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Historical person
1859–1941
Wilhelm II was German emperor and king of Prussia from 1888 until his abdication in 1918. His assertive personal style, naval expansion and pursuit of Weltpolitik contributed to international tension, although responsibility for German policy remained divided among military, diplomatic and political institutions. Defeat in the First World War forced him into exile in the Netherlands, where he lived until 1941.
Wilhelm appears in Ken Follett’s Fall of Giants, which follows interconnected families through the diplomacy, mobilisation and conflict of the First World War. Historical fiction often uses him as a symbol of imperial Germany, while more nuanced portrayals distinguish his rhetoric and personality from the broader structures that produced the war.
John Jakes’s American Dreams places Wilhelm II within a narrative shaped by family, marriage and personal loyalty and court politics and dynastic power.
Series
The Century Trilogy follows five interconnected families from Britain, Germany, Russia and the United States from the years before the First World War to the collapse of Communist rule in Europe. Across three generations, miners, aristocrats, diplomats, political organisers, soldiers and journalists experience public events through marriages, rivalries…
All books in this series
The Crown Family Saga follows a German-American family in Chicago as immigration, industrial wealth and new forms of entertainment transform the United States at the turn of the twentieth century. Beginning with young Pauli Kroner’s arrival from Berlin, the novels explore the household of brewery magnate Joe Crown…
All books in this series
Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes canon follows the consulting detective and Dr John Watson through four novels and five principal short-story collections. Beginning with their meeting in A Study in Scarlet, the sequence establishes Holmes’s method of close observation, forensic experiment and deductive reasoning as he investigates murder,…
All books in this series
Non Fiction
Biographies, histories and other non-fiction are listed separately from the historical novels above.
