Historical semi-fiction like Philippa Gregory?

[Trills]

Any recommendations?

I'd like semi-true scandalous stories please - with real historical characters so I can Wikipedia them afterwards and feel like I've learned something.

Does it have to be scandalous?

Lets make something up.

Who are you interested in?

Non-scandalous recommendations also welcome :)

These won't be revelations as they have been recommended several times before, but they are very good:

This Thing Of Darkness
Measuring The World

And if it doesn't necessarily have to be fiction:

The Worst Journey In The World
Operation Mincemeat
The Strangest Man

Thanks - I'll check it out. Like the idea of a Darwin story :)

Alison Weir, Innocent Traitor. Its the story of Lady Jane Grey, its quite moving actually. Very similar style to Philippa Gregory.

Have you read Anya Seaton? Katherine is v good - scandalous historical fiction with good research foundations and a true story.

Not scandalous though...

Sorry, that was in relation to my own post

You might also like to read a book about Coco Chanel. I read this one and it was pretty good. There is quite a bit of scandal in there, too.

Jean Plaidy is good.

The Bones of Avalon by Phil Rickman? (Set in Elizabethan times).

Whatever you do, don't pick up Wolf Hall.

Virgin Widow by Anne O'Brien? It's about Ann Neville - kind of an antidote to how she was portrayed in The White Queen, if you saw that.

I really enjoyed Wolf Hall!

Ah I just remembered:

Drood - Dan Simmons

It is about the last year of Charles Dickens' life, narrated by Wilkie Collins. Weird and interesting take on the real-life events. It's about real people, has lots of true events, details, etc but it is definitely fiction. Arguably more fiction than most historical fiction books, but anyway.

If you like fantasy type stuff too - Deborah Harkness' 'a discovery of witches' and the sequel are brilliant and have a lot of history in them too (especially the second book)

The Last English King by Julian Rathbone - about King Harold and the Battle of Hastings. A jolly good read.

Wolf Hall got on my nerves with its disjointed snippets of conversations between various people, sometimes years apart, which made the entire first half of the book. The author's shocking ignorance frustrating disregard of proper grammar and punctuation. Use of the pronoun 'he' for Thomas Cromwell even when it's talking about other characters, seemingly for the sole purpose of confusing the reader.

To each their own and all that, but the book didn't even have a plot until about the last third

Try Lavinia Collins, she has two books of a trilogy out about Guinevere and Arthur. They're only on kindle but not expensive. I think the first one was called The Warrior Queen.

All of Alison Weir's ones are good. Also Suzannah Dunn. Better than PG IMO.

I didn't mind Wolf Hall too much (wish that every bloody person was not called Thomas, but that's not exactly her fault).

I don't think I could have managed it if I didn't already know the approximate story.

Only managed the first few hundred pages of Wolf Hall. Sheesh.

Sharon Penman's good, as is Elizabeth Chadwick.
I couldn't be doing with Wolf Hall, either.
Diana Gabaldon's OUTLANDER is a great read and is being made into a Game of Thrones style TV series as we speak.

I'd second Jean Plaidy, the Stewart kings are a good place to start