Dorothy Dunnett

Dorothy Dunnett was born in Dunfermline, Scotland, in 1923 and spent much of her adult life in Edinburgh. She worked in the civil service during the Second World War and later became a professional portrait painter and designer. Encouraged to write the kind of historical novel she wanted to read, she produced The Game of Kings, published in 1961. Its difficult, charismatic protagonist Francis Crawford of Lymond introduced readers to a highly allusive style built on politics, languages, music and intellectual puzzles.

The six-volume Lymond Chronicles move across sixteenth-century Scotland, England, France, Russia and the Mediterranean. Dunnett then wrote the eight-volume House of Niccolò series, which follows trade, banking, diplomacy and dynastic competition across fifteenth-century Europe and beyond. King Hereafter offers a historically grounded reinterpretation of Macbeth, while the Johnson Johnson books show her skill in contemporary mystery. Dunnett’s fiction demands close attention but rewards it with intricate plotting and a global view of premodern power. She died in 2001, leaving a major influence on later historical novelists concerned with Renaissance politics, commerce and cultural exchange.