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SOLANDER_ 26

FEATUR_ES

A Tale of Two Novels SUSAN HIGGINBOTHAM explores

Charles Dickens's historical fiction

This call, the bird obeyed with great alacrity; crying, as he sidled up to his master, 'Tm a devil, I'm a devil, I'm a Polly, I'm a kettle, I'm a Protestant, No Popery!" Having learnt this latter sentiment from the gentry among whom he had lived oflate, he delivered it with uncommon emphasis. 1

It sheared off heads so many, that it, and the ground it most polluted, were a rotten red. It was taken to pieces, like a toy-puzzle for a young Devil, and was put together again when the occasion wanted it. It hushed the eloquent, struck down the powerful, abolished the beautiful and good. Twentytwo friends of high public mark, twenty-one living and one dead, it had lopped the heads off, in one morning, in as many minutes The name of the strong man of Old Scripture had descended to the chief functionary who worked it; but, so armed, he was stronger than his namesake, and blinder, and tore away the gates of God's own Temple every day. 2

Thanks to Sir Walter Scott, historical fiction was a popular genre during the 19 th century, one that attracted William Makepeace Thackeray, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, and Elizabeth Gaskell. Charles Dickens, like his colleagues, tried his hand at the historical novel twice . Barnaby Rudge, one of his most obscure novels, and A Tale of Two Cities, one of his most famous, were the results.

Barnaby Rudge

Published in 1841, Barnaby Rudge had the misfortune to follow the wildly popular Old Curiosity Shop, after which any novel (at the time) was bound to feel anticlimactic. For contemporary readers, the new novel's titular hero, a mentally ill young man with a pet raven, was no match for the pretty, doomed Little Nell, and its historical subjectthe anti-Catholic Gordon Riots of 1780-apparently failed to catch the popular imagination. Dickens, who published the novel in weekly installments, saw his sales fall steadily as it ran its course. Modern readers, including those who love Dickens's other novels, have shied away from it as well. Nonetheless, it has much to commend it.

What made Dickens turn to histor ical fiction? As John Bowen notes, Dickens had considered writing a historical novel at the very beginning of his career: historical fiction was Victorian England's "hot" genre, one chat "seemed to promise the chance of literary respectability as well as popular success." 3 As Dickens feuded with successive publishers and turned his hand to other projects, however, Barnaby Rudge got pushed aside until 1841, when Dickens picked up its first three chapters, which had lain dorma nt for months, and sec to work.

Dickens scholars have spent much time debating what precisely drew Dickens to the subject of the Gordon Riots (named after Lord George Gordon). It has long been speculated chat he was concerned about the Chartist movement and the potential it presented for violence, but as D. G. Paz has suggested, his motives were probably more mixed than this, and included Dickens's concern about

renewed anti-Catholicism, his cordial detestation of religious fanaticism, which makes itself felt throughout all of his novels, his dislike of false nostalgia, and his desire to compete with Sir Walter Scott, Victorian England 's king of historical fiction. And, Paz notes, "he wrote to make money." 4 Dickens himself simply explained, "No account of the Gordon Riots, having been to my knowledge introduced into any Work of Fiction, and the subject presenting very extraordinary and remarkable features, I was led to project this Tale" [3].

Though the main characters of Barnaby Rudge are purely fictitious, one historical figure does turn up: Gordon himself Described by Colin Haydon as "unbalanced, irresponsible, and dangerous," 5 Gordon, the third son of the Duke of Gordon, was born in 1751 and spent several years doing military service in the American colonies before entering Parliament for Wiltshire. In 1779, he became president of the Protestant Association, which strove to repeal the Catholic Relief Act, passed in 1778. Though the Catholic Relief Act was modest in scope, lifting some of the many discriminatory laws against Catholics but not allowing them freedom of worship, it was immensely unpopular.

On June 2, 1780, Gordon and his followers, estimated by Haydon as numbering about 60,000, gathered at

St. George's Fields in Southwark and marched to Westminster to present a petition to Parliament to repeal the Act. The crowd forced its way into the lobby of the House of Commons, much to the distress of Gordon's own uncle, William Gordon, who threatened to plunge his sword into his nephew's body if the crowd made it into the chamber. The mob had to be dispersed by the Horse Guards and the Foot Guards, after which it moved on to attack the chapels at the Bavarian and Sardinian embassies. Over the next few days, the mob attacked property belonging to Catholics and those perceived as being sympathetic to Catholics. Among those whose property was targeted was William Murray, Chief Justice Mansfield, known for his religious toleration. Newgate and other prisons were attacked and their prisoners were released; even the Bank of England was targeted. The government was finally obliged to call out troops, resulting in more than two hundred deaths.

Gordon, who had not been among the rioters and had in fact published an advertisement denouncing them, was arrested

on June 9 and taken to the Tower. Subsequently, he was indicted for high treason, but with the help of able defense lawyers was acquitted after a jury deliberated for only half an hour. Unwisely, he continued to speak out on political issues and was ultimately arrested again in 1786, when he was charged with criticizing the administration of justice and with libeling Marie Antoinette (an odd charge , one would think, for an Englishman to face). Sentenced to five years in prison but unable to produce sureties for his good behavior when his term of imprisonment expired, he died of gaol fever in Newgate in 1793. He had converted to Judaism , after which, Haydon notes, he himself became the target of religious bigots.

Dickens treats Gordon, who does not appear until halfway through the novel , as a pitiable figure, as unbalanced in his way as Barnaby is in his:

his very bright large eye betrayed a restlessness of thought and purpose , singularly at variance with the studied composure and sobrietyofhis mien, and with his quaint and sad apparel. It had nothing harsh or cruel in its expression; neither had his face, which was thin and mild, and wore an air

of melancholy; but it was suggestive of an indefinable uneasiness, which infected those who looked upon him, and filled them with a kind of pity for the man: though why it did so, they would have had some trouble to explain. [293]

Once in the story, Gordon soon drops to the background until the remorseful lord at last is taken to the Tower: " [H] e whose weakness had been goaded and urged on by so many for their own purposes, was desolate and alon e" [614]. He disappears until the final chapter, where Dickens writes sympathetically of his last years and his charity to his fellow prisoners: "There are wise men in the highways of the world who may learn something, even from this poor crazy Lord who died in Newgate" [683].

It is not with Gordon or in the fictitious characters (of whom few, except for Grip the loquacious raven , can hold

~,""11,,,;r

fliim11hy Rlld~ and h~ ~illK':r

FEATURES

their own against Dickens 's more memorable creations) that history comes alive in Barnaby Rudge, but in the mob scenes:

At one house near Moorfields, they found in one of the rooms some canary birds in cages, and these they cast into the fire alive. The poor little creatures screamed, it was said, like infants, when they were flung upon the blaze; and one man was so touched that he tried in vain to save them, which roused the indignation of the crowd, and nearly cost him his life.

At this same house, one of the fellows who went through the rooms, breaking the furniture and helping to destroy the building, found a child 's doll-a poor toy-which he exhibited at the window to the mob below, as the image of some unholy saint which the late occupants had worshipped. While he was doing this, another man with an equally tender conscience (they had both been foremost in throwing down the canary birds for roasting alive), took his seat on the parapet of the house, and harangued the crowd from a pamphlet circulated by the association, relative to the true principles of Christianity. Meanwhile the Lord Mayor, with his hands in his pockets, looked on as an idle man might look at any other show, and seemed mightily satisfied to have got a good place. [552-54 ]

Andrew Sanders sums up the successes of the novel neatly: "[l]f we are to consider Barnaby Rudge truly as 'A Tale of the Riots of 'Eighty' , it is most fearfully and wonderfully so once the relatively sluggish unwinding of the private destinies of characters is transfigured by a public world of violence and madness. "6

A Tale o/Two Cities

It was to be eighteen years before Dickens turned to historical fiction again, but his other excursion into the genre, A Tale of Two Cities (1859), the classic tale of redemption and selfsacrifice set during the French Revolution, hardly needs an introduction. According to Dickens in his preface, the idea came to him while he and his friends were acting in Wilkie 4

Collins's The Frozen Deep, where Dickens played the Sydney Carconesque hero, Richard Wardour. Dickens's main source, as he noted, was Thomas Carlyle's The French Revolution, though Richard Maxwell notes that Dickens consulted many other sources, nonfictional and fictional 7 ; in his Penguin edition of the novel, Maxwell sets out several of them and allows the reader to see how Dickens distilled his sources into historical fiction. Critics have also noted that the plot device of "victim substitution," which of course forms the dramatic climax of A Tale of Two Cities, was a common one for historical fiction set during the French Revolution; among others, Edward Bulwer-Lytton (known mainly now for his opening line "It was a dark and stormy night ") used it in a novel called Zanoni. As Maxwell comments, "[T]he Victorian scene seems almost too well populated with advocates of a generous though often implausible strategy for freeing one's loved ones from terror and revolution." 8

A Tale of Two Cities, however, unlike Zanoni, is still widely read today. Indeed, in contrast with the tepidly received Barnaby Rudge, A Tale of Two Cities was a popular success. Not surprisingly, therefore, it received mixed reviews from critics, most famously from Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, a barrister and essayist who was also the uncle of Virginia Wool£ Stephen found Dickens unbearably lowbrow, just as his niece would later, and spared A Tale of Two Cities none of his spleen, the echoes of which can still be heard in criticism of historical fiction today:

Continued on page 36

Kipling's Bath

MARY HAMER dips into the private world of Rudyard Kipling and his sister Trix

I feel terribly shy, getting into Kipling's bath. Not that we are going to share it, exactly, not at the same time. It's rather short, for one thing. Besides, a hundred years or more have passed since my host leaned back and propped his head against this same mahogany surround, to gaze with pleasure at his glowing brass taps. Yet it feels almost too intimate, disturbing. As though it were time to draw back.

What do you think you're doing here, I ask myself.

Renting Naulakha, the house Rudyard Kipling and his wife, Carrie Balestier Kipling, built for themselves outside Brattleboro at the opening of their life together, was part research, part reward to myself.

On that morning in Vermont last August I thought I was close to comp leting the novel about Kipling I'd been writing, one based very closely on the events of his life.

Bur Rudyard Kipling fought off all intrusion into his privacy, as I well knew.

Without thinking, I'd been behaving as though I were fully entitled, part of his family, close perhaps as his sister, Trix. She never even

not another academic publication. I've always worked within the university, even when I stopped teaching in order to concentrate on writing. The remit of the Du Bois Institute I'm affiliated with covers African and African-American Studies: I needed a research topic that reflected this.

On the other hand, my last book was an enquiry into violence and its aftermath, the sort of damage that emotional or physical trauma leaves inside. 1 I've always found that new projects build, often in unexpected ways , on the one before: there needed to be scope for using what I'd learned in my book about lasting damage.

I had a hankering to write about Kipling, too There was unfinished business between us. I'd wanted to work on him for my PhD but was advised against it. "Oversubscribed", they told me: you'd never get away with that today. When I discovered-how ignorant I was-that Kipling had spent a serious amount of time in South Africa during the Boer War, I felt my interests might be converging of their own accord

Rudyard Kipling

Many readers will be aware that Kipling , set eyes on Naulakha, but she had been his earliest companion, in on the very beginning of his story.

I was discomfited, still not sure what I was doing , but in the months that followed, I found myself seeking to know more about Trix Kipling.

There was a good deal of calculation in my choice when I set out on this project, though I don't think I was clear at first that I was at a turning point as a writer and that this was going to be a novel,

not quite six, and his sister Trix , at three, were left with a strange woman in Southsea, who was cruel to them, when their parents went back to India. The question was could I triangulate these points, Kipling's childhood damage and his investment in the Boer War? But once I learned that Kipling had lost his eldest child, his favourite, Josephine, only months before he rushed out to the war, I suspected my idea might have traction: we know that , in a person rendered vulnerable by previous damage, the experience of loss can trigger violence.

With chis cloudy, unformulated sense chat there might be a pattern here, I sec out co inform myself, about the Boer War and about Kipling himself. Though I had notions, I had no programme. I wanted to find out, co discover: to see if what I'd argued about trauma was proved true or false. Kipling was the living record of a sequence of events chat could not be imposed on anyone for the sake of experiment. I was curious, too, about the meaning Africa had for chis man who so loved India and its people. I was interested too in what all this meant for Carrie Kipling. As you can see, however, I was not giving Trix a thought.

There was so much to read about Rudyard. I darted back and forth, mindless as a dragonfly, overwhelmed: six volumes of the collected letters, thirty-odd volumes of the collected works, many fine biographies. I found myself reading chem anxiously but at arm's length, afraid of absorbing another's take on Kipling, along with the information they offered, which I could not do without. While admiring their achievement, the sight of the endless footnotes cold me chat I did not want co cake chat route again.

Writing my lase book, I'd discovered the storyteller's voice as a cool for advancing argument: I would present my Kipling in the form of fiction.

way, putting myself in Kipling's place: I would see what he had seen out on the veld, strain co catch its smells, its rare sightings of wildlife.

In Bloemfontein itself, I set our to find the town char he saw. The album he'd put together co hold a few memorabilia of the war contained four small photographs of a flag being raised-or was it lowered?-before a primitive single-storey construction. Now I know chat it was Queen's Fort, put up in the 1840s, and chat in 1900 Bloemfontein could already boast buildings co match any in Birmingham. Bue at chat time I was still following Kipling, and imagining the Boers to be primitive.

This identification was challenged, my illusions shanered, when I made my way co the Anglo-Boer War Museum there. Kipling cook a very hard line on the Boers whom he damned as rebels: not content with attacking their culture of piety and their policies, he insulted their women. The British were burning Boer farms, in order co cut off their guerrilla troops from supplies, then herding women and children into concentration camps, where thirty thousand died: but for Kipling, the woman who cried co bring the inhuman conditions in these camps to public attention, Emily Hobhouse, was "the unspeakable Hobhouse". 2

Many biographers come co feel with each fresh project they are very like the person they are writing about, and chat chis happens with every new and different subject they take on Although I'd set my face against biography, I found myself, or at lease my choice of 1 Kipling, flattered when I realised how many places chat were important in Rudyard 's life were already ~----- --~ known to me India, of course.

Alice 'Trix' Kipling

Twenty years ago, on the night I couched down in India for the first time, the ancient Ambassador car drove me past little wayside fires on the road in from the airport I was coo excited to go to bed. I'd come at last to the place Kipling's stories had me long for as a child. That connection wasn't so surprising. But when I found chat the great bronze Buddha at Kamakura, where I had drunk green tea among the call bamboos, had inspired the poem he wrote when his wife, Carrie, was first pregnant, I began to feel smugly chat I was on track.

Discovering chat I had already met Tanya Barben, the curator of the Kipling Collection in the University of Cape Town, on a previous visit to South Africa, seemed co clinch the deal. I went back to South Africa, intent on following Rudyard's trail, planning my trip co coincide with the timing of one of his. Early in 1900, Rudyard went up co Bloemfontein at Lord Roberts' request co help sec up a newspaper for the troops I bought a return ticket on the overnight train chat travels from Cape Town up co Bloemfontein , on its way co Johannesburg, defying acquaintances with their anxious warnings. Post-apartheid, the country is still racked by hostility and fear, a legacy chat British handling of the Boers played a part in creating. Absurdly, I sat on my bunk, taking notes all the

Viewing the reconstructed interiors of shattered farms, with shards of teapots lying among shredded fabric, all the family life they had sheltered blown apart, I could not, as Kipling did, withhold my sympathy. I could not withhold tears at the photographs of emaciated and dying children, the desperate mothers, the lines of crosses in the

camp graveyards. I was forced to start asking cough questions, how could this intelligent man, who had only recencly lose a child himself, be so cruel and so blind? Where did chis hatred come from?

I'm a member of a writing group made up, by chance, of women. When I began co present my work in progress I was surprised by the enthusiasm to know more about Trix. Without realising, I'd been filling her in almost as background, supplementing her brother 's life. It 's all coo easy for a woman writer co go along with pushing ocher women into the wings. Trix Kipling was a writer herself, but her development was constrained and even crippled in a way chat her brother escaped. Younger than Rudyard and chat much more vulnerable when she was separated from her parents, Trix was also confused: their foster-mother made a pet of her but persisted in savaging the big brother Trix loved.

Her trail was much less clearly marked than Rudyard's. The single book-length published source, however, Lorna Lee's Trix: Kipling's Forgotten Sister, 3 does establish a rough chronology for her life, even for the years between 1911 and the mid-twenties, when she was said co be coo disturbed co live with her husband. Armed with that, I was able co sloe back together the lives of brother and

sister, ci e pub ic view. As I did so, the dynamic of her growth as a writer, her two novels, her short stories, began to engage my own imagination. I began to identify with her, as a woman writing.

Yet her venture into "automatic writing", with its invitation to spirit control that she turned to, did make me pause. Under the aegis of the Society for Psychical Research she acted as a medium, under the name of "Mrs. Holland" in an experiment known as "the cross-correspondences". At the time it was already known that with some subjects, automatic writing could give rise to breakdowns: Trix had a bad breakdown in 1898 and though she recovered by 1902, she broke down again in 1911 and was ill, living apart from her husband for fifteen years or so. I kept this aspect of her life at arm's length.

As my identification with Rudyard weakened I began to pick up fresh information about Trix, allowing me to build an independent context for her as an artist and a thinking woman, one separate from the life of her family and her brother. Through the Kipling Society I was alerted to Judy Oberhausen's article4 linking Trix with Evelyn de Morgan and her husband William, the tile man: their paintings inspired her to write a number of "trance poems" and they encouraged her in her exploration of "automatic writing". Their intelligent and principled support for such exploration challenged me. Perhaps I needed to see this activity as something more than the symptom of her loneliness and frustration. To ask, even, about its similarities with the state of mind her brother experienced when he was led by his "daemon" of inspiration.

When I finally turned to Google Books, the dedication of Maud Diver's 1908 novel, The Great Amulet, 5 leapt out at me: "For Trix Fleming in memory of Dalhousie days". Here was another friend for Trix: in an interview given in the 1940s Diver, who had been a very successful novelist in the twenties, told how she and Trix had been close since they met as girls, on the boat going out to India. Now I had a woman whose career offered a counterpoint to that of Trix. Detaching herself from her background, stepping into view, Trix could now be seen in the round.

I managed co trace the set of parodies that in 1902 she published in the Pall Mall Magazine, for once under her own name as a married woman, ''Alice Fleming". Written as she emerged from breakdown, they were her swan-song, in literary terms, though she would live on for fifty years. Skilfully, lightly, one by one she mocks the style of the leading male poets of her day. When she comes to her brother, Rudyard, the echoes of individually recognisable poems written out of the mindset that possessed him during the Boer War expose them mercilessly: their father termed these verses "fratricidal".

Uncovering Trix gave my novel quite a different balance. Her life reveals the dark side to her brother's success but her writing, above all when she picks up all that is false in his war poems for parody, demonstrates that her ear was excellent: Trix Kipling had perfect

pitch.

Maybe I had to prove this to myself before I dared investigate her further. In the course of my story I'd reported her periods of breakdown, without entering into them. At last, my fellow-writers helped me to see that I was shirking and I must go there and allow myself to speak in the voice of a woman betrayed and mortally confused.

As a child Trix fed on the only adult affection available to her, compromised as her foster-mother 's concern had been. Growing up, she and Rudyard never reproached their parents to their faces; instead he took revenge on them when he published his story "Baa Baa Black Sheep", a lightly fictionalised version of the miseries they had undergone. Trix, however, remained silent. As a young woman making the choice of a husband, she was disabled by a muddle of love and dependence, fear and rage. In agreeing to marry Jack Fleming, she settled on a man who did not share her own devotion to literature and the arts, let alone her lively interest in new ideas: in choosing Fleming she doomed herself to a second exile.

It was my job to show the monstrous flowering in her maturity of that ruined childhood, but from the inside. In order to write scenes where she struggled to keep going with her writing through disappointment and che Calcutta heat I had only to elaborate on my own experience as a writer. I went further when I decided that the trigger for her first breakdown should be a prophetic vision of Josephine's death in the crystal ball she used: the daces worked perfectly. I really took the plunge when I made her relapse into madness on reading of the death of Rudyard's son. Sanity continued to struggle through in her, however. Ac some level she came to accept that the rage which made her fly at her husband muse be kept to herself, that she must "make nice" as we say today, and then she would be allowed to come home. Trix dwindled into a rather too talkative old lady, "a character, an eccentric perhaps, but she was a dear". 6

It's my belief that in questioning that happy ending reported by family and friends, I've arrived at a more truthful version of Trix Kipling's life. But if I hadn't felt so uneasy getting into Kipling's bath would I ever have felt the nudge towards Trix? I might never have recognised in her a woman like myself, one trying co find the right form for her voice.

Mary Hamer used to teach in the university but she escaped. Publications .from that life include Incest: a new perspective, (Polity Press, Cambridge 2002) and Signs of Cleopatra: reading an icon historically ( Exeter University Press 2008).She is currently seeking a publisher for her completed novel, Rudyard & Trix.

PllOFILES

''What

the dead do, they change you.''

VANORA BENN ET T explores the novels of Booker winner HILARY MANTEL

The 2009 Man Booker Prize is Hilary Mantel's first significant literary award, though her darkly fascinating novels, both historical and contemporary, have won wide admiration since she was first published in 1985. Mantel's latest offering, Wolf Hall, a retelling of the life of Henry YUi's hated chief minister Thomas Cromwell, has earned ecstatic reviews and was the bookies' favourite for this year's Booker, with the odds slashed from 12-1 co 2-1 within days of betting opening. William Hill said it had "never seen a betting pattern like it."

Although she has written two novels set in the 18th century, Mantel, who has grumbled about being responded to as a woman writer, is wary of being called a historical novelist. She prefers to describe Wolf Hall, like its predecessors (A Place of Greater Safety is an epic novel about the creators of the French Revolution; The Giant, O'Brien is the story of freaks and Irishmen being hunted down by a Scottish naturalist in Georgian London) as a "contemporary novel about past events."

"I think historical novels are just as diverse as contemporary novels, and their writers don't necessarily have anything in common," she says. A novel being labeled historical, she goes on, "can be a kiss of death."

Writing about people who are no longer alive doesn't, she believes, mean writing about situations that are no longer alive. When Mantel talks about the process of hearing their voices, it sounds uncannily like a haunting.

"I think, you see, the situations aren't dead and finished - to me, history is very much alive. The dead are inside us - in our genes. Their past has shaped our present. I like the challenge of crying 8

to get close to a person who is, as it were, always in the next room. You can hear them moving around in there, you can sometimes catch a reflection of them in a mirror, but you can't talk to them or see chem face to face."

"What che dead do, chey change you. You begin by identifying some little pare of you chat's like them, so you can split it off and work with it. But by the end of a book, you're different; the intense contact with another personality has reshaped you. I have never felt that about a purely fictional construct."

Ghosts, and the wisps and shivers of the otherworldly, play a big part in Mantel's interior world generally. Her novel Beyond Black is the story of a middleaged psychic, plying her trade round the scruffy wastelands of the M25, telling clients what their dead relatives think of their new kitchen units, and haunted by "real" ghosts from her own violent childhood. These literal hauntings shade off into something only a little more nebulous in many of her other books, where characters are often gripped by memories and might-have-beens chat exert at terrible pull over them, strong enough to change their behaviour. Mantel herself has felt haunted, she says, in all these ways.

"When I was six my family went to live in a house we considered haunted. I was frightened when I first came to believe in the ghosts, but much more frightened - helplessly so - when I realised the adults believed in them too. In chose days my belief was literal. I thought I would open a door and see something horrible, something half-formed and degraded. Lacer, my perception of ghosts became

PROALES

metaphorical. I think of ghosts as chances missed , roads not taken. And babies not born , of course. We have chambers in the heart for all these. "

Born in 1952 into a family oflrish Catholic descent - her father a clerk, her mother working at the nearby mill from the age of 12, home first a Derbyshire village close to Glossop, then, after her mother replaced her father with the lodger, a small town in Cheshire - Mantel only started writing in her twenties, after university at the London School of Economics and Sheffield, and marriage to fellow-student Gerald , a geologist, and the first of a series of postings around the world with him. It was pain and, she says, frustration, that drove her to it - the years from 19 onwards when doctors insisted on creating her mysterious aches and persistent lethargy as mental rather than physical symptoms , until, after she'd recognized what she was suffering from as endomecriosis, she was finally treated, as she put it in her memoir, Giving up the Ghost, by " having my fertility confiscated and my insides rearranged."

" I felt my future was slipping away. I wanted to make a mark on the world. And I also wanted to read a good novel about the French Revolution, one that didn't seem to exist, and wouldn't unless I wrote it myself I began A Place of Greater Safety when I was 22, and finished it when I was 27. Then I couldn't sell it. I had to go away, rethink, and write a contemporary novel before I could get the break-through into print. "

Her official debut was a story about a changeling. Every Day is Mother's Day, published in 1985, was about an agoraphobic clairvoyant, her daughter and their social worker. It was followed by a sequel, ¼cant Possession , and a novel about the plight of women in Saudi Arabia, Eight Months on GhaZZtZh Street. "A Place of Greater Safety was finally published as my 5th novel, in a slightly revised form; I wrote a final draft at great speed during the course of one summer."

The creepy shadows in Mantel's work have led to her being described as being, like Graham Green, a person who has seen darkness and could be said to believe in original sin. Her Catholic upbringing made, she said, an interesting background for a writer, "because when you are a very small child you are introduced to the invisible world of angels and saints, whom you are told are all around you, and to the concepts of time and eternity. You can't grasp these intellectually - you're not readyso you grasp them emotionally. You understand that the world is

not simply what it is. Appearances deceive. This is a good thing for a writer to know. "

" I decided when I was 12 not to be a Roman Catholic anymore. I might look and talk like a Catholic; but the outward form of a thing, I cold myself, is not always the same as its inner nature. For a long time I thought of myself as agnostic. Now I think I am moving back cowards faith. I am trying to understand the concept of grace. But I can't imagine ever going back to the Catholic Church. I bear too much ill will. I grew up believing that I was a bad, undeserving person, and developed an intense habit of self-scrutiny, which allowed me no peace. You can cease to practice the religion , but it's hard to change those habits of mind. "

It is no bad thing for a writer to feel an outsider, anyway, Mantel believes, because a writer's position is "necessarily peripheral. If you don't start off as an outsider, you make yourself one. The onlooker sees most of the game. "

It has therefore always felt natural to take the perspective of the weak, the underdogs, people forgotten or misrepresented by history's mainstream narrative. Giving these people back a voice feels a kind of retrospective justice.

This is why it comes as something of a surprise that she has now chosen the big soap-opera moment in English history to write about, the subject every TV producer and Sunday-supplement writer is interested in - England's move to Protestantism, and the rise and fall of Anne Boleyn.

"It's true I've always sided with the marginalised, the voiceless , the misrepresented or simply the unpopular. I admire courage, and it is most clearly manifest in these people. In a larger sense, as a northerner from an Irish Catholic background, I was always conscious there was a dream England I had never seen -a place where they had thatched cottages and hollyhocks, and people went to evensong. Englishness seemed to me to be something owed by male protestant southerners. I didn't feel English history was my history. Then, with Wolf Hall, I marched in and planted a flag on that territory - made a grab at one of the stories central to the English myth, the story of the Reformation."

"It was Cromwell himself who fascinated me, " she adds, quoting David Starkey, who has likened Cromwell to ''Alastair Campbell with an axe " . "I wouldn't have written about the era for the sake of it - the character came first. But it is important to me that to

PROFILES

himself, Cromwell is not a 'character' - he is a person half-way through his life and on an uncertain trajectory, with memories that don't fie together, with all sores of unfinished business trailing, a man who is living as we all do with messiness and conditionality and imperfect information. He is self-aware, but perhaps has his areas of blindness. He knows he scares people , but he's not quite sure why. "

Mantel believes that Cromwell couldn't be fully realized except through fiction. All the faces and public events chat have been recorded about him "don't add up co a human being"; in fiction, "the novelist can go on working beyond the point where the historian has to stop".

By the end of chis book, she says, she does not necessarily want her reader to like Cromwell - coo much empathy can betray the novelist - but rather co "co stand in his shoes and look ch rough his eyes"

There will be a sequel (though she hopes the books will each stand alone). "What I hope co do, in the next book, is co open the prospect that he's been holding out on the reader - by the end of Wolf Hall we think we know him, but do we?"

In Wolf Half, Mantel reworks familiar facts and characters, showing some in a disconcerting new light - in particular, her Thomas More , Cromwell's adversary and the champion of the Catholicism England was about co discard. The More of this novel is (historically plausibly) very unsaintly - sneering and clever-clever, a man who makes a point of humiliating his wife, a relentless self-publicise.

Her Cromwell is a recognizably Mantel construct - haunted by the memory of his dead wife, and by his violent childhood, and propelled by those memories and his own raw intelligence co strive upwards: the underdog made good. Born the bashedabout son of a drunk blacksmith in Putney, he becomes Henry VIII's right-hand-man and the first Earl of Essex.

The question driving the book, she says, is " how did he do it?"

The subtlety of her answer comes from her own style. "A historical novelist offers a framing of reality. That doesn' t wipe out evidence and doesn't preclude ocher framings. What I do is propose a version, and my guarantee co the reader is chat it could be true. I cry co make sure that I exclude impossibilities. I won't rearrange history co suit the dramatic process. There's tension between the two. Once you abdicate from the line of face you get yourself into all sorts of trouble."

"When working with a dead person like Thomas Cromwell, you become expert in directions: the half-seen, the halfexpressed," Mantel says. She builds her struggle between the two Thomases, Catholic and Protestant, on the merest sliver of a half-fact. When well-off young Thomas More was a teenage page at Lambeth Palace, early in the book, hungry, scruggling Thomas Cromwell had an uncle who worked in the kitchens there. "What do you do if you're a small boy from a chaotic home? Your first consideration is getting fed, so you run down co Uncle John for scraps. Two of history's great players at the same time and the same place - could they have met? My answer as a historical novelist is, of course, yes, yes."

Mantel has Cromwell remember a boyhood meeting with the slightly older page-boy More, who's carrying a big book under his arms. When the urchin Cromwell asks, "what's in that book?" More's snooty answer is, "words."

"Thomas Cromwell always remembers that answer: 'words'. What troubles him is the sense of possibility, and of loss - the feeling they might have had a conversation, but didn't. Cromwell rises up to be a supreme survivor, determined to set the agenda. But all Thomas More thinks of him is, 'drop Cromwell in a deep dungeon at night, and when you come back in the morning he'll be sitting on a deep cushion, eating larks' tongues, and all the jailers will owe him money'."

"Later, when More is in the Tower, prepared to die for a form of words, Cromwell reminds him of chat moment. He says: 'That book - was it a dictionary?' And More says, Tm sorry?' And when Cromwell unwraps the episode, More says, 'oh, what nonsense; I didn't know you when you were seven.' At More's trial, Cromwell thinks, 'chat's too bad, I remember you and you don't remember me. You never even saw me coming." '

VANORA BENNETT is the author of Portrait of an Unknown Woman, which features Sir 1homas More. Her latest novel Blood Royal, was published by HarperCollins in May. She has a website at www. vanorabennett. com.

THE HISTORICAL IMAG INATION:

JAMES HAWKING talks to journalist and novelist ALAN MA SSIE

Allan Massie is one of the foremost journalists in the United Kingdom, contributing regularly to the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail, as well as The Scotsman, where he has long been the chief fiction reviewer. His non-fiction books cover subjects ranging from Muriel Spark to rugby to financing health care. Proud of his Scottish heritage, he has served as president of the Walter Scott Club, and lives not far from Abbotsford. But what will probably interest readers of Solander most are the twenty-one novels he has published over the last thirty some years, particularly his historical novels and romances .

Five of his Roman novels are sometimes referred to as The Empire Series, each named for its protagonist: Augustus, Tiberius, Caesar, Antony and Caligula (Nero's Heirs, another Roman novel written between Antony and Caligula, can also be considered as belonging to the series.) When I asked in what order the books might be read, Massie prescribed the following:

"[Read ] them in this order: Caesar, Augustus, Antony, Tiberius, Caligula, Nero's Heirs. For what it's worth, my own favourites are Tiberius and Nero's Heirs. Since Augustus and Antony cover much of the same ground, it is difficult to say which should be read first, but I think Antony may have more resonance - and pathos? - if you have already read Augustus."

Caesar is narrated by Decimus Brutus, cousin of the better-known conspirator Marcus Brutus, for whom he expresses nothing but contempt. Decimus, also known as Mouse, describes a charming and gracious Caesar, but one who had to be killed for the good of the Republic. Most of the action takes place during the struggles between Antony and Octavian, the boy whom Cicero said must be "flattered, decorated, and eliminated." The presentation of Cicero seemed hostile, not unlike Massie's presentation of the journalists and politicians in his contemporary fiction.

"The hostility is my narrator's," he says. ''At the same time I would remark that Cicero's remedies for the ills of the Republic - the concordia ordinum and the idea that all would be well if only all good men ( boni) came togetherwere impractical. He seems to me a good example of the intellectual in politics. As to hostility to politiciansand journalists - which you find in m y modern novels, what can I say? Both trades demand men (and women) of the highest qualities, and most of us lack such qualities. "

Augustus purports to be a long lost manuscript found in a Macedonian monastery When asked about this, Massie recommended that the reader skip the introduction to this book and a similar one to Tiberius, both of which he now considers "silly". Massie's Augustus shares the slyness that is emphasized by many novelists, but he adds

a dimension of trusting friendship with the dependable Agrippa and the perceptive Maecenas. The Livia here is more believable than the schemer in Tacitus or the murderess in I Claudius.

"His (Graves 's) treatment of Tiberius's character makes little sense. As for Livia, yes, I suppose that it's an anti-Graves If she had really been the super-Lady Macbeth Graves makes her, I can't imagine Augustus wouldn't have divorced her. After all, he had quickly divorced two wives he found unsatisfactory. I greatly enjoyed Graves's two Claudius novels and admire them, but I haven't read them since I was at school, and deliberately didn't refer to them while writing my Roman novels for fear of influence."

about using a friend of the emperor as narrator of Caligula, the author recalls his thought process.

"The problem was how to make him interesting and convincing. So it seemed to me that a sympathetic witness

MAGNE AND

was necessary as my narrator. Madness is usually boring. My Caligula is first the product of a terrifying childhood, who grows up to be a clever but inadequate young man, very quickly corrupted by the absolute power he thinks he possesses."

Nero's Heirs is set in and around 69 AD, the Year of Four Emperors. The fictional narrator is the lover of Vespasian's son Domitian and his daughter Domatilla during the civil war that brought that emperor to power. The sources for the history of this period are unusually rich, with Tacitus, Suetonius, Josephus, Antony captures the raw vitality of the mortal version of the god Bacchus as it

ALLAN MASSIE

ebbs in what we know will be his last days. Part of the story is a ghost-written memoir, to which the secretary adds his franker comments about Antony's deterioration. Cleopatra seems more of a symptom of his downfall than THE

Dio Cassius, and Plutarch all writing extensively about the events. When asked which source he preferred, Massie had no hesitation. a cause.

Tiberius presents a sympathetic emperor deceived by Sejanus. In his relation with Germanicus, Tiberius is shown to be indulgent and generous towards his impetuous nephew, and in no way is he connected with his death. Much of the later actions revolves around Caligula on Capri and the problem of succession.

EVEN NG of THEW RLD

''All the Roman novels draw first from Suetonius, for years favourite bedside reading. Nero's Heirs owes much to Tacitus, even while the form of the novel makes it a sort of anti-Tacitus. It amused me to steal some ofTacitus's best epigrams, credit them to my narrator, and imply that Tacitus stole them from him."

In his biography of Gaius, better known as Caligula, Suetonius had said "first the emperor, then the monster", and Massie gives scope for both. For example, most sources represent Caligula's expedition to Germany as proof of his madness, but Massie shows that the emperor remains the child of the camps, nicknamed "Little Boots". Asked

When invited to praise or disparage other novelists working in ancient Rome, Massie was gracious and only spoke positively.

"Thornton Wilder's The Ides of March is very good, though he plays ducks and drakes with chronology. I greatly admired the first book of Robert Harris's trilogy about Cicero - lmperium - and am just about to read the second volume, Lustrum. Ross Leckie's

A ROMANCE OF T HE DARK AGES

ALLAN MASSIE

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books on Hannibal and Scipio are good, especially the latter. Shakespeare coo, naturally, though he got all his material, including some of the great speeches, from North's translation of Plutarch, which he then versified, magnificently of course. All historical novelises steal. Different period since he deals only with the lacer Empire and early mediaeval times, but I should mention Alfred Duggan, one of the greatest of historical novelises. Also Peter Vansittart's Three Six Seven."

Massie's latest trilogy, beginning with Evening of the World, uses a complex narrative structure, purporting co be written by Michael Scott for his pupil Frederick II, Stupor Mundi. Thus we have a twelfth-century perspective on earlier events. There are also notes from a Templar, and further commentary from a Rosicrucian. Although it seems co be sec in the fifth century AD, the novel invents much of its own history. The hero, Marcus, reunites the Western and Eastern Empire while hearing a number of stories along the way. Asked about the difference between chis trilogy and an historical novel, Massie made some interesting distinctions.

"These are really Romances rather than historical novels. le is in che nature of Romances chat there should be digressions and episodes which are

pleasing in themselves but often detached from the main narrative. All Romances are picaresque. The use of Michael Scott as narrator freed me from the need co adhere co a strict chronology. Modern mediaevalists know much more about the so-called Dark Ages than Scott could possibly have done."

When the Historical Novel Society was first being proposed by Richard Lee, he suggested che tide "Historical and Romance Novel Society". Perhaps this was meant to broaden the perspective, as Arthurian sagas - arguably Romances by this definition - have always received popular attention.

Arthur che King retells the Arthurian myths, which Michael Scott believes should be seen as "che best songs and history from my own Scottish Borderland." One difference from the standard versions is chat Arthur, like many characters in Massie 's novels regardless of time period, is actively bisexual. Massie explains chis as the narrator's choice.

"The reader should understand chat Scott is in love with his pupil, as many of the best teachers have always been with theirs, all the more intensely when chis love is denied physical expression. Yes, of course Scott is seeking co shape his pupil's mind, in order chat he may fulfil his potential."

When invited co name ocher Arthurian novelises of interest, Massie had one reservation.

" Malory, of course, and also Tennyson. Rosemary Succliffe's The Sword at Sunset is very good. Likewise, Peter Vansittart's Lancelot. Sadly, I never managed to enjoy T. H. White's Arthurian novels , despite making several attempts and liking other books he wrote."

Charlemagne and Roland is also a romance with little real history, except for "che coronation of Charlemagne as Holy Roman Emperor. I owe the idea that the circumstances displeased Charlemagne co one of my teachers at Cambridge, the great mediaevalist Walter Ullmann. He said that Charlemagne had every intention of making himself Roman Emperor but didn't wane co receive the Crown from the Pope, since chat implied that the Pope had the right co create the E )) mperor.

Massie has also produced several novels sec in contemporary times, many of which deal with the major historical events of the twentieth century. When asked co compare writing about historical themes in the distant and recent past, Massie had the following co say.

"I don't see a sharp demarcation between historical novels set in the distant past and novels about historical events within our own lifetime. That said, I think of A Question of Loyalties, Ihe Sins of the Father and Shadows of Empire as contemporary novels, though to younger readers (if I have them) they may seem historical."

These novels deal with the aftermath of World War II, and could serve as an illustration of Joyce's remark that "history is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake," as the characters struggle with the consequences of war crimes committed long before.

Another of his modern novels, Ihe Death of Men, concerns the kidnapping and eventual murder of a prominent Italian politician, an echo of the events of the 1970s.

"Obviously, as I say in a prefatory note, the novel is based on the Aldo Moro case. But the family of the murdered politician is entirely invented. As to continuity between Roman and Italian politics well, in every age, politics is much the same: politicians faced [with] the choice of what is right (morally) and what is expedient; having to choose between two shades of grey rather than between black and white."

Massie's most recent work, Surviving, also uses modern Rome and its environs as a setting. Nevertheless, this book is less concerned with politics and affairs of state than with the struggle to stay sober. The characters are connected by their membership in an expatriate chapter of Alcoholics Anonymous. One of them is an American teenager who knows the story of Tiberius and Sejanus because of an accurate novel he is reading at the time. Surviving lovingly details the streets of Rome, which make it impossible to avoid the past. For example, in the image of a young prostitute on the Via Veneto: "But she was beautiful, lovely with red-gold hair cut short and long, gorgeous legs. She wore a dull gold dress, brief as a legionary's tunic" (p. 73).

An author with such an impressive list of novels has earned the right to generalize about the relationship between fiction and history. "Obviously fiction is not history, and a historical novel is fictional, no matter its basis in historical fact," Massie says. "But the novelist can do things which scrupulous historians hesitate to attempt. He can make the past live as vividly as the present. Carlyle said that Walter Scott's achievement was to have reminded readers that men and women in the past were creatures of flesh and blood."

So what can we learn from Walter Scott? "Two things, I think. First, how to mix fictional characters with ... historical ones. In the novels set in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, historical characters are almost always presented to us from the point of view of fictional ones. Second, that the further back you go in time, the more liberties you can take. Compare Ivanhoe to Old Mortality."

From the way it had been portrayed in one of his contemporary novels, it was possible to guess what Massie's choice for Scott's best novel might be. "In Redgauntlet, which is, as you surmise, my own favourite Scott novel, he daringly introduces counter-factual history almost in his own lifetime: an aborted Jacobite Rising for which there is no historical evidence."

Walter Scott came up again when I asked Massie why he included no historical notes with his books. "I don't like the fashion of supplying notes on sources, etc. to novels (even though Scott did so). It seems to be saying 'don't take this as primarily a work of the imagination.' So it suggests that a novel can't stand by itself."

In his 1995 novel King David, Massie turns from the Roman to the Biblical in recreating the life of the shepherd's-son-turned-king David. "I now prefer King David to any of my Roman novels, partly because I find David, as a man who practised realpolitik while

also believing, though sometimes doubting, that he was the Chosen One of God, more fascinating than even Augustus or Tiberius. I recently had occasion to read it again for the first time since it was published and found myself thinking that I came close to writing the book I intended to write. Too often, sadly, this isn't the case, the book written being less than the one envisaged ."

With this endorsement in mind, I obtained and read a copy of King David and found myself agreeing with Massie. The book is both lyrical and exciting, and David might be his richest character in this highly original retelling of an old story.

like Walter Scott, the father of the historical novel, and such of his successors as Allan Massie.

ALLAN MASS/E's novels are published by Hodder & Stoughton, Phoenix and Sceptre. His latest novel, Surviving, is published by Vagabond Voices, an independent press on the Isle ofLewis.

ALLAN MASSIE

Solander thanks Mr Massie, and it is hoped that our readers will sample some of his books as well as those he recommended by others. One can never have enough reasons to enjoy historical fiction by writers

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JAMES HAWKING wrote ''Roman History through a Hundred Novels"for the first issue of So lander in 1997, and has contributed regularly to Historical Novels Review He lives in Chapel Hill North Carolina, where he is currently finishing an historical novel

about baseball players travelling around the world and establishing their own league.

ANGLES OF LIGHT

SARAH BOWER t alks to novelist EMMA DARWIN

Emma Darwin is the author of two popular and critically acclaimed novels, The Mathematics of Love and A Secret Alchemy. Though both cell historical stories, they also narrate the experiences of contemporary figures who themselves investigate chis history. Her thoughtful and sensitive layering of these different narratives makes not only for absorbing and entertaining fiction, but also comments on the entire process of writing history, of how we sift and sort through what we know, selecting and rejecting, ordering and reordering, until we have the story we need. Darwin's novels engage us both with a set of vividly and subtly drawn historical figures, and with contemporary characters who seek and find

redemption through history.

I began my conversation with Emma Darwin by asking her how she became a writer, or - more properly, perhaps - when she first realised she was one.

ED: When I was pregnant with my first child, I decided I would cry to write a novel. I'd always known I could bend words to my will, but I had to learn everything else : plot, characterisation, ideas and so on. I don't chink I even asked myself ifl was a writer, and I certainly didn't know there were courses: I just wrote. And then, as an extra to a novel which had come

our a bit shore - ic was a first cry at the whole family-firm idea which is so crucial co A Secret Alchemy - and co fill in some back story, I wrote some diary entries for the grandmother, moving backwards in rime co the point where the firm had scarred. And in working with researched material, with the sense of past and present, I had chis huge sense of coming home, like a five-year-old Andy Murray being given a tennis racquet. That was when I knew I was a writer, and it was the first novel I wouldn't be ashamed co show my agent now. It was also the first novel which cold the story from more than one point of view, in parallel.

SB: What is the silliest, or perhaps the best, job you've done to support your writing?

ED: It 's so long since I've had a proper job I can hardly remember. I'm a single parent and for years I've done little local bits co fit round the children and the writing. From the professional point of view, the most useful [job] was a couple of years in academic publishing, because it introduced me co the basics of how the trade works, so the brute realities of being an author -a seller in a buyers' market - weren't quite such a shock. And I remember chat the book trade has always, always thought that things were getting worse. Ages only look golden when you look back.

SB: Have you published works other than your novels? Short stories, nonfiction, poetry?

ED: I have a shore story in the erotic collection, In Bed With , along with Fay Weldon and ochers, but I'm not allowed co tell you which one's mine. And I've had a few shore stories published in competitions, including Fish and Bridport, and a few articles commissioned. But I'm very much hard-wired for novels, and the drive is always co go on with the current one rather than diverting co write and pitch other work. Then I have co re-learn how co write short fiction, which is very good for me, but very difficult. When my stories don't work , it's usually because inside them there's a novel struggling to get out. I have to start from scratch, thinking of them as a poem, co counteract chat.

attracted you to this structure? What are the particular advantages and challenges it throws up?

ED: I wanted co explore photography in The Mathematics of Love - I'd done an A-level in it, and found the history and philosophy of it utterly fascinating: observation, voyeurism, positive-negative. But my main character's dates didn't fit, since he was a Waterloo veteran, So I reamed him up with an artist, and paralleled his story with one set in the last generation of heroic photojournalists, in the 1970s. I love writing in different voices, but it does throw up the problem of how co articulate what a character-narrator wouldn't know or think. With a parallel narrative I could articulate such things in the other thread, shed light from different angles on the same themes, and explore how They are and aren't the same as Us, how Then is and isn't like Now. Many novelists play with 'there' and 'here' in a similar way: space and time really are the same stuff. And, of course, in setting Then and Now in the same house, I found I was playing with the presence of the past in the present: our sense of history, of the way in seems to , soak into the walls ...

With A Secret Alchemy it was for similar reasons: the dominant story was clearly the Woodvilles' , but again I wanted another beam of light at a different angle on the same themes: secret love, married love, widowhood, the family firm, foster fathers, siblings, uncles. Plus, with all that history co convey, it was a huge help co be able to use a modern historian, very cautiously, to fill in a few gaps. With both novels, though, the challenge is to connect the two stories well enough that readers aren't wondering why they're in the same book, and aren't frustrated by the switches. In a way, the more they're loving one strand, the more they sometimes resent the change. Some readers never get it, others absolutely adore it, and stare to see all the other links you've woven in, all the themes, ideas and images which web across from one co the other, even while they follow the two stories separately. I've only recently realised chat you're actually asking a lot of a reader in a parallel narrative novel, and I'm thrilled that so many readers seem co feel it's worth

SB: Both your novels use a multi-period format. What it.

SB: Your novels deal with widely differing historical periods. What drew you to these?

ED: Periods for me have characters as strong as people or places do. I was very disconcerted when people started asking me what period I write: co me, sticking to a single period would be like always writing novels about the same cast of characters. I knew my current novel would be set in London in the early eighteenth century long before I knew anything else about it, and I know when and where (time and space again!) the one after chat is sec, even though I shan't be starting it for a year at least.

The early nineteenth century is very familiar co anyone bred on Jane Austen , as I was, and who lacer became as much of a Georgette Heyer fan as I am, and the mid- l 970s is my own childhoodthough I still had co research it to gee it right. Bue I didn't know much about the late medieval period until I fell for Elizabeth Woodville and decided I had to give her a voice. I soon discovered that it's every bit as glamorous as the Tudors, on the cusp of Gothic and Renaissance, but much less known except for the central mystery of the princes in the Tower, so I had a lovely time.

SB: Do you regard yourself as an historical novelist? Do you think this kind of categorisation is useful, or just a marketing device?

SB: You are a popular and admired blogger. What made you decide to write a blog and how do you find time to do it?

ED: The received wisdom for new authors is co start a blog and gain an online presence, but I didn't for ages because I couldn't chink what I would write about. Then I realised chat, though I have nothing interesting co say about my cat or my cooking, I do have a lot I want co say about writing. For me, blogging isn't a diary but a newspaper column, like Alistair Cooke or Katherine Whitehorn And because novels are long-haul, it 's good co have somewhere co chink aloud and write in a regular, short-haul way. Its tide, ' This Itch of Writing', is a quotation from John Donne, who wrote co a friend that he'd been waiting for any

athe at of LOVE

ED: I chink of myself as a novelist -a storyteller - who happens to work with history. For one thing, my books aren't simply historical in setting, they're also about history: how it works, what's the same as and what's different from us, how people relate the past co their present. Bue I can live with my work being explained co the book trade as historical fiction: it is a marketing device, but a useful one, because the trade has to try to steer readers cowards books they might actually buy. I do reserve the right co write something else ifl want co, but even if it had a contemporary setting, as some of my short fiction does, it would always have history seamed through it, because that's how I feel and see the world.

old news as an excuse for a letter which would scratch 'this itch of writing', but nothing had happened , so he was going co write anyway. It has got harder to find time recently, since I've been juggling A Secret Alchemy being out there, and my PhD , and teaching and so on. Bue now that so many people use feeds , as soon as I do post something all my readers pile in, and if it 's then quiet for a bit it doesn't matter. I love my blog, and I'm actually a liccle bit proud of it, but there's no point in being a slave co it. I'd never advise a writer co blog purely for the exposure; writing time is too precious co spend on anything you don't really want co do.

SB: A broader question on information technology - how do you think it is affecting and will continue to affect readers and writers of fiction? Is the book dead, dying or temporarily on life support?

ED: In lots of ways it is very useful for writers , from researching incredibly obscure things from your desk, co the way you can connect directly with readers , to the humble , life-saving word processor. It also helps the small presses to reach the 'long tail' of readers and sell co chem. I do think the e-reader has a long way co go: it still turns pages slower than a human hand, and you still can' t read it in the bath. It's hugely useful for non-fiction and academic work, but for fiction it has relatively few advantages over the book, and a lot of drawbacks. Fundamentally, humans will always, always need stories: it's the forms in which those stories are cold which

T Ille

PROFILES

will change.

But much of the push cowards supplying narrative in nonbook forms comes from non-book people: they have no concept of territorial rights as the book trade has, or even the difference between UK and US English, lee alone markets. And it's still difficult co gee people co pay properly for digital content, which will be our livelihood. All we can do is hang on in there, support bodies like the Society of Authors who argue on our behalf, and pray. Bue it'll be a long, long time, I chink, before the book goes the way of, say, silver-based photography, and becomes solely the province of mad artists and historically-minded specialists. As a piece of technology for delivering words co minds it's hard co beat.

The internet has made most difference co bookselling: how books are delivered is changing fast: the print-on-demand unit

in the corner of the bookshop could yet bring the whole backcatalogue of Amazon on co the high street. If bookshops survive, that ' ll be how.

SB: What are your thoughts on the state of publishing, on the one hand the conservatism of the big publishing houses and buyers at Waterstone's, supermarkets and so forth, and on the other, the emergence of more small presses in recent years?

publishers and authors: they've had co focus on big sellers, and pleasing Tesco, co cope with the fierce discounts. And the big specialises, like Wacerstone's and Borders, have been caught by a price-cutting model they can't win on, while being physically unable co rival the online sellers for range, so they coo have become more conservative. As always, it's che economically marginal books, which, of course, includes the most cutting-edge and off-piste new writing, which are the first to be dropped.

And yet, the literary festivals are packed and proliferating, booky biogs have huge readerships, the best thing you can say co a bookseller is that yours is a book group book, the prizes get huge coverage, and the cop dream job for the population is becoming a writer. That population may have seriously distorted ideas about how much we earn, but you can't say the nation doesn't care about books.

"'lm all fo,- fiNt-6ook pl'izes, Bat the OfJe of the Ht/'ite,- is iHelenvit ,,, its Mt the ll"tlllfl tltinps wlw neetf help - H4111 sltoaldn Jt the!/ stawe in an attie in tl'tUlitional f asltiPa1 JY'ltat~ ~st impossi6le is w 6e a Ht/'ite,- amt !tare a/06 amt amt clti/tf/tea amt eklel'lfl ptWats w look afte,,,, N

ED: I do chink it's very tough at the moment, but in some ways 'twas ever thus: publishers, like any commercial organisation, tend co grow bigger, and co depend more on safe bets and decisions made by committee, while newer, smaller companies dart in and out, finding the surprises, the hard-co-categorise, the books which need passionate advocates. Then, in order co expand, they sell themselves co someone bigger, and new small independents cake their place. Significantly, the most profitable publishing group, Hachette Livre, actually keeps its individual imprints very separate and quite small.

The supermarkets have undeniably put books in front of the seventy per cent of the population which never sets foot in a bookshop, so I refuse co regard them as the sole villains of the piece, though it has been at a huge cost co

SB: On the subject of prizes, The Mathematics of Love was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers and Goss First Novel awards, and longlisted for the Prince Maurice Prize and the Romantic Novelists' Association Novel of the Year, when it was published in 2006. How do you feel about the culture of literary prizes? The literary world is very prizedriven, yet judging literary excellence is also very subjective.

ED: I've judged and been judged, and I think the longliscs can be quite a good Cook's Tour of what's good at the moment in that branch of fiction. Plus, I'd never begrudge anything which gees books into che headlines, although it does mean chat some publishers rely too much on them and aren't imaginative about promotion in other ways. Ir's when it comes to choosing a winner that it gets impossible. You have to recognise that all a prize win means is that this was the book which those judges, on that day, given that shortlist, could agree should win. le really doesn't mean more than chat.

Continued on page 37

Reality in Fiction

ELIZABETH JANE talks to novelist KATE GRENVILLE

In the Australian literary landscape, Kate Grenville is a towering landmark. Over the course of her career, she has won a clutch ofliterary prizes, including the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, the Orange Prize for Fiction, the New South Wales Premier's Literary Award, and Australia's Vogel Award She has also been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize , won various Arts Council, Literary Board, and university fellowships, seen her work translated into more than a dozen languages, had two of her novels adapted for the screen, and enjoyed an audience with Queen Elizabeth II

Yet, at the recent Melbourne Writers' Festival, as I sat in a glass-fronted auditorium overlooking Melbourne's Yarra River, listening to Kate Grenville speak, it was not the loftiness of her achievements that struck me, but the deep bedrock of her being. She is a woman, an ordinary woman who goes for walks, plays the cello, enjoys amateur carpentry and, in a recent Financial Times interview, said the happiest moments in her life were when her children were young, "waiting with the other mothers at the school gate and watching them run towards me."

1 A creative writing teacher whose books on the "craft" are both practical and candid, a novelist who is not afraid to admit she wrote twenty-five drafts of her last novel 1he Lieutenant, but at the same time confesses how deeply hurt she was by criticism she received at the hands of some Australian historians. A literary writer, who sets many of her works in the past, but does not like to make a distinction between fiction and historical fiction.

Having read Grenville's work, and heard her interviewed on numerous occasions, and having noticed her reluctance to sit under the "historical fiction" banner, I was keen to ask why she returns time and again to the past for inspiration for her stories, and how she manages the uneasy alliance

between history and fiction.

EJ: 1he Secret River was not the first novel you have set in the past. Lilian's Story and Dark Places were set in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Joan Makes History subverts Australia's history up to federation and has the parallel story of the twentieth-century Joan. Can you tell me why you return to the past, and what the inspiration is behind some of these stories?

KG: For me, the attraction of writing about the past is that it provides a new perspective on the present. I'm not so much interested in the past per se - in reconstructing a perfect diorama of history. It seems to me that you don't truly understand the present unless you have a sense of the context it sprang out of- that is, the past. In the Australian context, for example, there 's much hand-wringing about "The Aboriginal situation" and many well-meaning but misguided ways of "dealing with it" Until the last twenty or so years , the history of black-white interaction in Australia had been cleaned up , so the reality of long and brutal warfare was ignored But that reality has created the Australia we live in now, and without understanding that reality, the current situation can't be properly addressed.

I also feel that setting fiction in the past gives you a chance to raise issues in a way that makes them a little less confronting. Dark Places , for example , is about an incestuous father, written from his point of view. Sounds pretty daunting! But because it's set in the early years of the twentieth century, there 's a sort of buffer - it's our world, but it's not completely our world.

Most of all, though, I love to write about the past because

it's full of stories of great and mysterious power. Working from a basis in a real story is a particular fascination because you know that, however unlikely the events may seem, they really did happen. The question then becomes , who were the people who did these things, and what made them act like that? To me, that's more interesting than inventing events and characters out of thin air, which so often results in rather predictable stories.

The first time I took a real story as the basis for a piece of fiction was with Lilian's Story. My inspiration was a famous Sydney eccentric called Bea Miles who'd grown up in a nice middle-class family like my own, but had taken a onehundred-and-eighty-degree turn from the destiny that her background had mapped out for her. Why? How? What had happened to turn her from a polite young lady from a nice home into a wild street person who quoted Shakespearethreepence for a poem, a shilling for a scene from a playand hijacked taxies on the streets of staid old 1930s Sydney? In telling her story, I found I could use what I knew - the streets and harbour of my home town - but explore what might have made her take that extreme turn in her life.

EJ: I had a sense while reading your writing memoir, Searching for the Secret River, that you felt you were doing something completely different &om your earlier works. How did the process of writing Lilian's Story differ &om that of The Secret River?

KG: The Secret River began as a search for family history - just a private project. My great-great-great-grandfather had been a lighter man on the Thames, had stolen some timber and been transported to Australia in 1806. Family lore had it that he'd settled on some land outside Sydney and proceeded to make money hand over fist, dying a wealthy and respectable man. But I was becoming aware that in order to settle on that land, he'd have had to take it from the local aboriginal people. How had he done that? That was the question that I, as his descendant, felt uneasy about, and the question I needed to answer.

My search took me far beyond my own ancestor, and I saw that his story was part of a much larger one about the early days of Australia. It was also a story that had been glossed over by tales of brave "pioneers" and their hardships and triumphs - the aboriginal people seemed mysteriously absent from most stories about our national past.

I did an enormous amount of historical research for the book, both in the works of the historians who were now

uncovering the truth about our past and in primary sources. The transcripts of the Old Bailey trials (including that of my ancestor) were like a window into those past times - as close as we'll ever come to hearing the voices of those people. Once the project turned from private family history into a novel, one of the hardest things was to let go of some of that research. Less is more! I wanted a book that was not only faithful to the spirit of what the historians were uncovering, but also a dramatic, character-based story about one family plunged into a situation that nothing in their experience could have prepared them for. In order to make it a good read, and not simply a blow-by-blow account of events, I had to streamline and adapt the research and - with many sad backward glances - leave out a great deal.

EJ: How was the process of writing The Lieutenant different &om the "almost accidental" process that led you to The Secret River?

KG: In the course of researching The Secret River, I came across a story of such human power I knew it would have to be the next project. At its heart was the story of a young lieutenant (sent as part of the force to guard the convicts in the penal colony of New South Wales) who learned the language of the aboriginal people of Sydney Cove. In the process, an extraordinary friendship developed between him and a young aboriginal girl - given her age, a platonic relationship. I would never have thought to invent such a thing, but their relationship was documented in the form of the language notebooks he kept, in which he recorded entire conversations between himself and the girl. The question that provided the engine for the book was: who were these two amazing people who were able to have conversations of such affectionate playfulness? What made them able to speak across the gulfs of difference that separated them? A question about the past, but obviously also one about the present - how can we learn to speak and listen to each other in spite of the differences between us?

EJ: You are known to take an experiential approach to writing. For The Secret River, you camped out alone in the bush, made a slush lamp, and spent time in the Northern Territory, among other things. With The Lieutenant, you drank sweet sarsaparilla tea and spent time around Dawes Point. Can you tell us how this works for you, and whether it is an approach you have also used in your earlier works?

KG: With Lilian's Story, I'd found how writers can use what they know, without writing about themselves. With

chat book, I'd gone to the places in Sydney I'd heard she spent time in - the Public Library where she offered her recitations, the storm-water drain in a park where she lived for a time. Standing on the place - even when there was "nothing to see" - freed some muscle in the imagination, and reminded me of the exact sound of halyards against masts or the lap of water against a stone wall. With Joan Makes History I used what the world gave me - for example, there's a scene where a woman goes a bit crazy during a hailstorm, which was inspired by a gigantic hailstorm I witnessed, where I had a mad urge to rush out into the hail and strip off (which I resisted, rather to my regret now).

While I was writing Dark Places I took some tennis lessons, and although no one was standing on the sidelines sneering at the way I kept missing the ball, I could imagine someone doing so, and realised chat that person could be the misogynist I was writing about. That not only gave me a strong scene where the incestuous father watches his daughter play tennis, but also gave me the voice of scorn that I needed to write from his point of view.

EJ: This experiential approach has been criticised. In particular, Inga Clendinnen wrote an article in the Quarterly Essay series called W'ho owns the past? 2 Much of the article took the form of an attack on The Secret River. It called into question

the role of the historical novel and the ability of a novelist to reproduce the experience of the past. How do you respond to those criticisms, now, three years on from the article?

KG: Some have read Ihe Secret River as if it were a history -a compliment, in a way - but I've never made any such claims. In fact, I've written an entire book about the way the novel was written - Searching for the Secret River - in order to clarify where I've departed from the historical record, and why I've chosen to do so. I wanted to be entirely transparent about the process of taking the real as a basis for fiction.

I do whatever I can to try to understand how those past people might have thought and felt but, in the end, we can't know chat. In the end we're left with questions like , "What would I have done in that situation?" No one

would pretend that the answer to that question is going to be "correct" in the way the answer to a sum can be "correct". But it seems to me a useful way co burrow into puzzles that are important. The past is a mysterious place, and fiction about it is just one among many paths into its darkness.

EJ: In The Secret River you changed the name of your grandfather, Solomon Wiseman, in order to free yourself from the "straitjacket" of what really happened. In The Lieutenant, you also changed the names of key characters, in this case, known historical persons. Why did you choose to make such significant changes?

KG: With The Secret River and with Ihe Lieutenant, I changed elements of the "real" events in order to make the stories work well as fiction. Dawes and Wiseman were real, and many aspects of both books are straight out of the historical record. But around those real elements is a great deal of extrapolation, guesswork, and invention. Leaving the real names would imply that every derail of the stories was also real. I have a great respect for the discipline of history and feel strongly chat it should be relied on to be dispassionate and reliable. I wanted to make it very clear that I was doing something different, so changing the names was essential.

EJ: I got a sense in The Secret River that you were subtly educating the reader. You included information about the yam daisies, you had Thornhill realize the indigenous people had their own way of farming, and you had him witness a

religious ceremony and conclude it was sacred. Are you aware that while writing, you are educating?

KG: I don't set out to educate readers or to put out a "message" I write out of curiosity about the way human beings act, and why. Researching and writing the books was a journey for me, into what it means to belong to one part of the globe or another. The huge response to the books has shown me that many, many ocher people, all over the world, are wrestling with similar ideas. In the US, Britain, Israel, and Germany -a few of the place the books have appeared - these issues are urgent. Who belongs where? Given that human populations have always moved from one place to another, how do we work things out so that the people already there and the newcomers can accommodate each other?

Continued on page 38

OF TIIE ORANGl!l'R1Z£

SOLANDER_ SHOR_T STOR_Y AWAR_D WINNER_

The Torch of God

by DAVID PILLING

I, Robert Stafford, sometime thief and mercenary and ever a miserable wretch and sinner, will soon be dead. These past five years I have languished in Newgate gaol waiting to be hanged. If they do not kill me soon I shall do the job myself and dash my brains out against the wall, for even that is preferable to rotting away in a cell.

First I will finish writing my life's story, an entertaining tissue of half-truths, exaggeration and downright falsehood. They allow me pen and paper in here, thinking it a great joke that a condemned man should spend his time writing.

Today I shall write of the French wars and the child who brought

me closer to God than I have ever been.

Verneuil

August 1424, and I was serving as a captain of archers in the English army in France. I did this for no patriotic reason but because military service was the only alternative to hanging. I had done great harm in Surrey and Sussex as an outlaw and the justices gave me a stark choice: wreak similar havoc against the French or perish .

Fighting the French seemed the better option but several months

DER GUEST EDITOR

STEPHANIE COWELL is the author of Nicholas Cooke: Actor, Soldier, Physician, Priest, The Physician of London (winner of an American Book Award), The Players: ANovel of the Young Shakespeare, and Marrying Mozart which has been translated in seven languages and optioned for a movie. Her new novel, Claude and Camille: a novel of Monet, will be published by Crown in April 2010. Stephanie is married to poet and reiki practitioner Russell Clay. She has two grown sons and lives in New York City. Her website is www.StephanieCowell.com. of hard campaigning did much to change my mind, as did being kicked awake early in the morning of l 7'h August.

I cursed, rubbing the sleep from my eyes and struggling to focus on the squat sergeant-atarms looming over me . It was a dry morning, uncomfortably warm and plastered in a clinging yellow mist.

"The French are mustering for battle,"

DAVID PILLING, 30, currently works in the Library and Archives at the Tate Gallery in London. David has worked in archives for the past five years, and previous jobs included stints at the Royal Opera House and the School of Oriental and African Studies. He also has teaching experience, and spent a year teaching English in the Czech Republic. David has been writing fiction and non-fiction on a freelance basis for the past three years, and his non-fiction articles - usually on historical themes - have appeared in various regional and national publications in the United Kingdom. Writing fiction is a new challenge for David, inspired by a love for historical and science fiction and authors such as George McDonald Fraser, George R. R. Martin , and Bernard Cornwell. Selander congratulates David on winning the Short Story Award.

the sergeant barked. "We march out and meet them within the hour. Get your men up and ready. "

He clanked away to harass more bl issfully sleeping soldiers. I threw as ide the patched cloak that served as a blanket and t ru d ged off in search of my brave troops.

They didn 't cake long to find. The sicknesses and pr ivations of a long campaign had whittled their number down from fifty to rwelve, and the survivors lay fast asleep close to where I had made my rough bed. They were the scum of

the earth , convicted criminals like myself, and months of campaigning had only made chem worse

"Gee up!" I yelled , imitating th e sergeant and giving chem a taste of boot. "We have a bat tl e to fight!'

They were drawn up on the plain in front of us and blocked our path to the town. Twenty thousand French and their Scottish allies, rank upon rank of archers and dismounted knights and men-at-arms.

"Lombards," grunted a Wels h archer named Hook. I looked where he po inte d and saw a brigade of horsemen on the left flank of the French, Lombard mercenaries covered in thick place armour and mounted on massive war-horses.

"I sliouU warn you, god-dam, tliat qod' wi{{ not toferate tlie P.ng{isli presence in Prance mucli Conger. .. "

"Our bows won't make a dent on chat plate," Hook said casually. " Best not gee in their way when they charge, lads."

Gulping down the nsmg panic in my belly, I c u ffed and shouted my men into line with the rest of the archers. A ragged cheer rippled down the line as trumpets " Barde?" whi n ed a tous le-headed ruffian known as Dagger John. "It's too early for battles."

"My lord Bedford doesn't wait on your p leasure. Nor do the French and nor do I. Up, now! "

Groaning and cursing but not daring to disobey, the remnants of my company struggled to their feet and fo ll owed me to the muster.

Our army was camped on the outskirts of the forest north of Verneuil in Normandy, and we could see the grey mass of the town ofVerneuil a mile north of o u r camp. Until recently the town had been in our hands , but the French had captured it via a bloodless ruse.

screamed the order to advance.

The central division , composed of Bedford himself and his household knights and men-at-arms , clanked forward eagerly.

The lighcly armed archers on the flanks were more cautious.

Ano th er b last of t ru mpets halted our advance as we came within arrow range. Men rushed forward to plane sharpened stakes in front of o ur line. As they did so the French lines erupted with the sound of their own cr umpets and their hose began to move.

The ground began to shake , echoing the terrified rumbling of my bowels. The Lombards were coming rowards us at a slow trot .

" Notch! " I bawled in unison with the other captains , and a The Duke of Bedford , our commander, was determined co retake t h ousand men snatched arrows from their sheaves and notched ic. First we had co deal wit h che French army. ch em co their bows.

"Draw!"

A thousand bowstrings creaked. "Loose!"

A thousand shafts whistled into the au and plunged into the Lomba.rds.

And did very little. Here and there a horseman fell as chance arrows penetrated visors and other chinks in their steel shells, but the majority were unharmed and spurred their monstrous chargers into a gallop.

Our only defence was the wall of stakes, but the ground had been baked hard by the dry summer and they had not been driven in properly. A wail of despair went up from our ranks as the stakes were trampled and swept aside by the

crushing weight of charging horseflesh and steel.

In seconds our right flank collapsed as men cast down their useless bows and took to their heels. To stand against the onrushing horsemen was to wait for death, and there was nothing for it but co make for che relative safety of the forest behind us. All thoughts of comradeship fled from my mind as I did my best co shove and claw my way through the horde of fugitives.

La Puce/le

I stayed crouched in my hiding place until nighcfa.11. The noise of battle clashed in the distance and gradually grew fainter as darkness fell. I feared that our army had been shattered, in which case the survivors would be hunted like rabbits over the fields and plains of Normandy.

At last, when it was pitch black and coo cold to remain where I was, I crept out. The woods a.re no place to linger at night, when they become home co a.II manner of wandering spirits and bogeymen. One of them might have taken me had I not found the girl.

She was crouched with her back to an enormous oak tree in the middle of a clearing, watching a sliver of pa.le light from a moonbeam lancing through the canopy of the forest. She seemed fixated on the light and did not notice my presence at first.

}l 6ridge spanned tfie ravine, 6ut filig no otfier 6ritfge I fiat! ever seen, for it consisted' of a po{isfiea gCeaming sword. ..

The ground shook violently and the thunder of hoofs and rattle of harness echoed behind me. Any moment I expected a lance in my liver. A man screamed, something era.shed into my back and I fell.

By some miracle I wasn't trampled as a Lomba.rd galloped right over me, the place-sized hoofs of his warhorse pounding the turf inches from my head. I glanced up and a.II was chaos as the Lombards hacked and bludgeoned at the fugitive archers with maces and the butts of their lances.

A gap appeared in the melee and I ran for it, ducking beneath the belly of a horse that reared before me, leaping over a dying archer, and going hell for leather cowards the trees.

I kept running, certain that the Lomba.rds would pursue and chat my only hope was co flee deep into the woods where their horses could not follow. I ran until my lungs threatened to burst and collapsed into a pile of undergrowth, gasping and sobbing for breath.

A twig snapped beneath my heel and she glanced up. I reckoned she was about twelve, skinny and dressed like a boy in a grubby jerkin and torn hose. Her face was pa.le and thin and framed by an overgrown thatch of straw-coloured hair. She was rather plain for my taste, with freckles and a snub nose that made her look uncomfortably childlike.

However, her eyes were extraordinary, wide and large and a deep violet blue colour that a man could get lost in if he held their gaze too long. She sea.red at

me curiously with her head cocked co one side.

"Hello, goddam," she said in English with a heavy French accent, gesturing at the pool of light. "The moon is beautiful, is it not? It is God's torch, allowing travellers to find their way at night."

"Goddam" was the term the French peasantry used for the English, normally uttered with venom, since they judged us co be cursed by God. Bue there was no ma.lice in her reedy voice.

"What a.re you doing out at this hour?" I asked lamely. "The forest is not safe at night, especially for children."

"I ran away when my master was killed in the battle. I will come to no ha.rm. My voices will protect me."

"What voices?"

"Sa.int Michael, Sa.int Catherine and Sa.int Margaret."

"If a priest hears you saying such things, you will be punished," I warned her, "and I should know, since I used to be a priest myself."

"Yes, you were. From a place called Sussex. In the south of

England."

I was astonished. "How could you possibly know that?"

"My voices cold me," she said simply. "They also tell me that you are a sinner and a liar and have done many bad things. But I will be safe in your company."

"Do your voices have something planned for us both, then?"

"Indeed. Would you like to see something that has eluded man for centuries, goddam?"

"Where are we going?" I demanded as she ran towards me and took my hand.

"To see the Grail! " she cried. " You were once a holy man. Don't you want to see the Grail?"

"The Grail does not exist," I protested as we stumbled through the undergrowth, "or if it does , it is not in France. "

She laughed, and we emerged from the tangle of thorns and waisthigh bracken into a wide path lined by tall white trees like rows of marching pillars in a cathedral. Hand-in-hand we set off down the path.

This part of the forest was eerily quiet with no sounds of wildlife, and I felt a pressing need co fill the silence.

" What's your name? " I asked.

" My master called me La Pucelle. " "Who was he? "

"Courage is for fools, " I retorted, "or chose who can afford to case their bodies in steel. I am neither. "

Suddenly my fears dissolved and a feeling of peace and calm descended upon me. "What just happened? " I asked, sliding my dirk back into its scabbard.

" My voices decided you needed some help and laid a blessing upon you. Now you will be brave, for a while at lease. "

She trotted off down the path and I followed in her wake like an obedient dog.

1he Sword Bridge

The path through the white trees seemed to wind on forever, and I was sure chat we had passed out of normal reality into some mysterious Otherworld. The path gradually narrowed until it was barely wide enough for us to walk abreast. Then we turned a corner and came co a dead end.

In front of us the ground fell away into a ravine. A bridge spanned the ravine, but like no bridge I had ever seen, for it consisted of a polished gleaming sword. The sword was the length of two lances laid together and buried firmly at either end in a white tree-trunk.

Beyond the sword-bridge the ground rose steeply to a series of high mountains. Atop the central mountain was a castle with a high central dome like the roof of the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople.

"The Grail is in there," said La Pucelle, pointing at the castle, "but first you must cross the sword-bridge. "

''A knight, though a strange one. He made me his squire, saying he " Bur the blade is razor-sharp! I would cripple myself trying to get preferred the company of a girl while on campaign." across."

"I think I can guess his motives. "

"Not if you have faith in God."

"Yes, but he vowed not to touch me until he had killed an " I lost mine a long time ago, " I admitted. " Or rather, God lost Englishman at Verneuil. Instead he was killed, and now he is food faith in me. " for worms."

Something about the careless way she said chis made my flesh creep.

" Fool. Watch and I shall show you the power of faith."

I glanced sideways at La Pucelle and for a moment the shadows Before I could prevent her she was running cowards the bridge. She played on her face and lent her gap-toothed smile and cavernous leaped lightly onto the shining blade and scampered across with eyes a sinister aspect. her arms spread wide like an acrobat.

I pulled my hand away from hers. "Your voices are of the Devil, and " Look," she cried when she had hopped off the ocher side, raising so are you," I muttered, fumbling for my dirk. "You are leading me one of her feet for my inspection. "Not a scratch! " to damnation. Leave me be!"

le was true. Her naked foot should have been sliced to ribbons, but She frowned. "Sc Michael says you are being very foolish and I agree instead it was pink and whole and completely unmarked. with him. I had hoped you would have more courage."

She beckoned me to cross, and for my pride 's sake I could hardly do otherwise. Taking a deep breath, I got down on all fours and crawled onto the sharp steel.

I howled as the metal cut deep into my hands and would have scrambled back had not some strange inner resolve compelled me to keep going. Maybe it was the blessing at work as I shuffled in agony across the sword-bridge. My hands, knees and feet were sliced and torn and my blood flowed freely off the blade into the unfathomable depths below.

Somehow I made it across , though by the time I reached the other side I was a shrieking gore-spattered creature and almost out of my mind with pain. La Pucelle helped me off the sword-bridge and gently stroked my injuries.

She opened one of my hands , which had been clenched shut with pain , and through my tears I saw clean healthy flesh. The jagged cuts were gone , as was the pain. I checked the rest of my body and saw that all my injuries had vanished.

" Follow," said La Pucelle, starting up the path towards the distant castle. By now totally in her power, I got to my feet and obeyed.

The Grail Chapel

The castle looked to be miles away but despite that we were soon standing at the foot of the outer walls The gates were wide open, which automatically made me suspicious.

"Looks like a trap, " I said.

"This is the house of God, " La Pucelle reminded me. "Everyone is welcome here, and the gates are always open. "

The castle was deserted and the tiny arrow-slit windows on its high walls and drum towers stared down at us blankly as we crossed the outer ward.

Another open gateway led into the inner ward where the chapel stood. The chapel was a huge building, its vast central dome crowning a square base several storeys high and flanked by four slender cylindrical towers like great stone spears thrusting into the sky.

Unlike elsewhere in the castle, the doors were shut. They were some ten feet high, engraved with scenes from the Old Testament and forged of solid iron. The doors should have been immovable but they glided open at the lightest touch of La Pucelle's hand.

I had to stop and catch my breath at the sight that greeted me upon entering. The interior of the temple was one vast chamber, the walls and high domed ceiling painted with luminous images

of the saints and episodes from their lives. Presiding over all was a mighty fresco depicting Christ in splendour painted upon the interior of the dome.

In the middle of the temple stood an altar, upon which stood a stone chalice decorated with white gemstones. Between us and the altar was a pair of statues of crouching lions.

My thief's instincts took over and without thinking I strode greedily towards the altar, intending to snatch the chalice.

A blast of hot stinking breath smote my face and something slammed into my left shoulder, knocking me flat on my back. I hit the floor like a sack of potatoes, almost fracturing my skull on the flagstones, and a shadow leaped at me.

I rolled aside , whimpering at the pain in my gashed shoulder, and scrambled to my feet. Drawing my dirk, I turned to see what on earth attacked me and almost lost control of my bladder as I saw that the lions had come alive.

In place of the immobile statues were rwo sleek lethal predators. Their fearsome jaws gaped wide to expose long yellow fangs and they slunk towards me, little gold-flecked eyes fixated upon my wavering blade.

"You can't hope to defeat them, " said La Pucelle, her voice perfectly calm. "Your little knife is useless here."

One of the beasts made a sudden lunge, swiping at my face with a paw the size of a ham. I blocked it desperately with my dirk and the lion's claws sheared through the blade like a knife through butter, leaving me holding a hilt and a half-inch of broken steel.

"I warned you," La Pucelle said complacently as I dropped the useless remnant and fled to take refuge behind the altar. The lions padded slowly after me, licking their chops in anticipation.

"You were a priest once," La Pucelle reminded me as I cowered in terror behind the altar. " Surely you can remember some of your Latin? "

"Are you suggesting I give them a quick psalm?' I shouted. One of the lions leaped atop the altar, almost dislodging the chalice. He threw back his massive head and roared. The awful noise reverberated through the chapel and I backed away, heart fluttering as I waited for the beast to spring.

"Say something," said La Pucelle, "something to show you haven't entirely forgotten what you once were."

I dredged up dim half-memories of my brief life as a chaplain at Lindfield in Sussex. I had probably been the worst chaplain in history, preferring to steal from the poor box and dally with other men's wives than deliver sermons, and my Latin had always been

patchy.

However, the prospect of being torn to pieces concentrated my mind wonderfully. I managed to croak out "Sed et ambulavero in valle mortis "

"Good ," said La Pucelle encouragingly, but then my memory failed me. The lion on the altar crouched, ready to jump, while his mate prowled cowards me

"Non timebo malum quoniam tu mecum es virga tua et baculus tuus ipsa consolabuntur me!" I cried, shurting my eyes.

A few seconds later, having not been savaged by the expected flurry of teeth and claws, I opened them again.

were the same. Peasants marry other peasants, not kings. "

I shook my head impatiently. " So what and where is the Grail? "

" It stands in front of you. I am the Grail. "

"You are mad ," I said , rising, "and I have spent too long in your company."

" Whether you believe me or not is up to you . But I should warn you, goddam, God will not tolerate the English presence in France much longer. "

"God will just have to put up with it. "

" No. He will cast you out of my country. The Grail will cast you The lions had turned back to scone, their faces locked in an out. " expression of feral hatred.

"Well done," said La Pucelle. " Now give me the chalice. "

Trembling, I carefully picked up the heavy scone vessel in both hands and passed it to her. All thoughts of stealing it had vanished from my mind.

She held the chalice high as though offering it to the image of Christ. I expected some moment of epiphany but instead she dropped the chalice .

I had to laugh. The idea that chis pale scrawny girl , with her unruly thatch of hair and knock-knees , would somehow drive the English out of France was utterly preposterous.

CJ'hey found me in the woods... had I dreamed it a[C then?

It hit the flagstones and shattered, gemstones and all, as though made of cheap plaster. I fell to my knees, scrabbling for the broken pieces as though I could somehow put them back together. "You have broken the Grail!" I screamed.

"It was just a cup ." She sounded half-angry, half-amused. " Did you seriously think it was the Grail? "

I glared up at her. The curious hold she had over me was ebbing and I was sick of being patronized. " Where is the true Grail, then? "

" Have you not guessed? "

"No! "

"Then listen. You have heard the theory that Christ's children fled to France and married into the dynasty of the Kings of France? "

"Yes, but Christ fathered no children. To say otherwise is blasphemy. "

"Blasphemy or not, it is true. He did have children and they did come to France, but the theory is wrong in one detail. Christ was a carpenter, a peasant, and his progeny

" Will you put on armour, and lead armies into battle? " I sneered La Pucelle nodded.

" God wills it," she said earnestly, "just as he willed that you should meet me in the forest. Perhaps he means to save you. "

" He may as well give up now. I don't need or want to be saved. "

"Then goodbye , goddam, " she said sadly. "You will lead a bad life and come to a bad end."

She grabbed me by the scruff of my neck , drew me to her and kissed me full on the lips. Pain coursed through me at her couch, unimaginable bolts of agony that gripped and twi sted every nerve and sinew. I could bear no more than a few seconds of it before darkness took me.

Victory

" Captain, can you hear me? Are you all right? "

" I think he's waking up. Here, lads, the captain's waking up! "

I opened my eyes slowly with these rough voices echoing around me, dragging me out of the pit of unconsciousness.

I was greeted by the sight of Dagger John and Ill-Gotten Will 's

coarse faces uncomfortably close to mine. They were no better for being rwisted into expressions of sympathetic concern.

"Thought you was a goner, captain ," said Will. " Nasty wound you took. "

I tried to move and gasped as pain shot through my left shoulder. At a glance I saw it was wrapped in bandages crusted with dried blood.

Other men crowded around me, vague shadows whose faces I could not make our. "We found you in the woods after the battle," one of them said. " You were out cold, and your shoulder was a proper mess. Like a bear or something had been at ic. "

They found me in the woods had I dreamed it all then, La Pucelle, che sword-bridge and che rest? But my shoulder bore the marks of the lion's claws.

" How did you escape from the French? " I asked.

" We didn't ," replied Dagger John, grinning horribly. "They had to escape from us. We scuffed them, in the end. "

"You mean .. . we won? "

"Damn right! "

" But the Lombards rode right over us! " I protested , my voice gaining strength. "They could have turned about and rolled up our line. "

" Yeah, bur they didn't," laughed Will. " Instead they went and pillaged the baggage train. They're only mercenaries, after all. Meanwhile Bedford's boys got tore into the French men-at-arms and soon had chem on the run. They cried to gee back into the town bur the gates were closed and we slaughtered them like sheep."

"And their Scoccish friends," added John. "Greatest victory since Agincourt. Never seen so many corpses."

I said nothing. My shoulder throbbed, I felt dog-tired and La Pucelle's words kept revolving in my head.

He wiLL cast you out of my country 1he Grail wiLL cast you out. "Leave me ," I ordered. " I need rest."

My men obeyed and shuffled back to their boasts, their ale and their gambling. I was left alone with my thoughts , such as they were.

Ashes

La Pucelle was no dream. I know this because I saw her once more,

in the marker-place at Rouen seven years after Verneuil. She was tied to a pillar and surrounded by hundreds of gawping folk who had come to see her burned to death. She had fulfilled her promise to me and inspired her countrymen to rise up against the English. For chat and her claim to hear holy voices she had been condemned to che flames.

1he Grail wiLL cast you out.

I remember char her head was shaved and that she was dressed in a plain white shift. From her neck hung a placard bearing the words "Heretic, Apostate and Idolator" She repeatedly called upon God as the executioners lie the faggots piled below her feet and did not stop praying even as the smoke and flames rose to consume her.

To my shame I was one of the six hundred English soldiers assigned to guard her as she burned. I stood and did nothing as her prayers turned to screams and sobs, and then she cried out for a cross.

Ignoring the shouts of my commander, I broke my spear across my knee into rwo pieces and tied them together into the shape of a cross. I held it before her; careless of the heat scorching my face and hands, and my penance was to watch her burn. She kept her eyes fixed on the cross until the end and showed no sign of recognising me.

Afterwards, when the fires were damped and the poor girl reduced to cinders, I was flogged for disobedience and turned out of the army. Much I cared.

The girl I mer in my dream described the moon as God 's torch. She might have been talking about herself, for La Pucelle was the torch that lie the fires of French nationhood. In revenge my people turned her into a human torch and case her ashes into the gutter.

Even now, years after her death, the French cry her name as they sweep our armies and garrisons out of their country. They call her Jeanne La Pucelle, the Maid of Orleans.

THEEND

THE llED PENCIL

World-building in Historical Fiction

CINDY VALLAR analyzes the work behind polished final manuscripts. In this issue, she profiles ALBERT A. DALIA 's Dream of the Dragon Pool: A Daoist Quest

World-building, often associated with fantasy and science fiction, may also apply to historical fiction, for novelists recreate places that no longer exist. Aside from knowing what that world physically looked like, we research religions, traditions, and daily life so our characters realistically fit the time period in which they live. To do this we "sweat the small stuff', as Elizabeth Crook puts it. 1 We immerse ourselves in the period so that when we write our tale, we weave into it the details that "create a sense of background 'texture"' 2 that whisks the reader back to whatever place and time the story concerns. The earlier we place our story, the more difficult that becomes, but Albert Dalia succeeds in recreating 8 th -century China during the Tang dynasty in Dream of the Dragon Pool. 3

This story centers on Li Bo, 4 a poet who "wrote a good deal about drinking, about encountering Daoist immortals, whom he insisted he had met personally, and basically his own activities as a knight errant where he supposedly went about with a sword in hand righting wrongs throughout the Chinese empire." 5 Dalia admits that there are "large missing sections from Li Bo's recorded life after an execution order was commuted to death exile to a far southwestern region of China, and he did travel up the Yangtze visiting friends on his way to exile. By the time he reached Mt. Wu, the order was rescinded and he returned to central China." While there are no accounts of this journey through the Three Gorges, Dalia did find "a 12 th century travel diary of a Chinese official who took the same trip." 6

Dream of the Dragon Pool is set during this odyssey, which includes a visit to the Dream Temple, where Li Bo hopes to recapture his creative muse. There he dreams of an old woman who gives him a quest to complete.

"Remember, you are the source and final answer to your questions, " she says as she reaches down and raises a sword in its scabbard. It looks rather ordinary. She is handing it to me.

"Here, take this. Hold on to it and protect it, for this sword will guide you to the answer you seek. Forsake it and all will be lost. But I must have something in exchange for it. "

I have nothing with me. Furthermore, what do I want with a sword? Will I be called upon to defend myself with this weapon? I already have a weapon. See here, up my sleeve and under my left forearm, a long dagger, finest Damascus steelfrom Persia

'1 will take your Jan in return for this sword, " she smiled and raised her finger. My fan has flown out of my waistband and into her hand! Hey, that has the Emperor's calligraphy on it, a special gift to me for ... I have only that

THE R..ED PENCIL

from my years at Court and now even this token is gone.

''Jfyou succeed, you will get it back at the proper time. 7his sword is no mere piece of iron like that thing strapped to your forearm. It is the famed Dragon Pool Sword. But heed my words well: 7hough you now possess it, only a pure heart can control it. "

But don't you understand, I came here for answers, not weapons? My life has been a failure and I am near the end ofit, condemned to death in a foreign place. It is not death that I fear. It is not knowing my own worth. I am here to seek that answer. She is gone ... only the mist lingers - perhaps, this is the answer ...

This early draft incorporates little of Chinese traditions, with the exceptions of the old woman and the sword. The old woman isn't who she appears to be. "Chinese tales like to have the gods or spirits show up in unlikely guises to test the sincerity of the adept." She takes his fan "to prove she had indeed given him the sword because in her 'true' form she would not resemble the old hag he had initially met. Also, she was crying to show him chat his most prized possession -a fan signed by the emperor - was only a mere token to The Perfected."

"Swords are key symbols in Chinese history and mythology They are power symbols. The Dragon Pool Sword is a jian - a doubleedged straight sword - the sword a 'gentleman' wields " At the time Dalia named this sword, he was bicycling "co a mountain pond in Taiwan when [he] realized chat dragons live in the bottom of such ponds, and so was born the idea of the Dragon Pool Sword." He thought it an original name until he did some research and discovered chat legends tell of such a weapon. "Then I discovered chat the name engraved on the sword my Tai Chi teacher in Beijing helped me purchase was 'The Dragon Pool Sword'."

How did Dalia go about weaving Chinese traditions into his story? Immersion in the culcure and history was something

he had already done. "[T]he Vietnam War got me to notice China and it was my interest in Buddhism that got me to study China. I became and remain fascinated with Chan Qapanese, Zen) Buddhism. My masters degrees and Ph.D. all focus on the history of chat school of Chinese Buddhism. But to get there, my professors made me first take on Chinese and Japanese history!" He also lived in a Chinese Buddhist monastery in Taiwan, caught writing at two universities, and "studied with a string of Buddhist and martial arts masters in Taiwan, Beijing, and Honolulu " Bue it was "a wonderful former literary agent who, co better understand what I had written, brought in an advisor steeped in the fantasy genre. [S]he urged my agent to get me to tell more about the origins of the Dragon Pool Sword." He heeded chat advice.

The old woman reaches down andpicks up a sword in its scabbard, "Good. 7his is the famous Dragon Pool Sword. Your quest is to deliver it to the Rain Goddess on this twelvepeaked mountain where we are meeting. I must, however, warn you, that in addition to those residents from both the Yin and Yang realms who will seek the sword once it reappears in the Yang realm, this task is also fraught with unseen dangers. 7he Dragon Pool Sword embodies immense power; only the purest hearts are capable of wielding it. "

And ifI fail?

"Ha, you are not so sure ofyourself If you fail, not only will you never attain Immortality, you will live to see this dynasty collapse and untold suffering visited on the inhabitants of this empire. For if pure evil gains the sword, a thousand years ofsuffering will visit this land. Do you still accept this quest?" She held out the sheathed sword. As I no longer possess my poetic vision, I stand before the sword crippled in spirit. At least ifI go away without the sword, only I am doomed and the rest ofhumanity is assured a foture.

"Do not underestimate the power of your verse, Poet. It has reached Heaven and Heaven is assured a future. "

Like a line of new verse spontaneously flashing into my mind, my hand reaches outfor the sword and grasps it. But she does not let it go.

"Before I can release the Dragon Pool Sword, you must know its origins, for this is no mere scrap of iron formed by human sinew and bone, cooled by blood or other putrid Liquid, and scraped sharp. The Dragon Pool Sword is the material emanation of an adept whose cultivation is so pure, so refined that you may only know her name once you have proved yourselfequal to this quest. "

I am awe-struck that such an instrument be entrusted to me.

"You will be struck dumb when you hear how this great adept refined her human form into that of a perfected astral being. Listen closely, Li Bo, few humans have had the privilege to know the history of the Dragon Pool Sword. The adept who formed the sword had desired from birth to attain the refinement of the Perfected. She hid among distant mountains, advancing in the various purifications, gradually mastering the art of ingesting Light and drinking auroras. "

Breathing light! Can this be?

"Ha! How Little you know, Li Bo. The teachings of the Upper Clarity Heavens are beyond those of the gross world, where the refinement of breath is the highest practice. In the Upper Heavens, Light is the substance of refinement. The Perfected have mastered the techniques of refining themselves into pure beings of light, astral light - they ingest sun, moon, and starlight. And so our adept continued her quest, until the Sage Lords of the Upper Heavens took notice of her shining white jade form and arrived on earth to further instruct her. They provided her with the teachings, talismans, secret names, and seals that would allow her to travel into the Heavens. Her goal was to gain audience with the Sage Lord of the Grand Pivot. "

My eyes are being drawn upward, as if I were taking this trip with the adept. Look! Directly above this spot,

the diamond lights of the Dipper's seven stars, and at the handle's end the radiant Pole Star, the Grand Pivot! As I rise, the starlight is changing. I can hear it! A heavenly melody; and smell it: such a fragrance! I am bathed in a purple glow. Light flows into my mouth.

"Yes, Li Bo, the goal ofher quest is to have her accomplishment, her transformation into a star being, confirmed by the Sage Lord who resides in the Grand Pivot, around which the universe turns. As the handle of the Dipper sweeps through space, the four seasons change, Yin and Ytzng cycle, and the Elemental Forces of earth, fire, metal, wood, and water pass through their transformations. Good and evil are distinguished by the sweep ofthe Dipper's handle as it dispenses happiness and hardship. "

Can such a force be mastered by mere mortals?

"Mortals have within them the potential of the Perfected. Our adept knew this, and armed with her cultivation and teachings from the Sage Lords, mounted the Heavens and approached the Dipper seeking audiences with its nine star lords. "

Nine? But there are only seven ...

"To mortal eyes on earth, there are only seven stars; but to the refined vision ofthe Perfected, they see the two secret soul stars that orbit the Dipper and protect it. However, our adept must first confront the Nine Empresses of the Great Yin, the female star beings who protect the Dipper with a field of black Yin light. If the adept does not have the proper dragon talismans, tiger insignias, special incantations, mystic seals, and adequate Levels of attainment, these star ladies will imprison the mortal adept and make her Lose her reason by exposing her to the paradoxes of a universe in reverse. "

I am approaching the Dipper! Below me lies the earth!

"Have no fear, Li Bo, our adepts cultivation is well grounded, and she is welcomed by the nine ladies and escorted to each of the star palaces of the nine Dipper stars. She meets with their Sage Lords and receives further instructions. Finally, she

CIL

stands at Heaven's Gate ready to make the jump to the Heavenly Pivot and the audience with the Sage Lord of the Pole Star. "

Before me looms a great glowing gate, bathed in the most radiant purple starlight. Around me is the black void of space.

"She is met by the Sage Lord's attendants and ushered into his most august presence. 1hey commune and her attainment as one of the Perfected is confirmed, upon which, a splendent beam of purple starlight issues forth from her forehead and shoots down to Mount Mao, the earthly home of the Upper Clarity teachings. 1here it burrows deep into the mountain summit, where a glowing stone is later brought to the surface. On that night, the stars of the Dipper do not shine forth. On the radiant stone are the words, Dragon Pool Sword, and within it lay this sword that I now release to ,, you.

A blinding purple light has surged throughout my body; the universe pivots around me!

"To seal our exchange, I must have something in return."

I have nothing. She is smiling and raises her finger.

I will take your fan in return for this sword

My fan flies out ofmy waistband and into her hand!

Ai-yah! that has the Emperor's calligraphy on it, a special gift to me... I have only that from my years at Court and now even this token is gone!

"You still do not understand what you have been granted Perhaps the quest will advance your understanding. Nevertheless, you will not need a silly fan ifyou fail. Heed my words well: 1hough you now possess the Dragon Pool Sword, only a pure heart can use

it.,,

Surely, she can see the future. Will I succeed? What if I change my mind? Perhaps I have been too hasty And this pure heart she speaks about? She is gone only the mist, which now has a purple tinge to it, lingers

The published passage incorporates a wealth of Chinese traditions. The Upper Clarity Heavens is "a heavenly level found in the teachings of Supreme (or Upper) Clarity Daoism" around the 5 th century A.D. The Sage Lords are "the mythical founders of Chinese culture", while the Grand Pivot "is the North Scar The Daoiscs believe chat the stars are homes of the celestial spirits. These heavenly patterns and spirits enjoyed a mirror reflection in our minds and medicacors would 'pace the void' [or] walk among the stars in their meditations. Thus the Lord of the Grand Pivot is the spirit of the North or Pole Scar. The Big Dipper was an important constellation in Daoist religion, in Chinese religion in general and an ancient symbol. The Daoiscs claimed . . . there were actually nine stars in the Dipper. " The Nine Empresses of the Great Yin "are the female scar deities chat protect and surround the Dipper casting a sacred darkness chat throws the adept into a totally upside-down situation - in other words, one more test for the adept to overcome in their cultivation of the Way."

Perhaps the greatest challenge for Albert as a writer is chat his story isn't cold in a traditional Western style. An adaptation "of a Chinese literary genre," wuxia is "a traditional Chinese storytelling form defined by two basic elements: wu and xia. Wu pertains co all things martial, such as weapons (especially the sword as a symbol of nobility and valor), fighting techniques, and martial culture. Xia is usually translated as 'c hivalric hero.' Xia refers co chose men and women who acted in a subjective, heroic manner co right injustice. Their sense/code/ethic of chivalry involved the following values: altruism, justice/appropriateness, individual freedom, personal loyalty, honour and fame, generosity and contempt for wealth, and reciprocity. "This genre normally focuses on action (especially the action

of the human form) and adventure and takes place in an imaginary world of these heroes known as the jiang-hu (literally, 'rivers and lakes'; also 'cultural-imaginary world') which has been defined as 'the self-contained and historically sanctioned world of martial arts.' It is a world that accepts the fantastic as normal at certain levels of skillful physical and mental attainment "

In answer to a question I posed about spicing a historical novel with traditions and fantasy, Albert wrote, "China's traditions give me a big leg up on the fantasy, since its culture is so rich in what we call 'fantasy.' And since it is a major part of medieval Chinese life - even now in contemporary China - it is already combined - IF you know how to understand • 1" 7 It.

Once you venture within the pages of The Dragon Pool Sword, you enter another world in the distant past that is far different from our world today. Perhaps Li Bo explains it best:

I've beenasked the reason for dwelling in blue-green mountains. I laugh without answering, heart at ease. In the mountains, peach blossoms on flowing watersmysteriously vanish. There is another Reality - not of the human realm.

For those who would like to learn more about wuxia, Li Bo, and the Tang dynasty, Albert invites you to visit his biogs: http:/ /thedragongateinn com/pblog/, for a discussion of wuxia literary history, and http:/ /writers-tao. blogspot. com/, for his views on fiction writing and the wuxia genre. To learn more about him and to read an excerpt of Dream of the Dragon Pool: A Daoist Quest visit www.aadalia.com. His "wonderful artist wife," Jinghua Gao Dalia, created the novel's cover art and the painting on his website. If you'd like to learn more about her artwork, please visit www brushmagic. blogspot.com.

CfND Y VALLAR is a freelance editor, an associate editor for Solander, and the author ofihe Scottish Thistle ( www.cindyvallar.com/scottishthistle. html). A retired librarian, she also writes about pirates, teaches workshops, and reviews books.

N o tes

1. Elizabeth Crook. "Seven Rules for Writing Historical Fiction," (Elizabeth Crook), http:/ /www. elizabechcrookbooks.com/articles/historical_fiction.htm (accessed 15 July 2009).

2. Sue Peabody. "Reading and Writing Historical Fiction," (Sue Peabody, Ph.D.), http:/ /www.vancouver.wsu.edu/ fac/peabody/histfict.html (accessed 15 July 2009).

3. Viviane Crystal reviewed chis book in the May 2007 issue of Historical Novels Review.

4. Variant spellings of chis poet's name are Li Po and Li Bai. As Albert Dalia explains, "There are two basic romanizations for Chinese in scholarly use today: the traditional Wade-Giles Romanization (Li Po), which is rapidly fading from use, and the style officially adopted by the People's Republic of China, Pinyin (Li Bo and Li Bai). The difference between Li Bo and Li Bai is the former is the more classical pronunciation of the same characters and the latter is the more common/colloquial pronunciation. I prefer the more classical pronunciation as it gives a little more authentic feel to the name, even though Tang Chinese pronunciation was different than present day pronunciation."

5. Paul Rouzer. "Li Bo's Poetic Style," (Asian Topics), http:/ /www.columbia.edu/icc/ eacp/ asiasi te/ topics/index. hcml?topic=LiBo+subtopic=Style (accessed 15 July 2009). Dr. Rouzer is an assistant professor of Chinese Literature at Columbia University and a friend of Albert Dalia's.

6. Albert A. Dalia, "Conjuring the Ocher: Chinese Heroic Fiction," (Octavia, her domain), http:/ /www.octavia.net/ texc/albertdalia htm (accessed 15 July 2009).

7. The fantasy elements chat appear in the book can also be described as what is often called China's Otherworld, a place where spirits, ghosts, and gods are an integral part of daily life.

from A TALE OF TWO NOVELS

The people, says Mr. Dickens, in effect, had been degraded by long and gross misgovernment, and acted like wild beasts in consequence. There is, no doubt, a great deal of truth in this view of the matter, but it is such very elementary truth that, unless a man had something new to say about it, it is hardly worth mentioning; and Mr. Dickens supports it by specific assertions which, if not absolutely false, are at any rate so selected as to convey an entirely false impression. It is a shameful thing for a popular writer to exaggerate the faults of the French aristocracy in a book which will naturally find its way to readers who know very little of the subject except what he chooses to tell them; but it is impossible not to feel that the melodramatic story which Mr. Dickens tells about the wicked Marquis who violated one of his serfs and murders another, is a grossly unfair representation of the state of society in France in the middle of the eighteenth century. 9

Given the fact that the Marquis is a fictional character, whose own upstanding nephew shows a very different side of the aristocracy, Stephen's criticism rings rather hollow, though it is probably fair to say that Dickens's portrait of revolutionary France is a somewhat lopsided one As novelist Susanne Alleyn (whose first novel, A Far Better Rest, features Dickens's Sydney Carton as its hero) writes, "For Dickens, the French Revolution is the Terror and only the Terror, a fallacy enthusiastically compounded and embellished by Hollywood and a dozen Scarlet Pimpernel novels." 10

Unlike Barnaby Rudge, where Lord George Gordon is made somewhat awkwardly to interact with the purely fictional characters (as when he reproves Barnaby's mother for telling him the quite self-apparent fact that her son is mad) , no historical figures appear in A Tale of Two Cities, except in set pieces such as the death of Foulon, the Controller-General of Finances. Despite this, this novel nonetheless succeeds

in sweeping up the reader into history just as its fictional characters are swept up into the Terror :

''Apparently the English advocate is in a swoon?"

It is hoped he will recover in the fresher air. It is represented that he is not in strong health, and has separated sadly from a friend who is under the displeasure of the Republic .

"Is that all? It is not a great deal, that! Many are under the displeasure of the Republic, and must look out at the little window." [370]

John Forster, in his biography of his friend Dickens, caught the essence of the novel: "There is no piece of fiction known to me, in which the domestic life of a few simple private people is in such a manner knitted and interwoven with the outbreak of a terrible public event, that the one seems but part of the other " 11

That, surely, describes not only A Tale of Two Cities, but historical fiction at its best.

Susan Higginbotham is still grateful to the friend who gave her his copy ofA Tale of Two Cities to read on a long subway ride home; it started her on reading all ofDickens's novels. Her third novel The Stolen Crown, set during the mtrs of the Roses, is being published by Source books in March.

Not es

1 Charles Dickens, Barnaby Rudge London: Penguin Books, 2003, p. 472. Edited with introduction and notes by John Bowen. Citations in the text of this article are to the Penguin edition

2 Charles Dickens, A Tale ofTwo Cities. London: Pengu in Books, 2000, p 284 . Edited with introduction and notes by Richard Maxwell. Citations in the text of this article are to the Penguin edition.

3 John Bowen, intro., Barnaby Rudge, p. xiv.

4 D. G. Paz, Dickens and Barnaby Rudge: AntiCatholicism and Chartism. Monmouth: The Merlin Press, 2006, p. 160

5 Colin Haydon, "Gordon, Lord George (1751179 3) ," Oxford Dictionary ofNational Biography, Oxford University Press, Sept. 2004; online edn., Jan. 2008 [http:/ /www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/ 11040, accessed 27 Sept 2009)

6 Andrew Sanders, The Victorian Historical Novel: 1840-1880. New York: Sr. Martin's Press, 1979, p. 86.

7 Richard Maxwell, Appendix III, A Tale of Two Cities, p. 399.

8 Id., p. 440.

9 Quoted in Ruth Glancy, ed., Charles Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities: A Sourcebook. London and New York: Routledge, 2006, pp. 63-64.

10 Suzanne Alleyn, A Far Better Rest. New York: Soho Press, 2000, p. 350.

11 Quoted in Glancy, p. 66.

from KIPLING'S BATH

Notes

1 In cest: a new perspective (Policy Press, Cambridge, 2002).

2 7he Letters of Rudyard Kipling, Thomas Pinney ed., (Palgrave Macmillan, Hampshire , 1996) vol.3 p.68.

3 (Forward Press, Peterborough, 2004)

5 Judy Oberhausen , "Sis ters in spirit: Alice Kipling Fleming, Evelyn Pickering de Morgan and I 9th-century spiritualism", 7he British Art journal, IX 3 (Spring 2009), pp. 38-42. (Blackwood, Edinburgh, 1908).

6 Berty Macdonald, Trix Kipling's niece, quoted Lee op cir,. p.113.

... from ANGLES OF LIGHT

I do have snarl about age-limited prizes. With musicians and dancers it's understandable: they have to establish their careers when they're young. And I'm all for first book prizes. But the age of the writer is irrelevant. Besides, it's not the young things who need help - why shouldn't they starve in an attic in the traditional fashion? You can be a writer and have a job. What's almost impossible is to be a writer and have a job and children and elderly parents to look after. If you're going to have age limits on prizes then it's the older ones with commitments who need chem, but there are precious few of chose, and the media obsession with youth

infects the book trade coo, so I suspect the publicity wouldn't be all chat desired anyway.

SB: As you've already mentioned, you're currently studying for a PhD in creative writing. Do you think creative writing can be taught, or are tutors more like gatekeepers for people with a pre-existing 'gift'? What are your views on the proliferation of university creative writing courses and the extension of creative writing teaching to A and GCSE level in the UK?

ED: Fundamentally, in any art you can teach technique, you can show people ways to find material and inspiration and manage their artistic self, and you can educate chem about the industry if they want to try for a career in it. What you can't do is make someone a much better artist than they're wired to be, only help them to make the most of what talent they have. Writing is one of the arts, so why shouldn't it be caught at any level where art and music and drama already are? There are problems with any curriculum in creative arts, because creativity and orthodoxy don't always mix, but I don't chink chat's a reason not to do it.

Two things worry me about the proliferation of courses. First, in a climate which thinks of education as a route to a larger income, we need to be honest about the likelihood of most BA and MA graduates making a living from creative writing. And second, as academic creative writing grows and acquires the shape of any other academic discipline, I worry that we're breeding a parallel universe of writers who stay within the academy for the whole of their professional lives, who write to demonstrate theory, to argue with their academic fellows, for whom the audience is within the seminar room and who lose interest in how anyone outside it reads. It happened to serious music in the mid-twentieth century and that's when such music lost its audience. It could happen to writing, but I passionately hope it doesn't.

SB: Who are your favourite novelists?

ED: Austen, Bowen Chandler, E. H. Young, Woolf, Trollope, Henry James, Heyer, Sayers, Golding, Henry Green, Olivia Manning .. .and Jasper Horde makes me laugh immoderately. (So does Heyer, come to that.)

SB: What writers inspire you?

ED: If you mean the ones who strip a skin off me, and make me feel the world anew, and run away and write and write,

then Shakespeare, Woolf, Donne, Elizabeth Bishop, Joyce, Chekhov, R. S. Thomas and Angela Carter.

SB: And finally, in this anniversary year, I have to ask you how you feel about being descended &om Charles Darwin?

ED: Well, it's been fun this year, and it's useful for publicity. We were brought up not to mention it, though, so I had to overcome my inhibitions about Showing Off. And in my early days as an author I found it hard to cope with when a piece ostensibly about my fiction was mostly about The Ancestor, but now I've got a body of work out there that doesn't happen so much. Very occasionally a review doesn't even mention that three per cent of my genome.

SB: Emma, thank you so much for taking the time to give such full and considered responses to my questions. It has been a great pleasure talking to you.

EMMA DARWIN's novels, The Mathematics of Love and A Secret Alchemy, are published in paperback by Headline. Her books are published in the US by William Morrow. You can find out more about Emma and Link to her blog at www. emmadarwin. com.

SARAH BOWER is the author of two historical novels, The Needle in the Blood and The Book of Love, published by Snowbooks. She is a regular contributor to Solander and the Historical Novels Review

REALITY IN FICTION

EJ: Finally, in addition to your memoir Searching for the Secret River, you've written or co-written three other books on the craft of writing. What is the number one piece of advice you'd give to an emerging writer?

KG: I'd give two pieces of advice to an emerging writer. One is only to write about things that genuinely interest you, and that you don't completely understand. Writing the book will take you further into understanding, and the energy of your own search will result in energy on the page. The second is to have a way of making a living that's not

dependent on your writing - some skill you use to support yourself and leave your writing free to take you wherever it goes.

ELIZABETH JANE is an Australian writer. When she isn't writing, she works as a Librarian, facilitates Balwyn Writers, and biogs at http:hannercymraes.blogspot.com. In 2007, an early draft of her historical novel, Chrysalis, was shortlisted for a HarperCollins Vtiruna manuscript development award. In 2008, it won an academic award. In 2009, her short-story, Beyond the Blackout Curtain, won the Bristol Short Story Prize. She Looks forward to the year 20 I 0.

KATE GRENVILLE's books are published in the North America by Random House and in UK by Canongate. She is published by Text Publishing in Australia. The Lieutenant was published in May 2009.

Notes

1 Anna Metcalf, Kate Grenville, Financial Times, UK, February 7, 2009

2 Inga Clendinnen, Who owns the past?, Quarterly Essay, Black Inc., Melbourne, November, 2006

THE EDITOR'S LAST WORD

I knew chat Claire Morris, Solander's previous editor, had done a remarkable job, bur never more so than with chis issue, when first I tried to fill her (very large, as it turns out) shoes. Claire will be deeply missed by staff and readers alike.

I joined So/anders team owing first to a love of both historical fiction and history: I write historical novels, and I am pursuing a PhD in Anglo-Jewish history at the University of Cambridge. Chief amongst my motivators in becoming a part of Solander, however, was a desire to be closer to a community devoted to the promotion and appreciation of historical fiction. With chis, my first issue, I have already come into contact with some amazing people, and I would like in particular to thank the founder of the Historical Novel Society, Richard Lee, and our talented and knowledgeable editorial staff - both at Solander and at the Historical Novels Review - as well as our gifted contributors, who made receiving copy such a treat.

I also hope you, the readers, will enjoy the direction I cake with Solander, and chat we can begin a lively correspondence on our shared love of historical fiction. I encourage your letters and look forward to hearing from you.

If there was a theme chat ran through the majority of the pieces published in this issue of Solander, it was the evaluation of "historical fiction" as a valid category not only for novels, but for novelists themselves. Hilary Mantel, 2009's Man Booker Prize winner, scares chat she writes not historical fiction as such, but "co ntemporary fiction set in the past," and, indeed, chat the category of ' historical novel ' can be a "kiss of death" to the book and its author. Emma Darwin, author of A Secret Alchemy, calls herself "a storyteller ... who happens to work with history. " Kate Grenville, author of Dark Places , offers the idea chat "se tting fiction in the past gives you a chance to raise issues in a way chat makes chem a little less confronting", having taken on the daunting task of celling a story from the point of view of an incestuous father.

This year, historical fiction was catapulted into the spotlight first by the Man Booker longlisc , and then by its shortlist, which was dominated by the historical fiction of such widely lauded authors as Mantel , Sarah Waters, and A.S. Byatt.

This provoked both a backlash and an examination of what historical fiction is, as well as the wisdom of shunting it into a category that can't be appreciated on as deeply a literary level as contemporary and non-genre fiction. Anyone who has read Mantel, Waters, or Byatt will likely agree chat fiction in a historical setting can be just as powerful , just as astute, and just as capable of altering the literary landscape as any other kind of fiction.

The May issue of Solander was dedicated to finding unusual historical fiction in unlikely places, to looking be yo nd the corsets and heaving bosoms to which the mind can so easily jump when "historical fiction" is brought up. The theme of that May issue was a wonderful primer for the summer of 2009, during which the value of historical fiction was debated in the literary supplements of major newspapers as bookies shortened and reshortened the odds on Mantel's winning the Booker Prize. This past summer has taught a lesson chat members of the Historical Novel Society have long understood: chat one of the great miracles of historical fiction is looking to the past and seeing something very similar to what we see in our own mirrors and out our own windows - love, ambition, hatred, the quest for identity. It is the timelessness of these themes that makes great fiction, and seeing them intact in the past only makes history - and historical novels - more astounding, and more insightful. That a sense of the past can inform the present is one of the more powerful themes in Kate Grenville's novels, and what we hold in common with our predecessors from decades and centuries ago is most powerful of all.

We at Solander would love to hear what drew you as readers (and writers) to historical fiction, and what historical fiction means to you. Provided a significant enough response, the May 2010 issue of Solander will feature a section dedicated to your insights on the genre.

Until then, we wish you a happy holiday season, a prosperous and adventurous new year, and a winter and spring chockfull of great reading.