by TCW | Oct 1, 2019 | Book review
The subtitle of Messengers is ‘Who We Listen To, Who We Don’t, And Why’. In a world that has given us Donald Trump and Boris Johnson, learning the answer to this question seems worth the effort involving reading the book, but having finished it I’m not sure that I’m any clearer.
This is a pop psychology book with all the strengths and weaknesses of that genre. It starts out with a lot of anecdotes – some mind-blowingly banal (somebody who tweeted something on the same day that Barrack Obama tweeted something very similar got millions fewer re-tweets) and some quite fascinating (employees of an Indian entrepreneur with a caring management style offered to work for nothing when her business was in trouble).
Anecdotes, though, obviously don’t make up a convincing argument so the book quotes lots of psychological experiments, some by the authors and some from other sources. The problem with this approach is that you have to take an awful lot on trust. I’m sensitive to this because my degree was in Experimental Psychology and I’m aware that very small differences in the way an experiment was conducted can have quite profound influences on the outcome. It’s difficult to be confident in the results of an experiment which has been reported in a few short paragraphs. This is an inevitable problem with this kind of book and does not reflect badly on the authors, but it does mean that if you accept their arguments you will trust the research and if you don’t you will (probably at least sometimes justifiably) dismiss the research. In fairness, research studies are well footnoted and you can follow them all up, but it is unlikely that the non-specialist reader that this book is clearly aimed at will ever do that. You have to take a lot on trust and, ironically, one of the main messages of the book is that humans are terribly bad at judging when they can take stuff on trust and when they should be more sceptical.
Leaving these reservations aside, what does it tell us? Very crudely put, it suggests that we pay more attention to the characteristics of the messenger than we do to the characteristics of the message. We like leaders to be tall and square jawed, or empathetic and caring. It’s an analysis that explains the appeal of Donald Trump. He is a classic alpha male – bombastic, dominant, and pugilistic. Some of this, according to the book, is innate. He was born with a face shape that is associated with dominance. (There is a photograph that illustrates how facial height to width ratio is calculated, enabling this to be quantified.) Some of it may have been learned over his lifetime: the way he stands, the amount he gestures with his arms, the deep timbre of his voice. Perhaps it’s significant that when comedians who do not share his political approach mimic him they tend to emphasise the speech mannerism where his voice can suddenly move into quite a high register. Or perhaps it’s not – the authors don’t mention this.
That’s part of the trouble. Human behaviour is complex. Few people are consistent. Boris Johnson is often compared to Donald Trump, but untidy blonde hair is not the attribute that the authors think is important. On the attributes they do think important – posture, vocal mannerisms, etc – Boris is almost the antithesis of Trump. He bumbles on, waffles and, to a degree, charms – but he hardly fits the stereotype of an alpha male.
In fairness to the authors, they do acknowledge the complexities that underlie many of the behaviours they analyse – but perhaps still not enough. So, for example, at one point they write:
[Apologies] are … immensely powerful social tools, critical to the repairing or re-establishing of relationships. Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd provided a formidable demonstration of this when, in the course of a four minute speech in February 2008 he issued a public apology for the way in which indigenous Australians had been treated years before he himself had achieved public office. He recognised, he said, that he needed to “apologise for the laws and policies of successive parliaments and governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on these our fellow Australians”.
Much later, in a separate discussion of apologies, the authors point out (in line, as it happens, with my own review of the literature1) that an apology is only likely to be affected if it is “made quickly… made sincerely. And it needs to be made in a way that shows remorse and commitment to change in the future.” Kevin Rudd’s four minute speech could not possibly have met these criteria and yet the authors explicitly link it to “the highest satisfaction rating of any Australian Prime Minister”.
Obviously there is more going on than can be covered in one relatively short volume. In fact some of the simplifications border on the absurd. At one point the book argues that an experiment showed that facial features are so crucial that “a glance at the faces of candidates running for election was all that was needed to make an informed, and largely accurate, estimate of who would (and indeed did) win.” Whilst what a candidate looks like can be a significant factor, the suggestion that facial appearance can be used to accurately predict the outcome of real elections would, if true, suggest that the selection of legislators by popular ballot is an idea that needs to be reviewed. Personally I am not suggesting that we abolish democracy, but that we view statements like this with grave suspicion.
There is usable, and indeed valuable, stuff in this book. It does no harm for us to be reminded how much we allow irrelevant assessments of people’s social class, dominance, or empathy to affect what should be rational judgements. This can even extend to favouring loan offers which are accompanied by a photograph of an attractive woman rather than an attractive interest rate. There are practical lessons to be learned, too. My wife does some university lecturing and I have passed on the information that lecturers who make more arm movements whilst speaking are perceived as better teachers by their students. In the new world of university education, where student assessment is critical to career advancement, I can confidently predict a fair amount from arm waving next term.
Overall, though, I found this an irritating book – neither an easily read series of anecdotes nor a serious academic study, it repeatedly overpromised and underdelivered. If, however, you honestly believe that you would never form your initial (and surprisingly firm) view of somebody based on the logo on their polo shirt, then perhaps you need to read it.
Note
- In a previous life I did a major review of complaints behaviour for (of all places) the Cabinet Office. Williams T and Goriely T (1994) Complaints: Literature Review, Cabinet Office
by TCW | Sep 27, 2019 | Napoleonic history
Like last week, this week’s blog is a result of my attendance at the recent conference on ‘War and Peace in the Age of Napoleon’ held at King’s College London. It’s basically a summary of the final presentation. That seems worth doing because it was a fun way to end two days of heavy historical analysis with a fascinating attempt to get inside the head of Napoleon by having his behaviour examined by a team of psychiatrists whose day job is treating American servicemen. It was presented by Dr Edward J Coss, who is a professor of military history at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College.
Napoleon being dead, Dr Coss decided that any diagnosis of his mental state should be based on the closest he could get to actual observation of the living subject, so he looked for things that Napoleon had written himself or statements made by witnesses who directly quoted the man. In this way he gathered a substantial corpus of what could be treated as primary source material on his subject. He then gave this mass of quotations to practising psychiatrists engaged in the treatment of American servicemen.
Coss was expecting to find symptoms of PTSD. Napoleon had been almost constantly engaged in warfare for 17 years. He was a general who (contrary to the way the English tend to think of him) often led from the front and was exposed to danger directly and saw the effects of warfare on his men for all that time. Coss stated that it’s rare for anybody engaged in conflict over a period of years not to suffer from PTSD, so this seemed the most obvious thing to look for.
To his surprise, none of the psychiatrists considered that there was any evidence of PTSD, but, in their professional view, Napoleon did show signs of other attitudes and behaviours which are nowadays classified as psychological illness.
The psychiatrists said they saw clear evidence of narcissism. This is a condition characterised by
- a strong sense of self-importance (grandiosity)
- fantasies of power, success, brilliance
- the notion that the individual is special and not as other people
- the need for excessive admiration
- a sense of entitlement
- the tendency to interpersonal exploitation
- a lack of empathy
- envy
- arrogance
There were interesting illustrations of such behaviours cited. For example, at Jaffa Napoleon touched the bubos of soldiers suffering from plague. While some people see this as evidence of his trying to show sympathy with the dying men, the psychiatrists suggested that it was more likely (as Napoleon was not a notably sympathetic character) that he touched them to show that he could not die of plague like ordinary people – he was, indeed, special.
Napoleon at Jaffa
I must admit that I was not entirely convinced. Napoleon was the single most powerful man in the world, ruler (effectively dictator) of a huge empire. A sense of self-importance and, indeed, entitlement seems, in the circumstances, quite reasonable. As to the fantasies of power, it is difficult to see how any fantasy could exceed the reality of his position. On the other hand, his early behaviour in Corsica (where he was heavily involved in local politics and rather over-reached himself as a very young man) did suggest that he had a sense of self-importance even then.
It does seem that Napoleon was big on admiration. He did like a certain amount of bowing and scraping, and Kamil Szadkowski’s paper on his court (officially established in 1804) gave a lot of fascinating detail on just how incredibly expensive and elaborate it was. But the court was part of a political strategy designed to establish his rule in France as being as legitimate as that of other rulers. Lacking the “divine right” of hereditary rulers, it was essential that the panoply of state was at least as impressive as that of other countries. It’s likely that Napoleon enjoyed the admiration (who wouldn’t?) but it’s not necessarily a symptom of a psychological pathology.
Self-important? Me?
I was also sceptical at the suggestion that Napoleon lacked empathy. It is said that he never showed real sympathy for those who were injured under his command. It is, of course, impossible to know for sure but the suggestion that he lacked the ability to form wholehearted emotional relationships is dubious. Even if you discount his relationship with Josephine (which was, at best, erratic) as a young man he did fall desperately (and rather pathetically) in love on more than one occasion. The suggestion that he was always cold and distant does not fit with many of the details of his life.
Much as, contrarian that I am, I was happy to take issue with individual pointers toward narcissism, eventually I was worn down by the sheer quantity of evidence. In any case, the psychiatric diagnosis relies on positive indicators of only five of these characteristics, and the psychiatrists had no trouble in agreeing that he was, indeed, a narcissist. Interestingly, according to Coss, narcissists are considered by psychiatrists to be “inwardly fragile”. Certainly Napoleon was prone to attacks of fury when crossed, often alternating with periods of sulking. He also famously attempted suicide on two occasions. It seems quite possible that under the bluster, the arrogance, and the spectacular displays of power, there was a sad little boy who had never had a good relationship with his father and who really, really needed his mum.
Napoleon was plagued with depression on Elba
But that was not all. We all know that Napoleon was moody and the psychiatrists volunteered the suggestion that he was clinically depressed – or perhaps bipolar. There was also a suspicion that by the end of his rule he may have been suffering a degree of brain damage. He twice injured his head falling from horses, on one occasion having a brief loss of consciousness. Nowadays he would have been encouraged to take it easy for a while, but in those days the suggestion that you “get back on the horse” was interpreted pretty literally. It is possible that some of his behaviour was the result of concussion-induced brain damage.
For me, the least surprising finding was the suggestion that Napoleon was a sociopath. Given that sociopathy is often linked with high performance in a corporate culture (so the incidence of sociopathy in CEOs is often quoted as being about 20%), I would be quite surprised if Napoleon had not had a sociopathic personality.
If the French army had had psychiatrists back in the day, could Napoleon have been treated? Well, brain scans could have looked for evidence of neurological damage, although as nobody did anything about it the time it’s unlikely that any effective treatment could have been given years later. The depression might have responded to drug treatment, but narcissism and sociopathy, according to the psychiatrists involved in the study, are almost impossible to treat.
It was a hugely entertaining presentation and may well give us a better understanding of Napoleon’s mind, but does it help us understand his rule? Honestly, I suspect not – except in so far that it reminds us that underneath that famous bicorn hat was a real person who had his personal strengths and weaknesses, his ups and his downs. By the time of Waterloo, he was quite sick. (He may well have picked up an illness during his Egyptian campaign that was never to entirely leave him. He is widely believed to have been suffering from piles at Waterloo and, whether or not the psychiatric diagnosis is accurate, he certainly seems to have had emotional issues by the end of his rule.) He was, it is fair to say, not at his best. When people ask why, for example, he allowed the cavalry to charge without close infantry support, we should consider the possibility that he was just having a really bad day.
Picture credits
Napoleon abdicated in Fontainebleau, 4 April 1814 by Paul Delaroche (1845)
Napoleon at Jaffa is a detail from Bonaparte visitant les pestiférés de Jaffa by Antoine-Jean Gros (1804)
Napoleon I on his Imperial Throne by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1806)
Napoleon on Elba is an anonymous painting from the early 19th century
A word from our sponsor
My interest in the Napoleonic era stems from the research that I’ve done for my books about James Burke. Burke was real person and although most of his adventures are fictional a lot of research goes into making the backgrounds authentic. Eventually it gets to the point where I spent more time writing stuff like this than I do writing fiction. (I am working on a non-fiction account of the background to Waterloo, if anyone knows a publisher who might want it.) Nobody pays me for writing these blog posts, although I do now accept donations if anybody wants to buy me a coffee. What I would really appreciate, though, is if you bought one of books. They are all available on Kindle and cost £2.99 or less.
Thank you.
by TCW | Sep 20, 2019 | Napoleonic history
I’m returning to a favourite theme of mine – that the events of 1815 have had a direct impact on the world of today, though not necessarily in the way that many people think. This week’s ramblings were inspired by lectures at the conference on ‘War and Peace in the Age of Napoleon’, particularly those by Eamonn O’Keeffe, Joseph Cozens, and Robert Poole.
The French Wars continued for over 20 years and are often said to mark the start of the modern concept of “total war”. The wars impacted across society, with the militarisation of much of the economy. In some areas, a phenomenally high proportion of men joined the volunteers: in Lancashire it was 32%. Even women’s fashion took on a military flavour, with some women dressing in clothes that reflected the uniforms of the regiments that they (through family or geographical links) were associated with.
In many ways, the war had an increased social impact with demobilisation. Suddenly 300,000 soldiers and sailors returned to civilian life. While, for the first time, some of them were paid pensions, money was only given to those who had served 14 years or more or been injured. Three quarters of demobilised soldiers got no pension and for most of those who did the amount was not sufficient to live on.
The end of the war marked the beginning of a period of “General Distress”. The economy was staggering under the weight of war debt. Food prices were high, shortages exacerbated by exceptionally poor harvests in 1816. Wages were low and many of those discharged from the forces were unable to find employment.
Unsurprisingly, the years following the war saw popular unrest and protests, especially in the northern industrial towns which were particularly hard hit by the recession and which were not properly represented in Parliament.
The period saw what Cozens called “the militarisation of protest”. Marchers organised in columns and were often drilled in their marching by ex-soldiers. Demonstrators marched behind bands, often ex-military men. They marched with banners which had often been ceremonially presented by women supporters, modelling the presentation of military colours and, as with military colours, the marchers were urged to defend the banners. Police and military units breaking up demonstrations (as at Peterloo) would often target the banners, trying to seize them just as they would try to capture the enemy’s colours in war.
Parliamentary elections might not have involved many actual voters, but they did involve the general population with marches and rallies, often taking on the character of holidays. Processions (with banners) were often led by military bands. In theory, serving soldiers could not lead political processions, but this ban was widely ignored.
Bedford Town Election (1832); The Higgins Art Gallery & Museum, Bedford
According to O’Keeffe’s presentation, this increased militarisation of political events was accompanied by an increased use of military language in campaign rhetoric: opponents would be put “under siege”, there would be “volleys” of arguments against them. O’Keeffe says that this language was seen occasionally in the 18th century, but became commonplace after 1815.
The links with today’s political rhetoric are obvious and often the subject of negative comment in the press and elsewhere. For example, here’s the Guardian after Joe Cox was killed in 2016:
On the morning of the referendum result, Farage celebrated a victory that had been won “without a single bullet being fired”. When Thomas Mair, Cox’s alleged killer, appeared in court on Saturday 18 June, he gave his name as “death to traitors, freedom for Britain”. Not two weeks later, the term “traitor” was being used by some of Jeremy Corbyn’s supporters as a standard term of abuse for anyone deemed disloyal. It appeared on the front page of the Morning Star, and in endless tweets and Facebook posts…
Meanwhile, as the Conservative party has remade itself, the Daily Mail and the Sun have returned to business as usual: Traitor Gove, Knifing of Boris, First Blood to Theresa. In the Mail on Sunday, Rachel Johnson wrote of Michael Gove as a “Westminster suicide bomber”, and professed her hope that she would again dine with his family “when the bleeding bodies of the fallen are removed from the smoking battlefield of this campaign”. The Guardian and Observer were susceptible, too. On a Friday, a prominent headline in the comment pages referred to the “reek of death” hanging over the Labour party; two days later, another referred to its “stench”.
Nor have MPs themselves proved immune. One Conservative, Ben Wallace, said that Gove was “Theon Greyjoy or will be by the time I am finished with him” – a reference to a Game of Thrones character who is castrated.
At the other end of the political spectrum the Daily Telegraph writes:
Three new intellectual magazines backed will appear on news-stands this autumn as the right and centre-left engage in a battle [stress added] of ideas.
There are many criticisms that this type of language coarsens political debate and may lead to violence. I have seen similar arguments in American academic publications, but British commentators frequently suggest that this is a particularly British (or English) concern. The oppositional style of British politics is often compared adversely with the approach taken in other European countries with the horse-shoe-shaped architecture of their parliaments and their predisposition to coalition government.
Of course, other European nations were also militarised during the Napoleonic wars, although it could be argued that their experience was different from that of the British because
- except for the French, all the other nations had periods of peace while Britain had only the short Peace of Amiens and
- other nations had to adapt to the reality of occupation, while the British were able to view war in terms of absolute victory.
Cozens’ paper did discuss attitudes to demobilised soldiers and argued that public attitudes were very ambivalent. Soldiers were simultaneously seen as brave, loyal and organised yet, at least potentially, as criminal, subversive itinerants. To the extent that they were viewed positively, the militarisation of politics makes sense and may well have been more pronounced in Britain than elsewhere in Europe.
So can we blame the Napoleonic wars for the violence of the fault lines that have appeared in British political life 200 years later? It’s not at all clear that we can. O’Keeffe’s research does not allow a direct comparison of the post-war picture with the language prior to the conflict. There is also no evidence that the problem (if it is a problem) is more marked in Britain than elsewhere. Indeed, there seems more academic research supporting the idea that political discourse is underpinned by the language of war in the United States than in Britain. On the other hand, would be dangerous to dismiss the argument altogether. O’Keeffe’s research does definitely show a very high level of militaristic imagery in the years following the Napoleonic wars. Peterloo, in particular, was held at the time to threaten rebellion simply because of the use of banners, drilling, and marching in columns.
As we start new political campaigns, denouncing opponents as traitors and ordering our supporters to target vulnerable opponents, we can see what might be the last traces of the language of the politics of 1816. And as protesters march under banners, albeit to steel bands rather than military music, we are seeing a tradition that goes at least that far back.
Does the language and style of modern politics and street activism really originate in the chaos of the General Disaster of 1815-1819? I honestly don’t know, but it’s a fascinating thought and one that I hope academics like O’Keeffe will turn their minds to.
Acknowledgements
I’m very grateful to the organisers of the ‘War and Peace in the Age of Napoleon’ conference at King’s College, London, and especially to Eamonn O’Keeffe for his paper: “An Evil of Long Standing”: martial musicians, partisan performances and the militarization of British electoral spectacle. Details of his work are available at https://www.history.ox.ac.uk/people/eamonn-okeeffe
A word from our sponsor
My interest in the Napoleonic era stems from the research that I’ve done for my books about James Burke. Burke was real person and although most of his adventures are fictional a lot of research goes into making the backgrounds authentic. Eventually it gets to the point where I spent more time writing stuff like this than I do writing fiction. (I am working on a non-fiction account of the background to Waterloo, if anyone knows a publisher who might want it.) Nobody pays me for writing these blog posts, although I do now accept donations if anybody wants to buy me a coffee. What I would really appreciate, though, is if you bought one of books. They are all available on Kindle and cost £2.99 or less.
Thank you.
by TCW | Sep 17, 2019 | Book review
This is the second of M J Logue’s books about Major Russell and his young wife, Thomazine, and I’m happy to admit that I’m a fan. What I love about books is the characters and their relationship. Essentially these are love stories for grown-ups. This is still more true of A Deceitful Subtlety than the first book, An Abiding Fire, for the Russells are now settled in the Chilterns, concentrating on the rearing of sheep and raising a family. Respectability beckons, though theirs is still a passionate relationship.
It still felt odd, to be quite as bare as an egg – without even your shift – in the middle of the afternoon. Thomazine would have thought she would grow used to it by now, but it seemed not. No matter how much she found herself tangled up in bed sheets in the middle of the day, it still felt wicked.
We follow their falling outs and their making up, their misunderstandings and their struggles to iron out the wrinkles in their relationship. There are more of them than usual, for Thomazine is pregnant and moody and her temper is not helped by the sudden appearance of a woman who may, or may not, be an old flame of her husband’s. When husband and old flame have to journey to Bruges, Thomazine goes too, braving sea-sickness and the funny foreign ways of the Dutch so that she can keep an eye on her man.
There’s a nice sense of ‘foreignness’ to Bruges and an interesting picture of the English émigré community there, though I got little sense of what Bruges itself was like, which is sad as much of the town (a UNESCO World Heritage site) still stands and its beauty deserves to be celebrated.
Why are they in Bruges? I’m honestly not quite sure. There is a notional reason, but as with much of the plot, it didn’t quite make sense. This is, to be honest, not a book you read for its plot. In fact, I was completely bemused about a lot of it (no details because of spoilers) until I read the very long and fascinating historical note. It’s clear that Logue has researched her period extremely well, but if you don’t already have a definite grip on some minor characters of the time, you’ll likely have no idea what’s going on for much of the book. Who is William Scot and why are we looking for him? The historical note explains, but in the novel itself we are just constantly assured that he is a man of mystery.
“I would have said to you that there was not a man in this city about whom I did not know something, even if it were only that he keeps a second household in lodgings off the Mariastraat, or favours this tailor over that. I know nothing at all about Mijnheer Scot, and that troubles me. No one speaks of him, no one at all. He is like a man with no face, you know? He is alive, he breathes, so much I know. But no one speaks of what he is as a man.”
This does leave rather a hole where one of the main characters should be – an irritation that becomes more marked as it turns out that another person we meet is a fascinating historical character who is lost in a rather insubstantial sub-plot. It does raise questions though – like why are people so concerned about a man of very little importance while showing so little interest in somebody of real significance and – probably more relevantly to a writer – somebody that the reader will have heard of?
No matter. In some books the slightly rickety plot would be a real problem, but fans won’t be reading it for the plot. We want to know if Thomazine’s pregnancy will end safely, or if the scheming minx who started this all off will have her wicked way with Russell. (She won’t, of course, but will Thomazine believe this?) We may even end up caring about the latest addition to the cast – a rather repulsive small black dog who I fear we are all destined to come to love.
If all the domesticity gets a bit cloying (I didn’t think so, but it’s possible someone might), be assured that there is violence and sudden death and even torture (though of an anonymous individual in what are literally “noises off”). You may be confused at times, but you won’t be bored and you will (I hope) lose yourself in the love story.
And did I mention that Logue just writes really well? I show my age by caring about this in a world of plot-driven stories where no sentence runs to more than fifteen words and the vocabulary is deliberately unchallenging. Here, for no reason at all, she is describing a bit of excitement while they are penning their sheep to be shorn. If you’ve ever watched (or tried to help) as sheep are penned up, this will have a horribly familiar ring to it.
A chalky-blue butterfly settled briefly on Thomazine’s wrist, its threadlike legs tickling her hot skin, and she smiled down at it. Had she not been looking down, her eyes would not been caught by the old bellwether. A cunning villain, that sheep, with eyes as yellow and knowing as the Devil’s and twelve years of malevolent experience under his fleece. His witless ladies were milling and bleating in panic, but he’d been here before, that one. His baleful slotted eyes met Thomazine’s.
And he was out, the hell-spawned eunuch, forcing his scrawny besmottered flanks through the meagre gap in the hurdles. Where he went his ladies followed, and suddenly there was a flood of pounding hooves as the rest of the flock went with him.
If you don’t love those paragraphs, this probably isn’t a book for you. But if you do, you’re in for a treat.
by TCW | Sep 13, 2019 | Uncategorized
I had intended for my blog this week to add some more photos of palaces in London, but there wasn’t much interest in last week’s effort so I’m not going to continue that theme unless anyone specifically asks me to. But what to write about instead?
I quite like responding to interview requests: people send me questions and I just have to answer them, which is much easier than having to think up my own ideas. Sometimes the interview finally slips out without my seeing it or something gets lost somewhere in hyperspace, so I have interviews that may never have seen the light of day. This was quite an interesting one that somebody (I’m sorry: I can’t find any note of who it was) sent me about music in my life. Links should take you to online versions of the songs. Enjoy!
Music in my Writing
What was the first record/tape/cd that you bought? Why this one? Does it bring back memories?
When I was a kid it was the era of home taping. We didn’t even have a record player. I used to record songs off Top of the Pops (the radio version). My first tape recorder was reel to reel! Then came cassette tapes and I began buying the odd album. The first one I got was probably something like The Who or Pink Floyd. It was a long time ago – it’s all a bit fuzzy now.
Is there a song that could be the theme tune of your life or your personality?
I don’t have a particular song in mind, but Paul Simon is the soundtrack to my life. I’ve grown up with him and for every important stage of my life he had a song about it. I used to sing my son to sleep with St Judy’s Comet.
In your books do your main characters have favourite songs or musicians?
My characters lived in a time before recorded music but folk songs feature here and there. I enjoy putting in some of the bawdier songs for soldiers to sing.
Had she but told me when she did disorder me
Had she but told me about it in time
I might have got salts and pills of white mercury
But now I’m cut down in the height of my prime.
If you’re romantically involved, or have been in the past do you have an “Our Song” one that takes you back to a certain moment? Do any of your characters have a song?
I’d been married for many years before one day we were at a tango club where the DJ played Dance me to the end of love (the original Leonard Cohen version) for us to tango to. We’d never had a special song before but that’s been our song since.
None of my characters really have a romantic song, although when Burke is courting in his earliest adventure he’s in Ireland and sings Dark Rosaleen to his girl. It’s a street ballad of the late 19th century.
I could scale the blue air,
I could plough the high hills,
Oh, I could kneel all night in prayer,
To heal your many ills!
And one beamy smile from you
Would float like light between
My toils and me, my own, my true,
My Dark Rosaleen!
The story is set before any of the published Burke books, although it hasn’t come out yet. I think that Burke was, perhaps, more naive in his approach to women then than he was in his later adventures.
When did you decide to write your first novel? Tell me a bit about the inspiration, process and of course the book.
I was in Borneo, very many years ago, and I found a museum exhibition about James Brooke, the first White Rajah. I was fascinated and decided to write about him, but it really didn’t work. Much, much later, I wanted to write a book about how good people do bad things and I realised I had my character and situation all ready. The result was The White Rajah, based firmly on the true story of a man who came to Borneo to trade and ended up the legal ruler of Sarawak. (He’d helped the Sultan win a war in the region and was given Sarawak as a reward.)
I believe he really wanted to do his best for the people and, even today, his rule is widely regarded as a good thing. When the natives he was responsible for were threatened by neighbouring tribes, he called on the British Navy to help him drive them out. The result was a massacre so appalling that it shocked people even in the mid-19th century. He believed his actions justified and a British enquiry exonerated him. My book tries to show both sides of the argument. I showed it to two friends: one took his side, the other sided with the critic whose voice tells the story. I was pleased, because it is the moral ambivalence of the (true) story that I thought was most interesting.
James Brooke by Sir Francis Grant, 1847
How do you write? Do you plan or take it as it comes? Have a favourite place or time for writing?
I write historical novels based around actual events, so the planning has to be very tight. Generally I write on a computer sitting at my desk. I always end up at the end of the day of producing very little desperately trying to churn the words out before I have to give up for the day.
Do you write to music or prefer silence? Do you think that music can inspire a scene or feeling within your writing and your characters story?
I used to use music a lot, but I’m more likely to write in silence these days. I do try to match the music to the characters. When I was writing Burke and the Bedouin I listened to some peculiar modern Egyptian music, while for Cawnpore I listened to a lot of sitar music.
What song would you like played at your funeral and why? (Sorry it’s a bit of a morbid question!)
Adios Nonino a tango by Piazzolla. He wrote it when his father died and it’s heartbreakingly beautiful. I don’t think it’s a morbid question at all. I’ve known this will be played at my funeral for years. A dancing friend of mine died a couple of years ago and his partner arranged for us all to dance tangos for hours after the funeral. It was a lovely way to say goodbye to him.
What are your Top 3 Songs of all Time? The ones you can’t live without?
I don’t often play it nowadays because it is just built into my brain, but #1 is probably Bridge Over Troubled Water. Abba’s Thank You for the Music is pretty much how I feel about music, except that I dance rather than sing. So I guess the third has to be a tango to dance to. There are so many it’s difficult to say but probably Libertango (Piazzolla again). There are zillions of versions, but I particularly like it played live by Alfredo Martin Espindola at a club I dance at (sadly not available on CD). The Grace Jones cover (I’ve seen that face before is fun too.)
I do have video of Martin playing Bajo un Cielo de Estrellas for our Ruby Wedding. He’s singing and accompanying himself on the bandoneon. It’s rather lovely. You can see it here: https://youtu.be/5i02toU2kWc
