I’ve been talking a lot about Cawnporelately because I’ve just republished the book and I’d like you all to have a chance to read it, but this week I’m writing about James Burke and an incident from the very first of my books about him: Burke in the Land of Silver.
A bit of historical background
In 1808 Napoleon “invited” the Spanish king, Charles IV and his heir, Ferdinand VII to Bayonne in France. They never returned to Spain. Napoleon installed his brother, Joseph, as King.
The British had seen this coming. They had evacuated the Portuguese Royal Family ahead of the French invasion of Portugal, moving them to their colony in Brazil. They planned to do the same thing with the Spanish king and queen. In the run-up to the French invasion, Charles had left Madrid for Aranjuez, where he had a new palace. Significantly, Aranjuez was on the Tagus. The British idea was to evacuate Charles and his wife down river and then across the Atlantic to their South American colonies. The British agent charged with arranging this with the Spanish monarchy was James Burke.
James Burke’s role in fiction and history
In Burke in the Land of Silver I have my hero travelling across France and Spain where he approaches the queen and offers her British assistance. He is, however, just too late. Before he can get the king and queen out, the French mount their coup.
It’s a fictionalised account of a real historical event, but last week Rob Griffith, a brilliant military researcher, sent me a copy of a letter he had come across in the National Archives. It is from James Burke and it describes what really happened in 1808. He’s writing from HMS Alacrity off Cadiz. His handwriting is a great deal more legible than that of many other people of this period, but I can’t guarantee that there aren’t errors in my reading of it. All the plans have been made to get the king and queen to safety but before he can land to put them into effect a revolution (the first stage of the French coup) breaks out:
we were favoured with the timely lamentable intelligence of a most unhappy revolution having taken place in the government of Spain
The details clearly differ from the way I tell it in my book, but here we are at that critical point where Burke realises that nothing can be done to save the Spanish monarch and his wife. As in Burke in the Land of Silver he’s all too conscious that he was almost in time. In fact, he was even closer than in the book.
had I been dispatched immediately on my arrival in England I would have prevented that awfully disturbing catastrophe
For me, seeing this letter in his own hand has brought me closer to Burke. It was actually quite an emotional moment.
I do worry sometimes that my fictional Burke is painted as a more significant figure than he was. Actually, this letter suggests that he was heavily involved in diplomacy at the highest levels and was even more significant than my hero. He does seem to have been quite a remarkable man to be so overlooked by history. I hope that, with all their imaginative license, my books will still go some way to restoring this extraordinary figure back to us.
Rob Griffith – writing fact
Huge thanks to Rob Griffith for finding this letter and sending a copy to me. Rob is a remarkable military historian who has featured on my blog before. [https://tomwilliamsauthor.co.uk/riflemen/] I do recommend his book, Riflemen, to anybody interested in British light infantry of the Napoleonic era.
Me – writing fiction
Burke in the Land of Silver is the first of several books about James Burke. His adventures in that one are closely based on fact, while his later escapades are more the product of my fevered imagination, but the character is true to what we know of the real man. The next in the series will see him dallying with the Empress Josephine, which I thought was probably a stretch too far until I realised that they had almost certainly met. Yes, James Burke certainly knew how to live!
You may also be interested in my books about the fictional John Williamson, whose adventures in the mid-19th century are closely based on actual historical events.
Cawnpore is being republished today, ten years after it first came out. Why am I doing this and why should you be reading it now, assuming that you haven’t read it already?
I’m republishing it because it is the book I’m proudest of. It’s the second of the John Williamson papers and, although it has had reasonable sales, I felt that the trilogy as a whole would benefit from a relaunch with the sort of marketing support that I can give it now that I am self published. It’s also the case that when Cawnpore was first published it was only the third of my books to see the light of day and that with the success of the James Burke series I am hoping that there will be more interest in it this time around.
That explains why I am putting it out there, but you’re probably rather more interested in why you should be reading it. Well, it’s a book about out one of the turning points in the British Empire – the events of 1857 in India which led to the collapse of the East India Company and, eventually, Queen Victoria being declared Empress. The War of 1857, and the British response to it, in many ways shaped modern India. There’s a lot of interest now in the idea that the British should know more about their history and the way that nations subject to British rule were treated. Cawnpore not only covers the history of a significant event in the 1857 War but also describes the situation that led up to it and gives some idea of how colonial rule worked. And – and for you this is probably the important bit – it does this in the context of an adventure story complete with battles, cunning plans, daring escapes and even a love interest.
There are a lot of books out at the moment with serious discussions of the Empire. You could reasonably suggest that that you would learn more by reading one of these non-fiction works than by reading Cawnpore but, strangely, I honestly think this is not necessarily the case. For one thing, you are more likely to get the end of Cawnpore. I’ve based a lot of the history in the book on an excellent non-fiction work by Andrew Ward, Our Bones Are Scattered. It’s a brilliant book and I do recommend it, but it’s around 700 pages and I know that practically none of the people I have recommended it to have ever read it.
Not all non-fiction is difficult to read, of course. Jeremy Paxman’s contribution, for example, was popular and undemanding. Unfortunately, Empire is also one of the worst books about history I have ever read. Recently there have been some more credible overviews of the Empire Project, but they are all written from a 21st century point of view and all reflect the political views of the authors. You take your position, be it ‘woke’ or deeply sleeping, and choose your writer accordingly.
I just don’t feel you can tackle the 19th century like that. The issues were practically and morally complex with no clear rights and wrongs. And there is a lot to be said for at least trying to get into the heads of the 19th century protagonists in these stories rather than looking at them purely from a contemporary perspective. That’s where fiction offers possibilities that non-fiction doesn’t.
Does any of this matter or can we just consign the past to history and get on with the present? Well the present has just seen British troops pulling out of a country where Western intervention has been a less than stellar success. The issues, we are somewhat belatedly realising, are practically and morally complex. Perhaps now is a good time to start looking harder at history in the hope that we can finally begin to learn something from it.
Today, assuming you’re reading this the day it came out (Friday), is the last day you can buy The White Rajah at its offer price of 99p/99c.
I’ve put The White Rajah on offer to kick-start sales of ‘The John Williamson Papers’ ahead of the release of the second volume, Cawnpore, on Friday 10 September. (That’s on Kindle: a paperback will follow soon.)
Why am I republishing all three of the John Williamson Papers years after they first came out? Partly it’s that my experience with the James Burke stories shows that my books sell much better when I’m marketing them (albeit quite badly) than when I leave the job to a publisher. The White Rajah and Cawnpore were first published by a tiny US outfit (JMS Books) who did an astonishingly good job. The moved to substantially bigger publishers in the UK proved to be a mistake and sales of the trilogy never matched the positive reviews they got. I’m hoping to do better this time around.
More importantly, I think (hope) that these are books whose time has come. There has been a lot of talk in the media (mainstream media and social media) about how we need to look more critically at our colonial past or, alternatively, how we need to celebrate the days of Empire. What these books tried to do was to look at the moral ambiguity of ‘the Empire Project’, which was neither the selfless act of a beneficent Britain that it used to be presented as, nor the unalloyed evil that it is often regarded as today.
If you are interested in getting some idea of the realities of colonial rule, the John Williamson Papers are perhaps a good place to start. And if you just want adventure and battles and a different sort of love story, then you can just enjoy them for that.
It’s a busy time at the moment because I’m trying to think about three books at once. First up is The White Rajah, which is top of mind because it goes on sales tomorrow (Saturday) for just 99p. It will be on sale for one week, which gives everyone a chance to buy it ahead of the republication of Cawnpore on 10 September. Although the two books both stand alone, the story follows the adventures of John Williamson as he moves from Borneo in The White Rajah to India in Cawnpore. Obviously I’d love for you to read both of them and if you are going to do that, it makes sense to read The White Rajah first.
Since these books were first published, there has been a growth of interest in looking at Britain’s imperial past. The White Rajah and Cawnpore both look critically at what we now call ‘The Empire Project’. I think that perhaps their time has finally come. Certainly there has been a sudden resurgence of interest in British rule in Borneo with the release of the film Edge of the World this summer. I even got quoted in the Mirror talking about James Brooke, the eponymous White Rajah.
If you look carefully, you’ll see my name in the top right.
I’ve written a lot about The White Rajah here lately. I won’t repeat myself. Just go out and buy it.
I said three books. So what I am thinking about when I’m not worrying over the re-launch of my John Williamson books? Well, Burke fans will be pleased to know that the next Burke book, Burke and the Pimpernel Affair is now at the stage where draft copies are out for comment from beta readers and I hope that means you’ll all be able to read more of James Burke soon. Until then, I do hope you will enter John Williamson’s world. It’s dark and dangerous and it might make you look at some aspects of the British Empire with fresh eyes, but most of all I hope it will entertain.
The White Rajah is available on Kindle, in paperback and in hardback (because I think it’s worth it).
Cawnpore is now available to pre-order on Kindle: https://mybook.to/Cawnpore
I’ve now got a draft of the next Burke book in a fit condition for it to get its first beta read. That’s always my wife and she can be harsh, so if it survives that it will go out to a couple more beta readers and then we’ll start the move towards publication. One of the joys of being self-published is that I can move at my own pace rather than having my schedule dictated by publishers
While Burke marinates quietly, I can finally get on with republishing Cawnpore. People on social media often make quite a song and dance out of showing the covers of their new books but I really can’t work up that much artificial excitement: so, without more ado, here it is.
Cawnpore is the second book in the John Williamson trilogy. Unlike The White Rajah it has been little changed since it was published by the US small press, JMS Books, ten years ago. Why publish it again?
Well, ten years is a long time – long enough for me to have been through two UK publishers who took the book on but didn’t offer much in the way of marketing support. It did well on its first US publication and sold a few more when it moved to a UK publisher but sales in the past few years have been negligible. I have learned, though, since I took back control of the James Burke books that there is an untapped market for my writing and that people will buy the books if they are promoted. I’m better known, too, with five James Burke books already published. So I’m hopeful that there will be more interest in Cawnpore now than there was a few years ago.
The John Williamson Papers are a very different series from the James Burke books. They are set in the mid-19th century and are rather more serious in tone. They are first person accounts, written in the style of the period, so they demand a little more of the reader, but I think they offer more back. They do have adventure and battles but there is rather more politics and Burke’s doubts about the morality and worth of a lot of the killing he is involved in are much stronger with John Williamson.
Each of the books in the trilogy stands alone, but they are written as a cycle, starting with John Williamson in England signing on for a voyage to Borneo and ending in the third book with his return to England. If you want to start the trilogy at the beginning, The White Rajah will be on offer at just 99p from Saturday 28th of August to Friday 3 September. 99p is the Kindle version, of course. The White Rajah is alsoavailable in paperback for £6.99. Because I think The White Rajah is a serious book deserving serious presentation, it is also available in hardback for £14.99: it does look rather nice.
I won’t go on about why you should read The White Rajah – mainly because I’ve talked a lot about that in recent months. (If you’ve missed it, have a look HERE.) I hope you’ll give The White Rajah a go and enjoy reading it.
I’ll be talking about Cawnpore next week. Meanwhile, because I really don’t want to make a song and dance about cover reveals, here is a poster with the covers for the whole trilogy.
