Of all the ways that people chose to mark the period of mourning for the late queen, the nicest I came across was at Syon House, the home [or one of the homes] of the Duke of Northumberland. He decided to open the park there free for people who wanted somewhere for “quiet reflection”.
I’m not sure that we really needed quiet reflection, but we certainly needed to get away from the general atmosphere of gloom so we took ourselves over there on a beautiful afternoon to explore the gardens. We’ve only been there once before, which is ridiculous because they aren’t particularly expensive to visit and it’s quite close to where we live. They are very beautiful but that’s not the reason for mentioning them on my blog.
The entrance to the gardens is dominated by the Great Conservatory. That’s it at the top of the page and you will probably recognise it from any one of a number of Regency films. It featured in Vanity Fair and Bridgerton, to name just two. It is very beautiful and does seem to epitomise Regency style. The reason for mentioning it here is to point out that it isn’t Regency at all. It was built in the 1820s and finished in 1827. I’d say this was picky and pedantic – after all, the Regency period is usually interpreted quite flexibly and it’s not as if most people know or care exactly when a building was put up. But the thing about the Great Conservatory is that it was the first building of any size to be built predominantly from glass and cast iron. Regular readers may remember my post about Ironbridge and the start of using cast iron in architectural engineering. The bridge was built in 1779 using the then brand-new cast iron technique, so using cast iron to build the Great Conservatory in the 1820s was cutting-edge stuff. In fact, Joseph Caxton is supposed to have visited the Great Conservatory when he was developing his ideas for building the Crystal Palace for the Great Exhibition of 1851.
So there we are – the Great Conservatory at Syon house: not only very beautiful but a building that marks an important advance in technology. Just not from the Regency.
A lot of people say that you shouldn’t read your own reviews but that’s always struck me as rather strange. Very few writers do it for the money so a kind word from a reviewer is often the most rewarding thing you get in exchange for your creative efforts. This, which turned up yesterday, is a lovely example:
Of course, not all reviews are kind. Some of the negative ones are hilarious. My favourite review of ‘The White Rajah’ (no longer visible on Amazon as it was of an earlier edition) complained that it had been ruined by “the sexual proclivities of the author” and went on to ask what evidence there was that James Brooke was gay. A helpful reply in the comments suggested, “His diaries.”
More serious negative reviews can give useful indications of what does or doesn’t work in your writing and may help improve future novels.
Sometimes, though, a negative review shows that a reader has not enjoyed your book for reasons that are not their fault or your own. These always seem quite sad. The latest two-star review for ‘The White Rajah’ is a good example.
Perhaps this reader had read my Burke books or had seen reviews of them and thought that ‘The White Rajah’ was a similar sort of action/adventure book. I like to think that there is a certain amount of action and adventure in it (there’s a small war, and battles with pirates and escapes through the jungle) but the core of the story is about the conflict between James Brooke’s idealism and the pragmatic (and often brutal) realities of colonial rule. It’s not a particularly easy read. (Please don’t let that put you off – lots of people tell me it is a seriously good book and well worth the effort.)
It’s always annoying when you read a book which turns out to be completely different from what you were looking for. It can be a particular problem when an author writes very different types of books. One solution is for the author to use different pen names for the different genres and I do wonder whether I should have done this. I write three very different kinds of book: the James Burke novels which are classic action/adventure set around the Napoleonic Wars; the John Williamson Papers, which is a trilogy looking at issues of colonialism and class conflict in the mid-19th century; and my Urban Fantasy stories which are about Black Magic and vampires and werewolves and which are huge fun but very, very different from my historical fiction. I hope you like all three, but I know a lot of people won’t.
Reviews are valuable for both readers and writers. Reviews should help readers decide what sort of book they are about to read so that they don’t, like the unfortunate reviewer above, get 50% of the way through a book before realising that it just isn’t the one they wanted. (Why he thought this was a seafaring book, I have no idea. It has a ship in it, but so do a lot of historical novels but we’re not all rewriting Patrick O’Brien.)
Reviews do also provide feedback to writers who can feel that they are sending their work out into the void, even when their sales figures prove that they are not. If you have enjoyed a book, a review can be an easy way to say ‘Thank you’ to the author and most really appreciate that.
Reviews are also – and I can’t stress this enough – the best way of generating book sales. The worst thing about taking back control of my books and publishing them myself was losing all the Amazon reviews that they had accumulated when they were published by other people. If any of you would care to write reviews now they are published by Big Red (that’s me), that would be much appreciated.
If you are quick (and are reading this on the Friday I wrote it) you can still pick up a FREE copy of ‘Tales of Empire‘, four short stories by four indie historical fiction authors. If you do, please consider leaving a short review once you’ve read it. Thank you.
Tales of Empire is free on Kindle next week (12 – 16 September). Here’s why you should grab a copy.
Tales of Empire is a book of short stories. There are only four, which is why even when you have to pay for it, it costs only 99p. The four showcase the work of four very different but uniformly excellent historical fiction writers. (Well, three excellent writers plus me.)
The authors were asked to submit a story set anywhere from the end of the Napoleonic Wars to the end of the century. Although they all write conventional historical fiction with no revisionist agenda, all four stories ended up challenging some of the more traditional approaches to Empire.
These are the authors and what they write about.
Antoine Vanner is the author of the Dawlish Chronicles, a series of novels (and the odd short story) about the adventures of Nicholas Dawlish who joins the Royal Navy in the second-half of the 19th century as the Navy is moving from wooden sailing vessels to the modern world of ironclad steamers. The stories show Dawlish developing from a very young man to a seasoned mariner, his own progress mirrored in the development of the ships that he sails in. Vanner is fascinated by the technology of naval warfare and his stories are full of solidly researched detail, but they are adventure stories too with Dawlish caught up in espionage and fighting alongside regular army forces as well as engaging in the sea battles that you would expect of a naval series.
Antoine’s contribution to this collection is a story about the Royal Navy’s attempt to suppress the slave trade and how difficult this could turn out to be in practice.
Jacqueline Reiter is a professional historian whose biography of John Pitt, 2nd Earl of Chatham, The Late Lord, is the definitive work on his life. The Late Lord is a joy to read and Reiter’s affection for, and understanding of, her subject shines through. A fictional account of a real episode in Pitt’s life is her contribution to this collection.
Penny Hampson writes mysteries set during the Regency. A Gentleman’s Promise is the first book in her Regency Gentlemen Series. She also enjoys writing contemporary mysteries with a hint of the paranormal, because where do ghosts come from but the past?
Her story looks at how social and technological change during the Regency led us from the world of the 18th century to the country we live in today.
Tom Williams (that’s me) writes the James Burke stories about a James Bond figure during the wars with France. The Burke stories have an enthusiastic following but the books he is most proud off are the John Williamson Papers which deal with more serious issues at the height of the Age of Empire. The first, The White Rajah is about the real-life James Brooke who became the absolute ruler of a chunk of Borneo in the mid-19th century. The novel looks at how his idealistic approach to government collided with the realities of the day. The short story is about a fictional tiger hunt that shows the kind of person he was and the effect his style of rule had on those around him. It was written after The White Rajah but it could well have been a chapter in that book. I hope it will encourage you to read the novel.
So there you go: four writers showcasing their talents in the hope that you might read more of their work. And free. I do hope you pick up a copy. Here’s a link: mybook.to/TalesofEmpire
I’m working on the next of the Burke books. All of the books in this series have a fight in somewhere. It may be a pitched battle between armies or a one-to-one fight. (I’ve had readers insist that there must always be some violence, That’s surely reasonable for action-adventure books, which these are.) In the latest, one of the fights involves seeing off a group of bad men who are forcing themselves on a beautiful woman. Fans of Lee Child’s ‘Reacher’ series will recognise the situation because Reacher has to deal with it in so many of the books. (There’s an example here: Jack Reacher (2012) – 5 Against 1 Scene (3/10) | Movieclips – YouTube)
I asked a friend if they thought it was too much like a Reacher fight. I used the word ‘derivative’. He replied, “It is very derivative of Lee Child but few people complain if they’re told they look exactly like George Clooney….”
I thought this was quite amusing and very flattering and I posted his response on my social media. A few people seemed to share my views but I got a couple of comments suggesting that being “derivative” was very undesirable and borderline immoral.
This got me thinking. How much do writers borrow from this style of other authors and does it matter?
It’s a real issue for me. Paul Collard (a much more successful historical fiction author than I am) described James Burke as “James Bond in breeches”. It’s a nice description because the Burke series consciously models itself on some aspects of the James Bond franchise. There’s a spymaster very like M, there’s always a girl, there is always a fight (see above) and Burke, like Bond, is sometimes morally ambiguous but will, in the end, do the right thing for his country. There’s a very clear nod to On Her Majesty’s Secret Service in one of the plots too. (I won’t say which one because Spoilers.) Not everyone will pick up the Bond connection but I think those who do will enjoy the books more for that. They are classic action-adventure spy stories, albeit in a carefully researched historical context, and people who enjoy action-adventure often enjoy these tropes. I don’t think I’m about to apologise for them.
The John Williamson papers are very different from the Burke series and poor conflicted John Williamson isn’t like James Bond at all. But a leading publisher described The White Rajah as “reminiscent of William Golding”. He decided to pass on the book in the end but that comment was intended as praise, not criticism.
It’s the Galbraith & Pole fantasy stories that are most awkward on the ‘Are you just ripping off other authors?’ front. The fact is that they are very like Ben Aaranovitch’s excellent Rivers of London series and that is a bit embarrassing. But I only know about this because a reader remarked on it. When I wrote Something Wicked (which introduced my vampire policeman, Chief Inspector Pole) I had never heard of Rivers of London, let alone read it. Anyway, I doubt Ben Aaronovitch is going to get too agitated: in the introduction to one of his Dr Who ‘New Adventures’ books he wrote, “Talent borrows and genius steals, New Adventures writers get it off the back of a lorry, no questions asked.”
Nobody writes in a vacuum. Almost all modern cosy crime mysteries owe something to Agatha Christie and you can’t write about vampires without a nod to Dracula. Everything has been done before by someone, somewhere. All us poor writers can do is try to build something new and interesting on the foundations we have inherited.
I’ve mentioned once or twice lately that I was making (yet another) trip to the Historic Royal Dockyards in Portsmouth. I do love the ships there, though compared with a lot of people on Twitter I am not particularly interested in naval history. This time we made a side trip to Portchester Castle and I’m going to write a short blog on that because it does actually have a Napoleonic Wars link.
The Napoleonic Wars came very late in Portchester Castle’s life. The castle has an unusually long outer wall which is an almost perfect square. This is because that part of the construction is not a mediaeval defence at all – it’s the original walls of a Roman camp built on this site toward the end of the 3rd century. They are in surprisingly good condition so when the Normans decided to build a castle on the site, they simply tucked it into a corner of the old Roman camp.
For hundreds of years the fortunes of Portchester castle waxed and waned, largely according to our relationship with France. Portchester was a good place to gather together an army ready to go and attack the French in bad times and a convenient port of call for visitors from across the channel in good. In 1445 it was the landing place for Henry VI’s French bride, Margaret of Anjou, and it was often used as a royal palace until it was finally sold by Charles I. Since then it has been privately owned, but frequently leased by the crown, often for use as a prison which brings us to the Napoleonic connection.
During the wars with France it was used as a prisoner of war camp. Although it was crowded, it seems to have been (as prisoner of war camps at the time went) not a particularly bad place. Some prisoners were housed in the old keep, but many lived in huts erected inside the Roman walls. The governor seems to have been a reasonably humane man who made provision for keeping up the morale of his prisoners. They had a theatre in the base of the keep. You can see a photo of the restored theatre below.
In 1810 the prisoners included an entire theatrical troupe who had been captured in the Balearics and transferred to Portchester. The prison governor provided them with materials to build a stage, scenery and boxes and they put on professional quality performances. The standard was so high that local civilians used to pay to come and watch them – until the local theatre complained that it was destroying their business. After that only prisoners and the army garrison were allowed to attend. The theatre operated for three years, staging a variety of plays with scripts often sent over from Paris.
The last prisoners of war left the castle in 1814 and it was finally abandoned by the army in 1819. It stood as a ruin until 1926 when it was placed in the guardianship of the state. Since 1984 it has been managed by English Heritage who describe it as “one of the most outstanding surviving coastal fortifications in the country.” It’s an astonishing place to visit but it seems not nearly as well-known as it deserves to be – and I haven’t even mentioned the spectacularly beautiful Norman church within the Roman walls.
If you are in the area, I would really recommend a visit.
