#TopTenTuesday Opening Lines – The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2026 Longlist #TuesdayBookBlog

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme created by The Broke and the Bookish and now hosted by Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl.

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• Each Tuesday, Jana assigns a new topic. Create your own Top Ten list that fits that topic – putting your unique spin on it if you want.
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• Or if you don’t have a blog, just post your answers as a comment.

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This week’s Top Ten Tuesday is Quotes From/About Books. I’ve selected opening lines from ten of the twelve books on the longlist for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2026. Links from each title will take you to my review or the book description on Goodreads.

“Dusk, a deserted room, a scrap of black silk on a marble table, darkening waters beyond. This was the scene, unpeopled, dim and silent, that I had been dreaming of for months, often on two or three consecutive nights, always the same dream, the same tableau, more or less, more than less. What did it mean, what did it signify?” (Venetian Vespers by John Banville)

“The pair of them lie panting together, curled like commas, naked in the next they’ve rolled in the high golden grass.” (The Two Roberts by Damian Barr)

“Helm doesn’t know when Helm was born. Or brewed. Conjured or conceived. First formed above the highest mountain. First blown into the valley. Long before humankind – that brief, busy interlude.” (Helm by Sarah Hall)

“… Was this the first thing he wrote of his own?‘I am John Collan today in the yere 1483 I will defeat the goat. In the name of honnour and glory to god highest & for reson that it knocked me in the mud again today & has TRODDEN churlishly over my back has despoiled ! an insult that cannot be borne.” (The Pretender by Jo Harkin)

“History is not History when it is Happening. Do You understand? I hope You are listening? No, You cannot ask Questions. You can be sure that I will construct this Historical Record most accurately. I know because I have lived through those Wartime Days. I saw it all and I recorded every detail in a Most Meticulous Manner.” (The Matchbox Girl by Alice Jolly)

“Eddie Blanket was falling, falling, falling towards the good Yagara earth. A calamity. At her great age, a fall meant the end, simple as that. Broken hip, pneumonia, kaput.” (Edenglassie by Melissa Lucashenko)

“It was already late in the afternoon when I saw them come around a bend in the river, in sight of the Lake of the Two Mountains. Two of them, though from a distance it was difficult to be certain.” (Boundary Waters by Tristan Hughes)

“It is dark now and my window onto the world is a small one. I do not know how much longer I will be here.’ (Benbecula by Graeme Macrae Burnet)

“It was late, but he was wakeful. There was snow on the way again: a last fall. Benno could smell the cold of it as he pushed his face between the curtains. His breath fogged the glass, the dark was spread wide across the rooftops, across the heathland beyond too, and the night out there had him restless.” (Once the Deed Is Done by Rachel Seiffert)

“Thomas Flett relies upon the ebb tide for a living, but he knows the end is near. One day soon, they’ll hardly be a morsel left for him to scrounge up from the beach that can’t be got by quicker means at half the price.” (Seascraper by Benjamin Wood)