I’m back from three weeks in India. We went out with an Indian friend who has been talking about us visiting the country together for around 20 years. Finally we all decided that we’re not getting any younger and if we were going to do it, we should do it now.
It was a fantastic experience, visiting her family in Bombay (Mumbai) and then doing the tourist bit: Delhi, Agra, Jaipur and Jodhpur. If you’re not good, I’ll make you look at all of my 500+ photographs.
It was lovely to finally see the country that I’d written about back in 2011 with my book, Cawnpore, set during the war of 1857. It was strange writing a book set in a country I had never seen but, of course, the India of 1857 was very different from the India of today. I relied on accounts of the country by Victorian visitors. (I was writing from the viewpoint of a European living there, so the way that people like Fanny Parks saw the country was particularly useful.) We didn’t go to the city that the British knew at the time as Cawnpore. It’s called Kanpur now and almost all traces of the events of 1857 are gone. We did see some of the famous sites from back then: the Red Fort in Delhi and the fort at Agra (just along the river from the Taj Mahal).
In the Red Fort there are the barrack blocks built by the British on the ruins of some of the Moghul palace, which suffered very badly when Delhi was retaken. And in Agra there are the tiny airless rooms built into one of the corridors dating from when the British ran the province from there. There’s the grave of John Russell Colvin, the Lieutenant-Governor of the North-West Province, who died in the fort (of cholera) in 1857 and whose dying wish was to be buried there.
1857 was a long time ago and, certainly for most Indians, hardly a burning source of resentment. If anyone wants to badmouth the British, they are most likely to complain about Partition and the damage that did to their country.
In fact, the way that Indians feel about the British seems conflicted. Staying at the Cricket Club of India in Bombay, or visiting the Yacht Club there, I felt closer to the England of the 1950s than I ever do in London.
Cricket Club of India
Yacht Club
For many Indians, speaking English seems a crucial part of middle-class identity. There are adverts for private schools everywhere and most of these stress that education will be provided in English.
You can see why Prime Minister Modi sees de-colonialisation as unfinished business. Seventy-five years after India achieved independence, he is anxious to see the relationship with Britain defined in a more 21st century context.
Modi (with a white beard) presenting modern India
1857 is now celebrated as India’s First War of Independence, with characters like Nana Sahib (who led the Indian forces in Cawnpore) given the sort of uncritical acclaim that the British used to give their military leaders who might, with the wisdom of hindsight, be seen as having had a problematic approach to the way they treated their enemies.
Nana Sahib’s sword on display in the Red Fort
In reality, the events of 1857 were complex. Decades of mismanagement by the British had led to a burning resentment of their rule from many elements in Indian society and, once revolt had broken out amongst soldiers serving the British, it spread to encompass the old rulers of India and ordinary Moslems and Hindus who saw their religion under threat They were joined by people with grudges to settle and many prisoners, released by the mob in the early days of the revolt, who simply saw the chance to profit from the unrest. Violence and massacres by the rebels led to retaliation on an almost unimaginable scale from the British. It is a story from which nobody comes out well, although there was extraordinary courage and heroism demonstrated on both side.
The amazing thing is that after 1857 the British continued to rule in India for almost 100 years. Indians even volunteered in large numbers to defend Britain during the First World War.
Memorial tablet to men from Jodhpur who died in WW1
Indians believed that the British had promised independence if Indians went to fight in France. After the war, with no prospect of independence, Indian attitudes hardened. In response, the British introduced repressive legislation allowing them to imprison independence activists with no proper judicial process. Inevitably the Black Bills (as the legislation came to be known) led to protests and one such peaceful protest resulted in troops firing on an unarmed crowd with hundreds of casualties. (The precise number of dead is unknown.) This event, which came to be known as the Amritsar Massacre, is thought by many to have marked a turning point in the fight for independence.
India finally achieved independence on 15 August 1947.
Cawnpore
Although it has a fraction of the readership of my James Burke series, Cawnporeis the book I am most proud of. It’s told from the point of view of John Williamson, a British official in the East India Company’s administration, running India on behalf of the Crown. Williamson is from a working class background and does not fit in well with the men he works alongside. He is happier making friends in the court of the local Indian ruler and immerses himself in the culture and the language. When war breaks out in 1857, he finds himself caught between two camps. As he tries to find a way out of his dilemma, the war becomes more vicious and the bodies begin to pile up.
It’s a story with no heroes and I can see why it will never be as popular as the straightforwardly swashbuckling adventures of Burke, my Napoleonic Wars hero. Even so, I stand by it as the best thing I’ve written. It’s an absurdly cheap £3.99 on Kindle. I’d be very grateful if you could read it.
I’ve been away for a few weeks and I’m well overdue a review of Foutté, the last book in Ailish Sinclair’s trilogy, A Dancer’s Journey. I’m quite glad to have had a few weeks to digest this one because Foutté is a wild ride.
The first thing to say is that the book is definitely not a stand-alone read. You’ll need to be up to speed on the adventures of our heroine, Amalphia, and the men in her life. Fouetté brings the story of passionate, talented Amalphia to its conclusion. (At least for now: Sinclair has promised that she will be revisiting Amalphia’s growing family soon.) The book ties off a lot of loose ends and we find out what has happened to many of the people who featured in the two previous books.
I mentioned a growing family and children are central to this book. Polyamorous Amalphia is living happily with two men and three children, but more children appear throughout the story. Much of the plot depends on parent-child relationships, both loving and abusive. The story centres around Amalphia’s love life, now rather less chaotic but still enthusiastic. Sexy Aleks is there, occasionally brooding but consistently magnificent. Loveable Will spends much of his time pursuing a successful career in the States but he returns regularly to Amalphia and the children. The three of them enjoy various combinations and permutations with the sex scenes particularly explicit, though never crossing the line into pornography.
It’s impossible to describe the plot, partly because anything I say will contain spoilers, but also because so much happens. There is magic and mayhem, evil plots and cruel revenge, and a lot of love and laughter. Some themes from the other books seemed more obvious to me this time. There’s a lot of attention to houses and homes, verging on property porn. Food features all the time – especially chocolate.
The story is not overly concerned with mundane reality. Frankly, it’s mad. A tiny part of me hated myself for reading it but I could hardly put it down. I galloped through it, loving every moment.
Fouetté is a particularly good example of why star ratings for books are so ridiculous. If, like me, you love this book, it will be an obviously five-star read. If not, then one star will seem generous. Will you love it? I have no idea, but if you enjoyed Tendu, you should definitely give this a go. (If you are not sure if you will enjoy Tendu, you can read my review HERE.)
I found the second book, Cabriole, less fun, but it sets up the situation for Fouetté. Think of the series as a classic three-act ballet. Tendu introduces the characters and has a lot of plot, Cabriole is the second act with lots of dancing and excitement but not a lot moving forward and then Fouetté is the final act where evil is vanquished and good triumphs and everybody gets to do a wonderful ensemble finale.
This reader for one, was happy to join the standing ovation.
Years ago I started blogging (originally on Blogger at https://thewhiterajah.blogspot.com/) and I wanted to prove that I could produce something every week. I think I sort of hoped someone would notice that I can turn out a regular column and that I might get some sort of writing gig out of it. Sadly, it turns out that the likes of Jeremy Clarkson and Rod Liddle have cornered the market in those jobs and I am carrying on with the self-inflicted chore of producing my pearls of wisdom every week just from force of habit.
I regularly say I’m going to take a break and, for the next few weeks, I’m going to be away. For this week, though, I’m reposting something that first appeared on Blogger back in 2013. Some of the details have dated (I think the average published writer might clear over £11,000 a year these days) but I stand by the general idea.
I hope you enjoy it anyway.
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A recent post about word count seems to have attracted more interest than most. This set me to wondering why so many writers are quite so obsessive about word count.
I was listening to a programme on Radio Four last week (for US readers, Radio Four is the main UK talk radio channel) and it was discussing the difficulty of defining “work”. It turns out that most people like to be thought of as doing quite a lot of “work” but nobody is quite sure what to include in it. My personal bete noire is when businessmen say that they work 16 hour day in which they include lunch and dinner because they’re talking to colleagues, so this is obviously “work”, isn’t it? When I was working as a freelancer, there was always the question as to whether journey time counted as “work” or not. Given that I might be expected to travel from London to Manchester as part of the job, this was hardly a trivial issue. For writers, the whole question of what is “work” is even more difficult to pin down. Donna Tartt has apparently said in an interview that she “works” all the time, partly on the grounds that she carries a notebook with her and constantly jots down things that she might put into a novel. Given that she has written three novels in 21 years, her definition of “work” does, I think, stretch it about as far as you can. And in that last, ever so slightly bitchy, comment, we come to the nub of the concern about word count. For when I say that three books in 21 years hardly seems like full-time employment, what I am saying is, ultimately, that she doesn’t write a lot each day.
Now I spent my last post ridiculing the idea that your creative effort can be measured in words per day, but here I am, doing just that. Why? Because, like all writers I want to be taken seriously as a writer and, until I win the Booker, how do I define the “work” of writing?
I could, of course, just say that a writer is anybody who writes. But, every so often, someone comes up with the idea that almost literally everybody in the country has, at some stage, started to write a book. I can quite believe it. I have even seen computer programs being sold that claim to enable you to turn your brilliant idea into prose even if you do not really have a plot, any characters or the first clue of how to write. On this definition, we are all, it appears, writers now.
I have a friend with an English degree who decided that she would like to write. She joined a Writers Circle, because people in a Writers Circle will be writers, yes? After weeks of listening to a group of not noticeably talented people reading their Special Words to each other, she gave up. The worst thing, she suggested, was the unspoken social contract whereby you agreed that the other person’s Special Words were evidence of real talent in exchange for them doing the same for you. It’s quite possible that some of the people in the group had real potential, but in the atmosphere of mutual onanism, nobody was ever going to find out. It does seem fair to say, though, that membership of a Circle does not make you a writer.
Once upon a time, the test of whether or not you were a writer was whether or not you had a book published. But that’s hardly a test any more. Many really rather good writers are self-published or published by independent publishers that no one has ever heard of. Unfortunately, so are some people whose work, by any standard other than their own, would struggle to be judged as a “proper book”. Some people have tried to replace the test of “had a book published” with “had a book published by a mainstream publisher”. But, looking at the books published by mainstream publishers, I don’t see that as being any test of quality either. Even after you’ve taken out the celebrity books (often written by someone whose name is not on the cover) you are left with some works of dubious worth. I’ll name no names because it’s a grey area, but we can all think of some very doubtful stuff that is getting mainstream publication these days.
So if the test isn’t “I’ve had a book published”, what defines somebody as a “real” writer? It would be nice to suggest that it is whether or not you make a living out of writing. Unfortunately (he said with feeling), the last time I looked, which was, admittedly a few years ago, the average amount made by somebody who actually writes for money was £7000 a year. Obviously Dan Brown and JK Rowling manage rather more than that, but for most writers, the idea of it paying a living wage is just ridiculous. At one level, this is quite a good definition of a writer, but it suffers from the opposite problem of defining it as “somebody who writes”. While almost everybody is in the first category, practically nobody is in the latter.
I think it is the absence of any useful definition that makes us so obsessive about word counts. It’s almost as if, in the community of “serious writers who haven’t had a bestseller yet”, we define a writer as “somebody who writes down about 1000 words a day”. It’s a measure of our insecurity. And we are all so very insecure. It’s a lonely life and we look for all the validation we can get. And in the absence of Amazon reviews (hint, hint) and massive sales (even bigger hint), we look to our word count for the validation we aren’t getting anywhere else.
Every year I point out that this is not a book blog but every year there seem to be so many reviews… 2023 has been a comparatively quiet year with only 11 books. Click on the titles to go to the full-length reviews.
As ever, the majority of the books reviewed are historical, but there are a few contemporary novels too.
I have often visited Siborne’s model of the battle of Waterloo, which is displayed at the National Army Museum. I love it, despite the fact that in one very important aspect it is totally misleading. Peter Hofschroer’s wonderful book explains why and includes lots of fascinating detail on the battle. A must read-title for Waterloo fans.
I’m a huge fan of Bryant’s Manxman series, looking at the Peninsular War from a naval standpoint. This is the third in the series and I wholeheartedly recommend it.
Obviously I like history and I love tango, so i would be enthusiastic about this book even if it wasn’t simply one of the best novels I have read in a very long time. I can’t begin to summarise how good it is in this snippet. Read my full review and then please go on and read the book.
Three books by Deborah Swift
I’m something of a Deborah Swift fan. She is an astonishingly prolific author and writes historical fiction in several different periods. Two of these, The Silk Code and The Shadow Networkare set in World War II while the third, The Fortune Keeper takes place in Renaissance Venice. Swift’s ability to write convincingly about such different periods (she has good line in 17th century England as well) is astonishing and she has gripping plot lines too. Recommended.
I should have loved this book. It’s got conjurers, history and supernatural happenings, but it just didn’t work for me. I honestly can’t recommend it, but that doesn’t mean you won’t like it.
This is a supernatural horror story: not my usual sort of thing, but the author contacted me and asked me to review it and the opening pages gripped me enough to carry on to the end. It’s a very good example of the genre.
A mystery with more than a touch of romance from the ever-reliable romantic novelist, Karen King. It’s a fun, light read, likely to appeal to Agatha Christie fans.
Ailish Sinclair’s dance trilogy
I loved the first book in this trilogy, Tendu. It’s got sex and ballet and a touch of X-men superpowers. What’s not to like? The second in the series, Cabriole, didn’t work as well for me but, so far, the third, Fouette, has me completely gripped.
Me, me, me!
Beside reading all these books by others, I managed to put out two books of my own this year. As with the books reviewed, my efforts were partly historical (Burke and the Lines of Torres Vedras) and partly contemporary (Monsters in the Mist). I obviously haven’t reviewed them, but others have said:
We’re almost halfway through January and Deborah Swift’s latest is published next month so now seems a good time to get my review out.
The Shadow Network takes us back to the world of WW2 espionage that she introduced in The Silk Code. This story features Neil Callaghan from the earlier book but it is a separate story about a different aspect of Britain’s secret war against Germany. It centres on the work of the Political Warfare Executive which pumped out black propaganda to the Reich. It was a significant part of the British war effort, pioneering tactics that we see used in conflicts nowadays. It’s fascinating stuff and deserves to be better known. Swift, as ever, writes with authority and I loved those parts of the book.
The social background to the story also gives vivid insights into the world of the time. The heroine, Lilli Bergen, is a half-Jewish German, who we first meet living in Berlin. Swift gives some idea of the reality of life for Jews at the time. Lilli’s (non-Jewish) father disappears into the camps – her mother is already dead – and Lilli flees to Britain. There, she thinks she is safe until she is caught up in the anti-German hysteria that saw Jewish refugees rounded up alongside Nazi sympathisers and interned on the Isle of Man. Swift catches the terror of Jews who had lived under a police state being suddenly ordered from their homes to live, without family or friends, behind barbed wire.
Fortunately for Lilli, the Political Warfare Executive needs a German singer to entertain on a radio show designed to appeal to German soldiers. The songs are interspersed with propaganda designed to undermine morale.
In her new job she meets an old boyfriend from Germany – somebody she believes to be a Nazi collaborator. Instead of denouncing him to the police, she decides to investigate on her own. It’s a trope of this sort of fiction (one I’ve been accused of myself) that your hero will find themselves in a situation where they have to undertake a risky job without any kind of backup, although they are surrounded by people who could easily help them. Swift does a good job of explaining why Lilli insists on becoming a (frankly unconvincing) Mata Hari even when she has clear evidence that her ex-boyfriend is a wrong ’un, but I did struggle to suspend my disbelief. I had particular problems when she gets engaged to the villain and moves in with him. I know it was wartime and that people let things slip a little, but I was surprised that nobody seems to have thought this was odd. What, to me, was even odder was that, though the man is a cad and a bounder, he accepts that they will share a bedroom without actually having sex. That’s a necessary plot device, as there is a romantic subplot in which Lilli is saving herself for her true love.
Will Lilli save the day and will her apparent philandering be forgiven? No plot spoilers here, but no great surprises in the book either.
Like all Deborah Swift’s books, this is a joy to read and the story bowls along fast enough to skim over the more implausible elements – and you learn a lot about the war years on the way.
The Shadow Network is published in February and is already available on pre-order on Kindle and in paperback.
