There’s no escaping Christmas now. The Christmas advertisements are out, the shops are full of Xmas products and the Christmas lights are everywhere. Everywhere including Seven Dials, where I was out last night to dance tango and stopped on my way to take this photo.
Cynical old curmudgeon as I am, I still really like the lights here. It’s lovely that they’ve made the Seven Dials sundial the centre of the illuminations. When Seven Dials was originally laid out in the early 1690s the Seven Dials column was put at the centre with all the roads in the development radiating out from it. It was originally seen as a desirable place to live but, as the city moved westward, Seven Dials was left behind. It became a notorious slum and the column was viewed by the authorities as a meeting place for gangs of rogues, so it was demolished. The existing column is an exact reproduction of the original, unveiled in 1989. It is London’s only column sundial.
Seven Dials is the setting for my book, Back Home. It is the end of a trilogy of books following the adventures of the (fictional) John Williamson and his travels to Borneo and India before returning to London in the mid-19th century. The books are very different to the Burke series and look at questions of Empire during a tumultuous time (including an account of the siege of Cawnpore during the Indian Mutiny/War of Independence). Although the stories all feature a lot of excitement and incident, they also ask more serious questions about the relationship between colonisers and colonised and how this reflected power relationships back in London. They’re not as much fun to read as the Burke series but, I like to think, more rewarding. The paperbacks are cheaper too, because I really want people to read them. I’m so fond of them that the first in the series, The White Rajah, is the only one of my books that you can buy in hardback. All three stories are standalone, although you will probably get more out of them if you read them in order. Perhaps, given the Christmas theme, you might consider The Williamson Papers as Xmas gifts. I’d love it if you did.
Tales of Empire is free on Kindle until Saturday 5 October. If you’re reading this after that, you will have to fork out a whole 99p. Here’s why you should grab a copy.
Tales of Empire is a book of four short stories showcasing the work of four very different but uniformly excellent historical fiction writers. (Well, three excellent writers plus me.)
The authors were asked to submit a story set anywhere from the end of the Napoleonic Wars to the end of the century. Although they all write conventional historical fiction with no revisionist agenda, all four stories ended up challenging some of the more traditional approaches to Empire.
These are the authors and what they write about.
Antoine Vanner is the author of the Dawlish Chronicles, a series of novels (and the odd short story) about the adventures of Nicholas Dawlish who joins the Royal Navy in the second-half of the 19th century as the Navy is moving from wooden sailing vessels to the modern world of ironclad steamers. The stories show Dawlish developing from a very young man to a seasoned mariner, his own progress mirrored in the development of the ships that he sails in. Vanner is fascinated by the technology of naval warfare and his stories are full of solidly researched detail, but they are adventure stories too with Dawlish caught up in espionage and fighting alongside regular army forces as well as engaging in the sea battles that you would expect of a naval series.
Antoine’s contribution to this collection is a story about the Royal Navy’s attempt to suppress the slave trade and how difficult this could turn out to be in practice.
Jacqueline Reiter is a professional historian whose biography of John Pitt, 2nd Earl of Chatham, The Late Lord, is the definitive work on his life. The Late Lord is a joy to read and Reiter’s affection for, and understanding of, her subject shines through. A fictional account of a real episode in Pitt’s life is her contribution to this collection.
Penny Hampson writes mysteries set during the Regency. A Gentleman’s Promise is the first book in her Regency Gentlemen Series. She also enjoys writing contemporary mysteries with a hint of the paranormal, because where do ghosts come from but the past?
Her story looks at how social and technological change during the Regency led us from the world of the 18th century to the country we live in today.
Tom Williams (that’s me) writes the James Burke stories about a James Bond figure during the wars with France. The Burke stories have an enthusiastic following but the books he is most proud off are the John Williamson Papers which deal with more serious issues at the height of the Age of Empire. The first, The White Rajah is about the real-life James Brooke who became the absolute ruler of a chunk of Borneo in the mid-19th century. The novel looks at how his idealistic approach to government collided with the realities of the day. The short story is about a fictional tiger hunt that shows the kind of person he was and the effect his style of rule had on those around him. It was written after The White Rajah but it could well have been a chapter in that book. I hope it will encourage you to read the novel.
So there you go: four writers presenting their talents in the hope that you might read more of their work. And free. I do hope you pick up a copy. Here’s a link: mybook.to/TalesofEmpire
Last week Tales of Empire was available free on Amazon. I hope you got a copy. If you didn’t, it will set you back a whole 99p this week.
I’m never sure about whether free promotions really boost sales of books, but in this case book sales aren’t the important thing. After all, at 99p the four authors whose stories make up Tales of Empire are never going to become rich. (If we are ever all in the same place, our profits might buy the coffees.) The whole reason for producing Tales of Empire was introduce new writers in the hope that you will go on to read their books.
My contribution, The Tiger Hunt, is a spin-off story from the world of The White Rajah and I hope that it will make you want to learn more about James Brooke and his life as the White Rajah.
He was a fascinating man: a merchant-adventurer who bought a ship, ostensibly to trade in the South China Seas but really in the hope of extending British influence in an area dominated by the Dutch. He extended British influence even more than he had planned, involving himself so thoroughly in the politics of the local Malay rulers that he ended up ruling his own country: Sarawak in Borneo.
It’s a tale of adventure with battles and plots and midnight raids, but it’s also a more serious story about colonialism and how, even when seeking to do the best for the natives he thought of as “his people” the sudden intervention of Europeans from an alien culture had some unhappy unintended consequences.
James Brooke did an enormous amount of good in Sarawak and even today some people look back on the time of the White Rajahs as a Golden Age. But when his rule was threatened he could be utterly ruthless.
Evil white colonialist or a good man who spent most of his life (and practically all of his fortune) building a peaceful and prosperous society where there had been little but poverty and war?
I’m biased: I think Brooke was a hero, albeit a flawed one. However, I have tried to be even-handed in the telling of his story. The story is told from the point of view of Brooke’s interpreter, John Williamson, who is also the narrator of The Tiger Hunt He is caught up in the events but still sees them as, to an extent, an outsider. He is so shocked by the massacre that he leaves Brooke and Sarawak, convinced that what had happened was wrong.
I hope that you might read the book and make your own decision. It’s available on Kindle for just £3.99. Click HERE for the Amazon site. You can also buy it in paperback.
Recently, I’ve written about the Williamson Papers and how much I would like to see them get a wider readership. The first book in the trilogy, The White Rajah, costs just £3.99 on Kindle (or you can read it free if you subscribe to Kindle Unlimited).
The White Rajah started life as a story about the real-life James Brooke of Borneo. In the mid-19th century he ruled the country of Sarawak as his own personal fiefdom and was known as the White Rajah. I invented the character of John Williamson (the name of Brooke’s real-life interpreter) as a narrator but eventually I realised that the story was just as much about the fictional Williamson as it was about Brooke. Williamson becomes the moral centre of the story, watching as Brooke’s dream of an innocent Eden meets the reality of the politics of the region and the complexities of colonial rule.
It’s not for everyone but you might find you love it if you give it a go. Committing to £3.99 and, more importantly, a first-person novel written in a mid-19th century voice is a lot to ask of people who have no reason to trust me to tell a good story. (One major publisher turned it down on the grounds that it was too ‘difficult’ for a first novel from an unknown writer and recommended that I start with something more commercial, which is why there are now seven James Burke books.) But I have a suggestion that may make it easier for you.
Years after I wrote The White Rajah, I was invited to add a short story to a collection put together by the Historical Writers’ Association (Victoriana). I wrote a story from the world of The White Rajah, which serves as a lovely introduction to John Williamson’s story. And from 10th to 14th April you can get it absolutely FREE as one of the four stories by different authors that make up Tales of Empire.
So there you are: log into Amazon using THIS LINK between 10 April and 14 April and get a free short introduction to John Williamson and James Brooke. And if you like it, you can buy The White Rajah then.
I’ve been posting a lot about India over the past few weeks. I think people are getting a bit bored of it by now. (Let me know if I’m wrong. I have several hundred more photos to share.)
Part of the reason for writing is just that, having finally made it to the sub-continent, I was blown away by it and wanted to share some of my experiences. Another reason, though, is the hope that you might be drawn in to want to read more of my writing about India, but this time looking at my historical novels. I’ve mentioned a few times that my personal favourite of my books is Cawnpore, a story set during the events of 1857, usually referred to in England as the Indian Mutiny. It’s one of a trilogy of books that looks again at the glory days of the British Empire and asks if they were as glorious as many people like to think. They’re far from revisionist history and they are full of excitement and battles, love and betrayal. But they are, I hope, a bit more nuanced than a lot of novels set in the Age of Empire.
I knew when I wrote them that they would never have the commercial appeal of my books about James Burke, cheerfully putting the damn French in their place half a century or so earlier. But it has always saddened me that, though they’ve had some lovely reviews, the Williamson Papers (as the trilogy is called) have ever had the readership I like to think they deserve. So here is an unashamed plug for the books. They are each just £3.99 on Kindle, so you can buy the whole series for less than £12. That’s got to be exceptional value for money.
The Williamson Papers
[NB There are major spoilers here, so don’t read on if you don’t want any idea of how things end.]
The first book of the Williamson Papers is The White Rajah. It introduces us to John Williamson, a young man who runs away from farming life in Devon to go to sea in search of adventure. He finds it when he becomes the companion of James Brooke, the first White Rajah of Sarawak.
James Brooke is an amazing figure. (I’ve written about his real-life history HERE.) Brooke arrives in Sarawak (in Borneo) in 1839 and is made ruler by Muda Hassim, the Bendahara of Brunei. He starts with nothing but the most liberal and humane of intentions, yet goes on to preside over a massacre so terrible that it leads to protests half a world away in London. It’s a fascinating story of how the high ideals of some Europeans produced such terrible outcomes when applied to other peoples’ countries.
WHY READ IT? It’s got pirates and headhunters and battles and loads of excitement. This is the background for a story about a good man who ends up doing terrible things and how this affects the man who loves him. There’s a lesson for today in the story about good and evil in the mid-19th century.
In Cawnpore, Williamson leaves Borneo, unable to live with what he has seen. He sails for India and takes up a post with the East India Company. He is sent to Cawnpore, where he finds himself at the centre of the events that will lead to the siege of the city and a massacre of Europeans unprecedented during colonial rule in the subcontinent. As with The White Rajah, the background to the story is closely based on real historical events. Williamson, ever the outsider, flits between the Indian and European camps, passing himself off as an Indian amongst the sepoys (something that we know Europeans managed to do during the Mutiny). Again, Williamson struggles to reconcile his own liberal principles and the realities of colonial life. This time it is the Europeans who are (in Cawnpore, at least) on the losing side. Williamson becomes one of a handful of people to survive the siege and its bloody aftermath. The experience marks him, though. He has watched his Indian friends massacre women and children without mercy and then been rescued by European soldiers who strike back with awful savagery. Once again he turns his back on a European colony, this time to return to England, where he hopes at last to find peace.
WHY READ IT? The siege of Cawnpore is one of those bits of colonial history that we have decided to forget about but it’s an amazing story – even if nobody involved comes out of it looking good. This lets you top up your historical knowledge and enjoy a good read at the same time. And I can’t help thinking that if more people had known anything about the history of the region, some recent foreign policy adventures might have been given a bit more thought.
Although Cawnpore is my personal favourite, some people prefer Back Home, which brings the cycle back to England. It’s on a much smaller scale than the others, with most of the action set in London’s Seven Dials, but it features the same themes. Williamson finds a country he hardly recognises. Industrialisation at home and military expansion abroad have made Britain into a dynamic political and economic power that dominates the world. Yet Williamson finds the same divide between the poor and the rich that he saw in the Far East. A friend from his youth has tried to escape his poverty by entering a life of crime in the slums of London. Faced with threats of war with France and concern about Communist terrorists, the government needs to smash a foreign plot – and if they can’t find a real foreign plot, they’re quite happy to invent one. Williamson’s friend is caught in the machinations of a Secret Service determined to prove him an enemy agent and, in his attempts to help him escape, Williamson is once again caught between the machinations of the powerful and the resistance of the powerless.
Back Home ends with Williamson back in Devon where he started out in The White Rajah. But will he finally find happiness there?
