Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that is some level of genius. It also helps that it's a long time ago, right?

It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream van plays music when it's out of ice cream.

Listen to Evil Genius on BBC Sounds.

This is the BBC.

I'm Sarah Dillon.

I present the detective documentary series on Radio 3 literary pursuits,

and I also moonlight as a lecturer at the University of Cambridge in the English faculty.

But today I'm here to present Radio 3's Arts and Ideas program Free Thinking.

Our subject today is historical fiction.

And I'll be joined on stage shortly by three wonderful authors, Sebastian Barry,

Madeline Tien and Jake Arnott.

Okay, so we'll give a very warm welcome to my guests, please. Thank you. Historians and novelists are supposed to worship at different altars.

Historians are devout chroniclers following every twist and turn on the ascent of Mount

Panassas to pay homage to Cleo, the muse of history,

while poets saw up to the summit on gilded wings to court her sister, Erato.

Yet it can seem as if some writers wish to woo both sisters at once,

at whose feet is laid Tolstoy's war and peace in its account of Napoleon's Russian campaign, or Gibbons's

decline and fall of the Roman Empire. Where does history end and literature begin? And does it matter in a

world of so-called alternative facts if one muse cross-dresses as the other, giving us poetic history or historical literature.

My guests today are well placed to answer these questions and many more, as they've all

recently made offerings to both muses. In Jake Arnett's Thriller, The Fatal Tree, we step into the

criminal underworld of 18th century London,

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