Christopher Wilson is the author of several novels, including - Gallimauf's Gospel, Baa, Blueglass, Mischief, Fou, The Wurd, The Ballad of Lee Cotton, Nookie, and The Zoo. One of his top ten books about tyrants, as shared at the Guardian:I, Claudius by Robert GravesRead about another entry on the list.
A writer, lame, with a stammer and deaf in one ear, Claudius is seen as an idiot by his Roman imperial family – too ineffectual to bother about, let alone kill. Claudius watches as his relatives jostle for power and dispose of each other. Augustus gives way to the paranoid Tiberius. Then there’s the crazy Caligula, who declares himself a god, makes his horse a senator, commits incest with his three sisters and has sections of the crowd at the games thrown to thelions. Imagined by Robert Graves, sourced from Suetonius and Tacitus accounts, the book is an encyclopaedia of tyrannical possibilities, and a cracking, engrossing, gossipy read.
I, Claudius also appears on Sarah Dunant's six favorite books list, Daniel Godfrey's top five list of books about ancient Rome, Jeff Somers's list of six historical fiction novels that are almost fantasy, Tracy-Ann Oberman's six best books list, the Telegraph's lists of the 21 greatest television adaptations of novels and the twenty best British and Irish novels of all time, Daisy Goodwin's list of six favorite historical fiction books, a list of the eleven best political books of all time, David Chase's six favorite books list, Andrew Miller's top ten list of historical novels, Mark Malloch-Brown's list of his six favorite novels of empire, Annabel Lyon's top ten list of books on the ancient world, Lindsey Davis' top ten list of Roman books, and John Mullan's lists of ten of the best emperors in literature and ten of the best poisonings in literature.
--Marshal Zeringue
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