If you enjoy watching celebrities trade passive-aggressive barbs via Instagram, or you like debating whether they may or may not have spit on one another at European film festivals, don’t feel bad! You’re engaging in a very human pastime; we’ve been gossiping about rich and famous people for yonks.

And don’t let anyone tell you that the past was a classier place. History is chock-full of high-profile personalities, politicians and royals (especially royals) behaving very, very badly. To help you quench your thirst for tittle-tattle, here are six top-notch history books stuffed with real-life, gasp-inducing drama that’ll put today’s celebrity gossip to shame.

ROMANTIC OUTLAWS – CHARLOTTE GORDON If you like your scandal-prone celebs to be intellectuals, acquaint yourself with the British Romantics, a notorious group of 19th century artists and thinkers who produced a lot of titillating gossip (like Lord Byron, who was widely rumoured to have slept with his half-sister). Two of them take centre stage in this dual biography of early feminist Mary Wollstonecraft and her daughter, Frankenstein writer Mary Shelley. Both women had steamy affairs, children out of wedlock and epic adventures as page-turning as a juicy romantic novel, like the time Wollstonecraft travelled to Scandinavia to recover her lover’s stolen treasure. Or the time Shelley lost her virginity on her mother’s grave (?!!!). Read this for the Bronte-style drama, but also for an inspiring, often tragic tale of two women trying to free themselves from a world designed to rein them in.

THE ROMANOVS – SIMON SEBAG MONTEFIORE A 700-page book detailing 300 years of Russian history may not sound like a cracking good time, but no one does high-stakes hijinks like the Romanov dynasty. The Romanovs starts in 1613 with the teenage Michael I, and ends in 1918 with the assassination of Nicholas II and his family (including the famous Anastasia). You can tell British historian Simon Sebag Montefiore absolutely froths a bit of goss, because he leaves no sexy, salacious stone unturned in his definitive look at a family of royals (and their power-hungry hangers-on) who conspired, partied and murdered their way to infamy. Think Game of Thrones – minus the dragons.

CLEOPATRA: A LIFE – STACY SCHIFF You thought your family was complicated? Cleopatra married two of her brothers, and had her sister murdered by her lover, Mark Antony. Stacy Schiff’s Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of the last Egyptian queen has all the juicy, gory and glamorous details: Cleopatra’s turbulent reign, her extravagant parties and her relationships with Antony and Julius Caesar. But the book might also piss you off, mostly because you’ll realise the extent to which Cleopatra’s legacy has been altered and diminished by the men who wrote about her (I’m looking at you, Virgil, Ovid and Shakespeare). Schiff helps remedy this by painting a thrilling and complex portrait of a smart, charismatic and ambitious woman who, at one point, ruled half the Mediterranean.

THE KID STAYS IN THE PICTURE – ROBERT EVANS Once upon a time in Hollywood, a young actor named Robert Evans was lounging by the Beverly Hills Hotel pool, when he was spotted by actress Norma Shearer and cast to play her late husband in a movie. It’s an appropriately cinematic beginning for a man who went on to become one of Tinseltown’s most legendary producers, the tenacious, larger-than-life personality behind The Godfather, Rosemary’s Baby and Chinatown. His famously grandiose tell-all memoir is not a totally objective airing of the film industry’s dirty secrets, but who cares when it’s this fun? Evans’ Hollywood is straight out of a movie – smoke-filled rooms, red carpet glamour, slammed doors and sordid, cocaine-fuelled parties – told in the brash, funny, arrogant tone of a man who’s probably lived one too many lives.

THE PILLOW BOOK – SEI SHŌNAGON Reading The Pillow Book feels like having a lovely hot cuppa and a lengthy gossip sesh with your nosy neighbour – if that neighbour happened to be a lady in the court of 11th century Japanese Empress Teishi. Shōnagon’s famous work is a collection of musings, poems and sassy anecdotes about court gossip and other random topics, such as, “Things that make one nervous”. It’s pretty mild, even soothing, compared to some of the other books on this list, but full of clever, sarcastic and rather juicy observations about daily life and human behaviour (kind of like a very elegant, old-timey Twitter feed). Take this tidbit on mansplaining: “a man who has nothing in particular to recommend him discusses all sorts of subjects at random as though he knew everything.”

THE SIX WIVES OF HENRY VIII – ALISON WEIR Britain’s King Henry VIII was such a crap husband it’s hard not to be fascinated by the six women forced to marry him. How on Earth did they deal with a man who thought he was ordained by God to be such a jerk? Here’s your chance to get to know them beyond the common refrain used to memorise their fates: “Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived.” Alison Weir’s popular biography of Henry VIII’s six wives (from cast-aside Katherine of Aragorn to charismatic Anne Boleyn to intelligent Catherine Parr) is a warm, engaging and readable book that’s just as intriguing as an episode of The Tudors – except it’s all true.