Allan Massie

Blending history and fiction, the author presents the memoirs of Emperor Augustus and reveals a complex leader capable of great cruelty and deceit, but also possessing forbearance and humanity

Augustus

Retells the story of Caesar in a glamorous, sexually charged light, depicting the downfall of a charismatic showman desperate for power

Caesar

This is a story of corrupting power, the random nature of violence and indeed most other things, and, of course, the emotional effort that we, and particularly alcoholics, have to put into just surviving.

Surviving

'Massie's achievement is to infuse the mythical emperor with blood . . . he invigorates his characters with voices that seem to echo the present, not the past, and which are utterly convincing . . . a piece of bravura invention' Independent

Tells the stories of four Scottish brothers and their sister from the 1930's through the Second World War. From the author of A QUESTION OF LOYALTIES and THE SINS OF THE FATHERS.

Shadows of Empire

This inspiring narrative covers the complex interplay of rivalry, collusion, affection and hostility that has been central to the relationship between Scotland and England since the first attempt at dynastic wooing during the 'Rough Wooings' through the Treaty of Union in 1707 to the present devolved situation.

Six Centuries of Love and Hate Between the Scots and the English

The Thistle and the Rose

A Nazi war criminal's son and a Holocaust survivor's daughter decide to get married in 1960's Argentina, but when their parents recognize each other, difficulties ensue.

The Sins of the Father

The historical novelist turns his attention to the Authurian legends, constructing a historically astute reading of King Authur's life that focuses on the details of life in the wake of the chaotic collapse of the Roman Empire.

Arthur the King

"Compelling...A masterly feat...A magnificent, sweeping, authoritative, warm yet wry history." --The Wall Street Journal In this fascinating and intimate portrait of the Stuarts, author Allan Massie takes us deep into one of history's bloodiest and most tumultuous reigns. Exploring the family's lineage from the first Stuart king to the last, The Royal Stuarts is a panoramic history of the family that acted as a major player in the Scottish Wars of Independence, the Union of the Crowns, the English Civil War, the Restoration, and more. Drawing on the accounts of historians past and present, novels, and plays, this is the complete story of the Stuart family, documenting their path from the salt marshes of Brittany to the thrones of Scotland and England and eventually to exile. The Royal Stuarts brings to life figures like Mary, Queens of Scots, Charles I, and Bonnie Prince Charlie, uncovering a family of strong affections and fierce rivalries. Told with panache, this is the gripping true story of backstabbing, betrayal, and ambition gone awry.

A History of the Family That Shaped Britain

The Royal Stuarts

Gaius Caligula is known as the mad emperor, the one who made his horse a consul. He was violent and vicious, a murderer and guilty of committing incest with his sisters. Yet, when he succeeded the aged recluse Tiberius, the Romans were delighted and for a few months at least he seemed generous and enlightened. So what went wrong? Why was he murdered after a reign of only four years? Is the conventional picture true or false: was he mad and evil or the victim of circumstance and rumour? Is it possible to take a sympathetic view of Caligula... and is it possible to make sense of him? In his compelling new novel Allan Massie peels back the mask of the monster of popular myth to expose the young emperor as a real man and explore the truth of his brief but tempestuous reign.

Caligula

Standing on the verge of ruin, Mark Antony dictates his memoirs to his secretary Critias, who contributes an acerbic running commentary as Antony relives his struggle with Octavian for mastery of the Roman Empire in the wake of Caesar's murder, his infatuation with Cleopatra and his obsession with the East. A tragi-comedy of ambition and self-indulgence, passion and valour, ANTONY forms a triumphant conclusion to Allan Massie's acclaimed Roman Quartet.

Antony

At the beginning of the year 66, Emperor Nero ruled the Roman Empire. By the end of it, Nero had committed suicide and three of his successors were dead, and out of the carnage of civil war at home and a nationalistic uprising in Judaea a new emperor, Vespasian, had emerged. Here Scaurus, once the lover of both Vespasian's son and daughter, looks back on the whole extraordinary year and recreates a world of treachery, malice, passion and - occasionally - quite heroism. Drawing on his formidable knowledge of Roman history, Allan Massie brings the distant past vividly to life and creates telling parallels with the present.

Nero's Heirs

Five Edinburgh Murders

Ill Met by Gaslight

Tells the stories of four Scottish brothers throughout the 1930s and the war against Hitler. The first is a journalist in the Spanish Civil War; the second a secret Communist and even more secret homosexual; the third is a follower of Oswald Mosley; and the fourth, a remittance man in the Far East.

In the early summer of 1944, France is in turmoil. The Allied invasion, bringing the promise of Liberation, is awaited, eagerly and nervously. The Vichy regime is in its death throes. Those who have served it and collaborated with the German Occupation fear the revenge of the Resistance. Atrocities are committed on both sides, and justice is blind. Superintendent Lannes, suspended from duty by order of the Boches, searches unofficially for a missing girl, and investigates cases of historic sex abuse. His marriage is experiencing difficulties and he worries about his sons, one with the Free French, the other in Vichy. The narrative of this tense economical novel switches between Lannes in Bordeaux and the young characters met in the first three books of this Vichy Quartet, now caught up in the terrible drama of these months in France, London and on the Eastern Front. The fourth and final chapter of the 'Bordeaux' novels, Allan Massie's acclaimed crime series featuring Superintendent Lannes

End Games in Bordeaux

Habitually vilified as a monstrous tyrant, Emperor Tiberius has been one of history's enigmas. Now he speaks for himself - a proud, secretive, troubled man, a great general yet reluctant ruler, disgusted by the degeneracy which surrounds him. In this sequel to Augustus, Allan Massie combines a compelling study in public power and private tragedy with a vibrant portrait of the Roman world.

Tiberius

The Royal Stuarts ruled for over 300 years in Scotland and for a century as the Royal Family of Britain and Ireland. They were leading actors in the foremost political dramas of British history - the Scottish Wars of Independence, the Union of the Crowns, the English Civil War and the Restoration - and remain the most controversial and divisive of royal families. Drawing on the accounts of historians past and present, novels and plays, Allan Massie tells the family's full story, from the salt marshes of Brittany to the thrones of Scotland and England, and then eventual exile. A book which gets beyond the received generalisations, The Royal Stuarts takes us deep into the lives of figures like Mary Queen of Scots, Charles I and Bonnie Prince Charlie, uncovering a family of strong affections and fierce rivalries, the brave and capable, the weak and foolish. Told with panache and pace, adventurous and opinionated, this is a nuanced history of that remarkable family who, for better or worse, shaped our history and made our country what it is.

A History of the Family that Shaped Britain

First novel in the Dark Ages trilogy THE EVENING OF THE WORLD is set in the period of the barbarian invasions. Its hero is a young Roman nobleman named Marcus. He undergoes extraordinary experiences as he searches for meaning and stability in a twilight world where the old gods are dead or dying, but their mysteries still attract, and the new religion is threatened by new barbarisms. Marcus's journeys take him over the empire, from Italy to Greece and Byzantium, to the camp of Alaric the Goth and the wastes of the northern forests, from a Christian monastery to the horde of Attila the Hun. His is a world where everything is possible and nothing solid, a world that is full of danger and mystery, of love and terror, of simple faith and abstruse philosophy, of cruelty, strange perversions, treachery and undaunted courage.

The Evening of the World

'David comes alive in this novel as a fascinating, divided self, but you also feel on finishing it that you have understood a little more about the extraordinary world of the Middle East from which so much of our own Judaeo-Christian religion and civilisation spring. Modern parallels are never forced - Massie to too subtle a writer for that - but this world of sex, intrigue, war and religious mania suggests constantly to the reader not memories of the Bible but events in the newspapers in that very Hebron where David ruled as king' AN Wilson, Evening Standard

Allan Massie

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