Crown. She has written four award-winning novels set in ‘Anglo-Saxon’ Mercia. Her non-fiction books are Mercia: The Rise and Fall of a Kingdom, Women of Power in Anglo-Saxon England and Murder in Anglo-Saxon England: Justice, Wergild, Revenge, which was published on 15 February, 2025.
Our thanks to all the authors who gave their time to suggest Christmas reading books! I hope you’ve found some inspiration.
If you’d like some ideas for books to read next year, come back on 1 January when we’ll be publishing our round-up of books by HWA authors coming out during 2026. There were over 200 of them in 2025!
*How to choose which edition of A Christmas Carol to link to? In the end I went for one with the original text and illustrations, affordable, and in three formats. I suspect there are Christmas Carols out there for every taste and pocket…
Image:
Detail from Dig, poster by Sadie Wendell Mitchell, 1909: US Library of Congress via Wikimedia (public domain)
