Founder/Publisher : Richard Lee, Marine Cottage , The Strand , Starcross, Devon, EX6 8NY. UK. (histnovel@aol.com)
SOLAND ER:
EDITOR : Sarah Cuthbertson, 7 Ticehurst Close, Worth , Crawley , W Sussex , RHl0 7GN.(ICuthberts@ aol.com) Contributions Policy: Please contact Sarah with ideas in the first instance . Please note that the society does not usually pay for contributions, except for short stories . Letters to the Editor: Please, if you want a reply , enclose a stamped, addressed envelope.
FICTION EDITOR : Richard Lee, Marine Cottage, The Strand , Starcross , Devon , EX6 8NY. UK (histnovel @aol.com)
Trudi Jacobson , (tj662@csc albany edu) Ilysa Magnus , (goodlaw2@aol.com)
THE HISTORICAL NOVEL SOCIETY ON THE INTERNET:
WEBSITE : www.historicalnovelsociety com
NEWSLETTER : Write to Lucienne Boyce (GGBoyce@aol.com) for our fortnightly email newsletter - it's free of charge LISTSERVE : Join in the discussions on the society 's internet listserve -g o to the society website and sign up. CHAT ONLINE : At the society web-site From time to time we will invite authors along to field y our questions
MEMBERSHIP DETAILS:
Membership of The Historical Novel Society is by calendar year (January to December), and entitles members to all the year's publications : two issues of So lander, and four issues of The Historical Novels Review. Back issues of societ y magazines are also available Write for current rates to : Marilyn Sherlock, 38 The Fairway , Newton Ferrers, Devon, PL8 IDP UK(ray sherlock@ appleoneline .net) , or Tracey A Callison , 824 Heritage Drive , Addison, II 60101 . USA (Callison@wwa.com) or Teresa Eckford , 434E Moodie Dri ve, Nepean, ON , K2H 8A6 CANADA (eckford@sympatico.ca) or Patrika Salmon , Box 193 , Whangamata , NEW ZEALAND (pdrlindsaysalmon@hotmail.com) It is also possible to join the society by credit card online at www historicalnovelsociety .com
OUT OF PRINT BOOKS:
The following are dealers in out of print historical novelsKaren Miller, 43 Trent St. Retford , Nottingham DN22 6NG . Tel : 01777 705706 Karen @Millerl964 freeserve co uk Forget-Me-Not Books , 11 Tamarisk Rise , Wokingham , Berkshire , RG40 lWG Tel : 0118 9781572 judith_ ridley @ hotmail.com Rachel Hyde , 2 Meadow Close , Budleigh Salterton, Devon, EX9 6JN . Tel 01395 446238 rachelahyde @ ntlworld com Rosanda Books, David Baldwin , 11 Whiteoaks Road , Oadby , Leicester LE2 5YL Tel 0116 2713880 David Spenceley Books , 75 Harley Drive, Leeds , LS13 4QY . Tel : 0113 2570715 davidspenceley @ email.com Legend Books - www Legendbooks .com
COPYRIGHT remains in all cases with the authors of the articles. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, without the written permission of the authors concerned.
Solander 8
from the editor
History," said David Starkey, his voice ringing above the cannonades at Kirby Hall, "is Story, Story, Story."
Dr. Starkey, eminent Tudor historian and merciless scourge of fuzzy thinking, was discussing his best-selling book, Elizabeth: The Apprenticeship* at the HNSsponsored author talks held during this summer's English Heritage History In Action event.
That history is story needs to be said, especially where the subject is taught as "empathy", not narrative and where some historians reject the very idea of history as story in the tradition of Gibbon and Macaulay. This may be a good game for academics but where does it leave the rest of us? We have a hunger for history. To understand who we are and where we're going, we need to know where we came from; we need to know what happened Like our ancestors around their campfires, we need story.
For many readers, it's historical fiction that answers this need. Sometimes it's the whole answer; sometimes it's the key that unlocks a door. It also answers the needs of novelists who, for example, want to imaginatively explore gaps in the record or who, as historian Sir Steven Runciman told the New Yorker, want to "say what I know to be true but cannot prove. "
Whether its purpose is to inform , to explore, to challenge , or simply to entertain (which is equall y valid, of course, though I defy anyone to read any diligentlyresearched historical no vel without learning something from it) , both elements of the description historical fiction matter. While there is no ultimate historical truth, there is knowable historical detail , which must be got right. And the fiction - the story , the interpretation - must be both true to that detail and compelling enough to tempt us to read on , to turn the key , to be challenged , to be entertained In his introduction to Eliz abeth , Dr. Starkey pays tribute to the genre . " I never forget ," he writes, "that the years of Elizabeth's apprenticeship are a wonderful adventure story I try , as far as possible, to tell things as they happened , with cliff-hangers and narrow escapes. If the result reads like a historical thriller , I shall be well pleased."04
*Chatto & Windus 2000 UK/HarperCollins 2000 US (as Elizabeth : The Struggle for the Throne) Quote used by permission of the author and Random House UK.
Apologies to Belinda Copson for the errors that appeared in her profile ofD K. Broster in Solander 7. D.K. Broster's date of birth was printed incorrectly as 1878 in both title and text. It should have read 1877. Also, Belinda's name inadvertently appeared on the Contents page as Beverly
Rosemary Sutcliff: an Appreciation
SANDRA GARSIDE-NEVILLE looks at one of Britain's best-loved historical novelists
Personal Life
Rosemary Sutcliff was born in a blizzard on 14 December 1920. The place was East Clandon in Surrey and in her autobiography, Blue Remembered Hills (1983), she is rather rueful about having been born in Surrey, feeling that the West Country was really her home. Her father was in the Navy, though there were many doctors amongst her ancestors, plus a few farmers and Quaker merchants. Her mother's brothers all went to live in India to spend their lives working on building railways.
As a child she had Still's Disease, a form of juvenile arthritis. The effect of this led to many stays in hospital for painful remedial operations. As a very young girl, the arsenic in her medicine caused her to have hallucinations; she saw a panther, wolves and snakes despite not knowing what they were. However, years later , she was to meet them in Kipling's books Another effect of illness was that she spent much time sitting still looking , rather than moving around and investigating. This meant that she developed an acute eye for observation. Alan Garner (Wintle 1974, 224) comments that children's authors often
have two things in common - they were deprived of the usual primary schooling and they were ill and left to their own company, which was certainly true of Sutcliff.
Due to her father's postings she moved frequentlyliving in Malta, Streatham (London), Chatham Dockyard, Sheerness Dockyard and North Devon. She had an uneasy relationship with her mother, but admitted that "very few of the worthwhile things in this world are all easy". Her mother disciplined her rigorously, so that the child Sutcliff would take her spankings in proud silence, and later in life found it very difficult to cry, believing it shameful.
Her mother read to her very willingly, and never got tired of reciting stories. Sutcliff was reared on a diet of Beatrix Potter, A.A. Milne, Charles Dickens, Hans Anderson, Kenneth Grahame and Rudyard Kipling. She was read Norse, Celtic and Saxon legends, and also historical novels which her mother loved. Surprisingly, Sutcliff did not learn to read until the age of nine.
After the period of travelling , the small family finally settled down to live in the Devon area. For Sutcliff, these years alternated between hospital and school. One of the hospitals had a Guide pack; the only badge that Sutcliff won was the Artist's Badge . In the hospital library she found a book that proved to be the treasure of her childhood. Called Emily ofNew Moon, it was a Canadian novel that followed a girl's adventures and her attempts to be a writer. When she left hospital, she left the book behind, and then much later tried to trace it, but did not recall the author. It was eventually found for her in the 1970s by a Canadian friend who was doing a piece on the work ofL.M . Montgomery. The author of Anne of Green Gables had also written Emily ofNew Moon.
Sutcliff ended her formal education at fourteen, and went to Bideford Art School. She passed the City & Guilds examination, and was advised to make the painting of miniatures her profession. Now that she was considered an adult, any operations she had took place in nursing homes. These she found very lonely, mostly having the companionship of aged ladies when she really needed friends of her own age. She was eighteen when the Second World War broke out. Her father went to command convoys, while she and her mother stayed in Devon. Sutcliff had a miniature displayed at the Royal Academy, and not surprisingly, the subject was a knight in 15th century armour.
Around the middle of the War, Sutcliff"got the itch" to write. She felt cramped by the small canvas of miniature painting, and turned to writing to gain a larger vista. The first story she could remember writing was Wild Sunrise , a story about a British chieftain faced with the invasion of the Romans. In her autobiography she stated that she was happy that the story is now lost, as she felt that it was badly written, having too much of herself in it. She did regret the loss of her next story, which was set in the 18th century. It concerned a little girl sent to stay with her Great Aunt who befriends an embittered young man. Some of its themes re-emerged in The Eagle of the Ninth years later. Not long after the end of the War, Sutcliff wrote a retelling of Celtic and Saxon legends which she showed to
2
an old friend. He sent them to Oxford University Press (OUP). Although they rejected the manuscript, they requested that she write a version of the Robin Hood Story. It was during this period that she met Rupert, who had been an RAF pilot. He was married, but showed clear interest in Sutcliff. They spent the summer together, but in the autumn he went to work in London. They corresponded throughout the winter, but when he visited in the spring, Sutcliff had a sense of foreboding. It turned out that Rupert had met another woman whom he eventually married when his divorce came through.
Sutcliff had finished The Chronicles of Robin Hood and sent it to be typed up. It took eighteen months for the manuscript to be returned to her, during which time she had written The Queen Elizabeth Story and sent it on to OUP. This book was a subject choice of her own, and she found it a delight to write. It was accepted, and the two books were eventually published in the same year, 1950.
This is where Blue Remembered Hills finishes, but she stated that from 1950 onwards she kept a diary, and that she met Rupert again twenty years later. This infers that producing another volume of autobiography was perhaps on her mind. Her mother died during the 1960s, and Sutcliff and her father moved to Sussex. Despite being increasingly disabled, she travelled abroad and visited Greece. Her father died in the early 1980s.
Thereafter, she lived near Arundel with a housekeeper and two small dogs (Talcroft 1995, 146). These dogs were Chihuahuas. In 1984 when one of the dogs died, Sutcliff waited for a decent time before getting another one to be a companion to the surviving dog, Sebastian. She was waiting in the hope that the spirit of the dog that had died would perhaps be reborn into another dog that she might own in the future. This belief in reincarnation had been expressed elsewhere. Sutcliff said that perhaps the reason authors are drawn to certain eras was that they had experienced them in a previous life, so that they were essentially writing about what was familiar (Fisher 1974, 89). When someone said to her that she would perhaps be a soldier in another life, in reference to Sutcliffs heroes often being warriors, she instantly replied "No thank you, I had enough of soldiering". It was as if it was something she remembered (Thompson 1987, 14).
Sutcliff was writing the morning that she died on 23rd July 1992. She had completed the second draft of a novel (published in 1997 as Sword Song), with two more works waiting to be published.
Writing Methods
Margaret Meek wrote about the process by which Sutcliff started her novels (1962, 12). The idea for a story might come from an external source, such as visiting a house and wondering what the previous occupants might have been like when it was new, or perhaps inspiration would come from something Sutcliff had read. Sometimes the idea would come from the inside, completely out of the blue.
Sutcliff used large red notebooks to make her research notes in. An encyclopaedia would be the first port of call, which would in turn provide a reading list. This would be presented to the local library, and when those books arrived they could be mined for the bibliographies in the back, as well as the information in the main part of the works. All the sifted information would find its way into the red notebooks. Then Sutcliff would start to create a picture of the daily life of the era her idea was set in. This was the most enjoyable part for her. Not much of the plot would find its way into the notebooks, as Sutcliff would make a draft outline of around two or three thousand words, and then she would start to write. Ordinarily, she would write from mid morning until nightfall.
Sutcliff tended to write the drafts of her novels in longhand (Moss, 1992), producing three drafts plus a fair copy. She often wrote 1,800 words per day in a small clear script on a single folio sheet. Her pen was "fattened" and cushioned so that her arthritic hand could guide it easily (Moss, 1992). The process of producing a whole book would take a couple of months' research, followed by around eight months' writing.
Sutcliff wrote over fifty books (see the list at the end of this article), some of which were translated into fifteen languages. She also wrote plays for the radio and stage.
Finding a voice
The Queen Elizabeth Story, Sutcliff's second book, was primarily aimed at little girls. She acknowledged that this and the next two or three books were a little too cosy and too sweet (Sutcliff 1992, 169). However, she was aware that it was her apprenticeship phase of writing. It was Sutcliffs fifth book, Simon, published in 1953, that really showed what she could do, and this was recognised by the critics (Talcroft, 1995, 3). The book is longer and more complex than her previous works. Set during the English Civil War, it is the story of Roundhead Simon and how his childhood friendship with Cavalier Amias is wrecked by the war. According to Meek, it shows all the traits that became fully developed in later books (1962, 32). However, Simon is not handicapped in some way, or of a surly temperament, unlike many of the characters Sutcliff wrote about later.
Continuity
The next year saw the publication of what is probably Sutcliff's most famous book- The Eagle of the Ninth. The hero, Marcus Flavius Aquila, is invalided out of the Roman army and seeks to find out what happened to the ill-fated Ninth Legion. This is the first book to be set in the Roman period, and Marcus remained one ofSutcliff's favourite characters, although she was aware that many people found him to be difficult and prickly. However, she justified this by pointing out that he had undergone some awful experiences (Thompson, 1987, 13). This book also saw the first appearance of a device which provides continuity between several books: a heavy signet ring which was set with a flawed emerald bezel on which a dolphin was engraved. The ring also appears in The Silver
Branch, Frontier Wolf, The Lantern Bearers , Sword at Sunset, Dawn Wind, The Shield Ring and Sword Song These linked books were written over a period of over 35 years.
Evans-Gunther points out that a virtual family tree of the Aquila family can be compiled because the connections are so well illustrated (1993 , 7). The line runs clearly from Marcus Aquila in Eagle of th e Ninth (129AD) to Owain in Dawn Wind (6th century) , with the ring appearing in the other books though not obviously connected to Aquila's descendants. Sutcliff stated that she had a " terrific thing about continuity" (Fisher 1974, 186), so it is likely to be a very deliberate strategy. As well as the Dolphin ring , she set The Knight 's Fee (11th century) and Warrior Scarlet (Prehistoric) in the same hills, and used a flint axe in both stories to indicate the historical ties to that land (Fisher 1974, 186).
Continuity is very much a Kipling tradition ; he acknowledges the settling of England by many peoples , and the way they eventually learn together to create a new nationality (1962 , 52) . Also , Kipling emphasises the rite of passage from youth to adulthood. Sutcliff was happy to admit her debt to Kipling, and wrote an appreciation of him in 1960.
Kingship
Throughout her childhood , Sutcliff was steeped in the myths and legends read to her by her mother. Later, she visited a local bookshop to read Fraser ' s The Golde n Bough, a huge work that contained the ideas and background to sacred kingship and primitive religion that were to surface in her novels in various forms .
Barbara Talcroft's important study ofSutclifrs works with reference to this aspect picks out three major elements in her writing: Goddess, Sacrificial King and Maimed King. The relationship that a king has with the Goddess provides him with his legitimacy as a rule . The Goddess can take many forms and represent various aspects of life For example, she can be a maiden, a consort, or a hag , and these can be linked with the phases of the moon: the crescent moon being the goddess of birth and growth, the full moon the goddess of love and war , and the waning moon being associated with the hag of divination and death (Talcroft 1995, 25) .
The sacrificial king has an obligation to sacrifice himself for the good of his people and the land. The maimed king is a danger to his people as he might cause the kingdom to become a wasteland
A novel that contains all three of these in good measure is Sword at Sunset, published in 1963 This novel is about King Arthur, or Artos as Sutcliff called him. The goddess appears in Ygerna (Artos' half sister with whom he unwittingly commits incest), Guenhumara (whom he marries) and the Virgin Mary (who is symbolised by a moon daisy which is worn by Artos and his Companions as they go into battle).
The maimed king is Artos who fathers a child with his half sister. He sees this as a great sin and becomes
impotent. Though he does father a daughter eventually , both his children are maimed in different ways The daughter is sickly and dies in circumstances that cause a further rift with Guenhumara (so that he is effectively in discord with the goddess and the land). His son, Medraut, is maimed in character, being twisted by hate instilled by Ygerna, and seeks to undermine and destroy Artos Artos is also the sacrificial king , dedicating himself to his people and land, and eventually dying for them
However, the most obvious example of sacrificial kingship in the book is Artos' uncle , the High King Ambrosius. In the book ' s prequel , The Lantern Bearers (1959) , the young Ambrosius rejects marriage saying that " To lead Britain is enough for one man , with a whole heart and no ties", which is his first sacrifice In Sword at Sunset he falls ill with cancer, and chooses to die hunting, trying to kill a royal stag - both Ambrosius and the stag are portrayed as sacrificial kings.
Looking at Talcroft's analysis (1995 , 126), it is clear that the kingship themes became most developed in the early 1960s, culminating in Sword at Sunset in 1963 , and The Mark of the Horse Lord in 1965 After this time , the themes are still present in one form or another , but not so marked.
Sutcliff always became deeply involved in her books , but Sword at Sunset engaged her more heavily than any other book she wrote (Thompson, 1987, 13 ) It took some eighteen months to write, and absorbed her completely. She would write from 6am one morning until 2am the following morning, finding the process completely addictive. Usually writing in the third person, Sutcliff found she had trouble with this book, and only became satisfied with it when she wrote in the first person. It was the first time she had done this , but it seemed the best and only way. After finishing the book, it took her several weeks to get back into her own skin, after thinking herself so completely into the character of Artos Sword at Sunset is deservedly one of the most admired historical novels about King Arthur (Thompson 1985 , 47). Though some traditional aspects of the legend are retained , Sutcliff discards those that she deems to be rather late additions , so that, for example , Bedwyr takes the part later played by Lancelot. Along with The Lantern Bearers , it is among some the first attempts at an historical setting for King Arthur Rather than a just a Celtic setting, Sutcliff also fully acknowledges the strong role that those who had adopted Roman culture (and would have called themselves Roman) would have played in the fifth century This is still a relatively unusual viewpoint, and it has barely been explored in historical fiction for this period since Sutcliff (Nastali 1999, 19). Combining as it does primitive mythological elements, allied with solid archaeological research, Sword at Sunset is a deeply satisfying book.
Dark and light
The theme of dark and light occurs in many of Sutclifrs novels The subjects revolve around invaders of one kind or another (the Roman advance in Britain in The Eagle of the Ninth or the Saxon invasion of Britain in
Dawn Wind). Individuals can embody the light or dark as Artos and Medraut are light and dark in Sword at Sunset, or have both aspects such as the greatly conflicted Aquila in The Lantern Bearers. It is possible that this theme emerges so strongly due to Sutcliffs experiences of living through the Second World War. The outcome of the war, taken for granted now, was uncertain then, and the threat of invasion greatly feared. It must have seemed that that Britain was once again under the threat of having its light extinguished.
Conclusion
Sutcliff is considered mainly a children's author. However, many of her books have a wider appeal, addressing as they do complex and elemental themes in an intricately woven and foreign background. Sutcliff thought that her books were for children of all ages from nine to ninety (Thompson 1987, 13).
That Sutcliff is still an influential and well-respected historical novelist is evident. Recently, Helen Hollick has made a deliberate nod toward Sutcliff and her last book Sword Song where the hero has many ship-borne adventures. In Harold the King, about the last Saxon king of England, Holli ck named the lead ship in the Saxon fleet patrolling the English coast Dolphin as tribute to the linking emerald Dolphin that appeared in so many of Sutcliff's novels.
In her 1960 monograph, Sutcliff laments that Kipling has gone out of style (Talcroft 1995, 2). The same may now perhaps be said of Sutcliff. Harrison, reviewing Hollick's Arthurian novel The Shadow of the King comments that Sutcliff's Sword at Sunset is:" obviously now dated in many ways." (Harrison 1998, 4). This is in particular reference to Sutcliff's "telling" rather than "showing" style of writing, and Harrison herself finds the stories enthralling (Harrisonpers comm). Although the "telling" style of writing does not detract in any way from the skill and beauty ofSutcliff's prose, modem readers are often more used to the story being shown to them.
In the case of the Arthurian period novels there are now new theories, and stories that reflect them. Sutcliff's Roman books for children are still in print, but other categories have not fared so well. In particular, her adult books are mostly out of print, with Sword at Sunset currently only in print in the US by Tor Publishers.
Rosemary Sutcliff was primarily a storyteller. She said that she belonged to the minstrelsy, and chose to present her stories in the way that seemed right to her. In doing this, in her own poetic and rich prose, she has given us books that are already considered as classics and will be read for many years to come.c.Q
Acknowledgements
Thanks to: Belinda Copson for commenting on the bibliography; Sarah Cuthbertson for the loan of the Walck book on Rosemary Sutcliff; Towse Harrison for some useful perspectives; Helen Hollick for information on Harold the King. Any errors or omissions are my own.
Awards given to Rosemary Sutcliff
Carnegie Award, Library Association for The Lantern Bearers 1959
Boston-Globe Hom Book Award, Tristan and Iseult 1972 Hans Christian Andersen Award, Highly Commended 1974
Order of the British Empire 1975
Other Award, Song for a Dark Queen 1978 Phoenix Children's Book Award, The Mark ofthe Horse Lord 1985
Commander of the British Empire 1992
Bibliography and References
1992 "Obituary- Rosemary Sutcliff'', The Times 25 July
Eccleshare J. 1992, "Obituary- Rosemary Sutcliff'', Independent 27 July
Evans-Gunther C.W. 1993, "The Dark Age Novels of Rosemary Sutcliff'', Dragon Society Newsletter Winter Vol 4, No 5, 4-10
Garside-Neville S. & Hunter-Mann K. 1985, "Rosemary Sutcliff" Dragon Society Newsletter Vol 2, No 1
Garside-Neville S. 1992, "Rosemary Sutcliff'', Dragon Society Newsletter Autumn/Winter Vol 4, No3/4, 3-5
Harrison T. 1998, "The Shadow of the King" The Historical Novels Review December 1998, 4
Hollick H. 1997, The Shadow of the King, Heinemann
Hollick H. 2000, Harold the King, Heinemann
Lively P. 1992, "Obituary - Rosemary Sutcliff'' Independent 31 July
Meek M. 1962, Rosemary Sutcliff, Walck Inc
Moss E. 1992, "Chronicler of Occupied Britannia" The Guardian 27 July
Nastali D. 1999, "Arthur Without fantasy: Dark Age Britain in Recent Historical Fiction" Arthuriana 9.1 5-22
SutcliffR. 1983, Blue Remembered Hills: a recollection Bodley Head
SutcliffR. 1992, Blue Remembered Hills: a recollection Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Talcroft B.L. 1995, Death of the Corn King: King and Goddess in Rosemary Sutclifj's Historical Fiction for Young Adults The Scarecrow Press
Thompson R.H. 1985, The Return From Avalon: a Study of the Arthurian Legend in Modern Fiction Greenwood Press
Thompson R.H. 1987, "Interview with Rosemary Sutcliff', Avalon to Camelot Volume II, No 3, 11-14 [web version at: http://www.ub.rug.nl/camelot/intrvws/sutcliff.htm]
Wintle J. & Fisher E. 1974, The Pied Pipers: Interviews with the Influential Creators of Children's Literature Paddington Press
A bibliography of Rosemary Sutcliff's works
1950 The Chronicles of Robin Hood
1950 The Queen Elizabeth Story
1951 The Armourer's House
1952 Brother Dusty-Feet
1953 Simon
1954 The Eagle of the Ninth
1955 The Outcast
1956 The Shield Ring
1956 Lady in Waiting (adult)
1957 The Silver Branch
1958 Warrior Scarlet
1959 The Lantern Bearers
1959 The Bridge Builders (originally a short story in Another Six)
1959 The Rider of the White Horse (adult)
1960 Houses and History (non-fiction)
1960 Rudyard Kipling (non fiction)
1960 Knight's Fee
1961 Dawn Wind
1961 Beowulf(reprinted in 1966 as Dragon Slayer)
1963 Sword at Sunset (adult)
1963 The Hounds of Ulster
1964 The Fugitives (in Miscellany One, edited by Edward Blishen)
1965 The Mark of the Horse Lord
1965 Heroes and History (non-fiction)
1965 A Saxon Settler (non-fiction)
1966 The New Laird (radio play script)
1967 The High Deeds of Finn McCool
1967 The Chiefs Daughter
1967 The Man Who Died at Sea (in The House of the Nightmare and other Eerie Stories, edited by Kathleen Lines)
1968 A Circlet of Oak Leaves
1969 The Flowers of Adonis (adult)
1970 The Witch's Brat
1970 The Making of an Outlaw (in Thrilling Stories from the Past for Boys edited by Eric Duthie)
1970 Swallows in the Spring (in Galaxy edited by Gabrielle Maunder)
1971 The Truce of the Games
1972 Tristan and Iseult
1972 Heather, Oak and Olive (three stories including The Chiefs Daughter, A Circle of Oak Leaves, A Crown of Wild Olives)
1973 The Capricorn Bracelet
1974 The Changeling
1975 We Lived in Drumfyvie (written with Margaret Lyford-Pike)
1975 Ghost Story (a screenplay with Stephen Weeks)
1976 Blood Feud
1977 Shifting Sands
1977 Sun Horse, Moon Horse
1978 Song for a Dark Queen
1978 Is Anyone There? (a book on the Samaritans, editor with Monica Dickens)
1979 The Light Beyond the Forest: The Quest for the Holy Grail
1980 Frontier Wolf
1981 The Sword and the Circle: King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table
1981 The Road to Carnlann: The Death of King Arthur
1981 Eagle's Egg
1983 Blue Remembered Hills: a recollection (nonfiction)
1983 Bonnie Dundee
1986 Roundabout Horse
1986 Flame Coloured Taffeta
1986 Mary Bedell (play)
1987 Blood and Sand (adult)
1987 A Little Dog Like You
1989 Merch Y Pennaeth (translated by Gwenan Jones)
1989 Little Hound Found
1990 The Shining Company
1992 The Eagle of the Ninth: Play (with Mary Rensten)
1993 Black Ships Before Troy: The story of the Iliad (illustrated by Alan Lee)
1993 Chess Dream in the Garden
1993 The Minstrel and the Dragon Pup
1995 The Wanderings of Odysseus (illustrated by Alan Lee)
1997 Sword Song
Sandra Garside-Neville is a reviewer for HNR, though she was given a sabbatical(!) to research and write this article. She's a professional librarian and archaeologist who runs Brick and Tile Services in York (www.tegula.freeserve.co.uk). The photograph of Rosemary Sutcliff on the front cover is from her private collection.
HISTORY, FICTION AND THE GREATWAR
Professor DEAN MILLER looks at books that helped form his view of W odd War One 1
My grandmother's library held my first trove of reading material, and I found some strange and wondrous books in it , for a boy in the mid-1930s. One, entitled Barbarians, was written by Robert W Chambers (New York: A.L. Burt, 1917). Stories of the Great War but , by the time I read them, twenty years on, this was historical fiction. I was, naturally, fascinated.
Robert William Chambers (1865-1933) actually boasts an entry in my old Reader 's Encyclopedia, where he is awarded some popular success, and is frankly estimated to have produced "good work hidden under a mass of trash." Fair enough. Objectively speaking, Chambers' Barbarians is part of the trash; it is, not to put too fine a point upon it, pro-Allied war propaganda of the most tendentious, lurid , biased, and subjective sort, cast in a series offairly short chapters , with storylines sometimes maintained through several episodes . Subtlety and evenhandedness really should not be expected here. In the first set of stories we meet a German who is at least slightly sympathetic - an old university studentcompanion of the Canadian victim whom he nevertheless (accidentally?) pushes off an Alp ("Parnassus"). It is all downhill, or down-alp , from there. Crash-landed Hun airman tries to conceal his identity and shoots plucky but unlucky convalescing chap who finds him out ("In Finistere"); there is a creepy quality about these storiesgoggled Germans in gray become loups-garou - as well as some supernatural coloration
As to where Chambers places himself, personalities aside, in the larger political scheme of things, in "FiftyFifty" we are solemnly told by the doctor-narrator that American gangsters accidentally enlisted in the Foreign Legion are now "wearing the uniform of God's own soldiers." One gets the strong impression that this author, who can never have met an armed German soldier, has very nearly lost control. There is some minimal balance to the narrative, to the extent that the very first stories refer to deadly madness growing out of extraordinary isolation, and the fact that Chambers refers parenthetically to the "tens of thousands" dying at Gallipoli in a mismanaged Allied campaign. But one certainly knew where this elderly, non-combatant American writer stood vis-a-vis Flanders Field, where the towns' glorious bell towers were inevitably shelled and destroyed by malignantly aimed German artillery, never by British or French.
How did all of this affect me, when I first read it?
Seven-year-old boys are bloodthirsty little beasts and war exhilarates them. I had no personal stake here, and
Chambers' fictional blood and violence would hardly have fazed me as a reader of Treasure Island and G.A. Henty's boys' tales . But I have some reason to suspect that when I was a year older, in September of 1938, I might very well have been willing to attach Chambers' overheated prose and its anti-Hun opinions to Hitler's Wehrmacht as it overwhelmed Poland.
I would not have known much then about those who had objected to the United States' pro-Allied and antiGerman inclinations when Chambers was writing the fervid propaganda that supported and encouraged this bias. I was much older before I read war fiction (defined as historical fiction) written from another, an "enemy" point of view in the conflict, such as Remarque's All Quiet On The Western Front or Jiinger's Storm of Steel, older yet before I read specifically anti-war books about the Great War, such as Arnold Zweig's Decision Before Verdun or Humphrey Cobb's mordant Paths of Glory, and even older when I encountered a comic masterpiece like Jaroslav HMek's The Good Soldier '!;vejk with the opening lines of its "Drumhead Mass" chapter: "Preparations for the slaughter of mankind have always been made in the name of God or some supposed higher being", which may be set against Chambers' legionnaires surely fighting "God's own battles ."
For another historical turn and contrast, I must have bad some sense, in 1938-41, that the American Midwest was not exactly drumming itself into a pro-war frenzy. Partly this had to do with some of the same "revisionist" readjustments in attitudes toward the Great War that even more strongly affected France and Great Britain in the interwar period, as well as the revelation of the vast strategic stupidities of higher Allied commanders and the senselessly destructive nature of trench warfare itself. Partly we also saw - and this I was dimly aware of - the very strong local presence of home-grown isolationist and America First sentiment. On the other band, right up through 1941 we , as schoolchildren, recited John McCrae's In Flanders Field on November 11, with its adjuration to " take up our quarrel with the foe"
All these old confrontations pretty much ended when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor - news of which reached me when I was watching Gary Cooper in Sergeant York, at a local movie theater, which might qualify as my immersion in a semi-fictionalized filmed history of the First World War as the Second began, at least for Americans.
2
At just about the time I was puzzling over Chambers ' egregious Barbarians, J.C.Dunn, Medical Officer of 2nd Battalion The Royal Welch Fusiliers finally published The War The Infantry Knew, 1914-1919 1 , a collation of his own recollections and the memoirs and diaries of others who had managed to survive the War .
1 Originally published in 1938 by P.S King Ltd. ; reprinted with a new Introduction (by Keith Simpson) in 1987 by Jane's; my copy is by Little, Brown/Abacus (1999).
Here we have what I would call the closely observed, meticulously detailed study of the anthropology of war, though the fieldwork was done only on one side. However, some of the interest generated by this long work was probably connected to the fact that both Robert Graves and Siegfried Sassoon, poets, war protesters and litterateurs, served in the RWF - a segment of Sassoon's Memoirs of an Infantry Officer is actually inserted into Dunn's narrative. Graves' Goodbye To All That, his own semifictionalized war memoir, had been published a decade before Dunn's compilation.
Dunn's War, with its vast, dense collection of "snapshots" of the battalion's experience, and its occasionally telegraphic, opaque and even obscure references, can show the occasional glimpse of horror or humor - or both - in the trenches: the two soldiers, French and German, found lying where they had simultaneously bayoneted each other to death; the hard-case old soldier who begged for a 10-franc credit on his pay, and when he got only 5 francs threw the note back down before a very young-looking disbursing officer, saying, "You can keep it, sir, and buy yourself a f-----g rocking horse."
The overview is bleak if not dark - but terribly resigned, with a grim sense of the rigidity, stupidity and incapability of the high command, from supreme G.O.C. down to Brigade - the Donkeys, as Alan Clark called them, with good cause 2 - as a kind of permanent threnody. Dunn and his officers are, however, fair: Brigade and higher often didn't know what was going on because as soon as an operation - a "Show'' - began, all communication with the forward trench-line and beyond became patchy, and usually was interdicted completely, as telephone lines were cut by shellfire and runners were killed or fell out exhausted in the mud. The confused, deadly combat in Dunn's book is on the company and the platoon level, right at the sharp end - though a German shell, or more rarely bomb, can drop out of the sky on anyone, anywhere .
What one gets from the book is a continual impression of wastage. The veterans of Kitchener's army were almost all gone by early 1916 and drafts come up continuously as casualties are buried (if found) or invalided out. Even before the butchery of Summer, 1916, companies are cut down to half their size, and by late 1917 the "drafts" are increasingly made up of ill-trained men in bad physical shape.
It will come almost as a cliche to note that the enemy is never demonized in Dunn's narrative. "Hun" turns up early on, but is soon replaced by "Fritz" and "Gerry" (with its uncertain etymology) and occasionally "Boche". There are no reports of enemy atrocities, though there is a report in the early days of the Saxons on the other side applauding the hits made by British artillery on the Prussians. Usually, the enemy is simply there, though seldom seen alive, doing his best to kill or wound you, while you try to do the same to him.
2 The Donkeys, London: Pimlico, 1961/1966.
But I can't leave this invaluable treasury of accumulated facts and incidents without mentioning its greatest moment of - presumably unintended - irony: in March of 1916, Spring came early to the Front and "one avoided treading on little frogs in Cambrin trenches". The bloody shambles on the Somme was four months off.
3
Dunn's book is not cited in Paul Fussell's large-scale, provocative and much admired study, The Great War and Modern Memor/. Possibly Fussell didn't have access to the book; possibly Dunn's detailed and syncretic account does not have the "literary" views and shadings Fussell emphasizes. "Imagination" and emotion do not, in fact, loom large in Dunn's volume. He may have been emotionally constipated - or he may simply have been too busy, too concentrated, on that "work". He is perfectly conscious of the occasionally fantastic element in the rumors the Tommies passed on, but there is nothing much offantasy in his narrative, and no myth - the "Angel of Mons" and "The Bowmen" were invented elsewhere, far from the trench-line and the shells.
One other aspect of the Great War we also won't find in Dunn's book is enclosed in Fussell's chapter, "Soldier Boys", and that is any evidence of the permutations of homoeroticism - or in fact much eroticism of any sort Fussell essentially accuses Graves of concealing his homosexual inclinations; Sassoon didn't conceal his at all. Eventually, Pat Barker's Great War trilogy4 would appear to have created a Doppelgiinger to the homosexual Wilfrid Owen in a character that may have been modeled after Sassoon (shifted to another regiment and killed when Owen was killed) - and Barker took the Booker Prize with The Ghost Roacf, where she was playing, with notterribly-light irony, on the nature of the inhuman and the obscene - in love and in war. Dunn refers only in the most oblique way to how the British soldier was sexually relieved in the rest areas and, despite the fact that he was battalion M.O., makes no mention at all of venereal disease.
4
The pattern we have followed here might be called a narrative-hewn passage leading from a kind of fictional fantasy - Chambers' propaganda-fed orgy of anti-Hun hatred - to a kind of reality in Dunn's detailed, solid, possibly unimaginative and occasionally even stolid narrative of the dreadful "facts" of the War. Clearly, the focus-the Great War, marking what is now called the "end of the long 19th century" - still has the power to energize every sort of endeavor and genre, from the historical memoir to the monographic special view or special argument, to panoptic tours d'horizon (in the latter category the redoubtable John Keegan's recent The First
3 London/Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 1971/1977.
4 Regeneration Trilogy, London: Penguin, 1996.
5 New York: Plume, 1996/London: Penguin, 1996.
World War 6 joins a huge company of war histories, though of course it is written with Keegan's customary skill and flair - and in this case economy).
Nor has "revision" been totally done away with, as witness the furor raised over Niall Ferguson's The Pity of Wa/ which avers that if Great Britain had not gone to war against Imperial Germany all the rest of the 20th century would have been much the better for it.
At any point in this continuum, the fictional imagination can intrude or insert itself. Chambers' overheated hatred of an enemy he never actually met makes for "bad" fiction. And yet the very badness of it tells us something about the darker uses of imagination - a false-heroic imagination turned toward open manipulation. Or was Chambers writing "bad" fiction nevertheless created in a "good" cause - to bring the United States into the war on the Allied side? Depends on your point of view, of course. American authors of some consequence in the wartime and post-war period wrote their own realistic (yet romantic, at least in the first case) fiction (Hemingway, Dos Passos) based approximately on their own experiences, while William Faulkner had desperately wanted to play his part in the war, wasn't able to, and still produced his own "realistic" war stories 8. And here, though we speak of "realistic" fiction, Fussell insists -I think correctly- that in fact new myths emerged from the War-while in another aspect of myth-making, the Yankees had also already begun to create that massive fiction-or-dream factory, the movie studio with its filmed productions - and the interaction or interpenetration of the fictive-imaginative and the real creates such patterns as the "cinematographic" effects Fussell finds already in Dos Passos. (The "silver screen" continues to hold its power: in 9 Quartered Safe Out Here , George MacDonald Frazer's excellent memoir of his WWII service with the 14th Army in Burma, describes a newly-wounded man crying out "They got me! The dirty rats, they got me!", a line taken straight from an American gangster movie.)
For that matter, we don't have to go far to find an analytic linking the Second World War to the First, as Fussell does - both in showing strong and sometimes conscious continuities, and in showing irreversible reactions to the patterns set in the great War, reactions that blocked or disallowed anything like the late Victorian "aesthetic" mode, for instance. Fussell concentrates on British and American sources, but he could also have
6 New York: Alfred Knopf Borzoi, 1998/London: Pimlico, 1999, pb.
7 New York: Basic Books, 1999/London: Penguin, 1999. Actually, Ferguson's work is not so much revision as it is a sort of "time-fantasy", a projection of a completely changed - rebuilt - historical pattern into the future.
8 See the five stories in the section called "The Wasteland" in Collected Stories of William Faulkner (New York: Random House, 1950), while Soldiers ' Pay (1930) is fartially autobiographical. London: HarperCollins, 1993.
remarked on the contrast to be seen between Remarque and Jiinger (with what he perceptively calls their Romantic and sometimes overheated "gothic" imagery) with the grim ironies and the destructive tricksterish warriorComus to be seen in Hans Hellmut Kirst's Gunner Asch books, or the equally dark descriptions of a military Moloch in Theodor Plevier or Willi Heinrich 10
On the Great War: the old men themselves, the survivors, now are almost all gone, and with them the small treasure of personal memory held by each (I'm speaking here as a historian; some of this "treasure" might still be unbearable if brought back into conscious view). The root that ties us to this conflict is, however, very strong, and clearly it supports all sorts ofreal-historical and fictional investigations of the people and events of 1914-1918. Examinations of the more dreadful aspects of trench warfare are nearly a cottage industry, as we see in Lyn MacDonald's collected works. Fictional references and allusions crop up continually. Offhand, I can point to The Wood Beyond' 1 , a recent mystery by Reginald Hill 1 2 in his Pascoe and Dalziel series: part of the plot turns on the truth about the fate of Pascoe's great-grandfather, who had been shot as a deserter during the war. Or Stephen Fry's collection of casual essays, Paperweigh/ 3 Fry notes that when he was involved in the comic Blackadder, with Rowan Atkinson and a cast of similarly ripe loonies, the final avatar of the loathely Blackadder in the Great War's trenches was criticized because these events were thought to be proof against any attempt at humor, gallows or no. Comedy, then, is barely allowable - but on the other hand I doubt that it could ever be possible to reconstruct and convince us with a fictional work that carried all of the fervid, and fevered, power oflate Victorian pre-war imagination, freed absolutely from irony.
Fact, reality, imagination, fantasy, all continue to swirl around in our vision, or visions, of a long-ago war . My own Great War bookshelf continues to grow. A new millennium will not relieve me, or us, of this old burden.Gil
Dean Miller, a professor emeritus of history and comparative religion, was trained as a Byzantinist, but has a long fascination with both military history and historical fiction.
10 In another blending of fiction and history, we note that Plevier, a German Communist, gave his supposedly fictional account of the Stalingrad debacle a German cast of characters; he himself lived in Stalin's Moscow at the time. There is very little ideology - that other Myth - in his stark account.
11 New York: Dell, 1997/London: Harper/Collins, 1997.
12 Hill, who like Robert Barnard, made his reputation with thrillers and romans policiers, has also like Barnard investigated the "historical mystery", as did the late John Buxton Hilton and even Gavin Lyall, a creator of tough and realistic thrillers, spy stories, and the excellent Harry Maxim series. The most skillful writer with a Great War connection remains Anthony Price (Other Paths to Glory).
13 London: Random House/Arrow, 1997.
The Singular Case of the Medieval Sleuth
LUCIENNE BOYCE
carries out an in-depth investigation on behalf of Solander
Broad, low tables were scattered about, which bristled with retorts, test-tubes, and little Bunsen lamps. At the sound of our steps, he glanced round and sprang to his feet with a cry ofpleasure. "I've found it! I've found it!" he shouted, running towards us with a test-tube in his hand. "I have found a re-agent which is precipitated by haemoglobin, and by nothing else. Why, man, it is the most practical medico-legal discovery for years Don 't you see that it gives us an infallible test for blood stains ?"
It should not tax the reader ' s deductive powers too much to infer the identity of the "he" in the above (edited) passage. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle ' s character must be the best known fictional detective, the sleuth with the razorsharp powers of observation and deduction, a profound knowledge of chemistry, an accurate knowledge of anatomy, and a "good practical knowledge of British law''.
As the 19th century saw the application of new scientific methods to the solution of crime, it also saw the development of a new literary genre: the detective novel. Law enforcement officers and writers were swift to exploit
the possibilities of photography, fingerprinting, blood tests, chemical analysis, and autopsies. The crime novel has kept pace with technological changes ever since. It hardly seems logical, then, that anyone would think of trying to backdate the genre to an era where Robert Bunsen and his burner were unknown. Yet there are writers who have transposed the murder mystery to the Middle Ages, a time when forensic science did not exist, when there was no police force, no SOCOs, and no pathologists. Indeed, the science of the era bears little resemblance to what we call science today. We of the 21st century might wonder whether people who had no idea of the existence of germs, and did not know the world was round , could produce a science at all.
If there was no science in the modern sense , there was no detection either. The sheriff had a duty to hunt down and imprison suspects, every man had a duty to join the hue and cry in pursuit of a murderer, the coroner had a duty to inquire into sudden and unnatural deaths , but there was no official whose duty it was to collect evidence in the manner of the modern detective.
So what were the forensic methods of the Middle Ages? I asked Dr. Gwen Seabourne, Lecturer in Law at the University of Bristol, who specialises in pre-1400 English and Welsh legal history, to describe the system to me As all good detective stories start with the corpse, I began by asking Dr Seabourne to imagine that I had just discovered a body. Whom should I tell , what should I do, and what would happen next?
Dr. Seabourne explained that before the end of the twelfth century, the procedures are not well known. "There are presumably community bodies that you would have to report it to, probably the sheriff. " But after 1194 and the introduction of coroners, ' 'we do know a little bit more about what goes on. If you find a body, you are supposed to raise the hue and cry - report it to your neighboursand report it to the coroner. Then the coroner is supposed to come and view the body as soon as possible , and then have his inquest. He swears in his jury, usually twelve people, all male, and they have to decide whether it ' s an accident, a suicide, a murder or a death of natural causes. " If the coroner ' s jury identified someone as the murderer , then that individual would either be kept in prison or bailed, until the Royal Justices arrived for the local Assizes, when he would be tried .
An autopsy, an inquest, a trial it looks very similar to what happens today Dr Seabourne rapidly dispelled my assumption of too much familiarity. For one thing, the coroner's jury was not like a modern jury. It was not their task to hear evidence. " They are supposed to know what happened, to just give the answer. They tell the coroner what happened, what they think happened . . . sometimes that ' s going to be a bit unrealistic in that they weren't there when it happened , so they have just got to suppose."
They were drawn from amongst the victim's neighbours, and their decision would certainly be influenced by their involvement in the community. Dr. Seabourne points out that ''the coroner's jury might have said they thought someone was guilty on the basis of
reputation". It's important to remember too that there were no rules about hearsay evidence, so the jurors might discuss the case amongst themselves, or with other people, before reaching their verdict. On the other hand, a stranger in town could very well fall under suspicion. Even though jurors were drawn from four neighbouring villages in an effort to limit local bias, "it is reasonably well proven that they protected their own and were very harsh on outsiders".
As for the autopsy, this would be performed by the coroner himself, who would have no medical or anatomical training. Nor were there any experts he could call in. Dissection of cadavers might be practised in Universities on the Continent, such as Montpellier and Padua, but it was not practised in the small medical faculties at Oxford and Cambridge. It was very unlikely that there would be anyone locally with that level of expertise. Even if there were, there were no chemical tests, and little understanding of the pathology of disease or injury. There are occasional instances of French and Italian courts ordering autopsies, but in England the coroner's examination was limited to externals only, and it is unlikely that he would use instruments of any kind. Obvious wounds and bruises would be noted, but internal injuries were simply not detected. Poisoning or smothering might very well go unnoticed if there were no external manifestations, especially if the victim were already weakened by age, injury or illness. Dr. Seabourne remarked that although she has "looked at a lot of coroner's records, I've never come across a poison one". And if the body was discovered in an advanced state of decomposition, possibly very little could be inferred about the cause of death.
This is not to say that no one had any knowledge of human anatomy. Physicians did not perform clinical examinations on their patients (although they might examine the urine to determine humour imbalance), but barbers and surgeons were required to serve long apprenticeships - six or seven years. At the end of their training, the operations they performed might include opening the skull, treating cataracts, setting bones, sewing wounds, letting blood and drawing teeth. Authorities such as Guy de Chauliac considered knowledge of anatomy essential: "a cirurgien is a werkman of the helthe ofmanis body ... and by this manere resoun, he is holden to konne anothomye."
In time of war, there was ample opportunity for medical practitioners to study wounds. After the Battle of Shrewsbury in 1403, the Prince of Wales had a barbed arrow embedded six inches deep on the left side of his nose, for the removal of which surgeon John Bradmore devised a special instrument. There would be plenty of less illustrious patients strewn across the battlefield to practise on (in every sense of the word!). And the deceased, whether soldier or civilian, had to be buried. At least in royal and baronial families, a surgeon might be employed to remove the viscera and embalm the dead. But these types of practical knowledge would not necessarily be available to the coroner in his city or county.
Finally, the trial little resembled its modern counterpart. Before 1215, you were likely to be tried by ordeal, a process overseen by the church. But at the Lateran Council in that year, the Church ruled that ordeal was no longer permissible. Other than that, there was trial by battle, but from the late 13th century judges tended to restrict its use. By this time, it had become a ritualised display, opponents fighting with wooden staves and wooden shields. Theoretically, trial by battle was still available - in fact there was an attempt to claim the right to trial by battle in the 19th century - but it was not common. The alternative was trial by jury, which, incidentally, the defendant was required to opt for. Ifhe refused to do so, then he might be pressed with heavy weights, sometimes with a fatal result, in an attempt to make him change his mind.
Trial by jury has a modern ring to it, but the resemblance is superficial. There were no statute definitions of murder, and theories of provocation, duress, defences about mental state, and self-defence were not well developed. "The court," says Dr Seabourne, "looked at the harm rather than the guilt...ifyou killed somebody, you're guilty". However, there were things that would virtually automatically be pardoned, such as self-defence (though, says Dr. Seabourne, "you really have to be backed into a comer before it would be regarded as manslaughter and not murder"), minority, and very serious duress. There were also categories of people whom you were permitted to kill: outlaws. But, "if you were not pardoned, you would be executed by hanging." There was no legal representation, which was not a defendant's right until the 19th century. "It's not that somebody comes along and argues the case for one side, and somebody argues the case for the other". Trials were for that reason quite quick, and the verdict of the coroner's inquiry would very probably determine their outcome. "They are overturned at the later sessions, but not often," observes Dr. Seabourne.
No detection, no forensic science, no gripping court room scenes what do writers of medieval whodunnits find to write about? You'd think that, labouring under such limitations, a writer with any sense would abandon the attempt. In fact, far from being restricted by their choice of period and genre, these historical novelists have one huge factor in their favour. No one knows what really went on.
"The advantage as far as novelists are concerned," Dr. Seabourne explains, "is that there is very little actual evidence of what sort of evidence could be used in court, because the records just don't report that sort of thing. They would say so and so had done this, and he's guilty or he's not guilty, and they wouldn't tell you really what the process was whereby it was found that he was guilty or not". Court and coroner's records are voluminous. But all they tell you is who was killed, who was accused, who was executed: nothing of how the suspect came into the dock. As Dr. Seabourne says, "It's hard to see how we would ever find out, so I think it is a subject for decent speculation". Or, as author Professor Bernard Knight puts
it, "the lack of records is a mixed blessing, as no one can contradict my flights of fancy!"
So writers speculate. Or, to put it more accurately, they fill the gaps with fiction. So, let's say I want to write a medieval crime novel. How would I set about it?
I'd consult the experts.
A Question of Identity
My main problem is to find my "detective". He - or she - must have some degree of mobility in order to attend scenes of crime; some knowledge of anatomy and/or specialist knowledge that is useful to an investigation; a sufficient knowledge of the law; and be historically plausible. Monks are good choices. Ellis Peters's Brother Cadfael was a soldier (saw lots of dead and dying peopleas a monk might also administer last rites); travelled (picked up lots of esoteric knowledge); and is a herbalist (can spot poisons and, in the course of his duties caring for the sick, frequently leaves his monastery). He is also a close friend of the local sheriff(legal knowledge easily obtainable), who in his turn often seeks Cadfael's advice when a crime has been committed.
Choosing someone with some kind of medical training, like Cadfael's, is a good line to take. Candace Robb's Lucie Wilton is an apothecary in York. By coupling her skills and knowledge with her husband's - an ex-captain of archers who is frequently travelling away from homethe author can overcome any difficulties of having a female character who is rooted to one place. Similarly, Susanna Gregory's Matthew Bartholomew is a physician, and teaches medicine in Cambridge.
Medicine is not the only route. Mike Jecks' Sir Baldwin de Furnshill was a Templar, and as Mike Jecks explained to me, "a Templar would have had experience on a wide front: educated, a trained fighter, used to extensive trading around the known world - he would have been an excellent protagonist". As for historical plausibility, ''the Templars were destroyed in 1307, and many of them disappeared ! proposed that my friend Baldwin managed to avoid the torture and instead escaped to his old family estates in Devon". Needing someone with better local knowledge to assist Baldwin, Mike Jecks developed Simon Puttock, who is "an important man in Dartmoor, being the Bailiff of the Stannaries under the Warden".
Ian Morson's main character, William Falconer, "evolved out of Friar Roger Bacon, a real historical character. I wanted him to have Bacon's attitude of iconoclasm, and preparedness to challenge orthodox thinking." Falconer is Regent Master of the University of Oxford, who ''teaches according to the medieval system of the time, relying on Aristotelian logic to solve his murder mysteries."
It does seem then that there are occasionally real historical figures who fit the bill. P.C. Doherty "bases his characters on real people, e.g. Hugh Corbett is based on a genuine medieval clerk who was used by Edward I to investigate matters".
But perhaps the best-placed character of all is a coroner, such as P.C. Doherty's Sir John Cranston, whose secretary, Brother Athelstan, is there to supply many of the monkish advantages. That there are plenty of opportunities to write stories around such a character is evidentProfessor Bernard Knight will be publishing the sixth in his Crowner John series (featuring Sir John de Wolfe, the first Royal Coroner for Devon) next year.
The Statement of the Case
There's plenty of scope, then, for finding a suitable character - and of course, I'm not limited to the types outlined above. Edward Marston's Ralph Delchard and Gervase Brett are Domesday Commissioners, which makes possible a wonderful variety of adventures and settings. Otherwise, I can place my characters in one place - Shrewsbury, Cambridge, York, Devon - and use all my local historical knowledge and research to realise their setting.
What I really need now is a plot. Susanna Gregory, while she makes her characters up, bases her stories on real events. Ian Morson too says that "specific events in history fire my imagination". Dr. Doherty, who has a "deep absorption with history and particularly historical mysteries - Richard Il's death, the Percy conspiracy, the strange death of Henry IV, the mysterious death of York at the Battle of Agincourt", is interested in ''the nwnber of attempts, by different authorities on history, to investigate murder, and the process of justice involved". But Mike Jecks is "happy to bring in modem-day situations as a device to demonstrate first that there is nothing new in modem-day murder, but also to give a hint as to how things would have gone on in the past. I often take modem cases and transfer them back in time".
In Quest of a Solution
Now for the really tricky bit. I've got a place , I've got a plot, I've got my character standing over a dead body. They can't do blood tests, take fingerprints, or use a thermometer to check the body's temperature. What can they do?
Quite a lot. For one thing, they can look. They can observe the victim's surroundings. Perhaps there are signs of a struggle - "cooking pots lay on the stone floor wine dripped onto the floor " -as in Candace Robb's The Nun 's Tale. Or they can ask a witness, possibly the person who discovered the corpse, to describe what they saw. "I had seen that on the side of that stack the wind had carried fine ash right into the trees, and the near branches of the trees were scorched " one very observant witness tells Brother Cadfael in The Devil 's Novice. The position of the body can reveal a lot: Cadfael can tell from the way his stabbing victim is lying that she "had heard someone stealing close behind her, and whirled about with hands flung up to protect her head"
Much can be deduced from what the victim is wearing. Valuables left on the body - belts, buckles, bracelets -
suggest that the motive was not robbery. The murdered girl in The Nun's Tale is found wearing a blue shawl on a warm day, so she must have been murdered in the nightalthough this leads to a further puzzle: why was she fully dressed if it was night? Much can be inferred from the victim's appearance - the dead woman in The Devil's Domain might be decently dressed, but from the traces of paint on her fingernails and dye in her hair, Brother Athelstan realises that she is a whore. Clothes and accessories might help to identify a dead person -a distinctive weapon or piece of jewellery perhaps.
Weather conditions will tell the eagle-eyed investigator a great deal. "There's snow under her," said Brother Cadfael, " It was after the snow began that she fell. She was on her way home." Sometimes weather conditions are unhelpful - hard ground means there will be no footprints, so no way of telling in what direction the murderer fled, or what kind of shoes they were wearing.
Investigators can use their sense of smell. "Athelstan sniffed. There was an odour, slightly sweetish." They can touch. "Athelstan pressed his hand against Maneil's cheek. It was not yet cold." And, coupled with observations of the crime scene, the position of the corpse, the victim's clothes and so on, they can use their specialist knowledge, or that of a witness. Athelstan consults a man who makes bows and arrows in The Devil's Domain. It helps to know how long it takes grass to grow back when Cadfael is trying to determine how long a corpse has been lying in woodland, and as Hugh Beringer remarks, "There are those who can tell to a hair, by the burrowing insects and the spiders, and the tinder fringing the wood". P.C. Doherty's dead whore claimed to have walked from Dovet, but her shoes and clothes are free of chalky soil, an observation for which only the most rudimentary knowledge of geography is required. Sometimes it is the murderer's knowledge that is significant. The method of disposal of the corpse in The Devil's Novice suggests someone who knew how to build a charcoal fire, which limits the suspects somewhat.
Views The Body
But what about the body itself? Well, there are the obvious things. Candace Robb's strangled victim's "swollen face, split lip, the blood on her skirt and hands, and most of all the ugly dark bruise on her throat made it plain that Maddy's death had not been peaceful. " Although both Cadfael and Athelstan are presented with burned bodies, they are able to determine the cause of death by the presence of arrow heads or steel blades in or near the corpse. A crossbow in the throat is an unmistakable indication of how the victim died. Coupled with a description of the bloodstain, however, and the size of the wound, Athelstan deduces that the weapon was fired at close range. And this is where the real challenge lies. Just how much medical knowledge could a medieval detective demonstrate?
Knowledge that could have been gleaned from experience is plausible. An infirmarer in Umberto Eco's
The Name ofthe Rose recognises signs of drowningswollen face, taut belly. Apothecary Lucie Wilton, examining a living person, is able to tell which of her injuries are fresh, and which are old, and from "a red streak in the whites of her eyes" that she had been beaten "and not very long ago". Lucie also doubts that cuts and bruises on the girl's back were caused by a fall: "It was unlikely that her clumsiness would make her fall backwards ... "
Expertise in poisons is something that is linked with the Medieval Age, when use of herbs for medical purposes was widespread, and so it is easy to believe in a character who possesses this skill. In fact, it's an extremely valuable speciality for the medieval detective to command, with the obscurity of the poison being a major factor in the crimeand demonstrating the brilliance of the detective. We've already noted that poisons that left no external signs would go undetected, so very possibly it was a "hidden crime".
Working from the principle that, as Edward Marston put it, ''there are enough gaps in our knowledge of medieval history to allow imagination free rein", it's obviously a good crime to write about.
Poisons that leave little or no trace are effective, as in The Name of the Rose, or they may leave obvious symptoms but be exceedingly rare and exotic. Athelstan, whose examinations of the corpse are always extremely detailed, observes "The skin of the face was puffed and discoloured dark purple blotches discoloured the chest ... " Forcing a ''thin-stemmed horn spoon" into the victim's mouth he notices that ''the cadaver was stiff although the jaw was still slightly slack. The pink skin inside the mouth had turned a dark purplish hue, the gums and tongue were swollen. Athelstan knew and recognised a number of poisons but not this "
The modem reader will no doubt realise the significance of the slack jaw, the muscles of which are affected by rigor mortis before the larger muscle masses. How far can knowledge of the bodily changes after death be taken? Some writers take it very far indeed. In The Devil's Domain, a physician, basing his conclusion on how far rigor is advanced - "his body was stiff and cold"places the time of death at 9 pm. Cadfael and Hugh Beringer know more about the human corpse than the stages of rigor. When all they have is a charred skeleton, Hugh calculates"' ... his height by the look of his bones, a tall man's. What age would you say, Cadfael?' 'He's straight, and without any of the deformities of ageing. A young man. Thirty he might be, I doubt more.' "
Candace Robb includes two exhumations in The Nun's Tale. "Much too much flesh for a year old corpse", concludes the examiner at the first, and at the second Owen Archer "against the sickeningly sweet smell of rotting flesh" realises that ground conditions being damp, ''the bodies would go quickly".
The Final Problem
It appears then that it's perfectly possible for my medieval sleuth to glean enough from a corpse to solve a
case without access to modem scientific methods and equipment. The question is, does it work? Perhaps some of our detectives' preoccupations, such as establishing time of death, do seem a little too modem. "You haven't touched anything, have you?" enquires P.C. Doherty's Athelstan at one crime scene, a question that has a very contemporary ring to it, when scenes are sealed to avoid spoilage of forensic evidence.
Although some authors do refer to contemporary models of the human constitution such as the theory of the humours - Lucie Wilton observes that apothecaries "can do much to balance the humours" and suggests various herbal treatments to her patient - they tend not to dwell too much on the complexities of a system incorporating astrology, phlebotomy, uroscopy, cupping, or regular purgation. It is hard to accept that someone brought up in a culture informed by such philosophies could view a body as if they did not exist.
Of course, these matters aren't necessarily relevant if you are telling a murder story, nor are they easy for the modem reader to sympathise with. Explaining the "difference between modem day thinking and that of our ancestors" is the "greatest challenge" for Mike Jecks . Edward Marston remarks on the problem of getting "readers in a materialist culture to understand what living in an Age of Faith must have meant". Ian Morson said that while he "ensures historical verity through research", "internal mental attitudes and outlook are probably not accurate but modern". Susanna Gregory noted that "sometimes it's hard getting the balance right between historical accuracy (including attitudes that we now find morally offensive that were the norm then) and telling a believable story".
"'You ' re better skilled than I in dead men,'" says Hugh to Cadfael in The Devil 's Novice, "in how long they may have been dead, and how they died." Is it plausible that in the Middle Ages, people could have known so much about wounds , rigor mortis, and putrefaction? It 's not so unlikely. These days death is hospitalised, sanitised, it's less usual for people to attend the dead and dying in the way that our ancestors did. The women washing and enshrouding the body, the monk administering the last rites, the scavengers picking over the bodies rotting in the mud of the battlefield, the healer tending people smitten with plague, these people would know what death looked like. As Mike Jecks also points out, real violence was a part of their entertainment: they paid ''to watch two men fighting with swords, daggers, staffs and other weapons, or going to see a hanging." Terrible injuries and untreated disease were everyday sights. So much so, that I've come to think that if there is any anachronism in the novels, it's in the health, strength and beauty of the main characters! As for how realistic the crimes are, it is difficult to be certain what kinds of crimes were prevalent during the period. Domestic murder and brawls linked to alcohol consumption, in a period when drinking water was not a healthy option, are common, but reported cases of multiple murder are rare. Nevertheless, serial killings are a staple of the crime novel. But why not? Given the undeveloped
state of detection and that some parts of the country were virtually lawless (notably border areas), it may well have been easier to get away with murder in the Middle Ages.
The Conclusion
Undoubtedly there are problems peculiar to the medieval crime novel. Bernard Knight, who is a recentlyretired Professor of Forensic Medicine, a Home Office pathologist, and author of twelve text books, is perhaps best placed to summarise them. "With Crowner John, I have to be careful. not letting him use even crude methods that would not have existed in his day. However, all his rough and ready examinations of corpses are authentic!"
Historical accuracy is one thing, telling a gripping story in an authentic way another For Edward Marston, historical crime novels "should be a compromise between entertainment and scholarship ." And that medieval crime novels are readable is plain from their continued popularity . When the facts are well presented, and what is imagined is plausible , this is not surprising. Far from abandoning the attempt, with all its acknowledged difficulties, I suspect that writers will continue to develop the genre for some time to come.GQ
Credits
Dr. P.C. Doherty is the creator of coroner Sir John Cranston and Brother Athelstan his secretary, author of the Hugh Corbett medie val mysteries, and has also set murder mysteries in Ancient Egypt. His books are published by Headline UK/St Martin's Press US.
Edward Marston is the author of a series of whodunnits featuring Delchard & Gervase Brett, land commissioners, also published by Headline UK/St Martin's Press US. Professor Bernard Knight CBE , whose Crowner John trilogy about the first coroner for Devon will soon be up to five , with a sixth contracted for next year. His books are published by Simon & Schuster UK/F.A.Thorpe US. Michael Jecks is the creator of Sir Baldwin Fumshill, Keeper of the King's Peace and his books are published by Headline UK USffrafalgar Square US.
Ian Morson is the author of the Falconer mysteries featuring William Falconer, Regent Master of Oxford University, published by Gollancz UK/St Martin's Pr US. Susanna Gregory is the creator of Cambridge sleuth Matthew Bartholomew. Her books are published by Warner UK/St Martin's Press US.
Lucienne Boyce reviews for HNR and edits the HNS Online Newsletter. Since taking a philosophy degree at Sheffield University, she has followed a couple of mistaken vocations, but all she really wants to do is write. She now works part-time to finance her habit. Though not yet published , she delights in her life of writing, reading and general bookishness.
Writing The Roman Eagle
SIMON SCARROW
tells Sarah Cuthbertson about UNDER THE EAGLE, the first of his military adventure series
Simon Scarrow hasn't got used being referred to as an author, even though his first novel was published in July this year. But Under the Eagle is part of a three-book deal, so perhaps by the time book three hits the store shelves, he might start to feel like the real thing.
The novel, the first of a projected series, is set in the Roman army at the time of the Emperor Claudius' invasion of that fearsomely barbaric island at the edge of the world - Britain. Its hero, Cato, is an endearingly unsuitable new recruit in the crack Second Legion Augusta, stationed in Germany and commanded by the future emperor Vespasian. Everything about Cato is wrong - his build (too puny), his background (too imperial), his education (too much). His new colleagues, including the tough, gruff senior centurion Macro, are either sceptical of him or downright contemptuous. But to his credit, he sets out to earn their respect in a series of adventures involving
not a little convoluted political intrigue, beginning in Germany and ending in the first of what promise to be many bloody encounters with the intransigent Brits . The second novel will find Cato and Macro in the midst of the invasion, involved in a desperate bid to save the Emperor Claudius himself from a treacherous killer.
I ask Simon why he chose the Roman Empire for his setting and the Roman army in particular. He attributes his interest in the classical period to two inspiring teachers. The first led him on from Greek mythology ("fascinating for an 8-year-old") , through the Iliad and the Odyssey to the Punic Wars. In the hands of the second, a Latin master, he became mesmerised by Roman culture.
And the great movie spectaculars fired an already receptive imagination: " Ben Hur, Cleopatra, Fall of the Roman Empire, and of course now we have Gladiatorthey couldn't have timed it better for me! When I saw the battle scene, I thought 'This is how I imagined it'.
"Why the Roman army? Well, I love the Hornblower and Sharpe novels. I wanted to write something along those lines but not that period, and as far as I knew no one had written a military series set in Roman times. So my two interests came together - ancient Rome and military adventure."
One of the delights of Under the Eagle is the vivid portrayal of army life - the camaraderie, the hardships, the humour and the colourful language. Simon's Roman soldiers seem very much like modem-day soldiers He agrees. "The point about the Roman legions is that they were the first professional army in history that we know of. They had a career structure, regular pay, logistics corps, virtually everything that maps onto a modem army A legion was the equivalent of a modem brigade, and they had tactical units, the cohorts, that were battalion-size. So , if their organisation was similar, it follows that their needs and probably their attitudes would be too. The centurions certainly were a highly professional lot and there was a strong regimental tradition."
The dialogue is liberally laced with four-Jetter words. Was this part of the plan to create an atmosphere of authenticity? "Yes. What I deliberately tried to do was inject the modem military argot that I recall from my cadet corps days and the OTC. NCOs have a brilliant line in patter. It's as much as you can do to stop yourself laughing, even when they're bollocking you. So I took that and tried to put it into the Roman army so that it lived and breathed. Some people have said they don't expect historical characters to talk this way. And one person was slightly negative - not about the swearing itself but the fact that it's a modern form of swearing . I can see that this might jolt a reader temporarily out of the story, but equally it's part of what's going on. The point I'm trying to get across is that while you're reading the book, it isn't history - I'm trying to create a sense of here and now. So to a degree you have to go with the language. And how do we know these guys didn 't talk like that? In no army in the world would you find polite NCOs - they're brutalists, so
their language is obviously brutal. I reckon at least 30% of it is made up of expletives - so, if anything, I've toned the language down."
Steven Saylor, author of the Gordianus Roman detective series, has made interesting comparisons between the politics of ancient Rome and those of his native USA. Does Simon see any parallels? "They were fascinating people. They had tremendous self-confidence and belief in a manifest destiny, just like modem Americans and Victorian Britons. And of course the same idea that wherever you go, you take your culture with you."
Nowadays, an author of historical novels can't take the reader's background knowledge of his period for granted. Did Simon find it difficult to insert exposition without it sounding incongruous or holding up the story? "In first draft mode, I wrote as if everybody would understand everything that was going on. I think you need to write that way first and worry about background later, during the editing. Both my agent and editor were a great help with that. You have to build up a depth of background without hitting people with too much at once. For example, a conversation where one person mentions something and another adds to it or asks a question. That way the reader won't feel he's getting a lecture. Cato is the perfect vehicle for this -a new recruit, an ingenu, the eternal outsiderthe reader learns with him."
Was research a problem or a pleasure? "I enjoy it. And with the new emphasis among historians and archaeologists on practical research, it's great. John Peddie, an ex-army officer in an infantry battalion, has done elaborate calculations about Roman military logistics and of course there are re-enactment groups and reconstructions now, too: 'Let's make the things and see how they work.'"
Hornblower crops up in the conversation frequently. Simon is obviously a great admirer. "Yes, C.S. Forester has been a big influence. I'm a great re-reader of favourite novels and I'm always going back to Hornblower. What appeals to me most is the characterisation and humanity behind the action. This is what I've sought to create in Under the Eagle."
I ask Simon ifhe always wanted to write. "Absolutely. My father could have fixed me up with a good job in the City, but I wanted to get on by my own efforts and writing was the way to do that- it's mostly about being appreciated for what you've done alone. That gives me a real kick. I started with short stories when I was 17 or 18. Then I wrote a couple of novels, one of which nearly got published. And a play that was nearly staged."
He took a creative writing course while at the University of East Anglia ("not the famous Creative Writing MA"), but he found that students were expected to emulate the styles of a current canon of authors. "I wondered to what extent that could be called creative. For me, writing is more than just style. What's more important is entertaining people." For some time he's belonged to a writers' group in Norwich, where he lives. Its members share his philosophy, and some, like him, are published or about to be published. "What's good about the group is its honesty.
There's no politeness. It's really useful for sharpening up your writing, but you have to grow that extra layer of skin and remember that it's not you they're judging but what you've written."
What about the publishing process? "First I contacted publishers - a bad move. I realised this when I first visited my editor at Headline. She showed me the slush pile, which was stacked from floor to ceiling the entire length of a corridor. The difference between that and the pile of manuscripts from agents brought it home to me that the only way to get a publisher's attention is via an agent.
"I was very impressed with my agent. She read the manuscript and came up with twelve pages of notes about what she wanted me to change. Thirty thousand words had to go, for a start. That was a surprisingly liberating thing, and good for self-discipline. I knew then that I was on the right track. Then she offered it to several publishers. One editor really liked it, but wanted me to change it into a historical crime novel! I said no - well, she said she liked it, but if I changed it, it would be a different novel. I couldn't see the logic behind that."
A marketing ploy, I suggest. After all, historical detectives are "sexy" just now. Perhaps, I add, this is your cue to show that the Roman army can be "sexy" too.
I bring up the subject of a historical novelist's duty to the facts, in view of Hollywood's cavalier dismissal of them in several recent films. "That's difficult. There's macrohistory and micro-history. The macro stuff, as 'in 43 AD the Romans invaded Britain', is indisputable, or at least you'd have a hard time disproving it. But on a lesser level, for example, when I "invented" Vespasian, I think a writer should be allowed some licence. You trawl through every document and use what you find as a key to the character's psychology. I think you have to grant that kind oflatitude to a writer of historical fiction, otherwise how does he differ from a historian?
"As for Hollywood, there's a point at which you have to surrender to their version of events if you 're going to enjoy the film. But if you have some knowledge, there are jarring moments that temporarily break the spell - the onepiece moulding of the legionaries' helmets in Gladiator, for instance. Sometimes it's irritating. Then you think, fair enough, this is Hollywood and Hollywood will always do this."
And the future? "I don't see myself as a full-time writer, even if I could afford to be. Writing is too solitary as it is. I need plenty of company to keep me stimulated. I might dream about being a full-time writer but the reality would be different .I'd like to take Cato as far as I can, and there's certainly great mileage in the military history of the decades following 43 AD."oa
Simon Scarrow is a graduate of the University of East Anglia and teaches Media Studies at Norwich City College. Headline will publish Under the Eagle in pb in Spring 2001 and the next novel in hb in June 2001.The US edition of Under the Eagle will be published in 2001 by St Martin's Press. You can find Simon's Cato's Forum website at www.scarrow.fsnet.co.uk
ILet's Hear It For Harold!
1066, the most famous of all dates - the Battle of Hastings. At school we learnt that Columbus discovered America, Drake preferred to play bowls rather than fight the Spanish Armada - and Harold was killed by an arrow in the eye when William of Normandy conquered England as its rightful king. Historical facts - or so we have always believed! Yet Columbus already knew how long the journey would take, and Drake knew he could finish his game because he could not sail until the tide had turned. And Harold - well, Harold may not have been killed by an arrow, and William was a usurper who had no right whatsoever to the English crown. Spin-doctoring is nothing new! The propaganda established by William's medieval media-managers has lasted an entire millennium. Even the term "conquest" is exaggerated. William was crowned king, but the English were never "conquered": we did not become Norman, the Normans became English. For proof, I am talking to you in English, not French. General history tends to start at 1066 when Normandy swept the Dark Ages into irrelevance. Reigning monarchs are numbered from William: Edward I disregards three previous Saxon Edwards - the Elder, Martyr and Confessor. A future Harold would be Harold I, not III.
HELEN HOLLICK'S
counterblast to the Norman propaganda machine, based on her research for her latest novel, HAROID
Within twenty years of the Conquest, after the North was razed and Domesday compiled, Harold's reign of nine months and nine days was completely undermined. Despite legitimate crowning and anointing, he was systematically downgraded to his pre-1066 title of Earl, and portrayed as a loser - discredited because William had to justify political murder.
THE KING
wrote Ha:old the King_ because I'm fed up with the idea that our history started m 1066 - we've a rich and wonderful Saxon culture. And William has got away with his propaganda for too long! I think my leaning for novel writing seems to be heading for the "what might have really happened" scenario, with all the propaganda and justification stripped away - as the myth and magic was stripped from my trilogy, so the Norman spin-doctoring was taken out of Harold. I just wanted to write Harold's story, I suppose. This is the talk I gave at the Battle of Hastings re-enactment on 14-15 October 2000, the 934th anniversary. It was most odd being at the battle on THE day - there was a distinct atmosphere there.
William's claim was that King Edward- later canonised and called the Confessor - had appointed him his heir. Despite swearing an oath to support William, Harold seized the throne and in indecent haste, was crowned on the same day as the old king's funeral. Outraged, William ordered an invasion of England, and while Halley's Comet blazed in the sky, a fleet was assembled. In September, he crossed the English Channel without mishap. In the meantime, Harold's brother, possibly supporting William, had invaded Yorkshire. Moving swiftly, Harold marched to Stamford Bridge near York and won a victory, but when he heard of William's landing, he had to return south.
Medieval spin-doctors would have us believe that Harold was a poor commander who fought with a tired and depleted army against the elite supremacy of a Norman cavalry. Victorious, William marched on London and was crowned in all splendour in Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day.
In or around 1077, Duke William's half-brother Bishop Odo of Bayeux, commissioned a tapestry to' depict these events. William of Poi tiers was writing a detailed version, and William of Jumieges had recounted the Conquest in 1070. All three Norman sources are heavily biased. Their explicit purpose: to prove to a Papal inquiry concerned over the level of brutality and aggression, that William's conquest had been justified- in itself a need that screams foul play.
Strip away the Norman gilding, and what do you get? Edward was the eldest son of .tEthelred "the Unready" and Emma, a Norman. Her father was William's greatgrandfather; his grandfather had been a Viking, a North Man (Nor 'Man) who settled in a comer of France, embraced Christianity and established Normandy. When Cnut invaded and conquered England, Emma sent Edward to her country of birth. .tEthelred died and, wanting to remain queen, Emma promptly married Cnut - all of which, as an early plug, will be the basis of my next novel, due to be published sometime in the next few years.
Edward remained in exile for over thirty years, until he was recalled to England to become king.
Harold's father, Earl Godwine of Wessex, was the most powerful man beneath the king. Five of his six sons became earls and his daughter Edith became Edward's queen - but the union was never consummated: Edward, in his piety, declared himself celibate. Was this to curb Godwin's ambition or did he distrust women? Hardly surprising if he did after the way his mother had abandoned him. Was he homosexual? Whatever the reason, the consequence was a childless marriage.
Meanwhile in Normandy, no one had expected an illegitimate seven-year-old son of a tanner's daughter to succeed as Duke, but William's father, Duke Robert, died with no other son. Intrigue, plot and murder were to shadow the boy. To his credit, William survived into adulthood, although it is a shame that there was not an 11th-century equivalent of the social worker or behaviour therapist because he sure could have done with one!
Fighting with vigour and determination , William became a skilled commander and siege tactician. He expanded Normandy and gained independence from France. He was single-minded and ruthless: when he invaded England, houses and churches were burnt regardless of the innocent sheltering within. William was the inventor of death by incarceration in a dungeon and being left to starve.
Edward might have suggested to William that he be his heir in 1051/2 when the Godwines were temporarily disgraced and exiled, but William failed to realise one important aspect - primogeniture was in the ascendancy in Normandy, but things were different in England. Here, the most able, the most kingworthy, was elected, chosen as king by the Council. When Edward died on 5 January 1066, England was open to attack and Harold was the only man thought worthy to take his place.
Skilled in diplomacy and government, he was a proven and capable commander. It was Harold who first conquered Wales, not William's descendant, Edward I. He was the first king to be crowned in Westminster Abbey, founded by Edward. The coronation took place on the day of the funeral because, knowing the king was dying, everyone of importance had been at court for several weeks. They now needed to return home and England could not be left vulnerable until the next calling of Council at Easter. There was nothing untoward about accomplishing such important issues on the same day.
But what of that oath to William? In 1064, Harold went to Normandy, his voyage duly recorded in the Bayeux Tapestry- actually an embroidery. Norman sources declare he went to offer William the crown; more likely he was hoping to achieve the release of his brother Wulfnoth and nephew Hakon, held hostage by William since that temporary disgrace of Godwine back in 1052. He did return home with Hakon, but Wulfnoth never saw his freedom.
Harold went on campaign with the Duke, earning himself honours by rescuing two men from drowning near Mont St Michel. But did he have any choice in that oathmaking? What would have been the consequences for Harold and his men ifhe had refused? William, as his own vassals knew and Harold probably discovered, was not a man you said non to.
For a Saxon nobleman it is a matter of honour to protect those you command. To place his men in danger by refusing William would therefore bring a greater dishonour to Harold. And anyway, an oath sworn under circumstances of coercion is not regarded as binding.
As for Harold's command at Hastings-he showed aptitude and courage, dignity and ability. Norman propaganda states that he fought with tired men, with only half the fyrd - the army - and without the support of the North. Tosh!
In mid-September, Harold had marched from London to York in five days to confront his jealous, traitorous brother Tostig, who had allied with Harald Hardrada of Norway. The southern fyrd, on alert all summer, had been stood down. He took only his housecarls - his permanent army- North. Undoubtedly, they were mounted for no infantry could cover that distance so quickly. Already the fyrds of the Midlands and the North had fought and lost in a great battle at Gate Fulford, outside York. Under Harold's command, they fought again - this time to winat Stamford Bridge.
It was not that the nobility and the men of the fyrd did not want to support Harold at Hastings; they could not, for their numbers were savagely depleted, many of the survivors wounded and exhausted. It would have been impossible for them to have marched south when news came that William had landed. The northern earls did in fact follow Harold as soon as they could but, of course, by then it was already too late.
The battle that took place a few miles inland from Hastings is almost unique for this period. Fighting was usually over within the hour, two at most. This battle lasted all day. The English, for the most part, stood firm along the ridge that straddled the road out into the Weald, stood shield locked against shield, William's men toiling again and again up that hill. This was deliberate strategy on Harold's part. He and his men had marched to York and back, fought a battle in between. Doesn't it make good sense to make the opponent do all the hard work? Yes, perhaps Harold should have waited before committing his men to fight, but he probably had no choice in the decision: once out into the Weald, it would have been difficult to confront William. Within the Hastings
peninsula, he and the damage he was doing were firmly contained. Harold had to keep him there, therefore he had to fight.
Three times William was unhorsed. Three times the Normans began to retreat; only the fear of William's wrath held them together, although the Norman writers portrayed their blind panic as strategic withdrawal.
Nor was William's crossing of the Channel as straightfoiward as his spin-doctors suggested. He had sailed earlier in the summer, but was turned back. Bodies and wreckage on the Normandy beaches were buried in secret Why? If bad weather was the cause, why the need for a mass cover-up? It is more likely that he met with the superiority of the English warships, a disaster that subsequent propaganda would most definitely suppress!
The Bayeux Tapestry depicts a man wounded by an arrow in his eye, and another being felled by a sword , the words Here Harold is killed above both Which one is Harold? It is a controversy that has raged with heated argument!
Personally, I think the case against the arrow is more convincing. Stitch marks in the tapestry may indicate that the shaft of the supposed arrow was originally longer -a spear about to be thrown, not an arrow reaching its target. If that was Harold's death, why was it not more clearly shown? The trauma of such a wound would disable instantly, if not kill outright, yet we know that, although wounded, Harold fought on
He died at the hands of four of William ' s noblemen who hacked him to pieces, dismembering and decapitating him . The truth of Hastings is that our last, most noble English king died slowly and bloodily , was savagely murdered on the battlefield.
Harold ' s " common law'' wife had to find and identify the bloodied remains. He had married the sister of the northern earls for political alliance early in 1066, but for more than twenty years had remained faithful to Edith Swan-neck from Nazeing in Essex. She bore him six children, nursed him through sickness and witnessed his building of Waltham Abbey. When the torso was found , his mother offered his weight in gold so that Harold might have Christian burial. William refused her.
William later did penance for initiating such wicked death by founding Battle Abbey - the high altar was placed where Harold fell. Those of us who dispute the Norman version of events will remember Harold for what he really was : fJcet wces god cyning, that he was a good king who gave his life defending England from foreign invasion, and who has paid the penalty of deliberately twisted truth ever since.Ga
Helen Hollick's latest novel , Harold the King, was published in the UK by Heinemann in October 2000 and reviewed in HNR 14. Her Arthurian novels , The Kingmaking, Pendragon 's Banner and Shadow of the King , are published in Arrow pb (newed 2000) UK and in St Martin's Press hb US.
Historical Romance: A Transatlantic Conversation
So"lander gets MARINA OLIVER and TERESA ECKFORD to put their heads together over a few . . pertment questions ...
What type of romantic historical fiction is popular (by this I mean style, literary or light, focus on war and politics or romance, physical setting such as towns or rural, wealthy or poor characters, and specific periods)
a) with editors?
Marina Oliver (UK): Mainly 20th century , post WW2 For those set in earlier centuries, they like characters who are, if not major historical figures , people close to them. Sagas are still popular, but these tend to be "gritty , back street slum" settings, mainly 20th century.
Teresa Eckford (N. America): Judging from the books I see on the shelves , there would appear to be almost a 50/50 split between the more historical/political style of novel and those who prefer the lighter costume style stories. Poor characters seem to appear most in American frontier stories, while British set ones tend to feature mostly upper class characters with the occasional middle class hero and/or heroine creeping in.
b) with readers?
MO: I suspect, from talking to readers and librarians, that readers would like a more varied selection, perhaps more Regencies and ancient world settings.
TE: It seems by far the most popular periods are the Medieval, Regency and American West. Half like the more literary, heavy on the history and politics style romances and half just want the romance in fancy dress.
Do you think there are fashions in romantic historical fiction?
MO: Very definitely. For a long time the 19th century was popular, especially with sagas, and before that we had gothics and Regencies, which are virtually non-existent now. There was a vogue for what I call fictional biographies, Margaret Irwin and Jean Plaidy, for example, and I see signs that this is perhaps reviving.
TE: Periods go in and out of fashion all the time. For a considerable amount of time in the 80s, American Civil War fiction was very popular, while now Scottish medievals and Regency-set historicals seem to dominate.
Do most fiction publishers have a historical list, or publish many historicals?
MO: Most fiction publishers produce some, but generally this is a small proportion of the total.
TE: Yes, though the number varies from publisher to publisher.
Are these one-offtitles or category fiction (several per month, similar in style and length, marketed by product rather than author)?
MO: They are normally in the mainstream, one-off titles, except for Harlequin Mills & Boon, who produce long category fiction. There is also My Weekly Story Collection, and many of the serials in People 's Friend, which are later published in book form, are historical.
TE: For the most part, they're one-off titles. Harlequin has a Historicals line that might be viewed by some as category, but the books do vary greatly in tone, style and depth of historical detail.
Do they market all of them as historical fiction?
MO: No. The more literary books, and many written by men, are aimed at the literary market, especially if the author is already known for literary work which is not historical. And many war adventure stories by men are not referred to as historicals.
TE: They market them as historical romance, NOT historical fiction.
Have you any comment on the cover art?
MO: Some is excellent, but saga covers are remarkably monotonous. For some reason these are usually exteriors, rarely interior pictures. Recently, presumably to imitate the trend for "twentysomething" contemporary books, historicals are being given similar covers - stark white backgrounds, vivid lettering, and "arty" illustrations which give very little indication of the book's contents.
TE: I personally do not like the more flamboyant "clinch" style covers. Though we would like to believe that books are not judged by their covers, unfortunately they still are. Some readers and writers feel that until clinches are eliminated there will still be people who insist that romance fiction is nothing more than soft porn for women, simply because they cannot conceive that underneath those covers are well-written, well-researched compelling stories.
Are these novels well reviewed in the media?
MO: The serious newspapers rarely review any romantic fiction, and historical fiction by women, unless by a literary author, suffers from this seeming aversion by literary editors Women's magazines and local papers are much more generous with reviews of popular fiction.
TE: Some newspapers review romance fiction, usually written by romance writers. The big name authors like Jo Beverley and Mary Jo Putney will often be reviewed in the mainstream press, especially Publishers Weekly. Midlist authors have a harder time, though if they send out good press releases and snag the interest of a fair-minded reporter they'll often receive positive coverage, including a review.
Do readers enjoy series about the same people, families, places?
MO: Very much, and they sell well because once readers are hooked they usually want the rest of the series So this is good for publishers as well as authors.
TE: Many readers do, yes. Series are quite common.
Do the writers and editors care about factual accuracy?
MO: Sometimes I despair and think they don't! The truth is that many do, but too little care is taken by both writers and editors to check, and assumptions are made which are invalid. I've come across real howlers in many published books, and they are not simply factual errors, or anachronisms, but wrong interpretations of attitudes, social customs, or religious beliefs.
TE: For the most part yes. However, almost any writer or editor will still tell you that the romance is still paramount. So occasionally events and facts can be fudged, though the majority of writers will include an Author's Note explaining the reasons for the fudging.
Do the readers care about historical accuracy?
MO: Many do. Many readers want to learn something painlessly, but if they catch the author out in some error they lose faith in that author. I've abandoned several authors because I can't trust their factual detail.
TE: Many don't know a lot of history in the first place, while some say as long as the romance and story are good they aren't bothered by a few inaccuracies. However, there are some historical romance readers, like me, who DO care a great deal about inaccuracies and will often put down a book if they are too frequent and too glaring.
Do writers often use real historical characters as main or minor characters in their books?
MO: I'd guess less so now than they did twenty years ago.
TE: It appears that the majority of writers will at least include historical characters as minor characters in their books. Fewer will actually make them major characters. The real historical characters that do appear are usually the ones that are best known, such as Eleanor of Aquitaine, Richard the Lionheart, King John and Henry VIII.
If a romantic historical novel is about a real figure, how does it differ from a biography, and are there advantages (or disadvantages) in this nove/isation of a real life?
MO: A biography must rely on facts, and be about a whole life. It will also make judgements about character or the subject's work. Novelists can select a short, dramatic period in that life, do not need to strive for a balanced view, and can invent dialogue and situations to illustrate their view of or interpretation of the character.
TE: It differs from a biography in that artistic license is usually taken when dealing with aspects of the subject's life that aren't well known. This is particularly true the further back in time one travels. Also, a historical romance novel will end at a happy point, even when it's known that tragedy occurred later in that person's life.
Do readers want to learn something about history? If so, could this be because of the way they were taught history at school?
MO: I think they do want to learn. Many older people found history at school uninspiring, a list of dry facts and dates and little about personalities. This was very dependent on the teacher. In the past few decades, English school history has concentrated far more on themes and
empathy with the peasants than giving a structured framework to explain political and other developments. The approach has tended to be very spasmodic. I believe passionately that unless one has a rough idea of chronology, one cannot appreciate the events and conditions of the time.
TE: Many readers are interested in learning some history from the novels they read. Others only want the historical backdrop and pretty costumes, preferring the focus to remain solely on the developing relationship between the hero and heroine. I know personally of several readers who have said they hated history at school, but became enthralled by it after reading historical romance fiction.
Do you think people have more curiosity in discovering their origins, or ancestry, now, and is this reflected in the school curriculum or the type of novels they read? (Is history in North America, for instance, more concerned with domestic history since the 16th century and less with European and ancient? Does the history ofNative Americans/Canadians come into the curriculum?)
MO: In the UK family history, genealogical research, is more popular than ever, and the sources are more extensive, with the internet and many local history societies. Also, apart from novels, there is a much greater proliferation of memoirs and local history sources than used to be readily available. There are the re-enactment societies, which have grown a great deal recently, and many living history displays at stately homes, and many specialist historical museums, from reconstructions of villages to displays of buildings and artefacts. Not all of these are new, of course, but many are, or have been extended, and it's my impression they are visited more frequently than in past years. I suggest the growth of interest in local history stimulates the demand for regional sagas, and early 20th-century novels which give details of how our parents and grandparents lived.
TE: From my survey, it seems that the people most interested in their origins and ancestry are at least in their 30s and older and it's not really reflected in the school curriculum or the novels they read. Some might read novels that are set during the time and in the place of their ancestors, but most seem to read about certain periods just because they find them appealing. However, those who had teachers who introduced them to family history research responded enthusiastically. As for what is taught, again, it varies widely. The Americans I asked said that they learned mostly American history from the Revolution on, though some courses stopped before the Vietnam era. However, some did say that early civilizations were taught as well. It doesn't seem overly consistent. None reported learning much about Canada. Speaking for myself (a Canadian), in the 70s and early 80s, we were taught Canadian history from Jacques Cartier onwards, all the way through till almost contemporary times. We learned a great deal about the Native Canadians, the battle for
dominance between France and England and both World Wars. As far as I can see, though, historical novels are not used as teaching tools, though it's possible individual teachers might assign them as extracurricular reading. I checked out recommended resources for teachers and did not find any historical fiction included.
What help is there for aspiring historical novelists (HowTo books, courses, organisations)?
MO: Not many How-To books, three to my knowledge, plus a few on doing research. This compares unfavourably with the plethora of books on general novel writing. There are a few courses specifically for historical novel writing, but most are more general, for novels. The Romantic Novelists' Association has many historical novelists as members, and the New Writers' Scheme gives appraisals for many unpublished historical novel scripts.
TE: I could not fmd any how-to books specifically for writers of historical romance fiction, though most of the how-to books for romance fiction have sections on writing historical romance. There are courses available on-line, some free and some not. As for organizations, I don't know of one that is devoted to only historical romance fiction, but writers in the genre get a great deal of support through Romance Writers of America as a good percentage of members do write historical romance fiction
Are there prizes (or competitions) available for published or unpublished novels?
MO: Some of the literary prizes (Booker, Whitbread, Orange) have been won by historical novels, as have others like the Betty Trask Awards and the Winifred Holtby and Lichfield prizes . For the Romantic Novelists' Association Major Award for published novels about half the short-listed novels could be called historical
TE: Yes, there are many prizes for both published and unpublished novels and historical romance is almost always a separate category The biggest one is the Golden Heart contest run by Romance Writers of America. First prize is a statue and the chance to have your work read by major editors who act as final round judges. Others offer money, certificates etc ., but usually the most important aspect is having your work read by the final round judges who are often major editors or agents.c.Q
Marina Oliver, author of many historical romances, is a former chairman of the Romantic Novelists' Association. She has also written books on writing, including the recent Writing Historical Fiction (How To Books UK) Her website is at http://freespace.virgin.net/marina.oliver/ Teresa Eckford is a member of Romance Writers of America. She is a history graduate and has written romantic fiction and historical non-fiction. Her website is at http://www3 .sympatico .ca/eckford/teresa.htm
The RNA was established in 1960. Of the past 15 winners of its Romantic Novel of the Year Award, 8 were historicals and of the 20 chairmen, most have written historicals
Today there are around 650 members, including men and overseas members. Half are published novelists, the rest either Associate members (mainly agents and editors) or New Writers as yet unpublished in novel form. The RNA's New Writers' Scheme is the only such scheme run by a national group. Most years 3 or 4 novels attain publication this way, the best of which is awarded a prize. Five of our former New Writers have been selected for the W.H. Smith Fresh Talent promotions, but none of them write historicals. Is this a comment on the state of the market and what the chain bookstores see as popular?
There is a quarterly Newsletter, and a weekly Cyber Chapter newsletter on the Internet. Meetings are held six times a year in London, some of them Award ceremonies or parties, the rest having speakers. The Major Award is given at a lunch in April. There are regional chapters, day conferences in various parts of the country, and a weekend conference in July with lectures , workshops and discussions. We have a web site: www.ma-uk.org. For more information, contact me by phone or fax 01844 345 973, or email: marina oliver@virgin net. MO
R.oVvt~ V\,e,e wr-Lters of AVvterfo~
This summer I attended my first RWA National Conference, where I took part in three of the workshops for writers of historical romance.
Medieval Life in Three Dimensions was given by Lisa Hollis McCulley, a recreationist who, with her Markland group , demonstrated aspects of medieval life and answered questions. While I didn 't necessarily agree with their rather black-and-white attitude towards research, I found the workshop useful.
Authors Jill Limber and Terry Blain presented More Than Just Costume - History as Character Though they gave out a wealth of information and made excellent points about incorporating history into your narrative, this was mainly for the beginner writer, or one moving from contemporary novels to historicals.
The highlight for me was Writing About England by authors Jo Beverley and Margaret Evans Porter, whose main gist was that readers, especially British ones, get extremely frustrated when North American writers don't get the details right in their British-set historicals. They provided solid information about British geography, law, history and culture and dispelled some common myths. They also stressed how important getting the details right is to the craft of historical romance - if your readers don't believe in your setting and history, they might have problems relating to your characters as well.
It would be nice to see more sessions geared to the historical writer. But despite the popularity of historical romance, I believe that contemporary writers are still in the majority. RWA website: www.rwanational.com. TE
FROM VIRGIL TOA GUMSHOE
DAYID WISHART talks to Solander about his writing, and tells a couple of eerie stories on the way
David Wishart is the author of successful novels featuring his 1st-century Roman sleuth, wisecracking aristocratic layabout Corvin us, the most recent of which is Old Bones. He has also written The Horse Coin, set in Britain at the time of the Boudican revolt. He is published by Hodder & Stoughton (Sceptre) UK.
Could you tell us something ofyour pre-novelist career?
I took a degree in Classics from Edinburgh University, did my PGCSE in Aberdeen and then spent four years teaching Latin, Greek, Classical Studies and motor mechanics , about which latter I know nothing whatsoever. After a particularly interesting session where I found the kids (a remedial class) trying to open the crankshaft casing with a hammer, I decided that the education system could do without me, retrained as a teacher of English as a Foreign Language, and moved to Kuwait, where I worked for five years. We (the family) then moved to Thessaloniki in Greece (great!) and subsequently, largely for financial reasons, to Jeddah in Saudi Arabia. We came back to Scotland in 1990 and since then I've divided my time
between writing and teaching EFL/study skills with Dundee University.
Had you written fiction before your first novel I, Virgil?
Yes. All ofit (six or so books in manuscript form) is squirrelled away in a drawer in the study, and there it will stay, probably until hell freezes. Curiously, none is crime or historical fiction: I thought for a long time that I was a children's author, and I had (and have) a leaning towards science fiction and fantasy, which is what most of the books are. The impetus for the first came, literally, from a dream. All I can remember of this was that I was in a barn, watching a young girl talking to a lamp with a yellow plastic shade and orange sheep. The dialogue went:
Girl: Where're you from?
Lamp: Would you believe Wolverhampton?
- at which point I woke up. The "book of the dream" followed, and that is how it opens. I like "Miranda and the Unknown Pomegranate" and its sequel "The Urbetrycan Tales" (anagram of Canterbury: the tellers are machinesexcept for Earth, the universe is inhabited by non-organic lifeforms - who have been "taken" in an intergalactic chess game and are whiling away the time by telling stories a la The Decameron) very much, although they would have to be rendered down and recycled to be publishable Still, if there are any publishers out there looking for a follow-on to Harry Potter I'd be delighted to hear from them
As a classicist, your area of interest seems obvious, but how did you get the idea for I, Virgil, which puts forward an intriguing hypothesis about the poet 's death?
In my second year (I think) at university we had to write an essay on the character of Turnus, the villain of the Aeneid. I knew already that the poem was what is termed programmatic - i.e that it had the ulterior purpose of justifying the Augustan principate and its ideals to its readers; and that - roughly speaking - Aeneas stood for Octavian/Augustus and Turnus for Antony. What puzzled me , given that , was the work's ending. Virgil spends the first six books - half the poem - tracing the evolution of Aeneas from self-seeking, id-driven Homeric hero (for which read every warlord before Augustus, including Caesar) to Augustan paragon embodying all the good old Roman virtues, and the second half showing "Augustan" Aeneas pitted against "Homeric" Turnus. In the last few lines, however - the climax of the poem, where Aeneas/Octavian fights with and kills Turnus/AntonyAeneas reverts to his Homeric prototype and - worse - the reader ' s sympathies are made to lie squarely with Turnus In programmatic terms that made no sense at all - it was the equivalent of an artist putting a knife through what he must know is his masterwork - but it had to be deliberate. I just couldn't, at the time, see why Virgil had done it. One thing I enjoy is doing cryptic crossword puzzles, and there is nothing worse than being left with one unsolved clue. I'd thought about the ending of the Aeneid
on and off for twenty-odd years, and when I started writing I decided to tum my ideas into a book. I took as my basicand fictional - premise that Virgil had not been quite the wholehearted supporter of Augustus he is supposed to have been; that he had integrated his doubts about the new regime into his commissioned programme poem; and that Augustus had eventually found out and had him poisoned
When I started on the research I knew very little about the historical background, and only slightly more on the literary side: I am not, and have never claimed to be, an academic, let alone an academic historian, and I hadn't touched the subject since university. What set the hairs prickling on my neck as a writer, though, was that from the outset fact and fiction began to mesh and - from the viewpoint that I'd adopted - carried on meshing. There isn't space here to go into even the sketchiest of detail, and very little of my findings went into the book itself, but they were and are both eerie and fascinating. If any reader is looking for the gist of a PhD thesis they are welcome to get in touch.
Your hero, Marcus Corvinus, makes his debut in your second novel, Ovid How and why did you create him?
That's a rather eerie story as well, although most authors, I suspect, will have had similar experiences. The idea for the plot (why was the poet Ovid exiled?) came first. With it in mind I knew that I needed two principal characters, a man and a woman. The man had to be young and a Roman noble (so he had the entree into the appropriate social stratum) and the woman to have a connection with Ovid himself. Out of the air, I chose two names: Marcus Fabius Corvinus for the man and Rufia for the girl. "Rufia" puzzled me from the outset: it isn't a common name, but she was determined she wouldn't be the far more likely Rufa or Rufilla so I had to accept it.
Then I began the research. I quickly discovered (and I swear I didn't know this beforehand) that the historical Ovid had two patrons, Marcus Valerius Corvinus and Decimus Fabius Maximus; and that his stepdaughter Perilla, whom he mentions in the poems, was married to a Publius Suillius Rufus ... Eerie, yes?
So Marcus is a "real" character: as I've given him to be in Ovid, the grandson of the Marcus Valerius Corvinus who was Ovid's patron. That said, however, my Corvinus owes nothing to history but his name and family connections.
With your classical background, do you find you need to do much research? Do you enjoy it?
Yes - at least, where it really matters. As I said above, I make no claims to academic status - I'm a writer, not an academic - but you cannot cheat the reader, and where accuracy is important then you're obliged to be accurate Certainly where writing the overtly political books - that is, Ovid, Germanicus and Sejanus - was concerned the historical background - which provided, if you like, the girder-framework of the plots - had to be absolutely spot
on, and that was part of the fun of writing them: my compulsive Times crossword-doer's delight in taking actual events and constructing a theory to fit. Where nondirectly-plot-related research goes, though, while I do take reasonable care over it, my attitude tends to be a more relaxed one. I'm sure, for example, that a real historical academic would be able to pick several holes in my topography of Rome (my main source is the city plan in Heinrich Keipert's Atlas Antiquus, which was published in 1894. Ouch); but then I'm writing neither for the Journal of Roman Studies nor for Fodor.
Do you use the Internet for research?
No, I don't use the Net; or at least, not very much, being like Corvinus wary of gadgetry and seriously lacking in patience: supersmart computers and I usually end up swearing at each other before very long. What I do use it for, though, is getting contact names/addresses which I can then follow up where and when necessary.
Which authors do you most admire?
Within the historical genre, the ones you might expect: Graves for his Claudius books, Mary Stewart for her Merlin trilogy and Rosemary Sutcliff for The Eagle of the Ninth. All three writers have the knack of creating characters and worlds that are immediately and undeniably real; I have a strong childhood memory of listening to the last when it was serialised on radio, and I still get a shiver down my spine when I remember the whistling in the mist. Within the crime genre I tend to go for the seamier, grittier writers; Chandler, of course, but also authors like Ian Rankin and Paul Johnston.
Have any ofthem influenced your own writing?
As far as influence is concerned, I'm sure the answer is yes, although for me, as for most writers, the "voice" is not an artificial construct of the author's but dictates itself and has an independent existence, as do the characters. From the first pair (Graves and Stewart) I'd take my preference for first-person narrative; that I like, since it brings the writer - and so hopefully the reader - straight into the story. From the crime side, the grit; I like Corvinus, but the guy isn't perfect by any means - in Ovid he's a spoilt, rich, overbred yobbo, and although he's growing up all the time there will, I think, always be that side to him. His saving grace is that he can see his own warts qua warts and can laugh at them.
Mind you, Perilla isn't perfect, either.
Your latest novel, The Horse Coin, is a departure from your previous work. It's set in Roman Britain there's no Corvinus. Why did you choose this subject?
Because I felt that a) I'd like to try something different and b) I've always been interested in the effects of cultureclash. In reference to a), any author will go stale (and read
stale) if they become a mere conveyor-belt turning out book after book in a series. I enjoy writing the Corvinus stories very much indeed, but I feel that for them to work I need to write something else on occasion and come back fresh. Fortunately, I have in Sue Fletcher a very understanding editor, which is marvellous - although I think even she might jib if I suggested a rewrite of "Miranda"
What I did find difficult about The Horse Coin (and it probably showed in the writing) was having to use thirdperson narration. This was unavoidable: although I'm a natural "first-personer", what you can't do with firstperson narrative - or not to any great degree - is ring the changes on viewpoint, which the story's framework demanded.
I thought the ending seemed open to a sequel. Do you plan one (or more)?
Yes - the gods and Hodders permitting, although not necessarily in that order. The idea was (and still is) to trace the history of a Romano-British family from the Conquest (more or less) through until the Dark Ages. I don't have any immediate plans in this direction but I was down at Newstead - the Roman Trimontium - recently and that has definitely lit a spark.
Will you be writing any more Corvinus novels?
Yes, definitely: Old Bones came out in August; about the next, Last Rites, I'm not sure, because it was finished and delivered well ahead of time, so Sue may bring the publication date forward. Currently I'm researching a third, hence the temporary brake on the Trimontium idea.
How do you organise your writing day? Are you sternly disciplined or easily distracted?
I start writing, usually following a read-over of the previous day's work. No, I'm not "sternly disciplined" - I couldn't stand, for example, the Jeffrey Archer business with the five blue ballpoints or whatever he uses - but if the writing's going well I'm quite happy to stay with it for the rest of the day (with a working lunch break of cheese, salami, olives, bread and - most important - red wine: as far as I'm concerned, apart from my pipe, red wine is the sine qua non of successful writing). Then, around sixish, I get the dinner ready. Cooking I've always enjoyed: Corvinus's chefMeton may be a loose cannon but I have a great deal of sympathy for his single-mindedness where food is concerned. (Incidentally, any dishes I mention in the books are genuine, taken from Apicius's 1st-century cookbook).
I don't write at weekends. Never. Not ever. I'll also quite happily take a weekday off completely, although that doesn't happen very often either.
I try to arrange things so that I'm researching/plotting etc a book during the summer and writing it during the winter. This means I can sit out in the garden (with pipe,
red wine etc) and actually be working at the same time, which is marvellous; while in winter I can work in front of a roaring log fire while the rain lashes against the window. That's the theory, anyway; in practice it goes out of kilter more often than not, but there you are: life is never perfect.
Roughly how long does it take you to write a novel?
It takes me about eight or nine months to write a book, the actual writing accounting for half of that. I ask Sue, however, for a calendar year and hand the manuscript in early. Publishers love this, and it nets you quite a few brownie points.
The Roman period seems to be gathering some steam as a setting for historical.fiction. Why do you think this is?
I don't really know; perhaps with the demise of Latin in most schools for the majority of people the Romans have moved into terra incognito and so have acquired the mystery value of something lost.
Do you see any parallels between now and then?
Parallels - yes, of course: human nature doesn't change, it's simply given different arenas to play in and expresses itself in different ways.
Why do you write historical fiction?
In a way that has happened accidentally; what led me to write I, Virgil was the problem in abstract rather than an interest in the man as such: a response to the classic writer's question of"What if...?" - in this case, what if Virgil had not been a hundred-per-cent Augustan? If, on the other hand, "Miranda" had been published, or - a more likely proposition - one of the tirneslip stories for teenagers currently reposing in my study drawer, then I would be writing fantasy (or whatever you care to call it). Whatever I wrote, though, it would not be literary fiction. I am no more a "literary" writer than I am an academic. What I need to grab my interest is either an existing problem to solve (as, for example, the historical crimes in Ovid and Germanicus) or a problem to construct (as with the whodunnit books, among which I include Old Bones and the up-and-coming Last Rites). In both instances the problem comes first, the setting is secondary.
That said, given the writing truism "Write what you know", I do know where I am with 1st-century Rome, and have done all my adult life. Put these two together and you have (I hope) the answer to the question.
Do you think historical fiction is inevitably influenced by the time in which it's written, even if the influence isn't overt, as in political or moral propaganda?
I'm tempted (not being an academic) to say "pass" on this one. However...
My gut answer is "Yes, absolutely" - you only have to look at something like, for example, the very black and definitely-not-Disney last book ofT.H.White's Once and Future King trilogy, written in the shadow of World War Two by a sensitive, very smart anarchist/pacifist, to render the statement self-evident; although you might count White's portrayal of Mordred's Thrashers and his castigation of human history in general as "political/moral propaganda". That aspect aside, most, if not all, writerswhether they like to think so or not - reflect their time and its preoccupations, both in their choice of subject and the treatment thereof, and this does make things especially different for the historical writer. He can (and I think should) create the illusion of contemporaneity, certainly, through language - after all, history is no more than a series of present-days, and however his speech might strike our present-day ears no historical character, I'm sure, considered himself to be speaking archaically; but his main problem lies in the area of attitude. The hero (in my case Corvinus) must be, to the reader, a sympathetic character, certainly a comprehensible one; further, he must, to a great extent, share the reader's values, or he forfeits both sympathy and interest. As such he can never be totally authentic. A "real" 1st-century Corvinus would, for example, have a much less laissez-faire attitude towards slaves and his social inferiors in general; he would take the Roman code of penalties, with its crucifixions, amputations, maimings and the like on board without a qualm, without even a thought; he would support absolutely the widening of the empire by any means, balking at the wholesale massacre of a civilian population only for economic reasons and genuinely believing that imposition of the pax Romana was the gods' gift to benighted savages; and so on. Such a Corvinus might be authentic, but he would be, to me - and to any modem author setting out primarily to entertain - completely useless.Gil z·l#.l!f'l,,~.,,,,.,,,.,,..,,
IF YOU LOVE HISTORICAL
RIES
STO
; you should definitdy consider joining our sister organisation in i 1 the States, The Historical Mystery Appreciation Sociery. Run by ' , enthusiast Sue Feder, the society publishes a quarterly magazine, i Murtltr: Past Tmst, which contains reviews, interviews and chat i , about the genre. Thoroughly recommended. To find out more, have a look at the websites: ' http://www.themysterybox.com/hmas/index.html $ $ http://members.home.net/ monkshould I or email Sue - monkshould@home.com , If you want to join, you can either pay in dollars ($30 airmail to ' ' the UK), sending a check payable to Sue Feder, 3 Goucher ' : Woods Court, Towson, MD 21286 USA. Or you can pay in ' sterling, through the HNS. Make out a cheque for £21 to "The $ Historical Novd Society" and send it to Marilyn Sherlock at the usual society address. ' l '-IQ. t
The Black Death: An Islamic Perspective
JANE JAKEMAN discovers new insights into an old phenomenon
Tworecent novels taking the outbreak of the Black Death in 1347-9 as their major themes emphasise the international nature of that tragedy. These books are set in worlds of obsessive religiosity, one Christian, the other Jewish, yet both authors have a strong awareness of wider contexts. And the writers evidently have a lot of scholarship, yet manage the difficult feat of avoiding that academic stiffness which often clogs up inspiration.
In Pestilence, Salih lbn al Khatib, a young student from the madrasa (theological college) of Sultan Hasan in Cairo, leaves its marble courts and fountains to go on a pilgrimage of a very dangerous nature. At the same time, far to the west, a Welsh priest blesses his disorderly, ragged township, where the Redeemer is expected to be born again. Their stories are interweaved, as a deadly disease spreads like wildfire, till at last these two contrasting worlds lock together. This is a rich and complex book, full of dark bitter humour and evocative detail, reminiscent of the agonised contortions of a medieval Doom fresco, yet aware of old Celtic fable and tradition.
Salih tries to make sense of the seemingly insane kingdoms into which he has been plunged, as he travels through Italy and France. Meanwhile, the Lady Angharad and Iolyn the Priest are trying to defend their flock against calamity. Lady Angharad takes a vow of silence.
None of it does any good, of course: the gold and silver of the courts, the filthy half-starved poverty of the poor , all alike will be overwhelmed, though the compassionate rational mind of Salih tries to make sense of the craziness the plague unleashes. He crosses the Channel, is washed up before the eyes of an astonished Welshman - but I won't give away the rest of the story!
Avignon has a taut narrative, which dashes along like a medieval chronicle The beautiful detail - costumes, herbs, saffron-scented cakes, bright fields of gorse and poppyevokes the brilliant enamelled colouring of some fourteenth-century jewel or casket. We traverse some of the same ground as Pestilence , but Avignon deals with the special case of the Jews of Avignon. Theirs is an extraordinary world , that of ''the Street" ; the crowded, enclosed quarter, evoked with loving precision as to its inhabitants, food , furnishings and customs A Jewish doctor tends his flock , and an unhappy marriage plays out its sad course , as the terrible disease creeps nearer and nearer the little community. At length, after impassioned discussion by the rabbis, twenty families load up their carts and venture to the unrecognisable world outside Yet, once the disease has run its course, will they return to the imprisonment which they know?
I was particularly interested in these two approaches , Christian and Jewish , to the Black Death, as a study of a third aspect , the Islamic, formed part of my doctoral thesis. Since so many historical novels have dealt with this most dramatic episode in human history , I thought it might be of interest to HNS members if I noted down some of the Islamic attitudes towards the episode of bubonic plague , and how they differed from those of Christianity (In writing this , I was uncomfortably aware of the justice of Sarah Cuthbertson's stricture on reviewers in issue 13 of the His torical Novels Review: the reviewer should not use the occasion as an opportunity to demonstrate his or her own knowledge . Absolutely true, Sarah! My excuse is that the Islamic aspects are very little known and the sources are not always easy to find )
Muslim historians gave very accurate descriptions o f the disease , which attacked Syria and Egypt in 1347 and swept south and west. They noted its two major forms , bubonic and pneumonic . The first, transmitted by fleabites, affects the lymphatic system, producing the w ellknown black buboes and has a high , but not universal , fatality rate. The second , transmitted by droplet infection , affects the chest and lungs and has almost 100% death rate . There is a third form , the septicaemic, in which the disease is transmitted straight into the blood-stream , sometimes by a flea-bite ; death is inevitable within a few hours Some sudden cases were noted by the historians , but death is so fast in this third strain that few sy mptoms develop for the physician to record
Arab writers also noted the involvement of animals in the infection, though the rat-flea-human chain of transmission was of course not known till modern times , either in east or west. But it was particularly noted that subterranean creatures, especially rats , came out from underground bearing marks of the plague It is significant
that the disease was described as being especially virulent among the old-clothes sellers of the souqs, where flearidden clothing and bedding were collected , and among the royal harems and military barracks, with their communal living Army manpower seems to have been severely curtailed.
In religious and social attitudes towards the plague, there was very considerable divergence from western views. To our eyes, the most striking is probably that Muslims were forbidden to flee from an infected city. This had its roots deep in Islamic history. There had been many previous outbreaks of plague in the Islamic world before the Black Death, and the population had some considerable experience of dealing with it. The Prophet himself had ordained that Muslims should not knowingly enter nor leave an infected area - very practical in preventing the transmission of infection The decree was reinforced by tradition, because there had been an episode early in Muslim history where an army had been stricken with plague before a battle. The commanders were uncertain whether to stand their ground or leave: in the event, they stayed, fought and won the battle, and this became a model for future behaviour in time of epidemic.
Of course, injunctions were not always obeyed There was undoubtedly, in Syria and Egypt, an initial flight from the countryside to the cities, and in Cairo the Sultan and his court left at the start of the attack, though they returned shortly afterwards and the court remained just outside the city. (The Sultan was the same Hasan who afterwards founded the famous madrasa, the costs of which were probably partly defrayed by plague inheritance: where no heir was left alive , the estate reverted to the Crown.) But on the whole , the population of Cairo stayed put , and awaited its fate . The great emirs exposed themselves to risk , taking part in urban processions and even in the washing and burial of the dead Sultan Hasan himself was a very young man , and the real ruler of Cairo during the Black Death was the enigmatic emir , Shaykhu, to whose fervent but intellectual personality we have some clues : he founded a mosque and khanqah (residence for sufis) whose lintels are formed by blo c ks taken from a Pharaonic naos (the shrine which contained a cult statue) at Memphis .
Interestingly , the best estimate is that the death-rate in this society was about the same as that in the west where ev e ry one who could got as far a wa y as po ssible: about one-third of the population died Probabl y there were compensating factors in Islam , such as the much g reater emphasis on cleanliness, and the fact that urban society did not break down: the dead were buried , the sick tended , as much as was possible.
For us , the most striking difference from the Christian analysis was that death through plague was not generall y regarded as a punishment from God. It was God ' s will , yes , but to die of plague was regarded as a glorious martyrdom , probably as a consequence of the heroic military decision referred to earlier. Those who died of plague sacrificed themselves for Islam and Islamic society as much as if they had died in battle, and were assured of a
place in paradise. Islam was generally free of the crazy collective insanities, the flagellations and "Dance of Death" episodes that the all-pervading sense of guilt and punishment evoked in the west, though the Black Death seems to have been followed by a particularly intense period of sufi mysticism, a concern with metaphysics which seems a response to the devastation suffered. But undoubtedly Islam was far more rational in its reaction.
In these two recent books, the authors possess a powerful understanding that they are not dealing with isolated episodes nor limited intellectual confines, but with a universal disaster that reaches across religious and national boundaries. And the plague has changed things for their survivors, terrible though the new world may be. The underdogs, the imprisoned Jews of the ghetto or the starving serfs of Wales, emerge into a new order where the old rules no longer apply. There is a moving human immediacy here, like that evoked by the preachers in the crowded mosques of plague-ridden Cairo, who regularly reminded their listeners that "death is closer to you than the thong of your sandal."CIQ
William Owen Roberts: Pestilence, trans from the Welsh by Elisabeth Roberts Seren Books, Poetry Wales Press Ltd., Wyndham St., Bridgend, CF31 lEF, Wales/Dufour Editions US . Marianne Calmann: Avignon Allison & Busby UK US. The standard work on the plague in Islamic lands is Michael Dols, The Black Death in the Middle East, Princeton University Press, 1977.
Jane Jakeman has a degree in English and an Oxford doctorate in Islamic Art History. Her Malfine historical crime novels are Let There Be Blood, Fool 's Gold and The Egyptian Coffin (Headline UKffrafalgar Square US). Her new crime novel, Death in the South ofFrance, will be published by Allison & Busby in Spring 2001.
t'/I/IJ#W,W/L-.Z,JIVIYAW/.l/#/l/l/l/#/l,!I/Jl".ZW,W'c¥'1'/.I/I.W/.#/l/l/l.111'711"W,.W/l,;,r.,l'/,l/#I/~ ' I
I O! JORVIK VIKING FESTIVAL
Imagination, Inspiration and Research
JOANNA HINES
on goose wmgs and badger screams
When I set out to write The Cornish Girl, I wanted to try to recreate a vanished world. Inevitably, it was to be set in Cornwall, since this is where I have lived for most of my adult life. I wanted to try to get beyond the cliches - every tavern full of men swigging ale in great tankards and no barmaid can walk across the room without one of them catching her round the waist and pulling her on to his knee in a rough embrace. Actually, cliches have a way of creeping into every book, and I don't think mine have altogether avoided them. But I tried.
People sometimes ask, where do the ideas come from? Often, it's hard to be sure, but I know precisely where The Cornish Girl originated.
I i
Yorkl7-25February200I I
, i Two historical novelists will be giving talks: Helen Hollick fl ' i j ( HarolJ the King) follows the fottunes of the last English king. ,, l I i Eliza.beth Chadwick ( tbc) uses various methods of research to I write her books, including The Conm,est, set in the aftermath of ,.. 1066. On Saturday 17th, to start off the Festival, the city centre I will be taken over by re-enactment events including combat, I ' longship regatta, and living history, culminating in a battle at the I I Eye of York by Regia Anglorum. Throughout the week events j i include historical films, lectures and the "Skullsplitter" I f exhibition ( with the famed Coppergate Helmet). For details, and t I final confirmation of the dates that the authors are speaking, ! contact: I Jorvik Viking Centre, Coppergate, York, YOI 9WT, England I j Tel: +44 (0) 1904 643211. Fax: +44 (0) 1904 627097. I , Web: http://www.jorvik-viking-centre.co.uk/festival.html i ! E-Mail: jorvik@jvcyork.demon.co.uk or HNS member I ; Sandra Garside-Neville: sgn@tegula.freeserve.co.uk I CIIJ I J1/,Y#~#,_..A""~-.#,W,Wil-l/l/l/,ll'/A"'/IW/l'/#/l/l,W/"""l,:,',1,l/.l/l/l/,l/l1I/I/A'/.l/.tle,l/#'#.7,,,,J
It would be nice to be able to say that the idea came to me when I was walking along the cliffs in a good Atlantic gale, or something similarly romantic but, I have to say, that wasn't the case. I was driving along the Bodmin bypass, which at that time was the last bit of fast road on the return to Cornwall, with my daughter and her friend in the back and the Mamas and the Papas blaring out of the cassette. Maybe it was the delirium of too much driving, or too much sixties music, but suddenly there came into my mind what became almost the final image in the book: a man is being hunted by his enemies and is close to death. A woman he once thought himself in love with saves his life, but he doesn't discover what happened until much later. He learns what she said in those final moments and everything is changed. About as romantic as you can get. And the woman in the image was wearing 17th-century clothes. From there, it was just a question of working out how and why the participants reached that final denouement, a mere matter of several years' work, getting an agent, finding a publisher, that sort of thing.
Sometimes it happens like that: a person or image lodges itself in my mind and I have to work out what it's doing. With The Puritan's Wife, I knew right from the start that the woman Stephen Sutton got involved with was
called Dolores. What on earth was a woman with a Spanish name doing in the middle of England in the Civil War? I found out in the end , but it took some time
So how much research do I do? The simple answer is , far too much : I've no time for historical novels where the author's card index system seems to have been swallowed whole. I think I manage to avoid this because I have a hopeless memory , so most of what I read gets forgotten Still , to give the flavour of a period it is necessary for a writer to be saturated in it.
Research, however, comes in many shapes and forms . There ' s the obvious kind , the sort you do in libraries and county record offices. Pictures are useful , also television and newspaper reports , and of course re-enactment events A few years back I went to a Sealed Knot event at Godolphin House and happened to be standing near the owners in the main hall when the cannon started to fire. Chunks of ancient plaster began crumbling on to our heads , much to the consternation of the family. Their alarm , windows rattling , plates jumping on the table and a general sense of powerlessness, were a faint taste of how the real thing must have felt in the Civil War.
Then there ' s the kind ofresearch that comes and finds you One afternoon I was visiting an old lady who lived nearby. I was in the garden with her, admiring her runner beans , when suddenly our dog appeared with something white in its mouth. "My goose wing! " shrieked Margery , setting off in pursuit. "My precious goose wing! " We cornered the dog, prised her mouth open and removed what was indeed a goose wing. Hot and flustered , but happy , Margery explained, "You can ' t beat a goose wing for dusting down behind the Rayburn. Nothing else gets in corners so well. "
Suddenly I felt I was being transported back a hundred years , five hundred years. For how many centuries have our ancestors used goose wings to clean their homes? And how many people do so now? Not Margery, not any more She's now living in a tiny modem flat with all mod cons , not a goose wing in sight. But it was a timely reminder of a world where everything was useful : you used up every bit of the pig except its squeak, and every bit of the goose , including its wing And not so long ago, I saw a picture in the Wallace Collection in London. It was painted at about the time of the English Civil War: a woman is seated by the fire, at the back of the room a baby is sleeping in its wooden cradle and on the floor by her chair there lies a besom broom - and a goose wing. How many art historians knew what it was for?
Sometimes the research arrives after the book has been completed In The Cornish Girl there is an incident at the beginning of the book where a badger is being cruelly baited at a village fair. This is one of those many occasions when, for the historical writer, it is happily impossible to "write about what you know" , as all the writers' guides so adamantly insist. (What about science fiction? I always want to ask. What about the Hobbit? Fairy tales? Most of Shakespeare? You can spend a long time devising a list of all the works that would be struck off if writers had limited themselves to "writing about what they know.") When I
wrote the episode , I described the badger ' s scream, though I'd never heard such a thing.
And then, one night a year or so after the book was published, I did hear such a scream, and knew at once what it was. A pack of local dogs had been "worrying"what a euphemism that is! - sheep and anything else they could get their teeth into. On this occasion, it was a badger. We found the corpse the next day , though in the night it was impossible to do anything to help it.
It was a grim experience, but a useful reminder that it is always a mistake to romanticise the countryside, just as it is a mistake to romanticise the " good old days" - though writing and reading about them remains one of the greatest pleasures I know.~
Joanna Hines was born in London and read History at Somerville College, Oxford . She is married to Canadian poet Derrek Hines and lives on the Lizard Peninsula on Cornwall, which provided inspiration for her Comish historical trilogy The Cornish Girl, The Puritan 's Wife and The Lost Daughter (Coronet UK) She also writes contemporary psychological thrillers.
f eding a bit backed off
witb looking for out-of-print historical no"ds?
The da ys w hen yo u ha d to pick u p yo ur sword a nd joi n a wandering hand of me rcenari es in o rde r to hrowse the used hoo ks hops of Europe a r e thankfull y no w ove r
l.cgcndboo ks co m ha s a la rge ran ge of hi s to rica l. SF & fan tasy tit les jus t a fe w mou s e di ck
Writers' Masterclass: Historical Fiction
In a recent BBC Radio 4 programme,
SEBASTIAN FAULKS and PHILIPPA GREGORY talked to BLAKE MORRISO~
BM: Could I begin by asking you, Sebastian, how you would feel being described as a historical novelist?
SF: I wouldn't recognise the term as applied to me. I'm a novelist some of whose books are set in the past. For me the use of historical settings is to cast the present in a more interesting and broader light. I think there's a difference between the historical novel (capital H, capital N) and the kind I write , which may be set in the past. I suppose my definition of a historical novel would be one in which the circumstantial detail - clothes, houses, ways of lifebulks more important in the reader's mind than the abstract themes of the novel. In the kind of book I write , it ' s the other way round.
BM: Philippa, you trained as a historian Do you feel that anything of what you do when you write fiction is comparable to what you do when you write history?
PG: When you read histories, particularly controversial histories, you, the author, select the thing that interests you, the themes you're going to draw on in your book. That process seems to me to be exactly the same as the history that one tells in a novel.
BM: Sebastian, certainly for many people, part ofthe impact of Birdsong was that it did, in a way, contribute to their understanding of the First World War almost as a work of history would do But presumably that wasn 't your intention when you wrote it?
SF: No. Of the books I've written, Birdsong is the one in which the historical detail and background are most central to the experience of the book. It's a very head-on, direct book and part of what it's trying to do is to re-imagine the experience of being in the trenches. I still don't think it's a historical novel in that sense because what it's really about - the theme of the book - is how far can we go, how far can human beings be pressed and what actions are they
capable of? And of course, the First World War raised that question in a very pressing and dramatic way . It's simply an exaggerated version of the question that all serious fiction asks: What is it to be human? What are we, what is this life? And trying to give pattern to the rather thin substance that our daily life consists of - meaningless, unconnected frippery, really
But I do accept that a lot of people have read it for information, which is rather a pathetic comment on the teaching in our schools, since so much of the detail in the book seemed to break as fresh news to people. But I also had in mind when writing it something James Fenton said when asked for his advice to poets: "When you sit down to write a poem try to tell the reader something he or she has never known before ." I do feel that if you take a background like WW I, as I did in Birdsong, you have to bring something new to it because not everyone is completely ignorant. That was the function of the tunnelling scenes in the book.
BM: Another thing I think we all expect from historical fiction is that the novelist will have done some research, in archives or reading through histories of the period or research sources that a historian would use , or do you rely on secondary materials?
PG: I would start with secondary materials because why do original research if somebody much better than you has done a magnificent overview? It's a case of focusing down. First I read 3 or 4 major general histories of the period, then look in their booklists for things I find particularly interesting, and then do any specialist research for the sort of novel I'm writing. I also almost always go to the places I'm writing about.
SF: [I follow] exactly the same process, but I do think that documents are where the fun is. That's where you get the most exciting and original material - unread letters, manuscripts, postcards But I'm not trying to create a whole picture of a period or place . I'm looking for tiny details of what it felt like when people ate, what they'd eaten the night before the Battle of the Somme, for instance How you washed, how infrequently you washed It ' s a nuisance, but you do have to get it right, I'm afraid and the way I do it is I don't check too much when I write , otherwise I'd never get started. But I get it read by 2 or 3 people. Birdsong I had read by a WWI historian But as far as I'm concerned, none of this is as important as going there, getting the smell and feel of the place.
All this talk about research is all very well, but basically you make it up. You have to inhabit the skin of this person and that's something you can't learn.
BM: Presumably you steep yourself in the period with more information than you need, and when it comes to writing you have to shed that?
• Reproduced by kind permission of the BBC and of the participants.
PG: You do this long period of research and integrating yourself into the period and then, as Sebastian says, you have to just say, well, if that was me, how would I feel? In A Respectable Trade I was very conscious that I was telling the history of black slaves who were in Britain in their thousands in the 18th century. I felt I had almost a sense of moral obligation to make sure people realised that the novel wasn't a complete fantasy.
BM: So there 's a sort of desire to teach as part of the motive for historical fiction. I don 't know ifyou 've ever had that, Sebastian?
SF: No, I don't feel the pedagogic urge . But I sometimes feel a desire to share my understanding of something. I think, like a lot of British people, I didn't really understand what collaboration meant in France during the German occupation. As I read and understood the period [for Charlotte Gray], it's very complicated and has a whole range of moral colours and I felt a desire to share this What I'm trying to do is explain today. I wouldn ' t be interested in writing about historical events which were so distant that they were no longer directly touching today So I couldn't write before 1900
BM: Presumably you faced the same technical challenge as Philippa - that you have to impart the information in a subtle way through character and not allow the fiction to be bogged down. The phrase I read in reviews of historical fiction is " undigested research "
SF: This is a story which happens to take place at an earlier time. The only bits you need are the bits that are strictly relevant to the lives and themes of your characters.
PG: When you say it's a story that happens to take place at an earlier time , probably with all my historical fiction, especially A Respectable Trade , it's a story that could only happen at that time. To me that's one of the helpful things - that I don't get stuck with lumps I'm longing to impart to the reader The historical background is the story. It's as important as the characters. The narrative of the history conditions how the people behave
SF: I don't think the distinction I made earlier is cut and dried Much of what you say does apply to the books I've written which are set in the past, though I wouldn't like to call them historical novels Incidentally , I don't think it ' s a matter of quality For instance , War and Peace - I think that is a historical novel , because he ' s so fascinated by Napoleon, the Napoleonic wars, what makes a good general. And this isn ' t a story that could happen at any other time. Of course , it has its own human, individual themes, but it is, I would say, a real historical novel, like some of Dickens -A Tale of Two Cities The research is playing into the core of the book, rather than the background.
BM: You talked about the importance of getting things right. I wonder if this extends to the dialogue? I remember Pat Barker talking about Regeneration, saying she didn 't use some of the language Owen and Sassoon would have used because it seemed slightly stilted and distanced WWI from us
PG: One of the easiest things about writing in any period before the invention ofrecording is that we don ' t know how people really spoke. So I keep it fairly simple and then do a paranoid anachronism hunt. I also have someone to pick up ifl ' m using words before they were invented or ones that have changed their meaning.
SF: That's one of the most irritating anachronismsspeech Worse than the drainpipe in the house that doesn ' t have plumbing . But Pat Barker's dialogue is her great strength as a novelist, her principal narrative weapon But no one speaks in real life as they speak in novels. And all attempts are a dead end and a bore. It's an illusion. All you have to do in dialogue is reach a comfortable agreement with the reader and that enables you to use your dialogue for the purpose it's there - normally, to give information that you don't give in the plot. But you must give an illusion that it's feasible.
BM: I remember Marguerite Yourcenar saying that novelists and historical novelists are the same because all novelists have to rely on memory one way or another and really memory and history come to the same thing In other words historical novelists are really part of the mainstream
PG: I'd go along with that very much, of course What goes before you start the work of imagination - the research - might be different for a historical novel than for a contemporary one. But I think the whole question of the writer's imagination is very much the same for a writer of historical fiction as for a writer of history.
SF: The only way that historical fiction can be seen as mainstream or dignified is if it dignifies itself by its own merits War and Peace does that very well. Gadzooks , doublet and hose doesn ' t. But there is a point about putting into books things people don't know - the desire to give a certain sort of weight and gravity and nutrition , as it were , which tells the reader something.CIQ
Sebastian Faulks is the author of Birdsong and Charlotte Gray (Vintage UK/Vintage US) . Philippa Gregory is the author of A Respectable Trade (HarperCollins UK/Acacia US), Earthly Joys and Virgin Earth (HarperCollins UK/St Martin's Press US) Blake Morrison is the author of The Justification of Johann Gutenberg (Chatto & Windus UK).
Breakthrough Fiction
A BRJE,F {HI)STORY OF TIME
by
Towse Harrison
"Where are we going to set up the equipment then, Dave?"
Brian reached into the back of the Range Rover, began arranging cases and boxes in a well-rehearsed routine.
"Well, the house isn't occupied. The owners only use the west wing, and they're in France anyway so we know we won't be disturbed. I reckon we want temperature and infra red on the staircase and the main gear in the dining room. That's the centre of phenomena, they say."
Brian laughed, his familiar, short, sceptical snort.
"Another night's ghost busting, eh. At least we'll be warm. I was thinking this Davenant House of yours was just a ruin."
Dave's face was hidden by twilight shadows as he stared with interest around the cobbled courtyard.
"No," he muttered distractedly, "Not a ruin. Just not occupied right now. The family are very fond ofit. More than fond. There's an old story that only a pure blooded Davenant can inherit the house peacefully. But like all these old families it's all tied up with honour and possession. All that outdated, feudal stuff."
"And there's me thinking you still believed in the Age of Chivalry," retorted Brian briefly, well used to Dave's more romantic and other esoteric interests.
Dave still gazed at the house, typically lost in his own thoughts. Brian heaved the heavy tape machine from the back of the car, looked up, seeking assistance.
"Well, come on then mate. Put your back into it if you want all this set up before dark."
i'b-
My horse's hooves are muffled with leather shoes and I carry no torch in the inky darkness of the moonless night. But I need no torch to light my way home, and soon the pale candlelit windows shine out like a beacon through the trees and the big old oak gates are open as I cross the wooden bridge into the courtyard. The horse's leather shoes slide on the cobbles as I rein her to a halt and slip with relief from her heaving back. It has been a long, long ride from Scotland and I still have many miles to go. I should not be here, should not have come home, but it was so close and Blessed Jesu alone knows when I will pass this way again. I am tired, hungry, aching and sore. So is my horse. A night's rest in safety with my family and I will be on my way before sunrise.
"Who goes there?"
Clem Foskett's distinctive form limps from the shadows, his shirt hanging loose over hastily drawn on breeches. He aims the musket with steady hands. I can see the dull glow of the lit fuse and take no chances, raising my empty hands away from my body.
"It's me, Clem. It's Edward."
My voice is barely a whisper in the stillness. Walls have inquisitive ears I have learnt these last years.
"Sir Edward!"
Clem's roar of welcome as the musket stock hits the cobbles with a metallic thump leaves me in no doubt that the house is safe. We have no unwelcome visitors.
"We never thought to see you, sir, Blessed Virgin be thanked for your protection. Lady Margaret will be so pleased. Get you into the warm, I' II see to your horse."
He turns to shout at the open door behind him.
"Betsy, get food for Sir Edward and wake the Lady Margaret. Sir Edward, praise be that you're safe."
He clasps my gloved hand firmly in both his calloused palms. This is the man who put me on my first pony a lifetime ago, as much a part ofmy family as Davenant House itself. He takes my mare's bridle, strokes her sweat streaked haunches.
"Come on then, girl, let's get you to a stable."
Margaret meets me on the stairs, flinging herself into my arms heedless of my muddy coat and the saddlebag slung over my shoulder. My sister smells clean and sweet as a summer meadow and although I know she is full five years older than I, yet she looks to me a girl still with her dimpled smile, her hair unbound and a rustling silk robe drawn on hastily over her linen nightshift. All she seems able to say, over and over, is my name.
"Edward. Edward. Edward."
I hold her close. My throat is tight and choked so that I can say nothing at all.
Later in the dining room, my sore body cushioned by the padded seat, my belly replete, the table strewn with pewter plates, bones and crumbs and a cup of good wine from my own cellar in my hand, I feel my eyes droop, soothed by the warmth of the new set fire.
This room is part of the old medieval hall of the original house. My great grandfather had it partitioned and panelled in good oak. He spent a small fortune on the house, but those were better days. It is to him that I owe the existence of the safe place where my saddlebag and its precious letters now lie. It was built to hide a priest; and there have been many here; but that hide has never been found.
My family's insistence on staying loyal to the True Faith has brought us many difficult times. "Strength in adversity" is a reasonably accurate translation of the Anglo-French family motto. We have seen much adversity. The portraits ofmy ancestors are a constant reminder of our strength. The house is so much a part of our history that the stones have become a physical embodiment of what this family represents. I am proud to be part of it. And this house is as precious to me as it was to my father and brother before me.
I never thought to inherit. I was abroad, putting the finishing touches to an exemplary education, when the King raised his standard at Nottingham. I am but two years older than Prince Charles and I think my father had high hopes of a good career for me in the Prince's household before the world turned upside down. He was an ambitious man, my father, ambitious but loyal. That loyalty bought him a pike in the belly on Marston Moor. We were not able to recover his body.
My brother Richard wanted me to stay in France, find safety in exile. But Richard's authority over me ended with a musket ball on Naseby Field and as head of the household I believed my duty was to fight for my King and return to watch over my house and family. I accompanied the Prince of Wales when he sailed to take command of the West Country army from Lord Goring. By the end
of that dreadful winter of 1645 I had fought, killed and survived my first bloody campaign. But the capture of the King saw me back in France with the Prince and our fellow exiles. Two hard years followed but for us the war was not, is not, over. With our captive King's freedom to achieve, we will make sure that Cromwell and his cronies cannot sleep easy in their beds.
Margaret tells me still that I am far too young to be living so dangerous a life but, needs must I reply. This is no time to be a child and I dare not look to a future when I might have a son of my own. My poor sister too is like to wait long for a marriage bed. For what chance is there of a decent match for a good Catholic maid, and a Royalist to boot, until the King is freed and set back upon his throne?
"If you have time for sleep, then lie out on a bed."
Margaret's voice sounds harsh as it breaks into my reverie. I did not realise that I'd slumped across the table, head cradled in my arms. She is dressed now, a dark red silk I think I remember from a Yuletide long ago. She is not angry, I know. Her harshness is but fear for my wellbeing and my safety.
"How long can you stay?"
I realise this is her second time of asking, my head is too full of the need to sleep.
"Two hours ' sleep, no more," I reply. "I'm for Bristol by sunrise."
"Bristol?" she repeats, "A ship? France?"
She knows better than to expect a reply, gets none, says instead, ''Two hours only. I'll wake you, I promise. There's something I wish to show you before you leave."
I am too tired to be interested. Boots off and to bed.
"What's the story then, Dave?"
Brian adjusted a setting on the camera, checked the battery level.
"Well, the house has been in the same family for centuries but the most well known was some Henry Davenant, who was one of Oliver Cromwell's sidekicks. He was responsible for the destruction of the old chapel and all the family tombs-didn't like Catholics apparently, even his own family His brother, or it may have been cousin - some relative anyway - was a traitor, so Cromwell gave Henry the house. There are loads of stories, no one really knows the truth. One of those old family skeletons, you know what I mean."
Dave shrugged his ample shoulders as he set up the tripod for the camera, grinning as Brian encouraged him to continue.
"It's the usual sort of stuff, murder most foul, brothers falling out. Some sort of argument over a woman - she committed suicide so they say - supposed to have thrown herself down the staircase. Or maybe it was her who was murdered. Like I say, the family don't seem to know and the stories are all pretty confused."
"What with my scientific excellence and your paranormal sensitivity, how can we go wrong?" he quipped in his usual jovial manner.
For just a moment Dave's irritation was obvious in his sudden tension. Just as quickly he relaxed. His friendship with Brian was longstanding for all they were as different as day and night in their views. Just as longstanding was the interest in alleged paranormal activity, and their continual bickering banter.
"Why are you doing this, Brian? You've told me enough times you don't believe in ghosts."
"No, I don't. And I think you've fallen for some of this New Age rubbish hook, line and sinker. But that doesn't mean that I can't see there's a load of stuff we don't have any explanations for. Maybe
we just haven't worked out the science yet, I don't know Maybe I'm just a scientist with soul if that makes you feel any better I'm just not gullible like some."
He finished with a friendly smirk at Dave's "X Files - I Want To Believe" T-shirt, a present from Brian for Dave's recent birthday
,'t>-
Someone, Clem or Betsy bless them, has cleaned my boots while I slept, brushed my doublet, laid out fresh linen. It is good to be wearing a clean shirt and the sleep has refreshed me greatly Margaret is impatient, even nervous. I can tell by the way she fiddles with her skirt, folding and re-folding the silk. She is concerned about something but uncertain whether to bother me with it.
"Well," I tell her, "What is it you wish to show me?"
Her sigh of relief is audible.
"Something strange has been happening in the house. I don ' t know what to make of it, but Clem and Betsy are frightened. They say it's haunted."
"Haunted!"
I can't stop my exclamation of disbelief, my laughter.
"We've never had a ghost before - well not that I've seen anyway - and how long has our family lived here - since Henry Tudor! I think not, sister. This is beyond belief."
"Yes, I thought so too, brother, but I know differently now. Come with me and see for yourself."
Her voice is exasperated but her mouth set and eyes serious. This is no jest. Margaret would not waste my precious time with such a thing. I pull on my boots, pull my doublet over my clean shirt and accompany her to the stairs.
We pause on a wide sweep of the staircase. I can remember as a very small boy, hiding at the top of this staircase, peering through the balustrades, trying to catch a glimpse of the King. My father held a magnificent banquet in his honour, it was a great privilege for the family, a mark of the esteem in which His Majesty held us. Were these Margaret's ghosts? Mere shadows, memories of happier times.
"Sometimes, there are lights on these stairs."
She held the candle high, peering into the darkness.
"It's not candlelight," she spoke on insistently. "It's harsher, a sort of a blue white, shining in circles about four feet from the floor. The lights move around, but there's no one there."
"Well there are no strange lights tonight, Margaret, my dear, " I say lightly, trying to humour her.
"I can see that for myself," she snaps with uncharacteristic venom "Well, come back to the dining room - that's the strangest thing."
Shrugging, I follow her long candlelit shadow down the darkening stairs. it;,.
On the staircase Brian made a last check on the temperature meter.
"Well, that's that then," he muttered to himself, "If our ghosts come down here we should be able to see the change."
The torchlight shone harsh on the steps as he made his way back to the dining room. The main equipment was set up there and Dave was unfolding chairs and blankets to make them comfortable in the sparsely furnished oak panelled room. It was going to be a long night. ,'t>-
Margaret and I stand in the dining room. The table has been cleared, but a wine flagon and two cups remain and the fire burns brightly. I pour wine for us both as Margaret walks from window to
window, peering out into the darkness. The wine wanns my blood. It is the quietest and coldest time of the night in these hours before the dawn of an early Spring. I stand with my back to the fire. The heat feels good on the muscles ofmy saddle sore buttocks. Absently I rub my thigh, the jagged scar a legacy of the rout at Torrington.
"Well, sister, where's this strange thing you wish to show me?"
I am careful to maintain my light-hearted humour but am concerned at Margaret's nervous manner. It cannot be easy for her, alone in the house with two old superstitious servants for company, and always on the watch for Parliament men.
Margaret lights more candles, sets them on the chest close by the hearth.
"Here by the fire. Sometimes there is a ... listen for yourself. We must be quiet Can you not hear it?"
I stand close, my fingers tracing the foliage on the carved stone. Fine work this, from the time of Good Queen Bess. I shut my eyes. Could we be haunted after all? Then I hear it. A low hum, like bees on a summer drowsy afternoon or the low exhalation of air from the drone of a pipe. I open my eyes. Margaret is watching me intently, expectantly.
"You can hear it, can't you Edward?"
"Aye, aye, I can hear it."
I gesture impatiently for her silence. I am trying to track the source of the sound but it seems to be empty air.
Margaret catches my sleeve.
"There's more."
Her voice has dropped to a whisper for all that we are alone in the room.
"See! Look over there."
My gaze follows her pointing finger into the shadows. I can see nothing.
Then her voice rises with excitement, overlaid with fear.
"Look, look, it's there. There it is. Can you see it?"
"I see it."
I feel the blood drain from my face, the small hairs rise on the back of my neck, my fingers sketch a hasty cross before me. I seek rational explanations from this age of reason and scientific advances.
"What is it? It must be a trick of the light."
I move closer, my hand on the knife at my belt, though I can feel Margaret dragging still at my arm.
"Be careful, Edward," she whispers.
It is the strangest thing, a shadow within a shadow but with a glint of brightness, like sun on water. It is near enough to touch, but my cautious, questing fingers close on empty air for all it looks like something solid. Reassured, Margaret moves closer.
"I've seen it several times these past months," she tells me, "That, and the lights on the stairs, and the humming noise. What is it, Edward? A demon sent to torment us?"
"No demon, sister, I'm sure of that. But as for what it is, I know not."
"Perhaps it's Richard, father even, watching over us, watching over the house. Do you think it could be so, Edward?"
My soldier's senses, fine-tuned on the battlefield and other occasions since, yet more personally dangerous, find nothing to fear in this haunting. I peer into the strange shadows feeling only a sense of mutual curiosity.
"It's like a glass eye," I remark. "Watching."
"Yes, that's it," replies my sister, breathless with excitement. "Watching us." It,.
Dave was checking the camera when Brian returned to the room. The tape was running so Brian's report was brief, although he knew that Dave would be pleased they'd had a result.
"Temperature variation on the staircase. Nothing else."
Dave nodded in response, gave a smiling thumbs up. "There's time yet."
Margaret and I drink in silence. I have no answers for her although I have tried to reassure her that there is nothing to fear. There is so much else we should talk about and yet there is nothing to say. My visits are so infrequent that I'm sure they distress her quite as much as our partings. She fears for my life, knowing nothing of it save that I will not answer her questions and hold firm in my belief in our cause.
There is a vague light in the air, the cold, grey light just before dawn. Clem was to have my mare prepared for now. I rise to my feet, reaching for my discarded coat, my sword. I am reluctant to meet my sister's eyes.
"I must be gone. Clem will be waiting for me by the stable. I have my saddlebag to collect."
Suddenly she is in my arms, hugging me tightly. There are tears in her eyes.
"Don't go, Edward. Please don't go."
I put her gently from me.
"I must, sweeting. Many lives and the safety of our King depend onme."
Instantly I regret my words. They are melodramatic but there is too much truth in them too.
Margaret's pretty face is pink with anger as she stands with fists clenched and body taut.
"Damn the King, and damn Cromwell too. Damn the both of them for tearing this family apart! Father, Mother, Richard all dead! You're the only one left, Edward. The last real Davenant! I want you to stay alive!"
I am shocked to the core by her words, but remember that she is a woman alone in a land at war.
"We wilJ pretend that you never spoke those words, sister. Remember who you are. Remember who we are and where our loyalty lies."
I hear footfalls outside the door.
"Listen, there's Clem and Betsy come to bid me farewell. We'll say no more of this foolishness."
Even as the door crashes open, I can still hear Margaret's whispered words.
"My loyalty is with you, brother, only you. I want to keep you safe."
Suddenly the room seems full of shouting men. I stand still, my hand on the hilt ofmy sword. There is a musket, three pistols, all levelled at my chest. Margaret has covered her face with her trembling hands, she is weeping quietly. My heart beats fast, like a drum sounding the charge, but my mind urges sense. I lay my sword on the table and sit down.
"Good morning, cousin Henry. A most unexpected pleasure indeed to welcome you at this hour of the day."
To my relief the words come out level and clear from my dry throat, giving the lie to the flutter of fear in my belly.
"Edward Davenant, by the power invested in me by the Parliament of the English people I arrest you on a charge of treason and conspiracy."
Since our cousin gave up the Faith to espouse the dull vestments of some perverse Protestant sect, I swear he has lost all humour.
"And how, cousin, do you construe treason from my activities?"
"By conspiring with other traitors in Scotland and France for the release of Charles Stuart."
"So is it treason now to honour our oaths given to God and our anointed king?"
"Enough ofthis rhetoric, Edward! Where are the letters?"
Slowly I release my hands from the arms of the chair, brush at a speck of dust on my breeches.
"I carry no letters, cousin. I seek but to visit my sister in these unhappy times, to bring her solace and proof of my wellbeing Where are my servants, Clem and Betsy Foskett? I trust they have come to no harm during your most unexpected arrival at my house."
Henry is distracted by my manner. He had hoped for something else, panic perhaps. I have discovered in these years the constant charm that exists in danger, but only a fool would not admit to the knowledge of fear. The art is in not showing it The three men ranged behind my cousin are equally uncomfortable Their eyes flicker to him uncertainly, seeking instruction. The muzzles of the pistols are a little lower.
"Safely locked in the wine cellar. They have come to no hann I ask again, Edward, where are the letters?"
"And I say to you, cousin, I know ofno letters."
Henry looks briefly at Margaret, standing by my side white-faced, her hands plucking at the silk of her skirt. He gives the nod to his companions.
The fists are hard, blood drips from my nose and my breath gasps from the hot pain of damaged ribs. I cannot defend myself, held firm by restraining arms. Margaret has stopped screaming now, her fists ineffectual against Henry's chest. Henry moves to stand so close his breath is cool on my face. I feel his frustration in the flecks of spittle.
"I know you are Charles Stuart's spy. I know you carry despatches from supporters in Scotland to his followers in France, conspiring to raise rebellion to gain his release. My master, Cromwell, wants those names .I ask you again, where are the letters?"
"God save the King!"
The force of his blow fells me, retching, to my knees; his boot to brief oblivion.
"Henry, you promised his safety! You said arrest, imprisonment. I want Edward out of this war alive!"
Margaret's voice echoes in my aching head. It is hard to speak for the blood in my mouth.
"You did this?"
She is instantly at my side, easing my battered body to sit against the fireplace. I have not the strength to throw her off "Edward, Edward, I did this for you. You are all the family I have left. I want you alive and safe out of this cursed war Give him the letters. Where did you put them?"
My blood and spittle darkens the breast ofmy betraying sister Jesu, but this is too much to bear. I cast her off, haul myself to swaying feet.
"Never will I betray my oath to my King and the honour of my family. God curse you, Henry, for the evil that you have done here. God curse you to hellfire for eternity. "
Margaret screams, the pistol flares, the impact of the ball in my chest slams my back against the edge of the fireplace. I am on the floor, shadows swirl across my eyes , a great cold numbness in my legs and Margaret's arms around me, the wine dark silk of her skirts flowing warm down my chest spreading around us on the floor
"God forgive me. God forgive me. Edward, I'm sorry. I'm sorry " The letters are safe. Only I know their hiding place. They will never be found.
Brian was checking the tape as Dave packed up the camera. Their regular debate on the nature of ghostly phenomena was ongoing.
"A spirit, a trace of energy locked in place by some strong emotion, violent death, betrayal. Is that what you think then, Dave?"
Brian's ultra-logical scientific approach was the reverse of Dave's more sensitive nature but had done nothing to diminish their friendship. Dave knelt to lift a rug in front of the ornate fireplace
"Look at this . This brown stain. It ' s meant to be blood- never dried up-can't be washed away "
Brian snorted.
"Iron oxidisation of some sort, if you ask me. "
"Well, what do you think then?" Dave snapped more viciously than he meant, but he was cold and tired
"I'm not denying that we have strong evidence of unexplained phenomena. But trapped spirits? No, I can't go with that. But Stephen Hawking's theory of the multiple universe would allow us to accept the possibility of cyclical time."
"Cyclical time! What on earth's that? "
"It proposes the theory that past, present and future may be capable of occupying the same place simultaneously "
Dave had problems taking that in.
"You mean that the ghosts are around us all the time living their own lives just like we are living ours?"
He looked around the room wide-eyed.
"Hang on a minute."
Brian's excited voice silenced him.
"There's something on the tape."
The voices were quite clear. The young man spoke first.
" It's like a glass eye. Watching."
The woman, also young, sounded excited, scared even.
"Yes, that's it. Watching us." GQ
Fiction Editor's Critique
There were eighteen submissions this time for our "Breakthrough Fiction" slot in Solander Subjects varied through time from prehistory to World War II. The most written about area was medieval monasteries - so perhaps there is a ghost of Ellis Peters at large On the whole the entries were good, but there were some recurrent faults which I think are worth mentioning.
Firstly , nearly halfofthe stories purported to be stories within stories. In other words, they began with a fictional character who in some way was supposed to convince us that the " real" story was true or interesting because they said so In one case this actually happened twice -a fictional character told of meeting another fictional character, who told a third fictional character ' s story I know that this is a tried and tested literary conceitparticularly in Edwardian short stories, like Sherlock Holmes or Raffle - but it did not work for me in any of the pieces presented In all submissions the actual story was better than the framing story , and frequently there was no fictional reason at all for the frame - simply , one felt , a nervousness at starting out.
Secondly, several of the pieces had the pace and feel of chapters or even synopses of books , rather than of short stories. There was too much plot, too much unresolved or unexplained conflict. Often as not, there was no clear or neat ending In one case the short story was even sent as the first three chapters of a book.
Thirdly - and perhaps most importantly, as the earlier points are really points of technique - most of the stories were very general in their history. Only one of the writers impressed me that he (I'm afraid it was a he) had mastered the minutiae of the
period he was using as a setting well enough to include telling and new details, and even he centred his story on generalities (for example, a scene in a "costume" pub) rather than on those dearly gleaned details.
So what do I hope for next time? I want stories that bristle with the specific, and give an intimate and unusual feel of their time I want stories that begin and end - even if we feel we are to see the protagonist again in later stories. I want stories with character, atmosphere and poise Above all, I want stories that tum - if you'll forgive that writing school-style word. Each scene must tum the protagonist's (and reader's) attitude to the events of the plot, and the end of the story should provide a final and satisfying ending to the whole.
Towse's story has some of these qualities - and more of them than any of the other stories I received. The strengths of her story are its completeness and the human reality of the main protagonists which is cleverly achieved through the use of the graphic present narrative voice. We feel for them, and, within the confines of the story, care about their fate . The main weakness is that the modern story is not truly linked with the Civil War story, although sleight of hand allows the parallel stories to raise tension for each other There are surprises , but there is no real surprisingness about either side of the narrative . In the main story, we see that weird things can happen; in the sub-story we see that family betrays family - but in neither case do we think we have seen something unique or True These are the things that stop this from being a "major" short story. Nevertheless , it is an enjoyable tale , and a worthy first rec ipient of the £100 fee for "Breakthrough Fiction".
Richard Lee
BREAKTHROUGH FICTION
Send your short stories to Richard Lee, Marine Cottage, The Strand, Starcross, Devon, EX6 SNY.
Entries must be 3000-7000 words, on hard copy - NO EMAILS OR ATTACHMENTS will be considered
Please send stamped addressed envelopes if you wish acknowledgement of receipt or return of manuscript.
Please send £10 (Payable to Richard Lee) if you want an individual critique of your story.
We will print stories that have appeared elsewhere (if they're good enough)- but must know where and when. Also , if you should wish to submit a story to us and at the same time to another competition or magazine , we have no problem about that. ' If published in Solander , payment will be £100 , or £200 for a "major" short story.
letters
Solander welcomes your letters and Emaik The editor reserves the right to edit correspondence jor publication
Truth and Lies in History and Fiction: A Debate
Earlier this year, the historian David Irving lost a libel case against Deborah Lipstadt, who had accused him in a recent book of being a racist and a Holocaust denier. In Issue 11 of the HNS Online Newsletter, Richard Lee posed the following: David Irving is called a liar because he knowingly fictionalises history for his own ends. But doesn't every writer of historical fiction do the same? And if they don 't, where is the difference?
This, as intended , provoked a vociferous response , in which our non-wired readers may like to join:
Adrian Muller wrote: The difference between historical novelists and David Irving is that the former do not intentionally alter facts to suit their ideological purposes and then represent warped history as fact.
Richard replied: All history is written with a slant. Distortion can come through ignorance, selectivity or, as in Irving's case , propaganda. History , the old adage has it, is generally written from the victor ' s point of view. Historical fiction , I would contend , is generally written from the point of view of the victim ( v arious hero stories aside). The problem with the victims i s that their " history" has often been destroyed , so the historian (or novelist) of the victim might feel justified in fabricating evidence that could or should have existed. It is indeed a specific goal of some historical fiction - particularly what is sometimes called "post-colonial " literature. These are truly dangerous waters - particularly if you consider that David Irving would probably now say that since WW2, he and other Nazi sympathisers have been the victims .
Adrian Muller again : There is a very distinct difference between historians and writers who set out to create historical fiction . The latter are free to write something that completely conflicts with what actually occurred The former have the responsibility to accurately reflect/interpret events. They should never be allowed to present as fact material that "should" have existed
Richard: As far as historical fiction is concerned, it doesn ' t seem to me sufficient to say , well , it's fiction so it doesn ' t matter if it's true or not. Historical fiction is , and always has been, a primary tool for propaganda At its simplest level, this can be the kind of propaganda that occurs within families - stories of black sheep , heroes, secrets &c. At a national level, it can be something that is seen to be essential to national well-being - films, for example, made during WW2 or in Communist Russia. It can also be seen as an ultimate sin. There is an element of fiction about all history Conversely, there is an element of
truth in all fiction and it seems to me that it is one of the central questions of historical fiction.
Derek Wilson wrote : Adrian's suggestion that the historian has ''the responsibility to accurately reflect/interpret events" is, thus baldly stated, an oversimplification. It seems to imply that objective truth exists. The good historian is biased, creative and entertaining. The past has to be written up afresh in each age to reflect the latest political correctness, and to connect it to the contemporary world The historian must be creative because he has to devise material to fill the gaps in his narrative. He uses imagination to link the fragments thrown up by his research The good historian should be an entertainer - he should write in a fluent and engaging style However , the best offer us much more They convey the drama of great events and evoke the sights and sounds of other epochs, give us a sense of " being there". But hang on - couldn ' t that also be one definition of good historical fiction?
We are the result of our history , and understanding what lies behind us ought to equip us better for understanding the here and now. The only way we can reach the past is through an exercise of the imagination . Therefore we need practitioners able to stir our imaginations. Some will be historians. Some will be historical novelists - QED?
Pamela Maddison began with her dilemma regarding an intriguing historical fact that wasn ' t enough to base a nonfiction book on, so she decided to turn it into a historical novel. " I have gone to a great deal of trouble to stay close to the facts , and , on occasion, on discovering that I had been wrong , have rewritten huge sections As for history being falsified by the winners , this has been a commonplace for centuries . But if it is wrong for winners to falsify , it is also wrong for losers to falsify By the way, now I think about it , a Jot of the issues that the Irving case rested on are at the centre of Dorothy L. Sayers ' Gaudy N ight. "
Truth and Lies in Hollywood?
Another bone of contention in the Newsletter was an article by the historian Andrew Roberts , berating American filmmakers for misrepresenting Brits. Marina Maxwell sent it as "a topic worthy of discussion [for] those ofus writers who strive faithfull y for historical accuracy in our fiction , onl y to see moviemakers make big bucks out of lies and distortions. "
David Coles wrote : Do we really need to be so offended? On reflection, I think we do If thousands of people are led to believe that the Americans won the war by getting hold of the Enigma coding machine or that the IRA are a fun-loving bunch who can ' t resist setting off the odd explosion, then thousands more will come to accept this as fact Still, I have the miserable feeling nothing will be changed historical facts will not be allowed to stand in the way of a good story
Lucienne Boyce disputed Roberts ' assertion that British children learn history from films: "If there are any teachers foolish enough to send pupils to such tinselly commercial sources, then I can only conclude that educational standards have sunk lower than I thought possible."
Simon Scarrow weighed in with this : Where there is a positive representation of a British character, the chances are that the character is an underdog cheeking the establishment at every opportunity. Negative representations are associated with upper class characters in an oppressive role. I think we miss the point if our umbrage is the result of a link between " Britishness" and the "establishment" . The real issue would seem to be about an attitude to class rather than nationality and I think that's quite positive
From Prof. Dean Miller, Chicago
Acc uracy in Histori cal Fiction
When you are writing historical fiction , you have to get the " stuff' ' - the realia - right. And then you can go on to show your paces as a convincing, thoughtful, sensible/ sensitive and imaginative stylist. In other words , we ought to stress both " historical " and " fiction" more or less equally . Solander, I submit , cannot afford to be seen as a fanzine , slopping comfortable and comforting praise on the whole genre - or it is liable to lose me and anyone else who reads historical fiction critically , but for pleasure And worse , it will lose any ambition it might have had to enter the realm of " history" defined generously. The war between authors and critics (in terms of historical fiction) might also be phrased as a conflict between history and fiction, except that to be a "critic" entails not only making judgments about accuracy , but also about skill (believability and novelistic ability).
From Eleanor Thomson, Wiltshire
Wh er e are th e Men ?
I am writing to voice my concern over what seems to be a takeover of the running of the Historical Novel Society by a Monstrous Regiment of Women Where are the men ? No , I'm not a misogynist. I'm a normal , middle-aged female , once-published author who would like to see the opposite sex better represented
(Ed: Though a memb er of said Mon s trous Regim ent, I can ass ure Ms Thomson that there 's no femini st conspiracy. It 's a good ques tion, though. For a s tart, Sally Zigmond, Rev iews Co-ordinating Editor, t ells me that the HNS Review is desperate for more male reviewers. So com e on, chaps, contact addresses are in the in s ide front co ve r.)
From Celia Ellis, Manchester Reference Collection for Writers
I invite members to suggest one or two books that they have found valuable in their research for a given period If you wish to contribute to this Reference Collection , please contact : Mrs. Celia Ellis, 8 Hunts Road, Irlams O'Th'Height, Salford, Manchester, M6 7QL. Tel: 0161 281 6334. An updated version of the Research List , with Reference Collection, is available from the same address (I st or 2nd class SAE please), or as an Email attachment from the Editor (ICuthberts@aol.com)
