There are several reasons for doing so:

“The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.”
– L. P. Hartley, The Go-Between

We do it to learn about the past, to meet people from other times and cultures. And we do it to learn about ourselves. After all, we are fundamentally the same people as were here (or there) centuries ago. So, historical fiction enables us to touch, somehow, those people and live their experience in a more visceral way than by reading history textbooks.

“Reading is escape, and the opposite of escape.”
– Nora Ephron

Fiction of any kind can offer an escape from today’s world. The past is very useful for this. It’s more settled and feels more secure than our day-to-day lives - often unstable with world events usually beyond our influence.

“People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.”
– James Baldwin

Stories built around real events can also provide insight into the present. History unfolds through interconnected cycles: small personal decisions, wider social movements and enormous political forces. Understanding what happened in the past helps us recognise what may be happening again.

At the most personal level, fictional characters facing difficult choices can offer us knowledge, strategies and understanding that we can carry into our own lives. (Ed’s note: Who hasn’t been inspired by Churchill?)

But me? Why do I read historical fiction? I think it’s partly a way of testing my own character. I love learning about history and about people living through challenging situations. I read about fictional people and wonder what I would do in their situation. How would I respond to that crisis? Sometimes I imagine that I would handle things better than the protagonist. At other times, the story illuminates a part of me I know would fail the test.

After all, we are all works in progress. Growing up takes a lifetime and, in my case, lots of books.