#VANSITTART_Peter

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A Passage to India

E.M. Forster, A Passage to India

(1910s English girl confused by experience of the Raj)

Between Two Worlds

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Heat and Dust  (Englishwoman contrasts modern India with her aunt"s 1920s experience)

James Clavell, Shogun  (American becomes samurai in 17th-century Japan)

John Le Carre, The Perfect Spy  ("autobiography" of ipper-echelon British spy - and double-agent, trying to discover where his loyalty lies)

Henry James, The Ambassadors  (rich 1900s Americans take "culture" to Europe, find it more civilised than they expected)

Confused Emotions

R.K. Narayan, The Vendor of Sweets  (devout Hindu in rural India dismayed by son"s "progressive" ways)

V.S. Naipaul, A House for Mr Biswas  (Indian Hindu in Jamaica caught between dependence on his wife"s all-engulfing family and his longing to lead his own life)

L.P. Hartley, The Go-Between  (small boy in 1910s England carries love-messages, emotions he only dimly understands)

Paul Theroux, Fong and the Indians  (Indian shopkeeper struggling to survive in rural, tribal Africa)

Willa Cather, My Antonía  (daughter of 19th-century Bohemian immigrants growing up in rural Nebraska)

Imperialism, Good and Bad

Timothy Mo, An Insular Possession  (blockbusting novel about English imperialism in Honk Kong)

James Blish, A Case of Conscience  (should mineral-rich planet be exploited at expense of native inhabitants" life and culture?)

James Blish, A Case of Conscience  (should mineral-rich planet be exploited at expense of native inhabitants" life and culture?)

Rudyard Kipling, Kim  (adventures of Anglo-indian boy in heyday of Raj)

Twilight of Empire

Paul Scott, Staying On  (plight of English in India after independence)

Peter Vansittart, Three Six Seven  (Romanised Britons watching advance of barbarism after 4th century collapse of Roman power)

Morris West, The Ambassador  (Us ambassador in Vietnam, appalled by his country"s action there)

Gerald Seymour, Field of Blood  (underover SAS officer hunts IRA suspect in present-day Belfast)

P.H. Newby, The Picnic at Sakkara  (English teacher in 1950s Egypt confused by collapse of British Empire)

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I, Cladius

Robert Graves, I, Claudius

(the fourth Roman Emperor's 'memoirs' of his bloodthirsty forebears)

Ancient Rome

Peter Vansittart, Three Six Seven  (twilight of Roman Britain, late 4th century)

John Arden, Silence Among the Weapons  ("memoirs" of actor"s agent mixed up with Roman dictator Sulla in 1st century BC)

Thornton Wilder, The Ides of March

Anthony Burgess, The Kingdom of the Wicked  (Luke, Paul,and other early Christian missionaries)

"Memoirs"

Joseph Heller, God Knows  ("memoirs" of Old Testament King David)

Mary Renault, The King Must Die  ("memoirs" of King Theseus of Athens)

Gore Vidal, Creation  ("memoirs" of Persian diplomat who knew Socrates, Buddha and Confucius)

Stephen Marlowe, The Memoirs of Christopher Columbus  (early disappointments and ironic triumph of unscrupulous adventurer-explorer)

Marguerite Yourcenar, Memoirs of Hadrian  (reflections of 14th Roman Emperor and philosopher)

Carlos Fuentes, Terra Nostra  ("memoirs" of Philip II of Spain, in deranged old age)

Augusto Roa Bastos, I, The Supreme  ("memoirs" of Francia, 19th-century dictator of Paraguay)

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, The Autumn of the Patriarch  (deathbed monologue of fanatical, deranged South American dictator)

People of the Past (powerful historical novels)

Mario Vargas Llosa, The War of the End of the World  (19th-century South American religious community, communist, waiting for the Apocalypse)

William Golding, The Spire

Helen Waddell, Peter Abelard  (12-th century Paris: a monk falls in love with beautiful pupil)

Barry Unsworth, Sacred Hunger

Nicholas Monsarrat, Running Proud  (one of Columbus" sailors shipwrecked in New World, is taken for a God)

The Ancient World

Mary Renault, The Mask of Apollo  ("memoirs" of actor-spy in 4th-century BC Greece)

Peter Green, Alcibiades His Armour  (Alcibiades, the Oscar Wilde of ancient Athens)

Norman Mailer, Ancient Evenings  (memories of chief minister of warrior-pharaih Rameses II)

Joan Grant, Winged Pharaoh  (Grant describes her own previous existence in ancient Egypt)

Henry Treece, Medea  (powerful evocation of myth-witch, scorned wife who murdered her children)

Hilda Doolittle (H.D.), Hedylus  (Samos, 3rd century BC: ex-courtesan, lover and poet-son meditate delicately on life, love, the arts and politics)

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Ancient Rome

Lindsey Davies, The Iron Hand of Mars

Robert Graves, I, Claudius

Allan Massie, Tiberius

Steven Saylor, Roman Blood

Peter Vansittart, Three Six Seven

Thornton Wilder, The Ides of March

David Wishart, Ovid

Marguerite Yourcenar, Memoirs of Hadrian

See also: ANCIENT GREECE    THE BIBLE: OLD TESTAMENT    THE BIBLE: NEW TESTAMENT    THE MIDDLE AGES    OTHER PEOPLES OTHER TIMES    RENAISSANCE EUROPE