Sobbing into the void
Last Friday, for the first time in about 15 years, I just didn't bother to write a blog post. Friday came and went and I didn't post an apology for not writing anything or worry about whether or not anybody would notice that it wasn't there. I just didn't do it. I've...
The Chatterati of Georgian Twickenham
I’ve blogged in the past about Henrietta Howard and her home at Marble Hill in Twickenham, where she lived after leaving the court of King George II in 1734. Unkind courtiers at St James’s Palace suggested that she was abandoning the glittering centre of London...
Black Redcoats: a fascinating new book by Matthew Taylor
In Black Redcoats, Matthew Taylor has highlighted a forgotten element of the War of 1812: the effect it had on enslaved people in the USA and the role that some of them played in aiding the British war effort.
India, 1857
This is the time of year when my thoughts turn to Cawnpore and the events of 1857 and I'm reposting something I wrote three years ago. Although the British had been establishing themselves in India for some time before 1757, the battle of Plassey is often seen as a...
Kris: the magical sword of Malaysia
This week, I was pleasantly surprised to get a comment on a post I wrote on my old blog back in 2016. It made me think that there are still people who might be interested in what I said then so I'm reposting it here. I hope you find this interesting. I think that the...
The Economics of Fiction
Things are looking bright at the moment -- and not just the weather. People seem to be buying Burke and the War of 1812 and some have even been in touch to say how much they are enjoying it. Right now, being an author, even a not-particularly-well-known one, feels...
Writing history
The joy of writing historical fiction is that much of the story is given to you by history. When I was writing my latest, Burke and the War of 1812, I didn’t have to invent reasons why Burke might be fighting in Canada: the War of 1812 was a real thing and British...
Idling
It's Friday morning and time for me to write my weekly blog. It's been a good week. Saturday was publication day for the latest of my James Burke books, Burke and the War of 1812. We had a party. There was a cake. It was quite a night and, frankly, not a lot got done...
Excited!
I'm getting very excited here with the official launch of Burke and the War of 1812 coming up tomorrow. I quietly made the paperback available earlier, so if you want it on paper for launch day, you can order it today and it should arrive at the same time as the...
Historical fact and historical fiction
Research is always, in the end, a matter of judgement and, indeed, personal preference. There are some purists out there who seem uncomfortable with any fiction at all in their historical fiction. An author who dares to admit that sometimes they just make stuff up can infuriate this kind of reader/writer. At the other extreme, there are authors who will cheerfully ignore any historical details that get in the way of their stories which can often seem hardly “historical” at all.