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 society for a dull life in the countryside, which Twickenham then was. After she had been only a year at Marble Hill, though, Alexander Pope, the poet, was to write: ‘There is a greater court now at Marble Hill than at Kensington’.
Marble Hill House
Why did Henrietta choose to settle in Twickenham, and what was it about her life at Marble Hill that made such a centre of intellectual society?
She knew Twickenham because George spent much of the summer at Richmond. It had long royal associations (the Tudor palace there was particularly fine) and Kew Palace, where George III liked to spend time with his family, still stands in Kew Gardens. On the river between the court at Saint James’s in Kensington and Hampton Court Palace to the west, Twickenham, and what was known as the Arcadian Thames, was a fashionable place to live, with many fine houses along the river. Ham House (currently owned by the National Trust) is the best remaining example, but there were many others. Alexander Pope lived on the river, a mile or so to the west. It was not an especially fine house but he had a large garden that was much admired and, of course, his famous grotto.
Alexander Pope in his grotto (Contemporary sketch by William Kent)
Pope was a friend and (at least until she remarried) an admirer of Henrietta Howard and the fact that he lived in Twickenham was a consideration in her choosing the place as her home. And, as is the way of these things, Pope’s fame as a poet (it’s difficult nowadays to appreciate how well-regarded he was) meant that other literary types were attracted to the area and several of these became regular visitors to Marble Hill. Besides Pope, there was John Gay, the playwright, whose Threepenny Opera’s satirical swipes at the government had caused a scandal, Jonathan Swift, another satirist and the author of Gulliver’s Travels and, later, Horace Walpole, whose eccentric house at nearby Strawberry Hill was to start the English Gothic revival.
John Gay’s portrait in Marble Hill House
A close friend from Henrietta’s days at court, Kitty Hyde, the Duchess of Queensbury, lived just across the river at Hall Place in Petersham. (Horace Walpole, who found her irritating, remarked that at least they had the river between them.) The Duchess was an interesting woman, a great beauty and known as an eccentric even in an age of eccentrics. She was banished from court in 1728, over her championing of John Gay’s satirical works and responded: “The Duchess of Queensberry is surprised and well pleased that the King hath given her so agreeable a command as to stay from Court.”
All these people were part of Henrietta’s circle, but there were many more famous names living in Twickenham or nearby. Joshua Reynolds, the artist, (two of whose portraits now hang in Marble Hill House) lived on Richmond Hill with a view that stretched out across the Arcadian Thames towards Twickenham. Hogarth was nearby in Chiswick. (There’s a painting of his displayed at Marble Hill as well.) Horace Walpole (in 1755) produced a convenient list: “We shall be a celebrated as Baiae or Tivoli … we have very famous people: Clive and Pritchard, the actresses: Scott and Hudson, the painters: my lady Suffolk [Henrietta Howard]: Mr Hickey the impudent lawyer: Whitehead the poet: and Cambridge, the everything.”
Richard Cambridge (1717-1802) moved to Twickenham in 1751, taking a house just a few minutes walk along the river from Marble Hill. Cambridge is not remembered these days but was a well-regarded poet at the time and a man who seemed to know everybody. While Henrietta Howard entertained literary figures, Cambridge’s visitors included Lord North (Prime Minister to George III), Captain Cook (who called before his last voyage), Edward Gibbon (who wrote The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire) and James Boswell and Samuel Johnson, who, it seems, were inseparable even in their dinner invitations.
Cambridge House
By the time Henrietta died in 1767, many of those who had been part of her circle at Marble Hill were dead. Walpole, much younger than her, was still very much alive. (His novel, The Castle of Otranto, arguably the first Gothic novel, was only published in 1764.) He visited her the day before her death, but Pope, Gay, and Swift were all gone.
Twickenham is now part of the London Borough of Richmond-upon-Thames. The London centre of literary society and backbiting gossip has arguably moved to Islington. The authors and poets are less notable now, but Richmond is still home to actresses like Helen Baxendale, Amanda Holden, and Jane Horrocks. In the late twentieth century, it attracted a lot of musical stars (possibly because of the famous concert venue on Twickenham’s Eel Pie Island). Mick Jagger, Pete Townshend and Ronnie Wood all lived here. And, best of all, Richmond is still home to Sir David Attenborough.
If Henrietta Howard were to return to Marble Hill, she would not lack for company.
Burke and the War of 1812 plunged James Burke into a new theatre of war as he joined British forces defending Canada against an attempted annexation by the young United States of America. When I started writing the book, most people had never heard of the War of 1812, but Donald Trump’s announcement that he would like to see the USA annex Canada meant the war of 1812 was suddenly trending in social media.
What quickly became obvious was that very few people understood what had happened in 1812. It was not that surprising. The war was a scrappy affair. Both sides occasionally attempted bold strategic plans, but these usually came to nothing – from the first defeat of the United States when a grand three-pronged attack on Canada fizzled out as one failed invasion from Detroit, to the final defeat of the British (after the war had officially ended) with a doomed attempt to take New Orleans.
Political partisanship has further clouded the historical view. Well over 200 years later, people still view the war through politically partisan lenses. So, for example, a surprising number of people in the USA are convinced that the war was won by the USA. People on both sides of the conflict tend to downplay the role that native Americans played in the fighting (though Canadians seem to acknowledge this more than others) or how much the native tribes suffered in the aftermath of the war.
Now, with his new book, Black Redcoats, Matthew Taylor has highlighted another forgotten element of the war: the effect it had on enslaved people in the USA and the role that some of them played in aiding the British war effort.
In Burke and the War of 1812, the emphasis is clearly on the land war, but as the conflict went on, the role of the navies on both sides became increasingly important. Although the American navy was to prove its worth, the British had the ability to strike from the sea all along the eastern coast of the USA. They chose Chesapeake Bay as the focus of their efforts and established a base there. Eventually, the British had about twenty warships in the bay with some two thousand men capable of going ashore and taking the fighting to the enemy, most famously, in 1814, by marching to Washington and burning down the White House.
The White House after the fire
From early in 1813, enslaved African-Americans on the shores of Chesapeake Bay saw the British presence as an opportunity to escape to freedom. The first may have been nine men who, on 10 March, approached the guard boat of HMS Victorious and volunteered to serve in the ship’s company. Many more were to follow.
Soon, it was not only men who fled to join the British. Whole families were taken under the protection of the Royal Navy. Many of the men chose to join the British forces, but those who did not want to fight were given their freedom and evacuated to British territory in Canada or the West Indies.
The British action was driven by several motivations.
The men who chose to join them were valuable from a military point of view. They were loyal – desertion was not an option for them. They were committed to the British cause, which offered freedom to all the enslaved people in the territory under their control. They knew the geography of the area – an important factor given the guerrilla nature of many of the British raids – and they were soon to demonstrate that they were brave and able fighters.
The War of 1812 was a modern war, in that its economic element war was a strategic priority. To the farmers around Chesapeake Bay, their slaves were valuable stock and the British inflicted real economic damage by liberating them. Freeing enslaved people was also a blow to American morale as many Americans lived in fear of a slave rebellion.
Many naval officers were also motivated by sympathy for the abolitionist cause. Ironically, this was true even of some who themselves owned slaves in the West Indies. Slavery was already illegal in Britain and, whatever was happening in the West Indian plantations, British officers were uncomfortable to see slavery in a society which looked otherwise very much like that in England.
As the number of African-Americans serving the British military increased, a new military unit, the Corps of Colonial Marines, was formed in 1814 and volunteers were issued with red coats and given regular pay and rations.
The Colonial Marines proved excellent soldiers and were conspicuously active in many engagements, notably in the assault on Washington and the burning of the White House.
As the war drew to an end, the British planned an attack on New Orleans. It was probably always a step too far. Andrew Jackson had had time to construct a solid defence of the city and his troops were far from the inadequate opposition that the British had faced in 1812.
The British saw control of the coast of Georgia as important in enabling them to cut off the possibility of the Americans reinforcing New Orleans. The British task force sent to Georgia to accomplish this consisted of about 500 Royal Marines with 200 men from the 2nd West India Regiment from the Bahamas and 365 Colonial Marines. This meant that the slave state of Georgia was being threatened by a force that was majority black.
The British established a base at Cumberland Island where they were joined by many blacks fleeing from both Spanish and American slave owners. British forces were still based at Cumberland Island when news of the peace finally reached them and they were forced to withdraw. The island was held for approximately 8 weeks during which 1,700 enslaved people escaped to the British.
Meanwhile, in West Florida, the British had made allies not only of freed slaves but also of Native Americans. Thousands of Creek warriors had fled to Florida following war with the Americans and the British had organised a multiracial force of Creeks, whites, mixed race and black people to defend West Florida, then a notionally Spanish territory, against American attack.
The British formed a separate Florida Corps of Colonial Marines, based at Prospect Bluff, overlooking the Apalachicola River, about 15 miles north of present-day Apalachicola, Florida. The fort they built there was a moated, walled structure enclosing stone buildings. Bastions at the corner mounted defensive cannon. It was the largest man-made structure in Florida outside the cities of Pensacola and Saint Augustine. When the British withdrew they left at least 2,500 stands of muskets, 500 carbines, 500 swords, four 24-pounder cannon, and four 6-pounder cannon along with a fieldpiece and a howitzer. When the Colonial Marines were evacuated, as many as 450 of the men and their families decided to remain at the base, which became known as ‘Negro Fort’. It became the centre of the most well-armed Native American and free black community on the North American continent.
The continued existence of the Negro Fort, only 50 miles or so from the US border, was regarded as intolerable by the Americans and in the summer of 1816 units of the American army and navy attacked the fort. A gunboat opened the attack with a hot cannonball which, by chance, landed in the fort’s magazine. The explosion that it caused killed about 300 people.
The deaths at Negro Fort pretty much marked the end of the Colonial Marines, although individual marines seem to have continued as a thorn in American flesh, some becoming valued military advisers to Native American tribes in the region.
Matthew Taylor’s book explores an important and little known area of Anglo-American history. He looks at the possible influence of the Colonial Redcoats in history. It is, sadly, mainly a case of might-have-beens. If the British had responded to the diplomatic overtures of the Creek leader who travelled to London to plead for support; if a lucky shot hadn’t annihilated Negro Fort… Even so, the story tells us a lot about British and American attitudes to slavery and the start of the long, slow process of unravelling it.
Black Redcoats is an important book for anyone interested in the period and yet still immensely readable. I whole-heartedly recommend it.
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 turning point, marking the beginning of British rule in the country. This was certainly a view shared by many Indians and the idea had grown up among some but British rule would last for 100 years, ending in the summer of 1857.
In the early years of British rule, colonial officers were surprisingly well assimilated into Indian society. Many took Indian wives. In some cases these were little more than mistresses, but a lot of officers formed Indian households and raised children in the country. There was genuine interest in the local customs and religions, which were generally respected. Many parts of India were ruled by people who were not originally from that area and the change from an Indian overlord who had conquered their region to a European one meant little to the locals. Over time, though, the nature of British rule changed. European women travelled out to India in search of potential husbands and the custom of taking native wives was frowned upon. The Church saw India as fertile ground for new converts and preachers arrive who denounced local customs and religions. The country was flooded with new officials who saw a job in India as a way to make a fortune and who were little interested in the culture of the country, often despising the natives and their beliefs.
By the mid-19th century, many Indians were fractious and resentful of the British. Yet at the same time the British were so confident of their apparently inalienable right to rule that the majority of the soldiers employed to maintain British power in the sub-continent were, in fact, Indians. Furthermore, Indian troops were seeing a reduction in the respect and privileges that used to be accorded to them in the earlier years of British rule.
Throughout the spring of 1857 there were indications of growing Indian discontent and calls for revolt, yet when the first Europeans were killed by mutinying Indian soldiers – in Meerut on 10 May 1857 – it seems to have taken the authorities by surprise.
“The Sepoy revolt at Meerut,” from the Illustrated London News, 1857
Once the mutiny had started it spread rapidly from regiment to regiment. The revolt spread to the civil population too, taking on the character of a general uprising, though some Indians never turned against the British and those who did were riven by factional in-fighting.
Soon much of north-west India was rising against the British, but many of the Europeans stationed in India struggled to believe that it was really happening. Officers often implored their troops to stay loyal. Some troops did, others shot their commanders down. In Cawnpore (now Kanpur), a town about 250 miles from Meerut the local British commander, General Wheeler, did not expect any trouble even after news of the Mutiny reached the town. His military force was negligible and the local ruler was thought to be sympathetic to the British.
In the event, Wheeler (himself married to an Indian) proved horribly mistaken. The siege of the British at Cawnpore and the massacre that ended it was one of the darkest single incidents of 1857.
This is the background to the second of the John Williamson stories, Cawnpore. Cawnpore is set during a particularly vicious war, but it is not a war story. The book centres on John Williamson, the narrator of The White Rajah. (The story stands alone and you don’t need to read The White Rajah first.) His life in the Far East has left him more comfortable with the princelings of the local Indian court than with the class-ridden Europeans he works with. He has friends on both sides of the conflict and struggles to stay true to them all. In the midst of a war that is fought with terrible ruthlessness, he tries to remain a decent person.
Cawnpore is a story about idealism and reality; about belonging and exclusion. It looks at the British colonial project and how it went so horribly wrong. It makes most people cry.
At the time that I wrote it, my son was serving in Afghanistan, in a conflict that can trace its origins back to the 1850s and before. Yet again, British troops were fighting and dying for a way of life they didn’t understand. Researching Cawnpore made me realise that the important thing about the war in Afghanistan wasn’t that it was right or that it was wrong: it was that it was futile.
Cawnporeis my favourite of all the books I’ve written. I do hope you read it.
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 swords are beautiful and the more I know about them, the more I appreciate them. If you find the text heavy going, enjoy the pictures.
I first came across kris on holiday in Borneo. This was the holiday where I discovered James Brooke, whose life eventually became the story of my first ever novel, The White Rajah. Kris and Brooke have always been linked in my mind since then. There’s even a kris on the cover of the book.
What exactly are kris? Most are really too long to be called daggers but too short for swords. They’re a distinctive weapon common in South East Asia, being found throughout Indonesia and Malaysia. In the UK they’re usually depicted (as in the cover illustration) as wavy, though they come in a variety of shapes and sizes with marked differences from one area to another. Some old kris are as small as any dagger and the largest are the size of a sword. There isn’t even any agreement about how it should be spelt. Although ‘kris’ is the usual English spelling, I have also often seen it spelt ‘keris’. Wikipedia throws up even more variants: ‘cryse’, ‘crise’, ‘criss’, ‘kriss’ and ‘creese’, although these appear obsolete terms used by European colonists. Generally, the usual spelling in the West is ‘kris’, while ‘keris’ is more popular in the East.
Despite the variety of spellings, sizes and shapes, kris are easy to recognise. What are the attributes that define them?
The blade
The first thing is that all kris have, to a greater or lesser extent, “watered” blades. I’m going to write a lot more about this in a separate post, which is likely to appeal to a more specialist audience, but for now I’ll just say that the watering here is produced by a technique called ‘pattern welding’. Although the pattern can resemble that seen in the famed damascene steel, these blades are produced by a completely different technique and are vastly inferior in quality. They are quite beautiful though.
Some legends say that this pattern, known as the “pamor”, is made by the waves of the hair of a spirit inhabiting the blade. In fact, the waves are the result of the kris being made from thin bars of iron or steel which are beaten together. I’ll be writing separately about how these and other blades are made in a post for sword/metallurgy geeks.
The top of blade is wider on one side, maintaining a sharp edge. The other side is decorated with a curl in the metal, which resembles an elephant’s trunk (the ‘belalai gajah’). A good example of this is shown in figure 2.
FIG 2. Detail of a Kris Ksay Cantrik from Jogjakarta, Java.
The widening of the blade allows it to form a guard (the ‘ganja’). The guard is usually made from a separate piece of metal. This is placed across the top of the blade, providing a stronger and more effective protection for the user’s hands. Although this is made separately, during the forging of the weapon it is attached to the main part of the blade. This is also clearly visible in figure 2. At the top (in figure) a gap is clear between the main part of the blade and the guard, but the two are firmly joined beyond that point.
Some people suggest that the shape is derived from the shape of a stingray’s ‘sting’. The idea is that people used the sting as a weapon and then produced metal weapons based on the same shape. Unlikely as it is, the oldest kris are very small and thin and the resemblance there is more marked.
The details of the decoration at the top of blade vary considerably. The example shown in figure 2 could be regarded as typical. The example shown in figure 3 shows how, in some cases, these elements are reduced to a minimal symbolic representation. However, they are always present even if, as here, the cross piece is omitted.
FIG 3 Detail of peninsular kris
The tang (the bit of the blade that fits into the hilt) is very narrow. This is a significant weakness of the kris as a weapon. European sailors fighting natives armed with kris would typically use a belaying pin (essentially a large, heavy stick) to disarm their opponents by striking the kris blade, which would snap at the tang.
The kris in use
The hilts are sometimes described as offering a pistol grip. The blade is held horizontal to the ground. The fist fits around the hilt with the thumb and forefinger pinching the blade itself. Held like this, the so that the guard covers the base knuckle of the forefinger. (This would not be the case with the very long kris of the Philippines, which are, effectively, swords and will be held in the usual way.)
If only one kris is being used, it’s generally held in the right hand, with the scabbard sometimes held in the left, where it can be used to ward off blows. According to Draeger and Smith, the kris fighter will strike into soft flesh target areas of his enemy with the abdominal region, throat, and kidney areas most highly favoured.
I have seen displays, showing how the kris might be used in combat. Such displays, called main silat are a traditional form of entertainment where the duellists imitate the thrusts and parries, the passes and steps of a fight to the death. It is impossible to be sure how accurately these reflect fighting in the days when they were typically used, but the display I witnessed seemeda very stylised form of fighting, rather than a straightforward thrust and parry. Of course, as any fighting style becomes more refined it can take on an almost ritualistic quality, like fencing with the epee. It may be that the main advantage that English sailors had was that they did not bother with the finer points of kris use but simply bludgeoned their way to victory.
The style of fighting does mean that the blade will often slide along your opponent’s guard and the guard was often notched. This would serve to catch your opponent’s blade momentarily, and might give you an advantage.
Many people suggest kris blades were poisoned, although it is difficult to find any evidence that this was common. There are lots of Malaysian plants that can be used to make poisons (and blow-pipe darts, for example, have to be poisoned to be effective) but making these poisons takes time and if they are left smeared on the blade they soon become ineffective. You’d need a lot to cover the whole length of the blade and it’s just not an efficient way of killing. The application of poison to the blade hardly seems necessary as the blade is extremely lethal anyway. Perhaps the use of arsenic and lime juice to clean and etch the blade in its final stages of preparation has given rise to the idea that all kris blades were poisonous.
Kris were also used in executions. It is likely that straight edged kris were preferred for this. In the West, straight kris are sometimes referred to as executioners kris. This is, in part, because of a notion that straight kris are unusual and therefore probably reserved for some special purpose, but, as we have seen, this is a misunderstanding. Straight kris are, if anything, more common than the wavy ones. Not all of them could have been used principally for executions. Nonetheless, the straight kris is particularly well adapted to the traditional manner of execution in which the victim is held with their arms out their sides and the kris is pushed vertically down through their collarbone into the heart, causing instant death. The kris may be pushed through wadding to reduce the amount of blood generated.
The hilt
The hilts are usually made of wood, often kemuning, which some people claim has magical qualities. Weapons owned as status symbols may well have hilts of horn, ivory (elephant or walrus) or bone.
The hilts of kris are always carved into symbolic decorations, often with a religious element. Many hilts represent the garuda bird, which carries the god Vishnu in Hindu myth. Sometimes these images are elaborate, but, in many cases, they are very stylised and can appear quite plain. Examples of two extremes of decorative style are shown in figure 5.
Fig 5
Although the most common image is that of a more or less stylised garuda, other patterns are seen. Sometimes, the figure is that of a crouching man. The Erotic Museum in Berlin has several examples of hilts which represent people engaged in sexual acts.
A particularly interesting type of hilt is tajong, known in the West as a “Kingfisher” hilt. This is characterised by a long “beak” extending from the end of the hilt. Carving these takes considerable skill, and such hilts are rare. The workmanship would have made them valued when they were originally produced, but their scarcity nowadays means that they are worth considerable sums to collectors.
Although Western collectors attach great significance to the hilts, it is important to remember that the culture is that produced the kris saw the true magic and value of the weapon as lying in the blade. The blade will be preserved as the furniture is changed. This is particularly the case with kris that have been traded by collectors. It is common for hilts to be removed from blades so that a particularly good hilt can be matched with a particularly good blade to make a more saleable piece. My own collection includes kris where the orientation of the hilts to the blade is wrong, indicating that the hilt has been replaced. Whilst the furniture of a kris can provide useful clues as to its provenance, they can never be definitive.
The hilt usually sits in a small metal cup (the pendongkok), separating the hilt from the main part of the blade. Figure 3 shows a relatively elaborate example of this. Once the hilts are removed, the cup, which is not attached to the blade, is easily slipped off and therefore often changed when hilts are changed. In some examples held by Western collectors, the cup will be missing.
The sheath
Kris sheaths are also distinctive. Sheaths are made of wood, although they may be covered with a metal sleeve. The end of the sheath might be tipped with a chap of bone or ivory (the buntut). They are distinguished by a wide wooden crosspiece (the sampir) which protects the guard of the weapon. This is often described as “boat shaped”. The sampir may be a relatively functional rectilinear shape or an elaborately carved piece of decorative work.
Fig 6. Scabbard with metal sleeve. Jogjakarta.
The kris as a spiritual object
Kris are valued as spiritual objects. Although there is some uncertainty surrounding their origin, it is likely that the very first kris were the kris majapahit. ‘Majapahit‘ refers to the Majapahit Empire, which was based on Java in the 14th to 15th centuries. The very first kris were made when iron was a rare and precious metal. Early kris may well have been made of meteoric iron. They were very small, and may have been intended for use in religious ceremonies, rather than combat. The symbolic carving of the hilts reflects their continuing religious links.
Fig 7. Kris majapahit
Traditionally, the manufacture of kris was surrounded with ceremonies reflecting the fact that the early smiths were practising an art which was viewed as as much magical as technological. Some stories say that women smiths would temper the blade by drawing the red hot metal through their vulva before throwing it into water. Another version says that every kris would be tempered by being stabbed into the body of a prisoner, so that a person would be killed for every kris that was made.
Although kris are functionally defined by their use as weapons, they have always been much more than that. Often beautifully decorated (sometimes with gold worked into the surface of the blade) and with hilts and scabbards so ornate as to make them almost useless for fighting, kris are symbols of status, and of craft and cultural values at least 700 years old. Collected enthusiastically by Europeans (especially the Dutch), they can still be found and bought at affordable prices in the markets of Malaysia and Indonesia. The huge variety of styles and the stories that go with them make these a source of continual fascination to any traveller in the region.
FURTHER READING
Draeger and Smith (1986) Comprehensive Asian Fighting Arts. Kodansha America, Inc
Gardner (1936) Keris and Other Malay Weapons . Progressive Publishing Company: Singapore
Hill (1956) The Keris and Other Malay Weapons, Journal of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. 29, Part 4, No. 176.
Another post, all about the metallurgy of pattern welded and watered blades, is available HERE.
About ‘The White Rajah’
The White Rajah is the first of three books about John Williamson. Williamson is a fictional character, but his adventures take him into the lives of some very real historical figures. The White Rajah is quite closely based on the life of Sir James Brooke. Like the true story of his life, it raises issues about colonialism and our attitudes to what we now call Third World countries. But like his life, it also has pirates and rebellions and battles. And there’s an orang-utan who, if I’m entirely honest, probably wasn’t there in real life. It took quite a long time to research and write and is available on Kindle at the embarrassingly low price of 99p. You can use this book link to buy it, wherever you are in the world. Please do.
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 pretty good. And that’s important, because warm fuzzies are what writing brings, rather than any great material rewards. So now, warm fuzzies notwithstanding, is a good time to look at the realities of life for the overwhelming majority of writers.
Why you can’t find an audio version of my Burke books
Recently somebody asked me to recommend them an Audible book written by an indie author. They drive a lot in the course of their work, so most of their ‘reading’ is on audiobooks in the car. They said that I’m always encouraging them to try indie authors instead of just going for bestsellers, so they were going to give it a try.
I duly checked out some of my favourite indie authors and soon realised that hardly any have audiobook versions of their work.
There’s a simple reason for this. Paying a narrator is expensive and indie authors simply don’t generate the levels of sales that are needed to meet the narrator’s fees.
Narrating is hard work and narrators bring a lot of skills their job. I know, because I tried to narrate my novella, Dark Magic, myself and I don’t think that the result is nearly as good as if a professional had done it. (You can buy a copy for just 99p if you want to hear for yourself.) Recording a full length novel will take three or four days and the voice artist will reasonably expect a substantial amount of money. This is completely fair enough, but does rather beg the question of why a voice artist expects to be paid properly for the days of work that they put in while the author cannot generate enough money to pay their narrator, even though they will have spent months writing the book.
Please feed the authors
Underlying the problem with paying for narration, as with so many book-related issues, is that our culture does not believe in paying for books. In the recent scandal of Meta illegally copying millions of books to train their AI, Meta has claimed that the books have no “economic value”. In one of the lawsuits currently underway, Meta is quoted as claiming “none of Plaintiffs works has economic value, individually, as training data.” It’s a view presumably shared by those who download pirated copies of my books. (I’ve given up filing “cease and desist” claims against sites offering illegal copies of my books because as quickly as one site is shut down another opens.)
Writers contribute to this idea. Many regularly make their work available for free from time to time as a promotional ploy. I offer the occasional book for sale at 99p. A more fundamental problem is that the product of our labour is regularly sold ridiculously cheaply. All my books are available on Kindle for £3.99 or less. Perhaps I should put the prices up. Do feel free to respond, letting me know.
Writing isn’t cheap
Although the book is available in paperback, most sales of Burke and the War of 1812 will be on Kindle. Of the £3.99 cover price, I get around £2.76.
I’m lucky, because my family are spectacularly supportive and between them and some very good friends, I can get by without paying for professional editing and proof-reading, both of which are expensive. I prepare my typescript for publication by Amazon myself and by now I can do a decent job without wasting too much time, though many authors pay someone else to handle this.
All this means that the only cost I have to carry myself is the cover design. Mine cost £100 each. Authors who pay for editing, proofreading and preparation for publishing can easily spend thousands of pounds getting their book ready for market.
Because I write historical fiction, I can spend quite a lot on research costs. Some of the research is definitely fun. For Burke in the Land of Silver, I rode a horse high into the Andes until we were turned back by snow. For Burke and the Lines of Torres Vedras, I travelled to Portugal to see the remains of the fortifications. I enjoyed both trips, which is just as well as neither book generated enough money to pay for them. Fortunately, I enjoy historical conferences too, as these don’t come cheap. Less obviously enjoyable is the pile of reading matter that has to be worked through before writing can start. Many of the books I use were written in the periods I write about and are therefore out of copyright, but many are not and they have to be bought and paid for before any writing takes place.
Research trip for Burke in the Land of Silver
I’m not even going to think about the incidental costs, like hosting and other fees on my website (where you’re reading this blog) or membership of writers’ associations.
Any author who expects to make their fortune out of writing is unwise. Some may, but most won’t. Many will end up well out of pocket for their efforts.
Why we write
I think that writing could well be regarded as the sort of compulsive behaviour which, in other areas of life, could be regarded as a form of mental illness. Speaking for myself, it is something I’ve always wanted to do and which I’m glad to have been doing for the last fifteen or so years. I’m lucky. I’m retired and I can afford what is a (more or less) paying hobby. But most people – including many whose books you might enjoy – can’t put in the years of work that build their skills without seeing any tangible reward for their efforts. And even people like me, who can afford it, find themselves asking, increasingly often: what is the point?
Does it matter?
That rather depends on whether or not you enjoy reading decently written books by people who have the time and resources they need to keep writing them. Already, most books are being written by older, middle-class white people. The economic model of writing hardly encourages diversity and things are likely to get much worse.
Perhaps, in a world of digital entertainment, reading has just had its day. Perhaps Meta is correct: books have no economic value. Maybe we don’t pay our authors, because we do not really care about the books they write.
It might be time for authors, including me, to call it a day.
What can you do?
You might well agree that a world with a great deal fewer books is a better world and people like me should just stop adding to the pile of unread literature. (Ironically, as people spend less time reading, technological changes mean that ever more books are being published.) If you agree, do comment to say so. It’s a point of view that deserves to be heard and explored.
If you think books are important, there are things you can do.
Buy more books, obviously. It especially helpful if you buy books from the great pool of unknown writers, rather than the handful of established bestsellers – or singers/film stars/whatever whose names have been attached to someone else’s writing.
Please don’t steal books. Pirated copies are common. I used to take the view that I’d rather people stole my books than that they didn’t read them at all but the scale of theft has got to the point that some authors and publishers are giving up on sequels because recorded sales of early books in a series are too low to justify continuing. It isn’t just about the money: if a book is pirated there is no record that it was read at all. Plus stealing is, you know, Wrong.
If you can’t afford books (and, at the prices they sell at nowadays, that seems unlikely) use libraries. In the UK, authors get paid when you borrow books from the library. And a good chunk of what little I make from writing comes from people who read my books on Kindle Unlimited.
Tell people about the books you enjoy. Better yet, write a review on Amazon or other review sites. It doesn’t have to be an essay. Twenty words, sharing the pleasure a book has given you, are better than the 500 words you never actually get round to writing.
Let writers know that you enjoyed their books. The main reason Burke and the War of 1812 got written was because people I have never met let me know they wanted to read it. (True story.)
If you are a parent, read with your children.
If reading matters, writers matter. Please support your local writers. Or any writers. Without writers there will be no books and I think that will make the world a poorer place.
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