Some people turn their noses up at historical fiction. They think it’s either synonymous with bodiceripping romance (it’s not) or just irrelevant. Again, it’s not. These novels give me a connection to roots I didn’t even know I had. They teach me, when I need it most, that we are just a tiny part of humanity’s history and that there is nothing new under the sun. We didn’t start here and – hopefully – we won’t end here. It helps to acknowledge that we have made progress.

We don’t toil from dawn till dusk in fields, tied to our feudal lords and labouring only for them (“No,” says my sister, leaning over my shoulder as I type. “We just give away our data for free to people who control the democracy upon which our relatively new and still fragile freedom depends.” Ignore her. She thrives in the real world and is an unnatural beast.) We don’t usually die aged 20 in childbirth, at 30 of sepsis after a scratch from a rusty nail in the pantry, or at 40 of simple exhaustion.

Life, for almost all of us, is better than it was. People have been at the mercy of madmen before, though they tended to be kings or local barons instead of presidents or Brexiteers. Women and workers have always had to fight for their rights. And have succeeded.

People, as a whole, have survived. Here we are, after all, writing and reading about it.

Lucy Mangan wants you to read these soul-soothing historical fiction novels