'Occasionally truth really is stranger than fiction...'

Paul Dowswell

As part of this month's non-fiction special, author Paul Dowswell tells us why he loves reading non-fiction, and shares some of his favourite books

I spend a lot of my reading time devouring non-fiction – it’s where I get the ideas for the historical fiction novels I write. Much as I love a good novel, there’s something riveting about real events and the way human beings react to them. And real events never call for the suspension of disbelief that implausible plot twists in novels sometimes demand. Occasionally truth really is stranger than fiction. Here are a few of my favourite non-fiction books, and why I think they’re worth your time and effort:

Endurance by Alfred Lancing

The story starts in 1915, in the bleak ice-bound Antarctic, with the call to abandon ship – the Endurance. Explorer Ernest Shackleton, and his 30 strong crew of sailors and scientists were stranded 1,200 miles from the nearest human settlement. Shackleton was a magnificent leader and managed to bring every man back alive. But achieving this, in an age before radio and flying machines, calls for a soul-sapping trudge through pack ice, and for Shackleton and a small crew to make a 700 mile journey in a tiny boat, through terrifying winter storms. It’s too unbelievable for a novel. Shackleton went back to the Antarctic in 1921, and many of the men from his Endurance expedition came with him.

Batavia’s Graveyard by Mike Dash

Another sea story. In 1629 the Dutch ship Batavia sinks close to the coast of Western Australia, off course en route to the Spice Islands of Indonesia. The survivors, of whom there are many, escape to a group of small islands. But while the Captain sails north to seek help, one of the officers,  Jeronimus Corneliszoon, leads a mutiny and begins to kill the survivors who refuse to side with him. It’s like a modern day horror film and over a hundred are murdered before the survivors are rescued. Corneliszoon was a charming psychopath and if there’s a villain in fiction more fascinatingly, repugnantly evil, I’ll eat my black hat.

The Good War by Studs Turkel and The World at War by Richard Holmes

Lansing and Dash’s books have the narrative arc of a novel. These two books are quite different, but no less fascinating. Studs Turkel’s The Good War and Richard Holmes’ The World at War are both compendiums of eye witness accounts of the Second World War. They can be dipped into in any direction, but each selected account offers a fascinating insight into the most terrible war in history. Turkel quotes a US marine completely debunking the John Wayne style heroism favoured by Hollywood depictions of the war.  There was nothing macho about the war at all. We were a bunch of scared kids who had to do a job… The only way you could get it over with was to kill them off before they killed you. The war I knew was totally savage. Homes’ book, based on interviews conducted for the magnificent 1970s documentary series The World at War, quotes everyone from politicians and generals to ordinary soldiers in the thick of the fighting. There’s even Hitler’s secretary, Traudl Junge, who read Joseph Goebbels’ young children a fairy tale while Hitler went to his private quarters to shoot himself. Shortly after, the Goebbels children were poisoned by their parents who couldn’t bear to let them live in a world without Der Fuhrer.

As the Roman’s Did by Jo-Ann Shelton

After visiting Pompeii I came away with the notion that, aside from electricity and the internal combustion engine, and their shameless cruelty, the Romans were a lot like us. They had council flats, take-aways, central heating, and the kind of houses a lot of us would be delighted to live in. Jo-Ann Shelton’s brilliant book takes you right into the heart of everyday life in Ancient Rome. Want to cook ‘Anchovy Delight’ but you’ve run out of anchovies? Use sea nettles instead. ‘No one will tell the difference’. There’s a formula for a cosmetic to make your skin ‘more smooth and radiant than your own mirror’ and Shelton even includes excerpts from Ovid’s Art of Love with practical advice on how to pick up girls at Chariot Races. (‘…immediately cheer for the same rider she cheers for…’)

Read our review of Paul Dowswell's latest novel, Eleven Eleven