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National wars foster unity; civil wars are defined by its collapse. And that makes for great storytelling. Division means tension, choice - the things that stories feed on. It’s not surprising that the civil wars of history have been fertile ground for writers; and here are 10 great examples.
The Silver Pigs by Lindsey Davis
Rome thrived on conflict. The struggle for power, and the role of the legions, made great chunks of its history more or less a civil war. There’s a huge market now in sword-and-sandal historical fiction drawing on the chaos of Roman politics and wars. (MC Scott bases her vivid accounts of battle and camp life on 20th-century soldiers’ reminiscences.) But one of the best examples comes from 1989, when a former civil servant introduced Falco, a chippy, sardonic, harassed investigator, whose adventures begin as Rome tries to recover from the year of the four emperors.
A Morbid Taste for Bones by Ellis Peters
The battle for the English throne between Matilda and her cousin Stephen between 1135 and 1154 – 18 years of unrest “while God and his angels slept” – seemed bleak for fiction, until Ellis Peters (one of four pen names used by Edith Pargeter for her novels; she also translated Czech literature) recognised that the pervasive uncertainty and unrest were the ideal background for mystery novels. Brother Cadfael fought in the Crusades before becoming a monk; his experience of life and his knowledge of herbs, learned from Muslims in the Holy Land, make him a humane and relatively practical voice amid the superstition, able to see clearly through the crimes that the civil war brings to Shrewsbury Abbey.
The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
The struggle between Catholics and Protestants, and the national and international intrigue surrounding the French throne in the early 17th century, are the terrain for one of the most famous adventure stories ever written. Episodic and rambling – Dumas, famously, was paid by the line – it holds together and holds the attention thanks to character appeal and sheer rollicking force of storytelling. The sequel, Twenty Years After, links the aristocratic Fronde rebellion in France and the civil wars in Britain.
The King’s General by Daphne Du Maurier
The British civil wars saw great brutality (especially if you were Irish) and an explosion of ideas. But authors have tended to focus on the “wrong-but-romantic versus right-but-repulsive” Cavalier-Roundhead conflict between 1642 and 1651 in England. Du Maurier steps outside this by setting her classic in Cornwall, always a land apart, and making the eponymous object of her crippled heroine’s obsession the ambiguous and cynical Richard Grenville. Their relationship – passionate but knowing, and somehow above the concerns of lesser humans – has echoes of Rhett and Scarlett (see below), and is bracketed by a haunting fragment of historical truth.
Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
For many British readers, and certainly British audiences, this 1936 blockbuster is the American civil war. (It seems to last about as long.) It was Mitchell’s only published novel, and she originally named her heroine Pansy O’Hara. Behind the legendary passion at its heart, the book captures the scale and the devastation of the war and its aftermath. Some might prefer Stephen Crane’s 1895 The Red Badge of Courage, about a young soldier’s attempt to overcome his cowardice and get the wound that will win him respect and a way out.
Lorna Doone by RD Blackmore
RD Blackmore was a world-famous author, renowned for his sensitivity to nature and dialect; but if anyone still remembers his name, it’s for one title only. (Bizarrely, it was once voted the favourite novel of students at Yale, in 1906.) With a backdrop of Monmouth’s rebellion – the failed attempt in 1685 to wrest the British throne from the Catholic James II – it’s another sign that political divisions are the ideal dramatic setting for romantic ones. Perhaps it’s the echoing of torn loyalties; perhaps it’s all those breeches, bodices and splendid hats.
Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson
The divisions in Britain continued to fester, over the religion and thus the identity of the king. In Scotland, the effects were bitter and lasting, and they inspired two great novelists. Sir Walter Scott pretty much invented historical fiction and, indeed, historical Scotland; his masterstroke was getting the Prince Regent to wear tartan on a visit to Edinburgh, reconciling Hanoverian and Jacobite traditions with a healthy dose of pantomime. But arguably he’s lasted less well than Robert Louis Stevenson, now recognised as a writer of high literary skill and brilliant imagination, as well as a pioneering critic of colonialism. The Samoans, among whom he settled, called him “the teller of tales”, and readers who return to him as adults are still caught up in the engaging pace and clarity of those tales. Set against the lingering Jacobite tensions, and built around real individuals and incidents, Kidnapped is a simple, timeless adventure.
Dr Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
“You are hereby invited to watch me face the firing squad,” Pasternak is supposed to have said when he handed over his manuscript to be smuggled out of Russia. The author’s, and the protagonist’s, concern for the needs of the individual was vulnerable against the novel’s tumultuous events and the Soviet censor. But it overcame the latter, at least. Zhivago was published in Italian, then English and French, before a Russian version appeared – allegedly with CIA help. Pasternak was awarded the Nobel prize for literature in 1958, though under threat of arrest or exile he could not collect it. Written over and covering more than 40 years, Dr Zhivago is about much more than the Russian civil war that began in 1917 – but that internal conflict is at its heart.
For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
The Spanish civil war of 1936-39 was both a vicious domestic struggle and a dress rehearsal for the horrors that would spread across Europe. The doomed Republican cause attracted thousands of foreigners inspired to fight fascism, including George Orwell and Laurie Lee. Hemingway covered the war as a journalist, and his young American hero is likewise coming to terms with what he sees. It’s a story of human spirits swallowed by idealism and by fate, with an unusual and sometimes archaic style as Hemingway tries to convey a distinct Spanishness; it also gave us “feeling the earth move” as an image of sex.
The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway
Bosnia’s diversity only increased its suffering during the Yugoslav civil wars of the 1990s. Cultured, cosmopolitan Sarajevo became the epicentre and the icon of this anguish. Civil war is by definition the same concept seen in differing ways, and Galloway interweaves the stories of four protagonists: the nostalgist, the anxious family man, the sniper – and the musician who tries to celebrate life and beauty in the middle of the horror. Remarkably, the story of a cellist who played Albinoni’s Adagio every day for 22 days during the siege, wearing correct evening dress, was true.
• Robert Wilton’s Traitor’s Field, set at the end of the British civil wars, is out now in paperback. He appears at the Harrogate history festival, running from 23-26 October with writers and guests including James Naughtie, Alison Weir, Conn Iggulden and Bernard Cornwell. Box office: 01423 562303.
