“Nero in real life was a surprisingly modern person,” George explains, “the only Roman emperor who seemed to share concerns we have today, making a search for personal fulfillment and self expression his goal in life. Many readers can even find something in his character with which to identify. George’s narrative creates a portrait of a Nero who is, while by no means perfect, certainly deserving of the reader’s sympathy. I found Locusta’s chapters particularly entertaining. As she did with Henry VIII, George has told Nero’s story largely from his point of view, with brief chapters narrated by his first love, Acte, and the poisoner Locusta. This picture of Nero has been shaped by Peter Ustinov’s performance in Quo Vadis. Her Nero books were particularly eye-opening to me, since I, and I’m sure many of us, have an image in my mind of the cruel, mad emperor, responsible for the burning of Rome, and playing his lyre while the city burned. Her latest two novels, The Confessions of Young Nero (Berkley, 2017) and The Splendor Before the Dark (Berkley, 2018), portray Nero as an artist and a misunderstood figure, far from the mad tyrant of legend. Martin’s, 1997), Mary, Called Magdalene (Viking, 2002), Helen of Troy (Viking, 2006), and Elizabeth I (Viking, 2012). Martin’s, 1992), The Memoirs of Cleopatra (St. George’s novel about Henry VIII, which portrays the king sympathetically, from his first-person point of view, taking the reader inside his head, was followed by the equally fascinating novels Mary Queen of Scotland and the Isles (St. Her body of work is amazing, and few authors in the historical fiction world have produced such consistently memorable novels, featuring a great variety of larger-than-life historical and legendary figures.

Margaret George has been one of the leading authors of historical fiction since the publication of her first novel, The Autobiography of Henry VIII (St. A Leader in the Field: A Profile of Historical Novelist Margaret George

Mary queen of scots margaret george