Historical gaffes

[chickenfeet]

Do other people get as annoyed about factual goofs in historical novels as I do? Frankly, they drive me nuts. Recently I've been listening to some of the Alexander Kent Bolitho books while running. They are not bad as adventure yarns but the man has done no research at all. It would be tedious to list all the errors but they include huge ones like claiming that RN captains (we are talking 1770's - 1810's) could have someone hanged without court martial for instance or that the commander of an unrated sloop could be promoted Captain without moving into a ship that carried post rank. My annoyance isn't being soothed by equally annoying errors in the much vaunted Quicksilver of Mr. Neal Stephenson. This time it's even easier stuff to check. The puritan divine executed as a regicide was Hugh Peter, not Hugh Peters. Grrr! By contrast, Mr. MacDonald Fraser's delightfully silly Flashman stories are impeccably researched. So it can be done.

Comments

[shezan.livejournal.com]

I know they're supposed to be girl's stuff, be really, have you read Georgette Heyer? infinitely rewarding.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

I haven't. I would probably be less embarassed buying really kinky porn.

[knirirr.livejournal.com]

Yes. The one that wound me up the most was Harry Harrison's "Stars and Stripes Forever". The naval matters in it were complete bollocks.

[gillo]

Heyer is definitely worth a read. I read somewhere that "An Infamous Army" used to be required reading at Sandhurst, so accurate is the account of Waterloo. I don't know anyone who was there, so I can't speak for the veracity of the story, though. Dorothy Dunnet researched her stuff extremely well too.

I get positively squirmy at serious inaccuracies in fiction, film or TV. I work on the basis that if I> recognise it's wrong, the research much have been really sloppy.

[oursin.livejournal.com]

The one thing in Dunnett that made me grit my teeth (as opposed to wanting to codslap Lymond) was the habit of the characters of quoting from works not yet written (at one point Kate says something that's from The Mikado). But the actual history - Not My Period, but seemed spot on. However, her meticulous research possibly got to the bogging-down point in places in the Niccolo sequence.

[gillo]

Now you've given me an excuse to re-read to search for the Mikado reference!

Certainly all the history I knew before I read the books fitted, and a lot I've learned since also tallied. I know DD had huge notebooks full of research.

As for slapping Lymond, I'd like to do an awful lot more to him than that, some of it quite unsuitable for a respectable middle-aged teacher... I do seem to have a thing for blue-eyed blond men of athletic physique.

[ironed_orchid]

I think is one isn't going to get that stuff right, then just do the sf trick of making it an alternative history.

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

Yes, alternate history where s's have been abducted by aliens!

[albionwood.livejournal.com]

Ordinarily I'm right there with you - glaring errors put me right off. But if writing "Peters" for "Peter" makes you growl, we're not in the same league. (Especially given the somewhat casual approach to spelling and orthography in 17th c. England.) Things like that - mistakes that could easily have been made by a contemporary - just don't bother me.

What sends books flying from my fingers are characters behaving in ways that would be completely inappropriate, and paying no social price. Big problem for heroines in many historicals.