On Sunday we dropped in for a quick visit to Apsley House on our way to dance at the Argentine Ambassador’s Residence (as you do). Someone at English Heritage had said that we had to see the Duke’s robes, which were on display there and which had been worn at the coronation of Charles III.
I always do what I’m told, so we duly went in to gawp. Apsley House doesn’t allow photography but they have an excellent picture on their website:
The robes are interesting to me, not because they were worn by the current duke, but because they were worn by the Iron Duke at the coronation of George IV in 1821.
The robes say something about the whole ceremony of crowning the new monarch, which was true then and now. The robes worn in 1821 were not some traditional costume handed down through the centuries, but had been specially designed for the occasion. Say what you like about the Georgians, but they knew how to put on a spectacle. In this case, they decided that the robes should be designed in the style of Tudor and early Stuart dress to create an impression that these were ancient finery and that the ceremony was a continuation of a rich tradition. It was a “tradition” that the Georgians were anxious to emphasise as, in fact, their claim to the throne hung by a slender thread. (When you are next told that the king traces his ancestry back to Alfred, you might reasonably ask why his family is German.) It is a similar perceived need to appeal to ancient traditions that saw these early 19th century robes taken out of mothballs for a 2023 ceremony. In fact, we were repeatedly assured by the BBC that this ceremony was essentially unchanged in a thousand years. I wonder what people would have made of it had it been conducted in Norman French and Latin.
What did the first Duke of Wellington (a man famously thrown out of his club for wearing trousers instead of breeches) make of this fancy dress? He is on record as having said he thought it was ridiculous but seeing how the spectacle was received by the thousands of spectators he admitted that the magnificence of the display achieved the required effect.
Two hundred years later, it seems that this aspect the ceremony, at least, is following an established tradition.
Last week I spent an afternoon at Tyntesfield. It’s a National Trust property near Bath.
It was bought in 1844, by William Gibbs, a merchant who had made a vast fortune out of guano. The idea of using bird droppings for fertiliser was new at the time. It revolutionised Victorian agriculture and made Mr Gibbs one of the richest man in England. In 1863 he made the first of several significant remodellings of the house. A high church Anglican, he believed that building in gothic style evoking the English Church of the Middle Ages was an act of religious observation rather than just architectural extravagance. In this he followed the example of the Catholic architect, Pugin.
The architecture was not only designed to reflect High Anglican religious principles but incorporated space devoted to worship. An oratory, with stained glass windows, allowed William Gibbs to gather his family and all the servants to pray together morning and evening.
As William approached the end of his life, he commissioned his own chapel. This was no small private chapel (that was the oratory) but a church larger and more splendid than many parish churches. Indeed, the local vicar, nervous of losing his flock to his elaborate neighbour, petitioned the Bishop to deny consecration to the building, so it could be used only by the family. As this included servants, guests and estate workers, there must have been an acceptable congregation. Services were conducted by the family’s own chaplain, who had a specially built house in the grounds.
Building of the chapel started in 1873 and was completed in 1875 , the year of William Gibbs’ death. It is fair to say that he saw the building of this remarkable chapel as the apotheosis of his life — the crowning glory of Tyntesfield.
Victorian Gothic was dismissed as a ridiculous affectation for much of the 20th century, but it is beginning to come back into fashion. Nowadays, though, we see the religious references in the architecture (if we see them at all) as rather absurd. My first reaction on seeing Tyntesfield (a reaction I suspect I share with many of its visitors) is that it is gloriously, wonderfully mad. It is, though, quite beautiful and made for taking pictures of.
Looking through the photos I took, it is obvious that I did not take nearly enough. I must go back. But here, to be getting on with, are some of my pictures from the end of April. (All of these are exteriors. Inside is so vast and so mad that it defeated me, but I will try again on another visit.)
The Williamson Papers
Someone asked if this was a research trip and I said no, it had been entirely for pleasure. But it does relate to my books: not the James Burke series, which are firmly set in what historians call the long 18th century, but the Williamson Papers. My trilogy about the adventures of John Williamson, first in Borneo (The White Rajah) and then India (Cawnpore) before he returns to London (Back Home) is set around the time that Tyntesfield was being built. The money for Tyntesfield came from international trade. John Williamson is in Borneo and India because Britain trades with these places and alongside the trade comes colonial rule with all the problems, practical and moral, that that brings. Williamson returns to London where he discovers that the vast wealth that created Tyntesfield does not reach everywhere and that the poor of London are as exploited and repressed as the inhabitants of the colonies.
The Williamson Papers are not a revisionist history of colonialism. They are a first person account of Williamson’s experience and, while he is unhappy with some of the things he saw, he basically supports his country and sees a lot of good in what it does. The stories are full of excitement and incident (closely based on fact) but they should also make you question both what is now called the Empire Project and some of the fashionable revisionism which unthinkingly condemns everything that the Victorians did overseas. Unsurprisingly, I suppose, John Williamson has never had the popularity of James Burke (partly because there are only three books) but I think this is sad. I’m proud of John Williamson and he has had lovely reviews. Why don’t you make an author very happy and give them a try?
I grew up on adventure stories where many of the heroes were helped by loyal sidekicks. Biggles had Algy; Sherlock Holmes, Watson; the Lone Ranger, Tonto. Back then, before the darker Batman of today, Robin was simply his trusty sidekick.
Until I started writing my own adventure stories, I didn’t really understand why sidekicks were so ubiquitous. I do now.
Sidekicks offer all sorts of benefits to the writer. They can perform tasks that the hero cannot, or which are too tedious to bore the reader with. John Mortimer’s Rumpole, for example, uses a private detective, ‘Fig’ Newton, to produce crucial information to move the plot along. No details are required as to how Newton gets this information and, indeed, the reader doesn’t care.
Traditional adventure stories often break up the action with more light-hearted moments and a sidekick gives opportunities for banter. Sometimes the sidekick himself is a source of amusement. Lesley Charteris’s early Simon Templar stories featured Hoppy Uniatz, a Brooklyn gangster who had somehow (we never quite find out how) teamed up with our hero. His heavy accent is used to accentuate his apparent stupidity but he is unfailingly loyal and a good man in a fight. I find him quite irritating but, back in the 1930s and 40s, readers loved that sort of thing and he was the longest lasting of the Saint’s sidekicks.
The single most useful characteristic of a sidekick, as far as the writer is concerned, is that he provides somebody for the hero to explain the plot to. Imagine Sherlock Holmes without Watson, all those brilliant deductions and the reader having no clue of the basis on which he made them.
Holmes and Watson from the original illustrations in The Strand Magazine
James Burke’s sidekick is William Brown. While Burke is constantly on his dignity as an officer and a gentleman (and constantly resentful that he is trapped in the sordid world of espionage), William keeps him rooted in reality. We don’t get given many details of William’s early life but his skills as a forger and his ability with a picklock hint at a criminal past. He joined the army young and remained a private soldier until he was allocated to Burke as, officially, an officer’s servant and, unofficially, as an agent working to him on intelligence missions.
William is intelligent and resourceful and often has to work independently of Burke. (Another advantage of a sidekick is that it enables the author to run parallel story lines when necessary.) Despite this, he is convinced that he would be lost without Burke. He sums up how he sees their respective roles.
“I’m more a hit-them-in-the-goolies-and run-away kind of bloke. I rely on officers like you to write it up all nice afterwards.”
William Brown and James Burke have both saved each other’s lives on many occasions and they have a real affection for each other, but William would never think of presuming on Burke.
“There was only one bed and William did wonder if he should ask to share it, such an arrangement being common amongst travellers in small inns. In the end, though, he decided not to. The major was a good man and, in his way, a friend, but there were proprieties to be observed between a sergeant and his officer and William Brown was careful to observe them.”
Although William is something of a ladies’ man, he is married to Molly who he met in Buenos Aires [Burke in the Land of Silver]. She keeps a tavern near the Tower where James and William are based when they are in England. James is fond of Molly and is often a guest of the couple when he is in London.
As the series goes on, I find the relationship between William Brown and James Burke a pleasure to write. The relationship doesn’t exactly develop: it’s defined soon after they meet and doesn’t fundamentally change, but writing about their shared experiences and how these strengthen the link between them is one of the aspects of the books that I particularly enjoy.
The Burke books wouldn’t be the same without William Brown. He might officially be just an assistant – a henchman, if you will – but Burke would be the first to admit that the two are a team. Without William Brown, James Burke would be lost. In fact, one story (Burke in Ireland) does see Burke working alone and, though the book ends in a sort of victory, Burke would be the first to admit that things got very messy indeed.
William Brown and the Lines of Torres Vedras
In the latest in the Burke series, Burke is trying to track down a French spy ring in Lisbon in 1810. William is there with him, of course, looking for possible leads in bars while Burke hobnobs with minor aristocrats suspected of betraying their country. William’s mission proves the more dangerous and the poor man is beaten up and tortured. Another advantage of the sidekick, as far as an author is concerned, is that he can suffer the sort of beating that means that he cannot take an active part in the story for a while. That, of course, is trickier if you are the hero but sometimes the villain has to win or there is no jeopardy for the hero to overcome.
Will William recover? Will the villain who tortured him pay for his crimes? And will our intrepid duo be able to save the secret of the Lines of Torres Vedras?
You’ll have to buy Burke and the Lines of Torres Vedras to find out. It’s a thrilling spy story set against the background of the real secret of the Lines, which was a crucial element in Wellington’s strategy during the Peninsular War. Discover more of the history of the defence of Portugal and find out if William ever gets safe home to Molly.
Burke and the Lines of Torres Vedras is available on Kindle for £3.99 and in paperback at £7.99.
Burke and the Lines of Torres Vedras, the latest book in the James Burke series will be published on Kindle on 7 April and it is already available for pre-order. The paperback will be along soon. Somebody contacted me to ask how it fitted in with the others in the series. The answer is that it follows directly from Burke and the Pimpernel Affair. It starts with Burke back in London, suspended from active duty because of the leg injury he sustained in Paris. He’s soon back in the field though, returning to the Peninsula, though this time attached to the Portuguese army headquarters in Lisbon.
The beginning of all the Burke books now has a potted history of his career. It has grown a bit since I started doing it. Here’s the latest version (and, yes, his name really was Florence):
JAMES FLORENCE BURKE Born Ireland 1771 Enlisted Regiment of Dillon (France). Saw active service in Sainte Domingue. Surrendered to British in 1793. Detached for special duties at the War Office 1793/4: confidential duties in Ireland 1798: confidential duties in Egypt 1805: confidential duties in Argentina 1806: attached to British forces in Buenos Aires 1806: promoted to Captain 1807: confidential mission to the Spanish court 1808: promoted to Major 1808: diplomatic posting to Brazil 1809: diplomatic posting to Argentina 1809: attached to General Hill in Spain 1809: confidential work in France 1810: attached to General Beresford’s staff in Lisbon 1815: confidential work with Allied occupation forces in Paris 1815: attached to the Hussars of Croy. Saw action at Waterloo
The books dart around his career a bit. His service from 1805 to 1809 is covered in Burke in the Land of Silver, which also explains how his military career started in Sainte Domingue. Ireland is in Burke in Ireland (the fourth book published), Egypt in Burke and the Bedouin (#2 in the series) and his adventures in 1815 are Burke at Waterloo. The other three books, though, form a continuous narrative starting immediately after his return to England after his efforts in Argentina. He fights with General Hill in the Peninsular War before being sent to Paris to foil the plots of the ghastly Fouché. (Fouché was a real man and every bit as unpleasant as he is painted in the book.) Having survived Paris, he’s back in the Peninsula, hunting down spies in Lisbon.
Thanks to Bernard Cornwell’s efforts with Richard Sharpe, there is an apparently unending demand for stories set in the Peninsular War (Burke in the Peninsula is the most successful of the series) so I’m hoping that Burke and the Lines of Torres Vedras will do well. The Lines (a string of forts that ran from the Atlantic to the River Tagus) are a fascinating bit of Peninsular War history and should satisfy military history junkies. (I’ve blogged here about the Lines recently.)
My books are, I’m told, shorter than many historical novels. Readers who like to lose themselves in a long historical story could buy Peninsula, Pimpernel and Torres Vedras and read them straight through, which should satisfy the most ardent enthusiast of the long read.
The Burke books are definitely a series and not a serial. Not only does each stand alone, but I enjoy playing with slightly different styles within the genre. So Burke in the Land of Silver is straightforward historical fiction, closely based on the adventures of the real James Burke. Burke and the Bedouin, although sticking to the historical facts of Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt, is a romantic romp, featuring a beautiful woman in need of rescue and midnight rides across the desert. Burke at Waterloo is part spy story (based around a real attempt on Wellington’s life) and part a classic war story with the climax on the field at Waterloo.
Burke in Ireland is far and away the darkest of the Burke books. It’s the story of his first mission for British military intelligence and go some way to explain his cynicism in the later adventures. I hadn’t intended to write such a gloomy novel, but the English behaved very badly in Ireland and the tone reflects the reality of what was essentially a military occupation.
Burke in the Peninsula is a fairly straightforward war story. It shows two sides of the war in Spain, with Burke fighting alongside the guerrillas while William Brown serves at the Battle of Talavera.
Burke and the Pimpernel Affair, by contrast, is escapist fun, loosely inspired by Baroness Orczy’s classic Pimpernel stories. Burke ducks and weaves through Paris, freeing prisoners from a French dungeon and dallying with the Empress Josephine herself in a story that turned out to contain much more historical fact than I intended. (The real James Burke did infiltrate Napoleon’s court, although not in 1809.)
And now we’re back in the Peninsula, hunting down spies in best James Bond style while also getting up close to one of the greatest feats of military engineering until the construction of the Maginot Line in the 20th century. (And, unlike the Maginot Line, the Lines of Torres Vedras kept the enemy out until the war was over.)
Seven books, all different in their way but all filled with a mix of historical fact and swashbuckling fun. Why not read them all?
I published over eighty blog posts last year, which is probably rather too many. It does look as if people are reading them though. I’m not sure I entirely trust WordPress’s statistics but they claim that that has been a big growth in hits on my website recently, which suggests that someone, somewhere enjoys reading the stuff I write. Actually, I say “somewhere” as if I have no idea where my readers are but WordPress says that most of them are in the United States. This is odd, as I don’t sell many books in the United States. Are you real readers or are you bots? If you are reading this from the USA, why not say hello in the comments? And maybe even buy one of my books.
2022 saw the usual collection of personal ramblings, book reviews, historical nuggets and even (say it soft) plugs for my books. But what did people actually read?
Book reviews were popular. I often feel a bit embarrassed writing book reviews because, honestly, why should anybody care what I think of a book? I remember once reviewing a book that I thought was a bit of dire self-published nonsense only to discover later that it was actually a best seller on the New York Times list. All book reviews are subjective, but apparently some people like to read mine so I will carry on doing them.
Several other posts about my own books were also well read, which was nice. Sometimes I feel that people want to read the blog posts about other peoples’ books or historical events, but are much less enthusiastic about reading things promoting my own work. This year seems to have been a welcome exception. Thank you for everybody who did read these posts. Perhaps they contributed to a definite uplift in sales this year.
I’m always happy to feature guest posts, especially from historical authors. I’ve had some lovely guest posts in the past year. Carol McGrath’s recent one on ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’ was particularly popular.
Back in November I was very lucky to be invited as a guest to the officers mess at Saint James’s palace. I couldn’t resist writing about it on my blog and it seems that a lot of people enjoyed reading it. I’m happy to have shared my day with you.
Amongst the straightforward history posts, the most popular seems to have been my essay on the British invasion of Buenos Aires in 1806, which features in ‘Burke in the Land of Silver’. There was also a lot of interest in a series of blog posts which combined chatting about a holiday to Ironbridge with an outline of the town’s importance in the development of the Industrial Revolution.
It’s not just about the number of visitors. One reason why so many blogs appeared last year was that for a while I ran a post every week based on my wife’s diaries of two years before when we were in lockdown. These did not get as many visitors as the average post, but it did generate some discussion on Twitter and people who read them were sometimes very enthusiastic about them. Two years ago does not feel like history, but it’s amazing how quickly something that affected everybody so immediately is drifting hazily into the past. The government’s inquiry into what went wrong (and things obviously did go wrong) seems to have been set up with a view to reporting once we have all forgotten what actually happened. I think it’s important that we don’t, so I was happy to publish these diaries. They are honestly worth a look. Search for ‘Journal of the Covid Years’.
So there we are: the usual eclectic mix of subject matter. There was even the inevitably compulsory post on tango, written after a visit to Buenos Aires. I must be doing something write because you still read my blog — more and more as the year went by. Thank you very much for exploring this weird mix of subjects with me. If you’re enjoying them, I’m always happy to hear from you. And if there’s something you would particularly like me to write about, please let me know.
So here we are at the end of 2022.It’s been a funny old year, hasn’t it? A sort of good news: bad news kind of a year. Russia invaded Ukraine, but the war hasn’t gone nuclear. A small, self-selected group of not-terribly-bright people elected the most shockingly incompetent Prime Minister Britain has ever had, but she was only there for 44 days. Energy prices have rocketed to the point where many people can no longer afford to heat their homes, but we have yet to face power cuts.
Against this exciting background, daily life has continued remarkably much as usual here, though admittedly rather less warmly than normal lately. After over two years when even visiting Wales seemed like an adventure (and was often impossible) we have started to go abroad again with trips to Sweden (pictured above) and, towards the end of the year, Buenos Aires. It was lovely to get back to Argentina, but generally we’ve limited our travelling to England. It turns out there are still some fascinating places we have never visited before: amazing stately homes like Basildon Park and whole towns like Shrewsbury full of wonderful historic buildings.
Basildon Park
I’ve blogged here about all this, of course. Although I am always threatening to cut down on blogging, I’m still turning out something every week, though sometimes the space has been given over to guests like Carol McGrath and Anna Legat. There have been some brilliant guest posts and all of them are still available on the blog.
Despite all the excitement of Mr Musk’s antics, I’m still on Twitter (@TomCW99). I struggle to amuse on TikTok, but do feel free to have a look at tomwilliams4777.
In amongst all this excitement I managed to publish three books in 2022. The first was Burke and the Pimpernel Affair. All the Burke books are different and this one was a straightforward spy caper with more than a nod to Baroness Orczy’s Scarlet Pimpernel. It’s a fun read and I hope you enjoy it. Also a fun read was Eat The Poor, another story about Galbraith and Pole, this time with a satirical edge to add to the fun.
The third book to be published was Tales of Empire. It’s a collection of just four short stories. I wrote one of them, but the significant thing is that it appeared under the Big Red imprint so Big Red is now definitely a real (if small) publisher and not just a cover for self-publishing. That made me happy. (And Tales of Empire is just 99p, so why not treat yourself and make me fractionally happier?)
So maybe not that bad a year after all. And 2023 might even be better.
