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

[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.