http://www.opinionjournal.com/weekend/fivebest/?id=110009972
Past Tense
Favorite fictional tales rooted in history.

BY ANNE PERRY
Saturday, April 21, 2007 12:01 a.m.

1. "I, Claudius" by Robert Graves (Smith & Haas, 1934).

One of the most extraordinary accomplishments in fiction based on
history is Robert Graves's "I, Claudius." Graves wrote the "diaries" of
the physically awkward and bookish Roman emperor Claudius in such a way
that reading them is like spending the last hour of the evening
listening to one's eccentric uncle talking candidly about how his day
has been. Claudius speaks of the great figures of the Roman world 2,000
years ago as if we know them as well as he does. They are reduced from
legend to humanity: immediate, vulnerable and very real. Claudius's
forays into military tactics on the frontiers, political reform at home,
and architecture and philosophy in general are the interests of an uncle
we would never interrupt, for fear of hurting his feelings. Ultimately
we become fascinated as well.

2. "Full Dark House" by Christopher Fowler (Bantam, 2004).

On the surface this is a detective story set during the World War II
bombing of London. The destruction--not only of the city but of what
previously had been the certainties of life--is painted in a hundred
intimate touches. We taste the constant dirt, hear the sirens, bombs and
the whine of aircraft. There are shortages of almost everything, and
there is a tireless inventiveness to "make do and mend." Against this
backdrop in 1940, two young detectives in the Peculiar Crimes Unit
investigate the Palace Phantom, a killer who is stalking the cast of a
London stage production. But "Full Dark House" is really a novel about
the lifelong friendship of two very different men and the qualities that
survive time and disaster: tolerance, kindness, good humor and courage.

3. "The Scarlet Pimpernel" by Baroness Emmuska Orczy (Putnam, 1905).

The language is a trifle dated, but the strength of the plot has never
been surpassed. The time is the French Revolution, the setting both
England and France. A Frenchwoman named Marguerite St. Just is married
to Sir Percy Blakeny, a wealthy British nobleman whom she has come to
see as a shallow fop. Like everyone else, she admires passionately the
mysterious "Scarlet Pimpernel," who with his small band of friends risks
his life rescuing French aristocrats from the steps of the guillotine
and bringing them back to England, always pursued by his nemesis,
Citizen Chauvelin. Chauvelin captures Marguerite's brother, and the
price of his life is that Marguerite should find and betray the Scarlet
Pimpernel. She has a heart-rending dilemma, and only after she has
betrayed the Pimpernel--and then discovered that he is in fact Sir
Percy--does she set out to save him, willing to pay with her own life.
It is courage, choice, daring, invention, conflict and love--all
perfectly woven together toward a tremendous climax. Wouldn't we all
wish to be so loved, so brave, and to have a second chance in which to
redeem our misjudgments?

4. "To Say Nothing of the Dog" by Connie Willis (Bantam, 1998).

How can a modern American capture so perfectly the lyrical beauty, the
tumult of thought, the arrogance, prejudice and charm, the sheer
Englishness of Oxford in 1888? This is a tale of time travel from a
rather bleak future to a past where matrons are irascible and beautiful
girls fall in love at the drop of a hat--a straw boater, naturally, worn
by young men drifting downriver past old churches and flower-deep
meadows. The Oxford dons are brilliant and hilariously eccentric,
absorbed in arguments about history, Darwin, God and the universe. Our
hero, time-traveler Ned Henry, who specializes in 20th-century history,
needs recuperation from too much shuttling from era to era. He has
jumped from 1940s England to Victorian Oxford in search of the
mysterious "bishop's bird stump," an urn needed for a perfect
re-creation of Coventry Cathedral after its bombing in World War II. His
Oxford respite would be idyllic were it not that a fellow time traveler
has brought a cat along, causing a change in the future and disturbing
the time continuum for centuries. It is all a journey of wit, humor,
love and the sheer joy of life.

5. The Ballad of the White Horse by G.K. Chesterton (John Lane, 1911).

This is the story of the English King Alfred's desperate stand against
invading Danes in 878. England is conquered, and Alfred is a fugitive
when he sees a vision of the Virgin Mary that bids him call together the
remnants of his people for a final battle. "The Ballad of the White
Horse" is an epic poem of courage, passion and unsurpassable beauty.
When Alfred asks the Saxons to join the battle, the dismaying reply is:

    Friend I will watch the certain things,
    Swine and slow moons like silver rings,
    And the ripening of the plums.

Left to fend for themselves, Alfred and his followers are strengthened
by a faith in God and a love of England that are as deep as the bone. It
is the meeting of history and myth, a song of undying hope and faith in
mankind:

    Being what heart you are,
    Up the inhuman steeps of space,
    As on a staircase go in grace,
    Carrying the firelight in your face,
    Beyond the loneliest star.

Ms. Perry's "We Shall Not Sleep" (Ballantine), the fifth and final novel
in her World War I series, has just been published.