We somehow made it into December without my mentioning the dreadful C-word. Do I get a prize?
Anyway, we can’t put it off any longer so here is my annual reminder that books make ideal Christmas presents.
Amazon has now introduced the option to send Kindle books as a gift in the UK. Look for the button on the right of the page for the book you are ordering.
That’s a convenient (and cheap!) way to buy gifts right up to Christmas Eve. I can see the Internet crashing on 24 December.
In the end, though, there is nothing quite like a paper book as a gift. For many people, including me, the convenience of e-books means that that’s where we do most of our reading these days, but paper is special. Paper books can be lent to friends or passed on when they’re finished with. They do, indeed, furnish a room.
Old textbooks remind us of our student years, an autographed volume of a special meeting.
There is something personal about gifting a paper book. A paper book says that you want to share something you have enjoyed, or that you have thought about the interests and enthusiasms of your friend and sought out a book that matches them. The transfer of digital data from computer to computer does not, for some reason, carry the emotional resonance of the gift of a physical book. Paperback books make excellent Christmas presents and paperback books from less well known authors suggest you’ve given your gift more thought than just a quick check on the Best Sellers shelf.
All my novels are available in paperback as well as in e-book format, though Amazon can sometimes hide them away. If the paperback edition doesn’t show up, try adding “paperback” to your search. If all else fails, let me know about the problem (try mentioning it in the ‘Comments’ here) and I will track down the link.
There’s been a short burst of frenetic activity while I got the three John Williamson books republished over the summer. That didn’t involve much in the way of writing but there has been a lot of time spent trying to drum up interest in them. In fact, my latest effort came out today and if you are interested in my take on the importance of historical fiction in re-examining the Empire Project, can I point you to this article in Historia: https://www.historiamag.com/re-examining-history-of-empire/?
I’m delaying publication of the next in the James Burke series, Burke and the Pimpernel Affair, until January when everything might have calmed down a little. Until then, can I recommend The White Rajah as the ideal Christmas gift? It’s weighty enough to suggest that you are taking your literature seriously while still containing a fair quota of desperate battles and heroic deeds. And an orang-utan. It’s also the only one of my books to be available in hardback, so it will certainly look impressive when they open it.
If you want details of all my books (five about James Burke, three in the Williamson Papers and two contemporary urban fantasies) you can find them on this website: click on My books.
So there you are: your Christmas gift problems solved and still three weeks to go. Buy a book for yourself and give others to your friends. And keep a couple spare, for those last-minute gifts. And remember, a book is for life, not just for Christmas.
Another historical novelist was asking recently what historical novelists could do to market their genre. I’m not sure it’s entirely the right question. Is there really a genre of historical novels?
I keep reading that historical novels are madly popular right now. This seems to mean that there is a lot of enthusiasm for Hilary Mantel and Phillipa Gregory, partly because of success at the Bookers and on TV respectively. But an enthusiasm for what I (showing my age) still call mediaeval and Tudor fiction is not necessarily going to help me. I did hear on Radio Four that there is a fashion right now for what they called neo-Victorian books, which would help me if anybody had heard of this fashion outside the more aesthetic reaches of the BBC. But that’s not necessarily going to sell the books that friends of mine have written set in revolutionary Russia or on the old paddle steamers of the Mississippi.
My point is that because you like the Falco stories set in ancient Rome doesn’t mean that you’ll like Bernard Cornwell’s Napoleonic Sharpe tales. And you might think that a story based in the Korean War isn’t historical at all – although, according to many definitions, it quite definitely is. In fact, a recent survey suggests that readers’ favourite period is the 13th to 16th centuries (presumably the Mantel/Gregory effect) with the least favourite time periods being prehistory and the 2nd to 5th centuries. So I think we have to get away from the idea that there is one genre of “historical fiction” that people are buying into.
Apart from the whole question of period, there’s the issue of subgenres. With historical fiction, the subgenres are not a trivial or artificial distinction. There is a massive market for what is called in the trade “Regency Romance”. It is unlikely that a reader of Regency Romance is going to rush to buy my own The White Rajah, although it is set only a few decades after the Regency period. Some of Bernard Cornwell’s Sharpe books actually take place during the Regency, but I think that Romance readers will not want to read his military fiction. Military fiction is, of course, another subgenre of historical fiction. Cornwell is a particularly strong presence here, but so are the naval adventures of CS Forester and Patrick O’Brian. But is it sensible to assume that same people that enjoy Forester’s Hornblower stories are going to read the Empire series about the Roman legions?
The problem is that genre fiction sells. It is much easier to market a book that can be presented as a “thriller”, “crime story”, “romcom”, or whatever than simply as a novel. In fact the books that are left over after genre fiction has been taken out tend to be lumped together as “literary novels”, which get far more critical attention but, usually, much lower sales. Unsurprisingly, people like me, who write books that are not set in the present day, would rather have ourselves described as authors of “historical fiction” than as of (in my case) authors writing novels dealing with issues of colonialism and exclusion but with some quite exciting bits in. But I suspect that for every Regency Romance reader who looks my book before recoiling in horror, there is another potential reader who never gets that far because they “don’t read historical novels”.
What’s the solution? I have no idea. If you have, please respond in the comments below and you will have my undying gratitude.
Back Home is available on Kindle from tomorrow, 27 November. It Is the last of the three books in which John Williamson tells of his adventures since he left his home in Devon. Now, after his time in Borneo and the horrors of the Indian Mutiny, he has returned to England.
Back Home is different from my other historical books because it isn’t based around a particular historical event. It’s set mainly in London in 1859, a year which is easily overlooked. But the mid-19th century was an exciting time in London. Before 1860, London had more in common with the world of the 18th century than it does with the London of today, but this was a time of rapid change, with modern London beginning to emerge. Back Home tries to capture some of the spirit of the London of that time – a city in transition. It was a time of uncertainty and rapid social change and, as is common in such circumstances, a time of social and political unrest. Karl Marx and his Communists were meeting in Great Windmill Street and the Chartists were seen as a threat to public order. London in 1859 was a lot more like London today than you might think, so this isn’t just a fact-based peek into the past, but it might also make you think a bit about the present. After all, we all believe in Victorian values these days – or do we?
In The White Rajah and Cawnpore, I wrote about colonialism. My view is that the modern notion that colonialism was an unalloyed evil is simplistic, to put it mildly. But the relationship between those with all the power and those with none is always going to end up damaging both. Back in London, Williamson thinks that he has left the violence of the struggles between the powerful and the powerless back in Asia. He learns that the same divisions exist in his own country and that they can lead to bloody battles even in the heart of the capital.
Back Home is an adventure story with criminals and plots and fights and, yes, John Williamson again tries to find love, but there is politics in it too. It’s probably the only story you’ll read that includes detailed instructions for forging sovereigns and a discussion of Marx’s Critique of Political Economy. (Don’t worry: it’s a very short discussion.)
If you’ve read the previous books about John Williamson, I hope you will find this a fitting end to his adventures. If you haven’t, I hope you’ll enjoy a story that stands alone, even if you don’t know the character and his past. (Perhaps you will even decide to read one of the other stories – I recommend Cawnpore.) Over three books I grew close to Williamson and I wanted to see him off in style. I think Back Home did that. I only wish more people read it to share my farewell to a man who is constantly wracked with self-doubt but who always tries to do the right thing.
Buy it on Amazon
Back Home, is available on Kindle at £3.99/$5.35 and in paperback at £7.99/$10.70. You can buy it from THIS LINK.
I’ve always been quite surprised that at a time of “political correctness” I have had very little criticism of my John Williamson books set in the Age of Empire. Recently there was a ripple on Twitter when someone complained about my use of the term “Indian Mutiny (as discussed HERE. By and large, though, my books have attracted little attention – maybe because they don’t have a high enough profile to be worth a Twitter storm.
This week I was surprised to get a response to an old blog post about Cawnpore by somebody who was quite annoyed by it. It seems I have managed to offend not an Indian angry at my Anglo-centric view of the conflict of 1857, but an English reader angry at my “revisionist wokism”. You can see the comments on the post (https://tomwilliamsauthor.co.uk/the-massacre-at-the-bibighar/).
I’m quite glad to have a bit of controversy. The way that the British behaved in India in the mid-19th century should be controversial – not because they were evil colonialists or because the Indians were ungrateful or ignorant, but because the relationship was complex with much to be admired and much to be criticised. Particularly during the early period of British rule in India, the British – often the last in a train of conquerors annexing one bit of the sub-continent or another because they could make money out of it – had positive relationships with the local population. They did much good – more, often, than rulers who may have started with little connection to the people they governed. Over time, relations deteriorated. British administrators started to govern with limited attention to local interests or sensibilities. Increasingly, they looked only to see how much money they could make out of the place. An example of the reduction of Indian civilisation to financial opportunities was a serious suggestion that the Taj Mahal should be demolished for the value of the marble that could be salvaged. By 1857, relations were breaking down with tragic consequences.
After 1857 came the Raj and an attempt to limit the damage, but the fault lines having broken open, the relationship was irreparable. Independence was a long time coming, but it was inevitable from 1857.
The trouble with colonialism is not that colonialists are inevitably bad or invariably exploitative, but that the imposition of one set of values and attitudes on a culture with another set of values and attitudes never ends well, however well-meaning the rulers and however accommodating the ruled. Colonialism contains within it the contradictions that are the seeds of its own destruction. Whether the British were driven from America by revolution, India by non-violent resistance or Aden by armed uprisings, in the end they had to leave, just as the Belgians left the Congo and the French left Vietnam. The new American Empire had to quit Vietnam too and after Iraq and Afghanistan it is learning the lesson that the British spent most of the 20th century absorbing.
It isn’t that colonialism is good or bad. It’s just that it doesn’t work.
The John Williamson Papers
The John Williamson Papers is a trilogy looking at different aspects of British power around the world in the mid-19th century. The first book, The White Rajah is set in Borneo, where James Brooke established a personal rule (never technically a British colony). The second, Cawnpore, is set in India during the war of 1857. Finally, Williamson returns to England in Back Home, only to discover that the struggle between the powerful and the powerless can be just as vicious on the streets of London as in the outposts of Empire.
It’s time! I’m republishing Back Home on 27 November.
What’s it all about?
Back Home completes the trilogy of books narrated by John Williamson. In The White Rajah he leaves his home in Devon and takes up life as a sailor, eventually ending up in Borneo with the eponymous White Rajah, James Brooke. At the end of that book, unable to live with what he has seen in Brooke’s war on pirates, he leaves, travelling on to India. The next book finds him in the town of Cawnpore as the Indian Mutiny breaks out. With his working class roots and his homosexuality, Williamson is never at ease with the English rulers of the Empire and when Cawnpore is the centre of a bloody conflict between Indians and Europeans, Williamson finds his loyalties torn. Faced with the death of friends on both sides of the conflict, Williamson eventually breaks down and has to return to England.
Back Home is the end of his travels, back in Devon, where it all began. He is to have one final adventure, though. Travelling to London to find an old friend who has vanished into the city, Williamson is caught up in a world of poverty and crime. It’s a time of growing tension between Britain and France and there are those who believe that a criminal conspiracy in the London slums is organised from Paris. Williamson becomes a pawn in a deadly game being played by the British security services.
The battles of colonial rule are, in the end, the conflict between the powerful and the powerless and those battles can be as deadly on the streets of London as in the jungles of Borneo or on the plains of India. Back Home in England, Williamson faces his most dangerous enemy yet.
A 99p/99c offer on Cawnpore
All of the books in the John Williamson Papers stand alone, but if you want to see how Williamson changes as a result of his experiences, you might enjoy reading the trilogy in order. Each one leads directly into the next, so Cawnporeends with him landing back in Devon and Back Home starts with his journey from the port to the farm where he was born. If you want to read Cawnpore before you read Back Home, I’m offering it for just 99p for one week from Monday (15 November).
