Stella Tillyard's Reading List

"The reason I chose War and Peace is because it is the greatest novel of all time and I still think it is even after reading it five times. It’s an historical novel, as are my other choices Vanity Fair and obviously the Georgette Heyer. Tolstoy is writing 50 years after the event. What he is writing about is the deliverance of the Russian nation from Napoleon . As a novelist, when you begin to write in this era it is like the elephant in the room, especially if you love it as much as I do. Tolstoy isn’t just the great chronicler of what it felt like to be under fire, he also has the ability to make us feel the emotion of his characters with a single word or gesture. Not at all. It’s impossible for a modern novelist to write at that length, especially about philosophical issues . I just don’t think readers would get through it. But I also decided that while I was writing I would not look at it. I was worried that I might start to take on Tolstoy’s style! I had the new translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky and thought I would save that up for a treat at the end. The Pevear and Volokonsky is interesting because it is more modern and flows better, but I suppose what you lose with a new translation is the period feel. With the old translation the translation already reads like an historical novel. It has this archaic feel which I always felt was fitting because it is an historical novel itself ­– but maybe in time the new translation will have that kind of feel."

"Frankenstein was published in 1818 and for me it is the piece of British literature that best reflects the anxieties and concerns of the time, the fascination with and fear about science and technological advance. I think more than a science-fiction novel it is a book about morality. As someone who is concerned with feeling I suppose I would be more likely to interpret it in that way. At the beginning of the novel, Doctor Frankenstein creates a monster who lives like a human being and has the heart of a human being too. But the monster is unloved and unlovable and he becomes what we would call nowadays a sociopath. That is a very modern way of describing someone who has been utterly neglected and unloved and therefore has no moral feeling. But he has the understanding that he wishes to be given affection and when he is not given it he sets out to destroy the world that made him. For me the book is therefore about the immoral forces that science might unleash in the world. I think there was a lot of excitement, as well as fear. People were particularly excited about chemistry and there were lots of people doing experiments. For example there was Jane Marcet’s book, Conversations on Chemistry , and Humphrey Davy at the Royal Institution. So I think that, just as with the Internet today, there was excitement over the advancement of science but also a certain amount of trepidation. The great advances were in industrial processes, in chemical experiments and in geology. Biology was gathering its forces for the 1820s and the era of Darwin. But before that it was chemistry’s turn, with a huge craze for doing experiments at home and going to demonstrations of, say, the eruptions of volcanoes in theatres."

"Emma is the Regency novel in the sense that it was written and published during the Regency. I think the feel of much of Jane Austen is really in the late 1790s – the beginning of the French Wars. Jane Austen wasn’t writing about politics. She is famously someone who writes about what she knows. Her world is essentially a provincial world of manners. It is a comic novel about becoming morally mature. Yes, she does. And the book looks at the choices that people must make in order to become mature. She looks at the social order and how it works. It really couldn’t be further away from the kind of lonely alpine world of Frankenstein and the imaginary mindscape she lays out. Jane Austen’s genius is to write brilliantly about the world she lives in. She is a realist and I think she needs to be included. Well, I think she does. She is drawing on the world she knows, which is the world of the provinces rather than the metropolis or the government. In Emma you come across the provincial gentry and the yeoman class. Austen is well aware of the money coming in from the wars and has a very good grasp of local economy, which is reflected in the book. Yes, that’s exactly it – and to write about it with genius."

"Vanity Fair is another historical novel and a tremendous saga. I would call it the Whig version of the Regency. It is the tale of an adventuress abroad in a land where quick fortunes and metropolitan vices are very much in evidence. It is fantastically good humoured. I suppose it is the way that a liberal Victorian would look back on that time. Yes, so it is a fond remembrance of the time. I think Vanity Fair , more than any other novel, set the tone for how we think about the Regency before Jane Austen gained hugely in popularity. She is a woman on the make in a time of change. To that extent I think she is historically accurate. She learns how to manoeuvre in a very fast-changing world and make her way with all the comic richness of that. And she understands the power of Evangelical religion and the old Whig rakish values. It is a classic and, for anyone who hasn’t read it, it’s tremendous fun."

"This book is set during the siege of Badajoz. It is the retelling of a true story of Harry Smith, who was an officer at Badajoz, who saved a 14-year-old girl and eventually married her. In fact, in later life he becomes the governor of the Cape Colony and he founds the town of Ladysmith and names it for his wife. It is a sort of nostalgia for me. It is what I grew up with, under the bedclothes in the middle of the night. It is an historical version of Nancy Mitford. It is very well researched and she is very good on dress. It is very light. It has that kind of dash and wit about it. It is very much not in the tradition of the way that we are now writing historical novels. I think we are now writing historical novels to be something much more literary and weighty. In a way we are using them partly to comment on our own time. If you look at historical novels now being written in Britain, religion features very prominently and that is partly because we have got very interested in religion again, in particular sectarian religion. Historical novels are being written with a greater level of literary seriousness. I think the other thing is that historical novels give a licence to write about passion and romance – themes that are much harder to write about elsewhere, especially in modern times when people are quite cynical. These themes can still hold a real place. Perhaps the past is a place where you have more freedom, which is why I think there is something quite interesting going on in the historical novel. My rule of thumb is that you must be true to the facts. I did shift the odd scientific experiment a year here or there but I am certainly not as liberal as Hollywood with my dates. I think the historical novelist has a licence to take a less even-handed view of the past that a professional historian does. But, on the other hand, I also think that even professional historians choose topics and arguments according to their own particular interests. Exactly. I think there is an ideology of impartiality in professional history whereas a novelist is seen to be able to be freer. My other really strong rule was never to use any language that wouldn’t have been used at the time for all those characters who were thinking and speaking in English. I had a couple thinking and feeling in a different language and at that point I thought I can cut loose a bit here. But for all the others I was very severe because I wanted to create that linguistic net they live in. And I was able to do that because of all the time I have spent studying this period. I have that language in my head. I made one or two little mistakes which a couple of readers picked up on but on the whole it worked well."