I’d like to thank Tom Williams for inviting me onto his blog today, to talk about the joys and challenges of writing about real people from the past. As an author of historical fiction, it seems to me that there are distinct sub-divisions within the genre.
Some authors take historical
characters and fictionalise their lives. Sharon Kay Penman is an excellent
example of this; the main characters of her books are people like Simon de
Montfort or Richard the Third, and she does a brilliant job of turning the story
of their lives into vivid and believable fiction. Other authors choose to create an entirely
fictional world, populated by people they have created, and do not introduce
any actual historical characters. They may research settings, costume and society
to form an accurate backdrop but their people are not real.
Both Tom and I fall into a third category, which seeks to use actual historical events, with real people and then create fictional characters who move among them, blending in as if they belonged there. The central characters of both my Peninsular War Saga and the associated Manxman series are wholly fictional, and I have created a fictional regiment and warship but they fight and die alongside real officers and men. This weaving of history and fiction presents a number of challenges, one of which is to give life to often well-known historical people in a way that my readers will find both entertaining and believable. I’ve chosen two men to illustrate this, one from each series.
Most people will have heard of
Lord Wellington, who commanded the armies in the Peninsula and then at Waterloo
before going on to have a political career including two short terms as Prime
Minister. The second Earl of Chatham is less well known, his military career
having been sacrificed to the interests of his brilliant younger brother,
William Pitt who first became Prime Minister at the age of twenty-four. Chatham
returned to military service after Pitt’s death and commanded the army during
the disastrous Walcheren campaign of 1809, while still holding office as Master
General of the Ordnance.
As the central characters of my books are fictional, I don’t write from the point of view of either Chatham or Wellington, but both are significant secondary characters. Wellington appears in every one of the Peninsular books and makes a guest appearance in the first of the Manxman books, as commander of the reserve in Copenhagen. Chatham appears in person in This Blighted Expedition, but he plays a small but significant role off-stage in An Unwilling Alliance. The importance of both these men is in their relationship with my heroes.
Paul van Daan first encounters
General Arthur Wellesley in India, as a young officer and Wellesley takes a
liking to him. Their relationship develops over the years into a genuine
friendship, punctuated by exasperation and a few spectacular arguments. It is
not, and can never be, a friendship of equals, there is a gulf of both rank and
social status between them, but mutual respect and liking can and does exist.
Wellington was not an easy man to
like. His contemporaries described him as cold, reserved and haughty and he did
not have the capacity to inspire personal devotion and liking in most of his
officers. He was quick to anger, with a biting tongue, and his letters drip
with sarcasm when he talks about any officer who was not up to scratch. He
found it hard to delegate, and was openly mistrustful of his senior officers,
repeatedly stating that nothing would be done properly unless he did it
himself. His letters reveal a degree of micro-management almost unbelievable in
a commander-in-chief. At times, the challenge of writing Wellington is to turn
him into a sympathetic character at all.
And yet, there are endearing aspects to the private Wellington, which are very well highlighted in Rory Muir’s spectacular two volume biography of him. I read a lot of books about Wellington, but my character is based on the man Muir describes. Wellington’s harsh strictures on his officers and his difficulty in allowing his generals to make their own decisions makes an interesting contrast to the man who wept at the death of a friend, kept a watercolour of his sons pasted to the inside of his dressing case and exchanged banter about embarrassing injuries with Alava, his Spanish liaison officer.
I don’t know Chatham as well as Wellington, and my portrayal of him comes largely from the excellent biography of him by Dr Jacqueline Reiter, who has also written a very good historical novel about Chatham’s younger days. Chatham was known, during his time as First Lord of the Admiralty, as “the Late Lord” due to his inability to be on time for anything at all. In cannot have been easy being the son of that impressive statesman, the first Earl and the brother of the brilliant Prime Minister, William Pitt. History has not been kind to Chatham, whose political and military career never recovered from the disgrace of Walcheren, where the campaign failed to achieve its objective of destroying the French dockyards in Antwerp and where the army was destroyed by the dreaded Walcheren fever.
Chatham was an aristocrat, who
moved in court circles, and shared with Wellington an inability to inspire
devotion in his troops. He did, however, have the ability to inspire enormous
loyalty and affection in those close to him. While Wellington’s staff
complained of his sarcasm, occasional bullying and ingratitude for devoted
service, Chatham’s aides had nothing but praise for him. His military secretary
at Walcheren, Thomas Carey, wrote that “the more I see of him, the more I am
convinced that in understanding few equal him, & in Honor or Integrity He
cannot be excelled.” Men like Andrew Francis Barnard, who later went on to
serve with such distinction in the Peninsula under Wellington, wrote
affectionate letters to Chatham throughout their service.
Both men were married, but while
Wellington’s relationship with Kitty deteriorated very quickly into irritated
intolerance, Chatham’s devotion to his wife Mary, who suffered from both
physical and mental health problems for long spells of their married life, was
extraordinary. Wellington had two sons; Chatham had no children. At the time I
write, Chatham’s political career had recently collapsed in disgrace, while
Wellington’s was largely in the future.
The two men did not like each
other and it does not surprise me. Chatham served as First Lord of the
Admiralty and then Master General of the Ordnance and there were one or two
acknowledged disputes over military and public issues, but I suspect there was
also a real personality clash between Wellington’s aggressive energy and
Chatham’s languid indolence. In my books, neither of them wants to hear any
good about the other, and it is Paul van Daan, who has met both, who provides
the bridge between the two series and the two characters.
While Wellington’s character is
seen largely through the eyes of Paul van Daan and later his wife Anne, Chatham
is seen through the eyes of First Lieutenant Alfred Durrell, Hugh Kelly’s young
first officer on HMS Iris. The Pitt
family were patrons to Durrell’s father and both Durrell and his elder brother
Henry have benefited from their influence. Durrell has known Chatham since he
was a boy. First through the eyes of his father, and then with his own
clear-sighted observation, Durrell knows Chatham very well. He views his faults
with exasperated affection and is able to work around them in a way that I
suspect would be very familiar to Chatham’s real staff.
Writing Wellington and Chatham
presented different challenges. Many readers of Napoleonic fiction already have
a clear picture of Wellington, either from biographies and histories of the war
or from established portrayals in fiction or on screen. I don’t deviate
entirely from that character, but my Wellington is human, showing weakness and
uncertainty at times, and definite vulnerability when it comes to the
well-being of the few people he cares about.
In contrast, very few readers
know anything at all about Chatham, and those that do will probably have heard
of him as the bungling general who proved so ineffectual at Walcheren. That
would have been a very easy caricature to write, but it would have been very
boring. Instead, I have tried to portray an intelligent, interesting man who
loved his wife and would have been an excellent dinner guest but was not the
man to be in charge of a military campaign going wrong.
Above all, I write about people,
and both Lord Wellington and Lord Chatham are very human. Wellington is
definitely the man I’d want in charge in a crisis, but after getting to know
him over the past year, I’d probably much rather work for Chatham and I’ve
become very attached to both of them.
The Peninsular War Saga is
available on Amazon kindle and will be available in paperback in December.
The Manxman series is available
on kindle and in paperback.
About the Author
Lynn Bryant was born
and raised in London’s East End. She studied History at University and had
dreams of being a writer from a young age. Since this was clearly not something
a working class girl made good could aspire to, she had a variety of careers
including a librarian, NHS administrator, relationship counsellor and manager
of an art gallery before realising that most of these were just as unlikely as
being a writer and took the step of publishing her first book. She is the
author of eleven historical novels. An
Unwilling Alliance, the first book in the Manxman series was shortlisted for the Society for Army Historical
Research fiction prize in 2019.
Lynn and me at Malvern last year
She now lives in the Isle of Man and is married to a man who understands technology, which saves her a job, and has two grown up children and two Labradors. History is still a passion, with a particular enthusiasm for the Napoleonic era and the sixteenth century. When not writing she walks her dogs, reads anything that’s put in front of her and makes periodic and unsuccessful attempts to keep a tidy house.
Image at top of post shows Middelburg Abbey, Chatham’s headquarters during the Walcheran campaign. He liked his comforts, did Chatham. Photo by Richard Dawson.
Links in text take you to Amazon pages for the books.
Lynn Bryant writes stories of war and love in the Napoleonic
era. One day I may make her hero, Paul Van Daan meet my James Burke just as,
with a sort of inevitability, Lynn and I met up at various conferences about
Napoleonic military history.
Lynn has written several stories about Van Daan’s adventures
in the Peninsular War, but she has now branched out into another series
featuring the exploits of Captain Hugh Kelly, one of the stalwart sailors who
kept Britain safe from Boney. It should be an interesting series. It’s
important to remember that, at the time, the Navy was much more highly regarded
than the army and the war in the peninsula was seen as a bit of a sideshow. The
real land fighting was being done by other countries further north in Europe while
the Navy was engaging French vessels on a regular basis. In fact, our land
offensive in Spain was possible only because of British control of the western
coast of Iberia, maintaining our lines of supply and, in the early days of the
war at least, constantly harassing French positions near the coast.
An Unwilling Alliance
is set in the year before the start of the Peninsular War and centres on the
British attack on Copenhagen in 1807. This is one of those military engagements
that the British prefer to forget all about. British ships bombarded the Danish
capital when Denmark was a neutral country. The aim of the exercise was to make
the Danish fleet unavailable to Napoleon if, as expected, he invaded Denmark.
However, there were inevitably considerable civilian casualties and nowadays
the attack would almost certainly be seen as a war crime. Even at the time (as
reflected in Lynn’s book) there was considerable disquiet about the action.
Unlike me, Lynn is a “proper historian”
(shortlisted for the first Society for Army Historical Research fiction award,
no less) and she provides more military detail than I do, with a lot of very
precise factual information about the deployment of particular regiments and
brigades. I remember reading her fictional account of an action in the
Peninsular War and then later coming across a contemporary description of it in
my own research and realising how well I understood the situation from Lynn’s
story. She really is very good and weaves the detail into her fictional
narrative. But An UnwillingAlliance is not just a convincing war
story. It is also a romance. In fact the opening chapters are almost entirely
devoted to Hugh Kelly’s pursuit of the girl who is clearly destined to become
the love of his life, Roseen Crellin.
I can get very irritated by Georgian romances. A
particularly annoying example was the recent TV adaptation of Sanditon. Young ladies meet unsuitable
men in the peculiar absence of chaperones. Introductions are sloppily informal.
Any real Georgian woman behaving in this way would promptly be labelled a tramp
and unfit for decent society. So I could easily have given up by the end of Chapter
1 as Roseen Crellin wanders unescorted across the hills of the Isle of Man in
contravention of every rule of decent behaviour. However, Lynn gives Roseen a
convincing back-story to explain her behaviour and, more importantly, the poor
girl is shunned by decent society and
we see the social cost of breaking with convention.
When Roseen’s ill-considered behaviour destroys her budding
romance with Hugh Kelly and threatens to ruin her life, the story catches
something of the reality of the limitations that the world placed on young
women back then. And because the social environment and the character of Roseen
have been so well established, when an even more outrageous breach of decent
behaviour results in a near miraculous reuniting of the lovers, I was perfectly
prepared to accept it. This is, after all, as much a romance as a war story
and, though I won’t give the game away with the details, as soon as Roseen sets
out on a particularly inappropriate venture we all have a pretty clear idea of
where it will end up.
Lynn writes in fluid prose. The exciting bits are exciting,
the romantic bits are romantic and the whole thing has a wonderful sense of
place. Lynn is a proud resident of the Isle of Man and her love of the island
comes through. It made me want to visit, and what better recommendation can you
have for a writer’s descriptive powers?
All in all, I found this a book that is difficult to fault.
If you like Georgian romances, Napoleonic war stories, or just a dashed good
read, I do strongly recommend it.
(Some people will think that I’m only saying this because I know Lynn. Any writer friends who’ve been on the wrong end of a criticism of a book that I didn’t like will be happy to disabuse them.)
It’s that time of year when I blog 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. (This service has been available in the US for a while.) 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 historical 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.
My latest, Dark Magic should be available in paperback next week (technical glitches notwithstanding), giving you plenty of opportunity to get it in time for Christmas. It’s a short book, which people often appreciate in a gift, and early reviews suggest that some people, at least, enjoy the rather dark humour of this supernatural thriller.
So there you are: your Christmas gift problems solved and
it’s barely November. 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.
It’s been an interesting and eventful week – and not just in
the British Parliament.
Last weekend was the second Malvern Festival of Military History. I wasn’t speaking this year, but there was some interesting stuff on so I decided to drag my long-suffering beloved to go to it anyway.
We combined the weekend with another trip to Wales. The
countryside in October can be particularly magical with incredibly rich
colours.
We were lucky with the weather when we arrived. (The sky really was that blue.) But by Friday morning it was getting seriously misty – though still beautiful.
Soon, though, the rain began to fall … and fall … and fall.
By Saturday morning, when we were to drive toMalvern, the Met Office was warning of
extreme weather and roads were closed by floods. It was, to put it mildly, an
interesting trip. We made it safely in the end (though it really was touch and
go in some narrow lanes that were under several inches of water.)
It was definitely worth it. The Malvern Festival of Military
History attracts some big names and there was a range of fascinating subjects
from the propaganda war against Napoleon to Britain’s war in Iraq. The opportunity
to listen to Cedric Delves and Danny West chatting together about their
experiences with the SAS in the Falklands was a bit special.
We stayed on in Malvern on the Monday to take the opportunity to walk again on the Malvern Hills. It had finally stopped raining, though this photo, showing a considerably swollen River Severn in the distance, gives you some idea of how bad the flooding had been.
The Malvern Hills are a quite spectacular formation. If you
haven’t been and you ever get the chance, I do recommend them. Even on a dull
day, like Monday, the views are impressive.
We had just time before we left to visit the priory. It’s a
very early Norman building where work started in 1085. Its antiquity is clearly
reflected in the massive Norman pillars of the nave.
There’s an unusual amount of mediaeval glass as well. I
nearly said “stained glass” but medieval glass is generally painted
rather than stained and has an entirely different character to the Victorian
windows we are familiar with. The priory church (once attached to a priory that
was a victim of Henry VIII’s Reformation) is architecturally fascinating as
well as very beautiful. In most places, I would expect it to be very crowded
but in Malvern, on a chilly October Monday, we had the place to ourselves.
Back to London, detouring round roads that were still flooded and impassable to traffic, we were home on Monday night. The rest of the week was quiet except for the little matter of my book launch on Halloween. We didn’t have a party or anything (I think there is a convention that novellas don’t rate a party) but Thursday was still a bit special as far as I’m concerned. No Top Ten status, but lots of support and enough sales to make #68 in Amazon’s ‘Humorous Dark Comedy’ listing. (On a side-note, does this mean Amazon has a ‘Not-at-all-funny Dark Comedy’ listing?)
Dark Magic is a bit of a difficult book to classify. It’s about a troupe of magicians who discover that another conjuring troupe are using Black Magic in their act and set out to use their own skills to stop them. I have a rather dark sense of humour, so the results are occasionally funny (or so I’ve been told). It’s not a laugh a minute on account of all the Black Magic and death, but, yes, it does belong in that listing.
Anyway it’s out there on Kindle (mybook.to/DarkMagic if you want to buy it) with a print edition coming soon. So that’s been my week. I’ve had fun. I hope your week was good too.
People keep telling me that an important part of launching a new book is the cover reveal. So here (drum roll!) is the cover for Dark Magic. It was designed by David Slaney, who I think has done an amazing job.
Dark Magic is now available for pre-order on Kindle at mybook.to/DarkMagic. (For some reason this link is giving some people trouble. If it doesn’t work for you, just search Amazon.) It will be published, appropriately enough, on Halloween. A paperback edition will be along shortly.
Dark Magic counts as a novella at just 33,000 words, but I hope you will savour every one of them. It costs £1.99 in the UK and $2.58 in the US.
Dark Magic is a tale of magic, murder and malicious mendacity featuring supernatural goings on and splashes of both blood and dark humour. It is something of a departure for me and I hope you enjoy it.
Baby’s blood… Virgin’s tears… Chainsaws… It’s remarkable what some magicians keep back-stage.
Two magic shows: the Maestros of Magic touring the country, playing provincial theatres; the Carnival of Conjurors successful in the West End. When the Maestros learn that the Conjurors are using real magic – Black Magic – to do their tricks they decide that they must use their own, distinctly unmagical, stage skills to stop them. Soon people are dying on stage – but can the Maestros really beat a team that has the devil on their side?
