HANDS DOWN THE MOVIE A KNIGHT'S TALE!!!

Dear Lord it is one hell of an anachronistic guilty pleasure film. I used to dislike it immensely because of it when I was younger, now I love it because of how awfully inaccurate and fun it is. I totally recommend it to anyone who wants to have a fun time.

Surprised I haven't seen Inglorious Basterds posted yet. I mean, they killed Hitler.

I really enjoyed HBO's Rome series. While it played fast and loose with historical accuracy, the acting was very good and the storytelling was entertaining to say the least.

Anytime I'm feeling nostalgic, I pop in Robin Hood: Prince of Theives. Alan Rickman's Sheriff of Nottingham gets me every time.

Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure

The only truly accurate part that I can think of is that Napoleon totally loved ice cream.

The obvious answer is 300. So fucking good. So incredibly inaccurate.

The Borgias... in fact, I think they should elect Jeremy Irons as the next pope, and I don't even know if he's catholic.

Also, this is today's:

http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/history-books

Spartacus! I loved that show. One of my professors calls it "tits and torture." No matter how bad the history is, no matter how unlikely it is that Spartacus had some sort of agenda of equality, I think it's just great. I loved the stylized violence. I especially love the faux-Latin sentence construction the dialogue is written in, without articles or possessives where we think they should be.

The one thing that bugs me is the depiction of Caesar as a drunk-brawler-spy-impatient-political-adventurer. The only thing out of all of those he could vaguely be accused of is a political adventurer.

I just watched all of it with my girlfriend. We might be trying I Claudius next.

Kelly's Heroes is a personal favorite of mine. The equipment is all wrong, the plot is insane, and the whole movie has only the loosest ties to reality (there's a helicopter in an early scene, there's a russian sniper rifle in the hands of an american, and other equipment is clearly postwar issue, etc). To top it all off, Donald Sutherland's character Oddball is clearly from the 1960's rather than the 1940's.

Why don't you knock it off with them negative waves? Why don't you dig how beautiful it is out here? Why don't you say something righteous and hopeful for a change?

...and I just don't care about any of the problems with the movie. Just hearing this song from the movie makes me smile from ear to ear. It is glorious from start to finish, and its flaws just make it more endearing to me.

I really enjoyed Neal Stephensons Baroque Cycle. It obviously takes great liberties on the main events but the details (e.g. the history of finance in Europe) seem well-researched. It sent me on many a Wikipedia binge, which is always a good thing in my book.

I belly laughed through Moore's novel, "Lamb: the Gospel according to Biff, Christ's childhood pal".

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamb:_The_Gospel_According_to_Biff,_Christ%27s_Childhood_Pal

The Man From Earth!! The whole movie is just a group of college professors sitting in a cabin saying farewell to a colleague who turns out to be a man that has been alive for 14,000 years (somehow, it was never really explained, something about constant cell regeneration) but he's just an average guy with no special powers such as the X-Men or some such. He details his earliest memories from when he was still a caveman and lived throughout history's big moments. Extremely fascinating and very good despite the lack of any action and low budget constraints. It has put me on a path of love and yearning for history.

I have a thing for the Richard Sharpe series of novels. They're very well written, close to historically accurate with a fun, completely fictitious main character. It's a very engaging and extremely long series. I also really love the Master and Commander book series as well, for both its historical accuracy and also completely fictitious main characters and time-stretching.

Braveheart. The speeches. The costumes. And Stephen. Oh Stephen.

Oh man,I can't lie here, I have seen The Tudors more times than I can count. I laugh over how inaccurate it can be but I just can't stop watching!

A Knight in Camelot. Whoopi Goldberg plays a scientist who accidentally hurls herself back in time to King Arthur's court, uses her laptop and a boombox to make people believe she has magical powers and then kickstarts the industrial revolution a few centuries ahead of schedule surrounded by a cast of medieval stereotypes and 1990s TV movie production standards. It barely meets the criteria even for this thread, but it's the best. Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves also gets a mention, naturally, though that's in no small part because of Bryan Adams.

Incidentally, I have to say I also enjoyed A Little Chaos. Absolutely godawful for historical accuracy in terms of actual events and even people existing, but there were a few scenes that I thought did a good job of capturing lived experience, especially the scene where Kate Winslet's fictional character is talking about the death of her child with other women who had the same experience at a time when child mortality was much higher than today.

I could write a lot about Roots - which I often get asked about by PM - but it's a little heavy for this feature, and I'm planning a Friday write-up on it at some point in the near future. In essence, it's a book that's very, very good at dealing with the big questions of the history of slavery and capturing the essence of enslaved experience, even though when it comes down to the nitty gritty it suffers for a lot of inaccuracies - both basic and fundamental. You shouldn't read it if you want a very precise account of how slavery in the United States worked, but it's certainly a very powerful and compelling commentary on the formation of African American identity, and the experiences that enslaved people themselves found most important (both good and bad) in their lives. The book is better than the mini-series at doing that (the mini-series really undermines the most important scene in the novel to my frustration), although I haven't seen the remake yet. On the upside, neither adaptation is abruptly ruined by Brad Pitt, so that's nice (I have Opinions on parts of the Twelve Years a Slave movie, but that's also a different conversation).

All the Blackadder seasons, particularly 1 and 4.

Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter

*edited for correctness

Shogun by James Clavell is super fun and has a certain air of thruthiness to it.

Definitely Fury. Almost everything about that movie is wrong historically but hot damn is it good. The acting, the effects, and the sound work (especially) were all just so great, plus getting to watch all those restored tanks romp around was incredibly fun.

My favorite (or least favorite) thing they got wrong was the Tiger fight where Fury is nailing the Tigers upper glacis from <150 yards but can't penetrate it. In real life the long barrel 76mm was a tiger killer long past 500 yards (although it suffered against sloped armor).

This movie made me a bit of a tank nut, and i still watch it periodically. Would definitely recommend to anyone who likes war movies, but if you like history just remember to turn your brain off or it will make you mad.

Something tells me that not a lot of people have actually seen it on here, but the anime series (and accompanying Light Novel, which is boss) Oda Nobuna no Yabou is pretty awesome. Sagara Yoshiharu gets transported (for no apparent reason, and nobody seems to care why) to the Sengoku Period. He accidentally gets Oda Nobunaga's retainer-to-be Toyotomi Hideyoshi (errrr...well he's not known by that name yet, but anyway) killed and ends up serving in his place under Oda...Nobuna...Turns out he's been transported to some sort of alternate universe or something (again, nobody really gives a shit) where, as a result of high mortality among the nobility the first-born child of every family, regardless of sex, becomes the heir. Which is pretty fucking ridiculous really, but it's great--you get a lot of random genderswapped Sengoku leaders because fuck you I think it's cool. That's why. Nobunaga is Nobuna, and it's just great.

Also I don't really understand why people dislike Gladiator around here so much. It's, as my old man puts it, "fantasy Rome" and really no different than any sword-and-sandals flick, but with the added advantage of frankly being better in pretty much every respect than any sword-and-sandals stuff I can think of, with the exception of HBO's Rome (which, as I often say, is really a sword-and-sandals flick that pretends, effectively, to be "accurate," which I admit is a term I don't like). I mean, sure, it has nothing to do with Roman society. Neither does Ben Hur or Spartacus and I don't see such virulent hate turned against them (or any number of 1960s Italian Hercules B-movies) for being "inaccurate." I mean, Barabbas is, like so many Bible epics, a total clusterfuck of ridiculousness, and it's a really good, maybe even a great film

I am honestly amazed not to see Dr. Who on this. Dr. Who was even initially created to give kids a view of what historical periods were like, and ended up deciding that the rule of cool was more important than history when people started really liking the show.

I've mentioned them before, but I absolutely adore the Amelia Peabody series, and am not ashamed to say 95 percent of what I know about Egyptology comes from those. Agatha Christie style mysteries set during the late-Victorian/Edwardian/Great War period of an Egyptologist couple and their family who find more recently dead bodies than mummified ones. Highly recommend to everyone! The author actually did have a Ph.D in Egyptology, so the accuracy might not be that off - although I can't make that call of course - but it is also obviously filtered through what Egyptologists knew back in the turn of the century period.

Gotta be Guns of the South by Harry Turtledove, in which time traveling, South African white supremacists go back in time to give the Confederate Army AK-47s. They win the Civil War, Lee becomes the new President of the CSA (after a contested election with Nathan Bedford Forrest) and immediately releases all the slaves.

My time to shine! I'm a huge fan of Science Fiction in general and Alternate History. History is not my area, but I have read hundreds upon hundreds of science fiction novels. I am only mentioning books I have actually read:

There is a whole list of (to me anyway) interesting Alternate History, spearheaded by Turtledove. World War (aliens during WWII), United States of Atlantis (extra continent between US and Europe) and the Southern Victory series (Confederacy and North coexist) are other fascinating Turtledove series. Guns of the South has been mentioned.

Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson has already been discussed at length. I nevertheless highly recommend it along with it's cousin book, Cryptonomicon.

Eric Flint writes and edits a series called 1632, in which a West Virginia mining town is plopped smack in the middle of Germany during the 30 Years War. He also authored The Belisarius series, where the Roman general and India square off with the help of future knowledge (credit to: u/mgmtheo).

Lest Darkness Fall by L. Sprague de Camp is about a history professor come to Roman times (~535 AD) and is a classic.

Roma Eterna by Robert Silverberg is a series of short stories about a never ending Roman Empire.

The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson is about if the Black Death killed 99% of Europe.

Bring the Jubilee by Ward Moore is another "if the South had Won" tale.

Island in the Seas of Time is the first book in the Nantucket series by S.M. Stirling. Nantucket is transported to the Bronze Age (1250 BC). Interestingly, he has another series where Nantucket disappears and technology stops working.

The Yiddish Policeman's Union by Michael Chabon has the Jews relocate to Alaska during WWII

EDIT: I am very happy to discuss these, or go into more depth if anyone is interested. Additionally, there are a number of Anthologies that have great short stories, such as Alternate Generals edited by Turtledove (again, he owns this genre) or Alternate Empires edited by Gregory Benford and Martin H. Greenberg.

Gladiator. Pretty close to a flawless film imo, and it's a big reason why I got super interested in Roman history. I was in Rome last year and we ponied up for the private Colosseum tour, we got to go and stand out on the arena floor... it brought me back to seeing that movie as a kid, from being wowed in the theater then to as an adult standing where the gladiators fought, it was a really cool moment for me.

I highly recommend paying more for the private tour if you are ever there, it is 100% worth it. If you want to see the underbelly, go to the top, and best of all stand out in the arena that's the only way, they only allow small number of people per day to do it.

The Plot Against America by Philip Roth is a 2004 alternate-history. The story is told through the eyes of a young Jewish boy living in America as it descends into fascism after FDR lost the election to Nazi sympathizer and famous pilot Charles Lindbergh. In my opinion this book is especially prescient considering the state of the current American election.

George Macdonald Fraser's Royal Flash was pretty entertaining: a caddish British cavalry officer being kidnapped by Otto von Bismarck to take the place of an identical German prince in a duchy that doesn't exist to provoke riots so Prussia can march in and occupy the duchy? Amazing! I think I read a third of the book in one night!

I'm going to cheat and have three:

• Lawrence of Arabia

Look, I could nitpick it all day. But good lord, it's amazing.

• The US "history" books of Gore Vidal.

Lincoln and Burr are two of my favorite books. No lack of historical accuracy can change that for me.

Amadeus

Apocalypse Now

Guy Gavriel Kay. Anything the man writes is brilliant. Most are loosely based on historical countries/eras, some moreso than others. But Tigana (rennaissance Italy), The Lions of al-Rassan (Muslim era Spain), The Sarantine Mosaic duology (Justinian I's Byzantium), A Song for Arbonne (medieval France), Under Heaven and River of Stars (Tang and Song dynasty China), The Last Light of the Sun (Alfred the Great England) and his most recent, which I have yet to read, Children of Earth and Sky (16th century Croatia). His prose is beautiful, his stories are fantastic. His characterization is not as good as other authors I've read but they're a vehicle for the story.

Now it is fantasy but for those who aren't a fan of dragons and world ending spells and things of that nature, worry not. Most of his "fantasy" comes from being in an alternate world with a second blue moon and such. The most "fantasyish" thing he has is Tigana (there are strong sorcerers that are important to the plot but again, the magic isn't really there a lot despite being important).

His non-historical works (The Fionavar Tapestry and Ysabel) which are set in modern day Earth do have a lot of typical fantasy aspects however, so you might wanna stay away from them if that's not to your taste.

tl;dr Guy Gavriel Kay is someone I hadn't even heard of half a year ago but since then I've read all his books (minus his latest) and he's quickly become one of my favorites.

King's Speech is a fantastic film and (as far as I've been able to research) their relationshop wasn't very much like it's depicted in the film, but whatever.

Monty Python and the holy grail!

The temeraire series by Naomi Novak. Napoleonic era military fiction....with dragons!

Well, I enjoy manga, and one of the better historical ones is Hannibal to Scipio; to be honest, apart from minor issues (I don't think Maharbal has dreadlocks), I think the manga is mostly accurate.

More "fun" would be Kingdom (NSFW - violence), a manga about Shih Quang Di's unification of China. I think it's sort of accurate, but then there are ninjas, biological weapons, etc., so it's "fiction content" is higher.

Bernard Cornwell is a favourite.
Warrior Chronicles series. Told from the point of view of Arthur's right hand man, it casts it into the true "British" origin, in Wales, and places it in the era of rising christianity in Britain.

His Lost Kingdom series has been released by BBC 2/America recently and worth a watch.
He places his hero, Uhtred, in the time of Alfred the Great, and like the Sharpe books, has the hero close enough to the action to count but not change the historical narrative.

He also wrote a novel set during the Revolutionary war in America, The Fort casting Paul Revere in a less than stellar light during the Penobscot expedition. Always interesting to see the traditional "heroes" made more human.

Conn Iggulden.
His Conqueror series charts the rise and death of Genghis Khan.
While a dramatic history, he tries to stay as close as possible to the historical narrative as closely as possible.

Simon Scarrow carries off the Napoleonic war quite well with his Wellington & Napoleon quartet.
Again, an historical drama, using the known history of the two and focussing on the characters rather than pure historical fact, while not ignoring any of the agreed history.

Everything by James Clavell, the entire "Noble House" saga (or whatever you want to call it) is one of the great pieces of literary fiction. Shogun is also amazing, King Rat is quite good (and more of a fictional story but with fairly accurate history).

Honorable mention: everything Guy Gavriel Kay has written since The Fionavar Tapestry

There's a Poul Anderson YA novel called High Crusade that I can't resist loving despite (or maybe because of) its goofiness. A 14th C English lord is preparing to leave for war when an alien scout for an expansionist empire decides to swoop in to collect prisoners. Through bravado and a good deal of luck, the English instead end up capturing the ship and eventually conquering their empire. Aside from the one glaring inaccuracy, it goes along with some common tropes, like the exceptionally exceptional English longbowmen. But I find many, more serious works attribute all sorts of anachronistic motivations to people, above all nationalism. In this silly little book, beyond survival the end goal is always to use their conquests to support victory over France, and then on to the Holy Land!

While I know they're probably not historically accurate (even if they were based on scholarship, they were written in the 50s-70s), I really enjoy some of Mary Renault's fiction, particularly The Last of the Wine, The Mask of Apollo and The Praise Singer. I was never into her Alexander novels as much, but I reread those three from time to time.

On the theme of the ancient world, Colleen McCullough's Roman history series is also enjoyable -- it covers the end of the Republic from Marius through Augustus.

It should go without saying that I revere C.S. Forester and idolize Patrick O'Brian.

In terms of books were there is no freaking way they are even plausible, Naomi Novik's Her Majesty's Dragon and later books are super enjoyable reads.

I've also recently read Tom Holt's Who's Afraid of Beowulf? and it was great.

Reign. I end up cry laughing at the historical inaccuracy. If you're interested in period costuming and history... I recommend checking out Frock Flicks (they have a podcast too); they do an amazing takedown of the show's costumes. Seeing 16th century "sundresses" blows my mind too. The show is high drama-nighttime-soap opera... but you just can't.stop.watching.

The humor, while few and far between, tends to be laugh-out-loud. If you're a fan of Anne of Green Gables (back in the 80s) Megan Follows plays an amazing Queen Catherine. I'm pretty sure I watch the show purely because of her.

edit-for those who don't know, the show is about Mary, Queen of Scots

Difficult, difficult... there are so many works that (while not (at all) historically accurate) do a great job at sparking people's interest, which I value very highly.

If pressed, I'd say The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova is really up there when it comes to a true guilty pleasure. Historical Vlad III vampire madness, delicious!

Gates of Fire by Steven Prescott Pressfield.

Hooked on the first page and it is such a beautifully written story.

Probably Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon. Set in the 18th century it contains flying sentient robots, Americans cooking pizza, references to modern pop culture and a bunch of other (deliberately) anachronistic stuff, yet it is still for me one of the best modern works of fiction to create a truly immersive and actually rather realistic 18th century atmosphere.

It is difficult to put the finger on exactly what it is in the book that does this, the archaic language it is written in, annoying and a little bit silly at first, but gradually you just get used to it, certainly helps. But it is so much more, the characters, the settings, the mannerisms, set in a restless world which is just like it leapt out of the street scenes of Hogarth.

In that way he captures the 18th century exactly when it was a crossroads between the pre modern world and the modern world, and it is mainly this which makes the 18th century such an interesting period in history in my view.

Does Mad Men count?

I love Ken Follett's books. Pillars of the earth is a favorite of course. Historically speaking the trilogy series was really excellent and helped me to nurture an interest in world war I and II

Does time bandits count?

I'm a huge fan of Kingdom of Heaven. Despite that la posta de falcone nonsense and such, I think it's a really underrated film. Also for the historians here, what is your take on The Last of the Mohicans? It's hands down my favorite film but I don't know much of anything about the French and Indian War except for Mel Gibson wrecking the frogs

Game of Thrones. Obviously real dragons were smaller, but HBO had to play it a little more fast and loose for added entertainment value.

Aside from my all-time favorite book, Neal Stephenson's hilarious two-timeline novel centered around cryptography in WWII and the near-present, Cryptonomicon (his work discussed elsewhere in this thread), you can't do better than Connie Willis' loosely related time travel novels (my favorite is her slapstick comedy of Victorian manners To Say Nothing of the Dog) and Kage Baker's saga of The Company (starting with In the Garden of Iden).

I really, really like McCullough's Masters of Rome series. She gets a lot right as far as I can see, but naturally, a lot gets made up (which the author herself notes; mostly due to the shoddiness of sources during Marius's time; things get better as we approach Caesar).

The biggest problem, of course, is Caesar worship. She loves him. Which is weird, given that Marius and Sulla are painted as very complex and flawed people, but interesting. Caesar comes off as the super-duper perfect best guy ever. He can do...everything. Which is somewhat true to history, but we never really see Caesar falter or doubt or anything else.

She also re-wrote Pompey's Letter to the Senate during the Hispania campaign. Bloody shame that.

I have a soft spot for what a beautiful movie Memoirs of a Geisha is, despite inaccuracies. Music written by John Williams and performed by Yo Yo Ma? Get outta here.

Oliver Stone's "JFK"

I'm assuming that the mass of contradictory conspiracy theories surrounding the Kennedy assassination finds little credence among serious historians. Even as a non-historian, I certainly didn't (and still don't) believe any of it.

But what an amazing movie! It just grabs you from the start and never lets go, seeming like it's continuously accelerating until the climactic closing arguments. To this day, I have no idea how such a complex movie was planned, shot, and edited to create such a film masterpiece.

The scene that begins the second act always takes my breath away. Up to this point, the movie has a dark, claustrophobic feel, as Garrison investigates the case in New Orleans. But here the movie breaks wide open, showing the full scope of what he's dealing with. Garrison is talking with an eyewitness in the foreground, while a panoramic view of Dealey Plaza -- the actual location -- is laid out in front of them. This sudden confluence of film-making and real history is stunning.

I rewatch this movie frequently, and it's one of my all-time favorites. But I don't believe a word of it. In a way, I put it in the same bin as "Inglourious Basterds" (another movie that I love): a compelling piece of fiction about real-world events.

So you're telling me all of my favorite Sengoku-era samurai were not all hot dudes with tight clothes and maybe homoerotic tendencies? Sengoku BASARA is fun as hell.

The Highlander movie. It was filmed in real time.

No love here for Amadeus? Its one of my all time favorite movies, and the way it plays with fact and fiction is really clever

I have to say Gangs of New York. Scorsese's film is awesome stupid fun, and Daniel Day Lewis is an absolute powerhouse. But the book that it is (very) loosely adapted from, which was written by Herbert Asbury in 1927 is just fantastic. Asbury presents it as a non-fiction account, and just accepts every single tall tale about the major crime figures in New York City in the late 18th and early 19th century and presents them wholesale as fact. Some of them existed, some of them didn't, and it comes across a Civil War era version of the Warriors presented as history.

Lamb by Christopher Moore

David Tennant did a version of Casanova about a year or two before he was cast as The Doctor. It is absolutely a joy to watch, with no pretense to historical accuracy in the least.

The lack of love for The 13th Warrior is astounding to me.

The costuming is a gloriously inaccurate mishmash of styles from Roman Murmillo to Spanish Conquistador; ibn Fadlan grinding down his sword to a sashmir ignores basic metallurgy; the vikings riding Clydesdales and mocking ibn Fadlan's Arabian for being small (when in reality they'd have been riding ponies) and so-on. Plus, ibn Fadlan learning Old Norse just by listening to it over a the course of a few weeks is both infuriating and awesome.

I have a stupid amount of love for Harry Turtledove's Worldwar series. For those who are not familiar, it is a series of 3 or 4 books that chronicle an alien invasion of Earth at the height of World War 2. For cultural reasons the aliens, called the Race, are relatively technologically stagnant. Since their world has been politically unified for millennia, their military tech and doctrine have frozen roughly comparable to the state of the art at the time the books were written in the 1990s.

It's so dumb. But it's so fun to have the world come together at the height of the war to fight space lizard monarchists. I get a big kick out of how the aliens react to the idea of the bolsheviks killing their king, and the Americans having a revolution based around the idea of voting.

Authors

• Stephen R. Lawhead (The books Taliesin, Merlin, and Arthur especially, not as much the rest of his Pendragon cycle; mostly England, Wales, and Ireland for those, also he does Byzantium, etc. Accuracy-wise, the series starts with Atlantis being presented as real and somewhat Minoan in culture, so...).

• Sharon Kay Penman (books in the middle ages; mostly England, Wales, and France - for similar subjects see the film Lion in Winter)

• Morgan Llywelyn (ancient to middle ages mythical Celtic)

Also, in support of the positive mention of Gladiator else-thread, I always find the coming to Rome (with the view of the city and sound of the drums) scene very moving.

I have always been a huge fan of the I, Claudius books by Robert Graves. As well as the BBC series. The show is kind of hammy but I love it.

River God is one of my favorite books - a vivid story of the Hyksos invasion of Egypt. I know that it's mostly a mess, but it's certainly thrilling, and I've always wondered how much of day-to-day life it gets right.

Lawrence of Arabia, without competition.

Edit: I should add The Lion in Winter and A Man For All Seasons.

Sengoku Basara (anime) is stupid fun, although I think even associating it with the word "history" is pushing it... What do you mean samurai didn't have handlebars and tailpipes on their horses?!

Someone already mentioned The Baroque Cycle...

I guess Historie. It's a manga about a Eumenes of Cardia. I am not familiar with the actual history, but I assume it's almost entirely fictional.

I really enjoyed Braveheart. Watching that masterpiece, idgaf about glaring historical inaccuracies and offended viewers throwing hissy fits. It was epic. It had intense and grisly medieval battles, a grimy and shitty sort of feel to everything (costumes, makeup, environment), the music was incredible (RIP James Horner), and the directing was nuts (yeah whatever it was Mel Gibson. Dude made a good movie. End of story.) And the story was actually quite captivating. And holy shit King Edward the Longshanks was a chilling bmf. This movie was medieval Scotland, even if it wasn't actually.

This is a regional Indian thing - but The Immortals Of Meluha is absolutely fascinating and fairly plausible despite the big leaps of imagination by the author.

The author, Amish Tripathi, has done a really good job of reinterpreting mythology (and especially the ambiguous and unknown bits) with history. He has done very interesting reinterpretations of the ancient Harappa urban civilization, interpreted Indian gods as real life people who did extraordinary things and later became gods, has an interesting take on the mysterious ancient Indian drink called soma which was supposed to have powerful properties but there are only theories on what it really was.

But most of all, as an amateur who is deeply interested in history, I found this trilogy superby entertaining, original, philosophical, and woven very well with known and ambiguous Indian history.

Absolutely Red Cliff. The movie isn't even accurate to Luo Quanzhong's Romance of the Three Kingdoms, let alone real history. But I'll be damned if I didn't love that movie with an undeserved fervor. Everything about its presentation was just perfect.

Where Eagle's Dare is an absolute classic

The series that got me into reading novels, and that really got me more into history, was the A Dream of Eagles series (also called Camulod Chronicles, depending on where you live) by Jack Whyte. I saw him read an excerpt from Uther on tv once, and I knew I had to start reading them asap.

The source of the sword Excalibur is obviously a bit far fetched, but not impossible, and Merlin's visions are of course not provable (but are better than out-right magic).

And I'm sure some of the Roman tie-ins have inaccuracies scattered through out, but it's a great, engrossing read.

Well worth time spent!

1421: The Year China Discovered The World

Gavin Menzies thoroughly debunked book is still a pretty cool idea about a potential past that we could have had.

Zheng He's treasure fleets were truly capable of sailing anywhere, and could have really shaken things up.

I also like how he ties together monuments, flora, fauna, maps, stories, and other ephemera, and weaves them all into this fantastical story.

Of course, I believed it when I first read it, of course. But that didn't last long.

I don't care if it's hammy and historically garbage, but something about the storyline, characters, and all-around world of The Last Samurai is incredible. Plus that soundtrack, combined with the heroic charge into battle in the end? Phenomenal movie!

Scene in question: https://youtu.be/nRcFxGxNgIA?t=35s

I love Ken Follett's fiction and thought Pillars of the Earth was as entertaining as it gets. The bad guys are really badass. It has adventure, trials, love, sex, intrigue. What's not to like. I've loaned my copy out so many times that it is literally worn out.

I found the 2004 Troy extremely enjoyable, despite it playing somewhat loose even with Homer, even before you get into long arguments about Troy, Mycenea, the Hittites and bronze age warfare in Anatolia. Well worth the watch.

I'd also firmly second the Flashman books. And Poul Anderson's Boat of a Million Years which in places is even actually not bad history but even where it meanders off a bit it's still superb.

Super late to the party, but my vote goes to The Wind Rises. An anime based on the life of Jiro Horikoshi, an engineer who designed airplanes for Mitsubishi pre-WW2, and is responsible for creating the infamous Zero. Although it takes a few historical liberties, it's mostly spot on, and all of the aircraft technical information is on point. As an aviation geek, and someone who is starting to dive into Japanese history, this film is amazing.

Does Blackadder count?

I really loved the Mistress of the Art of Death series by Ariana Franklin. I don't know enough about that period to know how much liberty is taken, but I am guessing a lot. Fun series though.

Gangs of New York. I'm sure there are historical inaccuracies here and there, but it's hands down one of my favorite films by Scorsese.

Elizabeth Kostova's THE HISTORIAN is an amazing book

The adventures of Röde Orm by Bengtsson. Vikings, pillaging, seafaring, adventures... what else do you need?

The other work I would mention are Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin series. It stretches over 20 novels, is meticulously researched --O'Brian took care to note the few places where he took liberties with historical timelines for the convenience of his stories--, beautifully written (in language that, as far as I can tell, is pretty damned accurate), often hilarious and just as often tragic and/or deeply frustrating.

In short, O'Brian accomplished the feat of taking what was otherwise a somewhat debased and well-trod genre of "boy's fiction," and managed to turn it into high literature such that toward the end of his life, he was widely regarded by many as one of the finest novelists of his time.

For those who are interested in the early genesis of the Aubrey/Maturin cannon, I recommend "The Golden Ocean," and the "The Unknown Shore," both of which were published in the 1950s and are accounts of boy's experiences during Anson's circumnavigation of 1754 (?). They were certainly written for a young male audience, but nonetheless, they contain many of the same elements so gloriously explored in the later series.

I really enjoyed Fatherland, both the book and the Rutger Hauer HBO movie. It is an alternative history story where the D Day invasion fails and Hitler is stalemated in the east. Hauer does a great job of fleshing out the ambivalence of a mid-level Nazi in post-war Germania.

The Anno Dracula series by Kim Newman, in which Dracula (or more properly, the vampire Dracula. The book goes with the "Vlad the Impaler is Dracula" school of thought) is real, defeats Van Helsing, somehow marries Queen Victoria and slowly takes over the British government. Each book features appearances by various historical and pop-cultural figures from the era in which it is set.

The B-movie "Iron Sky". American astronauts discover a secret Nazi German moon-base which was built as a last resort at the end of WWII. More hilarious ridiculousness follows.

Ip man and Ip man 2. Great movie about the founding of wing chung martial arts and the Chinese Japanese relationship during the world wars. Boy, they really don't like each other at all!

I love Apocalypto. It may be inaccurate but its movement from the tribal jungle, into the city, through the lowest classes of the diseased and enslaved, through the middle and artisan classes, up into the highest strata of Maya society, back through the field of the dead. It's such an excellent movie, I can hardly believe it was made by Mel Gibson.

On mobile so please excuse any ridiculous formatting or auto correcting issues.

The Alienist. Fictional book about a serial killer in late 19th century and featuring Teddy Roosevelt as the then chief of police in New York City. Exceptionally good writing by Cale Carr that blends just the right amount of factual history and fantastical fiction.

Would recommend to anyone that enjoys this style of story.

Edit: Police commissioner, not chief.

Movie, Cutthroat Island. It's not actually that bad as pirate history, certainly better than that fairy-tale Disney trash. But the main reason I love it is to watch Geena Davis do almost every stunt Errol Flynn did in his entire career -- while wearing a corset.

Series, The Adventures of Brisco County, Junior starring Bruce Campbell. As history, it's almost entirely schwarbage, but I love it any way -- it's an even more sci-fi version of The Wild, Wild West for my generation, and Campbell was amazing in it.

Book, Mary Renault, The Mask of Apollo. As history it's pretty nitpickable, but it takes me there. And I love the protagonist.

I'm not sure this even counts but the 1632 novels are a guilty pleasure. The premise is that though Deus ex machina a chunk of modern day west Virginia gets plunked down in the middle of the thirty years war, in fifteenth century Germany. Thus you get teenagers on dirt bikes with shotguns vs heavy cavalry etc. It's pretty much pulpy warporn.

Creation, by Gore Vidal.

Explores a time when most of the world's major religious themes were beginning to coalesce (monotheism in Persia, Buddhist in proto-India and Taoism in proto-China) through the eyes of the grandson of Zoroaster.

Six Flying Dragons

Krzyżacy, or Teutonic Knights, a 1960 Polish movie directed by Aleksander Ford. Takes place between 1408/09-10 when the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth went to war with the Teutonic Order. The climax is the Battle of Grunwald, which is abosulutely huge, even by today's standards.

On a comical note, there's a scene where the protagonist is going to be executed for attacking a Teutonic knight unprovoked (he did this because he swore an oath to his love Danuśka, to attack the first Teuton he sees to avenge the murder of Danuśka's mother.) As he's being led to the chopping block, Danuśka runs out and throws a white handkerchief over his head, proclaiming "he's mine!" A random guy comes out and yells "It's an old tradition! It checks out! Give him to her!" It just cracks me up everytime for some reason; some random just coming out and yelling, yea, guys, it totally checks out, old tradition, it's all good haha. Apparently it was a pagan tradition where a dame could save a man from execution by claiming him for marriage or something like that, I honestly don't know though.

The full thing is on Youtube and it's been remastered beautifully, I remember it being a very grainy mess as a kid.

The Mattias Tannhauser series is truly historical fiction, but I absolutely love it. It is good to not pay attention to every little fact and read a story that is just fun. Well fun is probably not the right word for this series since it is quite violent (the books so far have the siege of malta, 1565, and the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre, 1572 as setting) and the main character is a bit of a chuck norris kinda guy. On top of that, Willocks (the author) has a history in medschool which he usus in describing how a blade disappears inside a body. It gets quite a few haters for this, but to me it is the same as an action movie. After a long day of reading serious stuff I don't want to watch a serious documentary. I want to empty my head with a good movie, or in this case book.

The books "Roma" and "Empire" by Steven Saylor. Historical fiction books that follow a family all the way from before the founding of Rome to the reign of Hadrian, by changing the point of view each generation. The books detail most of the big events throughout Rome's history, like the founding of the city, the reign of kings, the founding of the republic, the assassination of Julius Caesar etc. by seamlessly (although inaccurately) tying the protagonists into those events and making them key players. The historical part of the books is really well done and accurate and it is presented through interesting fictional points of view.

Tales of the Golden Monkey. It was an adventure show rushed out by ABC in the 80s on the heels of Raiders of the Lost Ark, its a pretty fun show in the spirit of old pulp serials. The main character is a bush pilot in the south seas, hes a former Flying Tiger and his love interest is American spy. And the whole show is set against the backdrop of Axis expansion, but its set in 1938... So with that in mind the timeline is kind of all over the place, some weeks theyre fighting Nazis, some weeks they accidentally kidnap the Emperor.

In a similar vein, Jack of All trades. This was a syndicated 90 action series from the folks who brought us Hercules and Xena, staring BRUCE CAMPBELL, as the eponymous Jack Styles, an American Secret Service agent undercover in French Polynesia at the behest of President Jefferson, his partner/love interest is a British secret agent and they get into all sorts of shenanigans, including rescuing Ben Franklin from a fire breathing Blackbeard the pirate using an electric submarine, and in another episode the Louisiana Purchase wasnt so much a purchase as something won from Napoleon in a poker game... and of course Napoleon was a recurring character played by reddits very own /u/vernetroyer.

The Children's War

This is a what if novel about the Nazis not losing World War Two but continuing on with the Third Reich and controlling most of Europe. The basis of the story is All based on real groups both working for the Nazis and those of the resistance.

The Man in the High Castle. It is more alternate history than accuracy-be-damned, but it was pretty interesting to see how the American 1960s would be had the allies lost WWII.

For example, there was a scene outside "Rockwell airport", named after the founder of the American Nazi Party. Some characters also talk about how fast the trip took (around 4-5 hours if memory serves me correctly). Of course, that is crazy fast for a passenger airplane, but think about it. Flights now are restricted to certain speeds, because no one wants to hear sonic booms all day. It makes sense that the Nazi leaders would say "tough luck" to everyone for the sake of time-efficiency.

I like the show just for small details like that.

I really liked Kingdom of Heaven.

The Guns of the South!! It's a book written by Harry Turtledove about someone going back in time and arming the South with ak-47s during the Civil War.

The years of rice and salt

Any of the Flashman novels.

Piece of Cake by Derek Robinson.

Bomber by Len Deighton.

Given Crichton's Verne-esque talent for mixing fact and fiction, it's especially hard for a layperson to tell how many liberties he took but I'll throw in "The Great Train Robbery." It's inspired by the real 1850s stealing of gold from a train and Crichton's depiction of Victorian London is perhaps the most vivid depiction of anything I've ever read.

The White Indian book series by Donald Clayton Porter. Read it as a kid and then swore to my parents that I could live in the woods, only needing a tomahawk and a knife.

Surprised no one's mentioned Little Big Man yet. It is such a beautiful story with a wonderful cast and manages to be funny, sweet, and gut wrenching all at once. One of my all time favorites. It has some historical flexibility, but every time I see the scene with Custer's men riding everyone down with Garry Owen playing in the background I sit there and have to remind myself that this actually happened.

EDIT: You want to make me cry you just put this scene on in front of me. Chief Lodgeskins' Death Scene

The Dynasty Warriors and Samurai Warriors series! It inspired me so much to read about the Three Kingdoms period of China and the Sengoku period of Japan. I love them all!

I haven't seen Lion in Winter in this list. And then, of course, there's Becket. Amazing acting in both films and I watch them every Christmas.

It plays -really- fast and loose with the history, but The Warlord Chronicles by Bernard Cornwell.

It's a somewhat more down to earth (for the most part) take on the King Arthur story, so it's set during the Saxon take over of Britain.

In the authors note he pretty much goes "We know these two facts, the rest is made up", but it's still a bit of a guilty pleasure.

Captain America

The Terror by Dan Simmons. A fictionalized version of the passage through the Arctic by the HMS Erebus and HMS Terror; it's a fantastic book

Hemispheres by Rush is a favorite of mine. A rogue spaceship pilot flies into a black hole, only to be transported to Mount Olympus as a god during the height of the Greco-Roman Empire.

Two of my favorites are The Given Day by Dennis Lehane and The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara. The latter qualifies for the accuracy-be-damned portion of the question. As for the former, I don't know anything about Boston during the Spanish Flu and police strike, but I love the book. You also get a POV Babe Ruth, which is pretty cool.

History of the World Part I!!

The Royals: Masters Of War was a fantastic short comic arc taking place in WW2, in a world where royalty=superpowers. It gets pretty dark in places though.

Has anyone read As Meat Loves Salt by Maria McCann? Historical fiction during the English Civil war, with very earthily written gay sex scenes (goose fat came in handy once). I thought it was excellent, and isn't that a great title?

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2001/jan/20/fiction.reviews1

http://www.economist.com/node/664465

I loved Marco Polo on Netflix. Historical inaccuracies galore but they managed to make it work.

How has anyone not said History of the World: Part II?

I loved 11/22/1963 by Stephen King. He did a really good job at creating a believable 1960's world

Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon

By no means a historian, but I believe Thermae Romae is a wonderful example. A shortish manga series by Mari Yamazaki about Lucius Modestus, a thermae engineer, during Hadrian's reign.

While the depiction of Rome might be pretty accurate, as she is supposedly a Rome history buff, the tale revolves around Lucius being transported to 1990's-ish Japan through thermaes, then going back to his time period and using what he has seen to improve his work, resulting on some very weird alt-history.

Also, the art is honestly great.

The Physician. The book, not the film.

Its portrayal of medieval England is a pastiche of every medieval trope you can think of. Its portrayal of Persia is filled with a great number of medieval Islamic and Persian stereotypes. And it's so well-written that I can't help but love it.

My favourite pieces of historical fiction ever are probably The Name of the Rose, the Aubrey-Maturin books, Samarkand, and My Name is Red. But they're rather more accurate than the above :p.

Deadwood.

I don't know much about US history, or the real Deadwood, but damn that show was sheer poetry. It was like Shakespeare had written it and thrown in a lot of swearing. It was very dense writing and, as with all HBO shows, the production value was incredible.

Timothy Olyphant was amazing and REALLY gave off the vibe that he was staying calm, but there was a murderous psycho rage just below the skin.

Has anyone here seen Kung Fury? The original trailer looked like a hoot.

Abraham Lincoln - Vampire Hunter

If for no other reason than the sets, the costumes, Hundred Eyes, and motherfuckin' Kublai Khan...

I've gotta go with Marco Polo. Just... just ignore the bizarre Christian Crusader shift it takes midway through S2... just... no...

Well, I may be biased (see username), but for my money Cormac McCarthy's "Blood Meridian" has to be up there on any list of the finest historical fiction. It loosely incorporates several historical events along the Mexican/US border in the late 1840s and early 1850s, most particularly the depredations of the Glanton Gang, in what to many readers appears to be no more than a blood-soaked orgy of violence and mayhem. The careful reader however, is rewarded with as strong a meditation on the human condition as, I would argue, exists in all of literature. McCarthy's violence may be gratuitous, but it is never without meaning, and in the end it never exceeds or really even approaches reality, loathe though many of us may be to admit it.

And all of the above is to say nothing of McCarthy's masterful use of language. Some people hate his style. I for one love it. While he's not without antecedents --he freely admits to having been heavily influenced by Faulkner, for example-- in "Blood Meridian" he manages to create a narrative style that many argue is worthy of attention on its own merits regardless of what one thinks of the story.

Airman by Eoin Colfer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airman_(novel)

It's not hugely historical in many senses other than the fact that it's in the past. Everything in it is believable--it doesn't go outside of its time frame too far--but it doesn't have really any basis in reality or real events.

John Birmingham's "Axis of Time" series is excellent. In 2021, a failed experiment causes an American-led multinational naval task force to time-travel back to World War II, landing right in the middle of the American task force sailing to Midway. After a truly epic blue-on-blue battle which consumes the first half of the first book, things are sorted out and the series gets progressively more awesome from there.

I love The Brigadier Gerard stories by non other than Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the epic yet humorous adventure of Brigadier Gerard aide de camp and officer of The hussars of Conflans.

George Washington. I mean some of it's accurate I'm pretty sure he did invent cocaine and makes love like an eagle, falling from the sky.

There's a special place in my heart for the 1632 series by Eric Flint. Despite being alternate-history fiction of the most blunt and unrealistic alien-space-bats type, I love it to death. Reading it as a teenager actually played a huge role in making me choose to major in history in college and inspired a lifelong interest in the human stories behind the grand schemes of history.

Plus the idea of a town of West Virginia hillbillies as the most technologically advanced society on earth just tickles me pink.

I like the Tales of the Otori book series.

The Tsar's Dwarf, historical fiction with a realistic setting. really interesting to me and inspired me to go on a reading binge about Peter the great.

I came here thinking I'd find 1776 at the top, and yet... it isn't anywhere on this list.

So, I'd like to nominate 1776.

Gladiator is one of my favorite movies ever. It helped inspire my love of history.

Eaters of the Dead by Michael Crighton, book not movie.

Homer's Iliad and the Odyssey got me into history when I was maybe 6 or 7 and my dad red it to me as a bedtime story. I got in trouble when I brought it to my school and show all the graphic details(it was an illustrated version) to other kids.

Probably the Sharpe book series by Bernard Cornwell. His badassery is peerless.

Guns of the South, by Harry Turtldove

Time travelers go back in time to the American civil war and arms the Confederates with Uzis.

I don't remember exactly the title, but there's one work of uchrony I liked a lot where the branching point is: by 1351, the Black Plague has wiped out the entire population of Europe

The book then covers 600-700 years of Chinese/Muslim/Native American domination, there's something reminescent of the Cold War, etc.

13th Warrior. I don't care what anyone says

Kingdom of Heaven. Honestly found it a very enjoyable film.

Patrick O'Brien's Aubrey-Maturin series. So much love for nautical age of sail, much of it accurate in the details and then painted in a largely fictional picture and setting. I suppose I would add Horatio Hornblower series but I've never read them.

Haven't seen Tolkien mentioned but LOTR, and the Silmarillion are wonderful tales of lore.

Lonesome Dove. Dune.

The Saxon Shore: Jack Whyte's Arthurian cycle

Gary Jennings: Raptor

Colleen McCollough : The First Man in Rome Series.

"Guns of the South" by Harry Turtledove a very compelling account of what would happen if someone armed the Confederate Army with AKs. A bit of a revisionists wet-dream but good none-the-less.

The film "Argo".

They got so much wrong in that film.

Michelle Moran's Nefertiti and The Heretic Queen books. I just love ancient Egypt.

A Knights Tale. Most of those songs were actually written much later, iirc

The Walking Drum by Louis Lamour (set in 12th century Europe/Middle East).

Illium/Olympos. Good greek mythology stuff right herrrre.

Stargate SG1 dramatically rewrites ancient Egyptian history. It's a pretty good show, does a good job of world building and creating scifi histories and cultures.

Gladiator. Still one of my favorite movies of all time

Hero

Tales of the Otori. The quickest and dirtiest comparison would be a japanese Game of Thrones with a lot more Arya chapters.

I don't read much fiction anymore but my favourite writer is historical urban fantasy author Tim Powers. My choices are, in order, Last Call, the Stress of Her Regard and Declare.

Way late for the party but no one mentioned I, Claudius by Robert Graves. I read it right after the BBC version was on Masterpiece Theater (with Captain Picard when he had hair) but I was young and got historical fiction confused with historical adaptation. For years I thought it was a translated version of Roman Emperor Claudius' diary.

Also the movie The Name of the Rose. The book was too much for me, but the movie was fun. Plus it had Sean Connery.

I'm quite fond of Ladyhawke; even though it's an original story it feels like it could be based on a real Medieval romance.

I also love Red Cliff, a Chinese movie about their Warring States period.

HBO's Rome and I, Claudius. Especially the latter, I could watch it over and over. I mean, Brian Blessed as Augustus; what's not to love?!

As much as it pains me to say it, I quite enjoy the two 300 movies. Despite them having no regards for actual history (though technically being based on graphic novels first), I do love me some mindless, over-the-top, bloody action.

I also have a soft spot for pseudo-Greek mythology action movies like Clash/Wrath of the Titans, Immortals, and Hercules.

I know Mel Gibson is really hated, but I loved Apocalypto. Mesoamerica was such a unique and colorful place and there aren't many movies set in that time and place. Even though it's not very accurate, I still enjoyed the sets and costumes. And I loved how bad ass all the characters were.

I'm confused about your attempted use of sarcasm.

Your title obviously is referring to a lack of accuracy, yet the body of the post, referring to works that have "all the cares in the world for maintaining historical accuracy" is contrary to the title. This is very curious, because there is no clear reason why you employed sarcasm. There's nothing inherently comical about your post, nor the language. Can you explain?

Well American Sniper is now historical fiction.

Shoukoku no Altair or Kingdom.

The Asian Saga series of books by James Clavell were all great reads. They are a sort of capitalistic historical fiction that spans a wide time range and are all very good stand alone books. Of them Tai-Pan was my favorite, set around the colony of Hong Kong's founding and infancy.

Kung Fury. I believe it's not a completely correct representation og either the 80's, the 40's or the "viking-age", but I love it

The books by Rebecca Gablé. They're incredibly entertaining, the characters are, if not all likeable, at least interesting and they just... suck you in. They are a bit formulaic and she admits to having taken liberties with history, but they're quite good.

Inglorious Basterds

My three favorite movies are all historical fiction that play pretty fast and lose with some facts, though to differing degrees.

• Lawrence of Arabia
• Bridge on the River Kwai
• Amadeus

NINJA SCROLL

Even as someone who knows little about Japanese history, I feel fairly confident in stating that "The Last Samurai" was wildly historically inaccurate but nonetheless thoroughly entertaining.

I've read through this entire thread and am astonished I see no mention of Horatio Hornblower. C. S. Forester's book series is a time-honored classic, and influenced many, many works of fiction that came after, from Star Trek to Sharpe. The TV miniseries from ITV/A&E was also very good, though unfortunately cancelled before reaching some of the more interesting parts of Hornblower's career.

Hornblower is about an English naval officer of the same name in the Napoleonic wars. Some of the characters are drawn straight from history, others are renamed but clearly based on recognizeable historic figures, such as Hornblower himself, who bears a distinct resemblance to Thomas Cochrane. The books are pretty historically accurate, though not as detailed as Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin series. They are a bit more accessible to casual readers not familiar with the era.

Fatherland by Richard Harris, movie or book. Also Pompeii, same author.

Kung fury

Death Hunt was based on the story of the manhunt for Albert Johnson. There's tons of information that was distorted in the story. People who complain about the historical inaccuracy of this movie miss the fact that it has freakin' Charles Bronson, Lee Marvin, and Carl "Apollo Creed" Weathers. So much testosterone...