Lucy Steeds arrived as one of the most exciting debut talents of the year last year with The Artist, a sun-soaked, psychologically charged historical novel set in 1920s Provence. Following an aspiring journalist drawn into the orbit of a reclusive painter and his niece, it became a major bestseller, won the Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize, and went on to be named Waterstones Book of the Year.
It also announced Steeds as a writer with a gift for making the past feel vivid and alive. Here, she shares her favourite historical novels that shaped her reading and writing, and that she recommends time and time again…
Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead
“Whenever I recommend this book I have to add the caveat that, ‘You think you’re not interested in aviation, but by page two you will be gripping the book, white-knuckled, desperate to know every single thing about the history of aeroplanes’.
“This is the story of Marion Graves, a fictional aviator intent on becoming the first person to fly around the earth from North to South. It’s a book about scale, and our wild human ambitions, and takes you across the 20th century and around the world. Think bootleggers in the Midwest, jungles in wartime, and the great eerie ice shelves of the Arctic. It’s a rare, sweeping accomplishment.”
