How do you research and write a novel set in a different time? This talk looks at the challenges of understanding a different era, and of thinking yourself into the heads of characters with very different cultural backgrounds and values. What are the pitfalls in writing about the famous, and how do you discover the forgotten figures of history – including those who don’t appear in the history books? Should you use real people, your own ancestors or entirely invented characters, and what are the implications of those choices? Is exact historical accuracy crucial – as novelist Hilary Mantel claims – or can fiction writers be more inventive? What are the different genres of historical novels, and what can we learn from writers as diverse as Patrick O’Brian, Mary Renault, Umberto Eco or James Clavell? How do you create a believable setting, whether in high politics, the battlefield, or the back streets of an impoverished town?

My talk is based around my experience in writing Mr Keynes’ Revolution and its sequel: historical novels set in the 1920s and 1930s, which cover high politics and finance, the Bohemian world of Bloomsbury and the avant-garde Ballets Russes. I also draw on my experiences writing a children’s novel based upon my own family’s history in the post war period, as well as my love of historical novels.