I’ll take the opportunity to recommend Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s historical novels. Better than the Sherlock Holmes stuff if you ask me and many others. Available for free at Project Gutenberg, and I think you can get these in print if you prefer.
These may be his best historical novels, but there are others.
The White Company
http://gutenberg.org/ebooks/903
A great look at the Hundred Years War from the perspective of a knight and his men at arms.
Sir Nigel
http://gutenberg.org/ebooks/8629
Prequel to the above.
The Adventures of Gerard by Arthur Conan Doyle
http://gutenberg.org/ebooks/1644
Wonderful story of a French hussar (light cavalryman) officer during the Napoleonic Wars.
The Exploits of Brigadier Gerard
http://gutenberg.org/ebooks/11247
Follow up to the above.
For some real history, we have:
The Crime of the Congo
http://gutenberg.org/ebooks/37712
If you want to understand the details of Belgian King Leopold’s genocide in Africa, this is a great place to start.
I would add the two novels “The 7% Solution” and “The West End Horror” both by Nicholas Meyer. I enjoyed Nicol Williamson’s portrail of Holmes in the film ‘7% Solution” also.
But, no one can beat Jerremy Brett. He WAS Holmes, just like David Suchet WAS Poirot. Others have played the part, but, those two WERE the character.
Basil Rathbone was just playing a detective named Sherlock Holmes, and, as they changed the stories so much, you can’t really say it was Doyle’s work.
The Radio programs weren’t much better.
I WOULD recommend, if you can find them, the BBC radio programs from the 50s and 60s that had the talents of Charlton Hobbs and Norman Shelly. While they are edited down for the time format, they stay very fateful to the stories, and, Hobbs’ voice IS the voice of Holmes (even more so that Brett), and Shelly’s IS Watson.