Next to speculative fiction, the literary “genre” I like best is historical, although in my case I include both fiction and non fiction under that umbrella.

So at the moment I’m reading — and enjoying — Douglas Woodruff’s The Life and Times of Alfred the Great (Weidenfled & Nicolson, 1974) which is a non-fiction account of the life and times of the Anglo-Saxon monarch. This is very much a coffee table book, so the writing is accessible and accompanied by many beautiful plates of manuscripts, craft, art, and weapons of the period. I am enjoying it very much but would describe it as an entry level work for looking at the period rather than heavy-duty history.

The historical novel I’m currently reading is Robert Harris’s An Officer and A Spy (Arrow Books, 2014), which is based on the true story of the Dreyfus Affair. The novel begins with the conviction of a French army officer, Alfred Dreyfus, for spying and follows the gradual realization by military intelligence officer, Georges Picquart, that Dreyfus has been wrongfully convicted. Currently I’m about a third of the way through and am finding it really engaging reading. The book combines a deft portrayal of the historical period, including the anti-Semitism that drove Dreyfus’s conviction, together with a real spy thriller that is at least as riveting as anything Hollywood could devise — without the need for CGI or other special effects.

Whether Anglo-Saxon England, the conflict with the Danes, and the life of Alfred the Great are your thing, or a real historical whodunnit and the miscarriage of justice meted out to Alfred Dreyfus is more your style, I think either Douglas Woodruff’s The Life and Times of Alfred the Great or Robert Harris’s An Officer and A Spy will well repay your time.