Quote:
Originally Posted by cassidym
My favorite Historical Fiction series is the Flashman series by George MacDonald Fraser.
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Apparently they were inspired by the Brigadier Gerard books by Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle. They're set around the Napoleonic Wars, so about 100 years before the preferred time period, but the OP did say he'd consider other periods
Gerard was a Hussar officer during the Napoleonic Wars, and the stories are written as recollections of his life. Gerard doesn't
quite say that his absence from the Battle of Waterloo is the reason the French lost:
Quote:
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At Waterloo, although, in a sense, I was present, I was unable to fight, and the enemy was victorious. It is not for me to say that there is a connection between these two things. You know me too well, my friends, to imagine that I would make such a claim. But it gives matter for thought, and some have drawn flattering conclusions from it.
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I highly recommend them, and they're both in the Patricia Clarke Memorial Library:
The Exploits of Brigadier Gerard
The Adventures of Gerard
For early twentieth century, I recommend John Biggins' Otto Prohaska series (A Sailor of Austria; The Emperor's Coloured Coat; The Two-Headed Eagle; and Tomorrow the World). I've only read the first two, the last two are on my to-read list. They're the recollections of an Austro-Hungarian sailor (in the first book he captains a U-boat). They're well written, amusing, and at least in the areas where my knowledge is good enough to judge, historically accurate.