Vivian V.A. Stuart books

Alexander Sheridan Reading Order

Non-Fiction

Phillip Hazard Reading Order

Standalone Novels

The Australians Reading Order

V.A. Stuart was the military fiction pen name of Violet Vivian Finlay, who was born in Berkshire in 1914. She grew up in Rangoon, Burma, where her father ran the Burmah Oil Company. She studied law in London, then medicine at the University of London, and obtained a pathology qualification at the University of Budapest in 1938. During World War II, she served in the Australian Women’s Auxiliary Service, attaching to the British XIV Army in Burma and rising to the rank of captain.

She began publishing fiction in 1953 and wrote prolifically until her death in 1986. Under the V.A. Stuart name, she wrote the Phillip Hazard naval series (8 books set during the Crimean War and Indian Mutiny) and the Alexander Sheridan series (7 books set during the Indian Mutiny of 1857). Under the name William Stuart Long, she wrote The Australians, a 12-book saga spanning the history of European settlement in Australia. Under her own name and variants — Vivian Stuart, Alex Stuart, Fiona Finlay — she published dozens of romance novels. In 1960, she co-founded the Romantic Novelists’ Association alongside Denise Robins and Barbara Cartland and was elected its first chairman.