Getting Historical Fiction Right

I have no formal training as a historian although I have a great love of history – social history in particularly.  To write a historical novel, a great deal of research must be done, of course, and some weeks ago, while I was researching the Victorian period for my next book, it crossed my mind that there might be better ways of searching for precious details of life in 1850.  Wasn’t I just rummaging as one rummages through boxes in an attic?  Surely real historians managed to research in a more organised way?  This fact here.  That one there.  Filing.  Collating.

Quite by chance, I heard about a one day course at the University of London called How to Get the History Right in Your Historical Fiction – a Workshop for Authors.  What a treat.  And as luck would have it, the date of the course fitted right in the middle of a promotional tour in London for my latest book Road to London .  The timing was perfect.

Senate House

Senate House was the venue - a rather magnificent white building around the corner from the British Museum.  Inside, it suffered from the Rabbit Warren Syndrome but, luckily, the course tutor had stuck arrows on the walls at crucial points and we soon found our way to a small lecture room on the third floor where twenty writers were to spend the rest of the day.

 

Simon and willing writers

The morning session was taken by the course organiser, Simon Trafford, an academic who made us all feel welcome and took us through the essential tools and techniques of researching.  He talked about access to resources on paper through University Libraries where access and borrowing rights can be expensive.  However, we all pricked up our ears when he explained how access could be made by taking up much cheaper membership of scholarly societies.

Online access to resources is a great time-saver for authors – particularly those who live outside of London. The majority of local libraries offer free access to the Oxford Reference Collection Online at home to all ticket-holders and free access to many scholarly resources is available through library membership.

Historians traditionally prefer to view original written primary sources but with the rise of digital storage, surrogates have come into their own in printed editions, microfilm and electronic editions.  Projects such as Early English Books Online, Old Bailey Online or Historic Hansard Online make them infinitely more accessible.

1790 Parlour - one of the room settings in Geffrye Museum

Our afternoon session began with a fascinating lecture by Eleanor John, Head of Collections and Exhibitions at the Geffrye Museum of the Home where collections of furniture, objects and paintings are set in a series of period rooms from 1600 to the present day.    Eleanor explained how researching wills and inventories of household contents can give a vivid impression of how people lived in a certain period in history.  Unfortunately, small, everyday items with little monetary value were rarely recorded.   A visit to this museum is a must for any author writing about a domestic situation.

 www.geffrye-museum.org.uk

Elizabeth Chadwick, author of the The Time of Singing and many other novels, was our last speaker and showed us how she researched her historical novels set in the mediaeval period.  She recommended belonging to a re-enactment group where that’s possible and relevant.  She belongs to a mediaeval group, dresses up in costume and generally had a great deal of fun while learning a  good deal about the period.  She showed us an ‘authentic’ mediaeval cooking pot which she has used at home (by way of research) and found it to be not only non-stick but of such a good design that it is possible to lift it off the heat without getting your fingers burned – something you probably couldn’t find out from secondary sources!

Valuable chatting

The one day course was invaluable.  It demonstrated how to access many wonderful resources and provided an opportunity to meet with other writers and discuss the challenges of our profession.  We were all hoping to make researching more thorough in order to write historical fiction with a sense of authenticity.  

A splendid day!

Make your Loved One a Codpiece? by Barbara Mitchelhill

I decided months ago to make Tudor costumes to use in school events when I talk about Road to London.   I began with a girl’s outfit which was a delight to make. My female character, Alice, was a serving wench and wore several layers including a red petticoat.  I loved the petticoat - especially the fact that it was thought to have health giving properties.

In February, I started making the clothes for the main protagonist, Thomas, who was a scholar at the King's New School in Stratford-upon-Avon.  

Making the shirt and the doublet was straightforward enough but when I can to the hose (trousers) it was a different matter.  With the pattern I had from Tudor Tailor, there was a choice of two - The Venetian hose or the rather racy fitted hose with a codpiece.  Mmmm.  I wan't so sure I wanted to make a codpiece.  In fact, I was surprised to find myself repulsed at the thought of making (and stuffing) one.  I knew it was just another part of his outfit after all.  But repulsed I was.  

As it turned out,  I need not have worried.   I discovered that codpieces, which were at their height (no pun intended) during of Henry VIII's reign, rapidly declined in the reign of Elizabeth who tended to keep a tight control on what people wore.  As Road to London is set in Elizabeth’s reign, I felt that, in order to be historically accurate, my boy would wear the nice baggy Venetian hose.  Thank goodness.  Now I wouldn’t have to make that padded thing tied onto the front.

But the codpiece was not a Tudor invention.  Examples from the ancient world have been recovered by archaeologists in Crete and cutting guides for Renaissance tailors have also been discovered.

It seems that the codpiece developed out of necessity.  In the 14^th century, men’s hose were simply two separate legs tied together at the waist.  This left a gap over the genitals which were covered by the linen shirt worn beneath.  When fashion changed and the hemline of the cote or doublet rose, they revealed thinly covered genitalia.  So, for the sake of modesty, something had to be done and a triangle of cloth was placed over the offending gap.

Once Henry VIII came to the throne, the codpiece became an art form.  It was exaggerated to amazing proportions. It was often stuffed with a padding called bombast – a word now used to mean pompous and pretentious. It was puffed and boned and slashed and sometimes heavily ornamented.  It became so large that it was often used to conceal a weapon or to hide jewels. (Hence a man’s genitalia being known as ‘the family jewels’.)  Armour at this time followed the fashion and metal codpieces were added to the best full harnesses.

I put it to you:  is 2012 the time to revive this article of clothing?  Should we think of embroidering a codpiece as a birthday gift for our loved ones?  Could it be in denim for the casual look? Or tweed for the grouse shoot? Or maybe a velvet one for those intimate dinner parties?  I’ll leave it up to you to decide.

Check out the video trailer for Road to London  HERE 

William Shakespeare - Workaholic and Businessman by Barbara Mitchelhill

Whilst I was writing Road to London, I had to view William Shakespeare through the eyes of Thomas Munmore, my thirteen year old protagonist. Thomas lived in Stratford-upon-Avon at the height of Shakespeare’s success and would have regarded this local hero as a superstar in the way that today’s teenagers would fawn over their pop idols or their football stars.  Thomas must have heard the common gossip about the younger William who was probably regarded as a Jack-the-Lad, marrying in haste to a woman eight year’s older and gaining a reputation as a poacher.  Tittle tattle said that he had been caught poaching and had fled Stratford to become an actor in London – a daring thing to do when actors were seen as little more that rogues and vagabonds.

William Shakespeare

Thomas must have found that very exciting particularly when he had made such a success of his life.  Only five years after leaving his home town, he had written sonnets so popular they would have topped Waterston’s Best Sellers’ List and his plays were performed for the Queen Elizabeth herself – the equivalent of winning an Oscar.  Like many of Manchester United goal scorers, Shakespeare bought himself a large house – the second finest in Stratford with five splendid gables and ten fireplaces (the equivalent of central heating).  With this amount of wealth on display, what boy wouldn’t want to follow in his hero’s footsteps?

A sketch of New Place, Stratford-upon-Avon.

But William Shakespeare’s wealth did not come from his plays.  None were published in his lifetime and royalties and performance rights had not been invented. He would have been commissioned to write plays for a flat fee of around £6 for both the Lord Chamberlain’s Men and the Admiral’s Men, two of the most successful acting troupes.  He wrote in the way that Alan Ayckbourn writes plays today for the group of actors in his theatre in Scarborough.

 

But Shakepeare’s talent was not only for acting and writing.  He was also a shareholder in the theatre and I couldn’t resist putting my favourite story about Shakespeare’s financial exploits into Road to London. 

Richard Burbage

Soon after he arrived in London around 1592, he joined the Lord Chamberlain’s Men and became an actor-shareholder.  The troupe performed at London’s first theatre – named The Theatre - which had been built by James Burbage (the father of the actor, Richard Burbage, who was one of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men).  But the land on which The Theatre was built was leased from Giles Allen and when the lease ran out, the men quarrelled and Giles Allen refused to renew it.  This meant that the Lord Chamberlain’s Men had to move to temporary accommodation at the nearby Curtain Theatre in Shoreditch.  Two years later, James Burbage died having failed to resolve the problem of the lease thus leaving the Theatre in Allen’s hands.  Now The Lord Chamberlain’s Men were in danger of becoming homeless.

Richard Burbage discussed the matter with the five actor-shareholders which included William Shakespeare and they all agreed to provide 10% of the buildings costs for a share of the profits.  They set about looking for land to rent and, in December 1598, found an inexpensive plot south of the river in Southark and signed the thirty-one year lease.  They also decided that, as James Burbage had built The Theatre, they had the right to dismantle it and use the materials to build the new one.

The frozen River Thames

The weather was bitterly cold that winter and a great snowstorm blanketed the city just after Christmas.  But the shareholders had to move quickly before Giles Allen returned from the country where he was visiting his family.  Together with a number of workmen, the shareholders gathered in Shoreditch and began work on dismantling The Theatre.  A crowd of onlookers soon gathered and friends of Giles Allen arrived to protest and they attempted to stop them but supporters of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men were determined that they should continue.

The Globe Theatre, Bankside.

Each piece of the timber frame from The Theatre was marked and transported to the site.  Some say they were taken across the frozen Thames on wagons but this is unlikely, given the weight of the timbers.  They were reassembled on Bankside to build the theatre that was to be named The Globe.  But even with the timbers in place, the cost of building would be considerable.  Buying tiles for the roof was out of the question and so the cheaper option of thatch had to be used.  This was a mistake in view of the fact that the thatch caught fire in 1613 and the Globe was burned to the ground.

Shakespeare’s initial investment of £70 was a large sum in 1599, but the yield would be great
 – about £100 per annum.

How the Tudors Dressed by Barbara Mitchelhill

From the writer’s point of view, the historical novel, is like an iceberg with only the smallest part on show to the public. First comes the research, which can take months or even years. Next comes plotting and planning before the writing itself - and all this is the tip of the iceberg. But if our iceberg isn’t about to sink without trace, it needs more underpinning by getting it noticed. In other words, promotion.

My next book, Road to London, set in the Tudor period, isn’t published until April 5^th but plans have been afoot since September as to how to promote it. After talking to Harriet Castor about the stunning Tudor dress she wears for the promotion of VIII, I had the idea of making two children’s outfits as might be worn by the two main characters in the story. One would be for Thomas, a scholar from Stratford-upon-Avon, and one for Alice, a serving wench from London. I wanted children at school events to be able to try them on and discover how different these clothes were from their own. For one thing, the outfits would be made of either linen or wool – no cotton or easy wash synthetics. A company called The Tudor Tailor was very helpful, full of advice and supplied patterns for each of the costumes.

I drove up to Stoke-on-Trent to a shop called Abakhan, which is an Aladdin’s cave of fabric at great prices and not long after, I got out my sewing machine (which I confess I hadn’t used for ages) and began to make Alice’s outfit.

This is the linen smock Alice would wear during the day and she would almost certainly sleep in, too. No nipping down to M&S or Dorothy P’s to buy a nice nighty. The smock was made of linen so that it could be washed from time to time – but I can only guess that it wouldn’t happen as often as we would like in 2012. Please note that she would not wear knickers. The advantage of this was that it was easier to ‘got to the loo’ if she was out in the fields. The disadvantage was that rape was very much easier.

On top of the smock, Alice would wear a red flannel petticoat, firstly for warmth as Tudor houses, in spite of their open fires, could be bitterly cold. But the Tudors also believed that red worn close to the skin would promote good health. When Henry VIII’s body began to fail, red flannel underwear was made for him and, interestingly, Elizabeth I was wrapped in red flannel when she had smallpox.

Alice’s woollen kirtle with attached bodice would be worn on top of the petticoat and was unlikely to be washed often but dirt and mud would be brushed off. The kirtle I made for Alice has a bodice attached with ties of ribbon at the front. I think the ribbon would be bought at a fair or from a tinker passing by and might well have been given to her as a birthday present. Ribbons or laces were a very practical way of fastening the bodice as it could be loosened or tightened to fit. I could have made buttons. These would be made with a circle of cloth, gathered up tightly, then stitched with back-stitch to cover the cloth. Then, of course, you would have to make a button hole. All terribly time-consuming – so I took the easy way out and added ribbons.

Now Alice is ready for work in the tavern. Her apron is made of linen and is not gathered at the top as is a modern apron but is perfectly smooth. Her cap is simply a square of linen tied round her head to keep her hair out of the way.

With just a month to go, I must get on with the boy’s outfit. Not quite so multi layered as Alice’s – just a smock, doublet and hose. I’m pleased with the results on a limited budget. The two outfits came in at around £80 – unless you pay me for my time, of course!

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The Englishman, the Frenchman and the Olympic Games by Barbara Mitchellhill

In 776 BC the Olympic Games were founded in Greece and were open to all free men who could speak Greek. They were celebrated every four years in Olympia until 393AD and then, so records show, they stopped. So, you may be wondering how and why these ancient athletic competitions were reinvented to bring us the modern International Olympic Games which will take place this year in the UK. How it came about is an interesting story of the dreams and determination of two men.

In 1809 in a small market town in Shropshire, a most remarkable man was born. He was William Penny Brookes, one of three sons of the local doctor in the parish of Much Wenlock. Prior to going to St Thomas’s Hospital in London, William learned doctoring skills by working alongside his father. Later, he went to study medicine in Paris and Padua, developing a particular interest in the classical theories of maintaining a healthy body to create a healthy mind. While in Paris, his father died and William returned home to take over the vast medical practice in the ancient borough of Wenlock. 

At thirty eight, he became a JP where he came face to face with petty criminals and drunkards in the community which sparked his interest in structured physical exercise and education for the working classes so that, in the same year, he initiated the setting up or the Wenlock Agricultural Society (WARS) where anyone could subscribe to and attend classes held by the Society in art, music and botany. Subsequently the Olympian Class was set up in 1850 to encourage athletics and outdoor recreation by holding an annual Games.

But trouble was brewing in the town.

When Brookes invited ‘men of every grade’ to take part in the Games, he was heavily criticised for insisting that they were open to the working classes. The local vicar, the Reverend Wayne (another driving force in the town and a WARS Committee member) objected most strongly on the grounds that a large number of scantily clad young men would be performing in front of women. He, and many other local dignitaries, had received complaints from people who felt that it would lead to drunkenness, lewdness and riotous behaviour. Brookes and the Reverend Wayne locked horns, resulting in the Olympian Class breaking away from WARS and naming itself the Wenlock Olympian Society which continues to date as the organisers of the Games annually. The first Games were a great success. There was no riot and Brookes’s reputation was safe.

As in the Ancient Olympic Games, only men were allowed to enter the athletic events except one year in 1851 when an Old Women’s Race was held for the prize of a pound of tea. ‘Old’ meaning a female out of the first flush of youth (the average age of the women who raced was thirty). ‘Women’ because ‘ladies’ did not run. Though the title had been chosen with care, the event was a disaster. The problem was that the contestants, being poor country women and who worked mainly in the fields where toilet facilities were not available, wore no underwear and so, as they ran, they displayed more than was acceptable, shocking spectators of a more nervous disposition.

All this time, Mrs Brookes did sterling work in visiting local schools to encourage and oversee reading and sewing classes. She must have been concerned about the lack of competitions which girls could enter and apocryphal stories suggest that she encouraged her husband to set up competitions in wonderful categories such as ‘the neatest collar making’ and the ‘fastest knitter’ which I regret didn’t make it into the International Olympics. Prizes were given to the winners in all aspects of the Games. In the early years men were awarded money and later valuable prizes such as silver sups. Women and ladies were never awarded money, rather prizes such as a pound of tea. The children were given books.

The Games flourished and people came from as far away as Liverpool and London and in 1865, Brookes was instrumental in setting up the National Olympian Association in Liverpool with the first National Olympic Games held in 1866 at the Crystal Palace, London. Over ten thousand people came and W C Grace, who was to become a cricketer of renown, won the hurdles event.

Because of his interest in the Ancient Olympic Games, Brookes had for some time been in contact with the Greek Government who had staged a revival of the Games in Athens, the first is 1959. He even asked King George 1 of Greece to donate a prize for his Shropshire Olympian Games and received a silver cup. But his dream was of an International Olympic Games and in 1881 he wrote to the Greek Government requesting that an Olympic Games should be held in Athens which would be open to all nationalities. Sadly, his timing was out. Greece had serious political problems and his suggestion was turned down.

Most people of 71 would probably have accepted that their dream was unlikely to come true and would have settled into a comfortable retirement, but not William Penny Brookes.

In 1889, he invited a wealthy French aristocratic, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, to come to Much Wenlock. At the age of 26 Coubertin was the organiser of the International Congress of Physical Education, and had attempted to introduce physical education into French schools but had failed miserably for want of political support. When, in 1890, he arrived in Much Wenlock to stay with the Brookes family, his spirits must have lifted for he was feted as guest of honour and a meeting of the Wenlock Olympian Games was put on especially for him. Inspired by what he saw, Pierre de Coubertin’s previous ambition was soon replaced with another and, full of enthusiasm, he took the idea of an open international Games back to France.

There was some interest but nothing was done and, despite many challenges, it was Coubertin’s drive, determination and money that brought about a truly open International Olympic Games. He formed the International Olympic Committee and, with his many high-ranking connections, including people within the Greek Government, Coubertin succeeded in launching the modern open Olympic Games in Athens in 1896. His real stroke of genius was in using Brooke’s innovative model for the Games and in determining that, although the Games should start in Athens, they should move every four years from one country to another thus ensuring that all countries had an interest in the Games.

Sadly, William Penny Brookes died four months before the first Games were held in Athens while Pierre de Coubertin became Honorary President of the IOC. He held this position until 1937 when he died penniless in Geneva, having spent his fortune on developing his dream.

The Olympic Games live on, as does the work of the dynamic William Penny Brookes in the Wenlock Olympian Games which are held every year - the Arts events in March and the sporting events in July, all still professionally organised by the volunteer workforce of the Wenlock Olympian Society in true amateur spirit.

History by Osmosis

Barbara Mitchelhill

In my November blog I wrote how I disliked history until I was sixteen. I didn’t ‘get it’. What was history to me? Dates. Kings and Queen. Laws and treaties. But when I was sixteen, I studied the Industrial Revolution and I suddenly realised that history was all around me in my home town of Rochdale. I understood why industry had built up in the town; how people had flocked there to find work; how the new inventions had made manufacturing on a grand scale possible.

At last I knew that history wasn’t just about kings and queens, it was about people and how they lived and how their lives changed, for better and for worse.

Because my own introduction to history was dire, I feel passionately that children should enjoy the subject from an early age. Have fun with it. Feel a part of it. With this in mind, I must enthuse about the pleasures of living museums and I’m lucky enough to live near one of the very best – the Ironbridge Gorge Museum in Shropshire.

This part of the country is often called ‘The Birthplace of the Industrial Revolution’ because it was in Coalbrookdale (now known as the Ironbridge Gorge) that Abraham Darby I perfected the technique of smelting iron with coke in 1709. It made the production of iron much cheaper and so the great quantities needed for steam trains and bridges and other inventions of the 18^th and 19^th centuries were now possible.

When his grandson, Abraham Darby III eventually took over the running of the Coalbrookdale Company, he built the first major cast-iron bridge over the Severn in 1779 – an amazingly complex structure with joints modelled on those used by the carpenters of the day. The bridge was unique and rapidly became a tourist attraction. Indeed The Tontine Hotel was built opposite the bridge by the shareholders of the Bridge specifically to accommodate visitors who came from all over Europe as well as the UK. A prosperous town grew up around the bridge which became known as Ironbridge.

The area was an interesting one indeed with its ironworks, potteries, tile works, canals and bitumen pools. In fact in 1837 it was described by Charles Dibdin as “the most extraordinary district in the world”. With all this wealth of industry, it may surprise most of us that, until the 1940s, no one was very interested in industrial archaeology. In fact, the expression ‘industrial archaeology’ was first used by the Birmingham University historian Michael Rix in 1955 and we have LC Rolt to thank for stimulating public interest by his enthusiasm for the restoration of canals.

By the 1950s, the Coalbrookdale Company had been taken over by Allied Iron Founders and in 1959 undertook an early excavation of Abraham Darby’s Old Furnace and opened a small museum to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the original perfecting of coke smelting in 1709.

In the 1960s, a huge new town was planned in East Shropshire

by which time the Ironbridge Gorge was in sad decline and many derelict buildings, both industrial and residential, were ear-marked for demolition to make way for new housing and offices in the New Town which was to be called Telford after the successful civil engineer, Thomas Telford, who was Shropshire’s first Surveyor of Public Works and who built forty bridges in the county.

The Lilleshall Company and Allied Iron Founders were keen to ensure the heritage of the area was not forgotten and encouraged the Telford Development Corporation to halt much of their demolition work in order to protect the early origins of the Industrial Revolution. The young Michael Darby, a descendant of Abraham Darby I and then a student at Birmingham University, became involved at this early stage and is still today a board member of the Museum Trust that was eventually formed . Through their combined efforts, conservation began and the architect of the new town, John Madin, was commissioned to write a report on the practicality of retaining the old buildings. In 1966 he reported that, with care and effort, the area could become of major significance and, thanks to the Telford Development Council and many significant industry supporters and volunteers, the Ironbridge Gorge Museum was set up in the following year.

Telford grew and flourished as did the museum as buildings were renovated or moved, brick by brick, from other locations. The museum sites are located in the Ironbridge Gorge, which in 1986 was designated a World Heritage Site, and spread over a vast area of six square miles.

There are now ten family-friendly museums, from the Museum of Iron to the Blists Hill Victorian Town, where you can step back in time and visit a fairground, or sit in a Victorian school and have a lesson from a very strict Victorian teacher. You can exchange twenty first century money for shillings and sixpences and spend them in the sweet shop or the baker’s and eat a pie walking down cobbled streets, passing folk dressed in Victorian costume who will chat to you about the town. If you take a short walk from the Coalport China Museum (European Museum of the Year 1978) you’ll come to the amazing Tar Tunnel where, over two hundred years ago, natural bitumen dripped like treacle into pools and was turned into pitch. You can walk along that tunnel and still see the bitumen oozing through the walls.

You’ll need several days to visit everything but this is a place of delight whether you are six or a hundred and six. A place where you can see and touch and experience how life was lived in another age. This is a living museum. This is history by osmosis

Protecting our Children by Marie-Louise Jensen

I had a different post in mind for today, but want instead to respond to Katherine Langrish and Barbara Mitchelhill's posts a few days ago about bleakness and violence in children's books. It's a subject I have strong feelings about.

What I have always loved about children's books, is the comparative safety and comfort they offer. Terrible things can happen, there can be danger, unhappiness and darkness. But you know for sure that things will somehow end up all right. Perhaps not for all the characters, and perhaps not a completely happy ending. But there will be light and comfort and a resolution of some kind. This is no longer the case.

I know real life isn't like this. None better. Perhaps that's why I crave this in fiction. Young people are going to be exposed to reality sooner or later - some will be confronted with loss and pain very young indeed. It's not about pretending the world is all wonderful when it isn't. It's not about lying to children to protect them. It's about fiction finding hope even in these bleak situations. When it doesn't, I wonder what the point of it is? What kind of message are we asking children to take away with them?

It bothers me that there seems to be a fashion and atmosphere of pushing at boundaries and taboos in children's fiction - to see just how grim writers can get away with being and still being published. And the shock factor is often endorsed with prize listings, which raises these books above more positive ones as though they are more imprtant and meaningful.

But are they? Is it not a greater message to a young person to help them find the positive or seek towards resolutions than to sink into a pit of despair? I believe that it is. Especially when you consider that British children are so often ranked as 'the unhappiest in Europe' or have 'the lowest self-esteem in the developed world' etc etc in the surveys the media loves so much.

The trend is only reflecting the one in adult fiction/television of course - there it is also towards the more violent and shocking too. I notice it because I rarely see television (I don't have it) and on the occasions I do, I'm horrified by the graphic nature of the modern crime series. They weren't like that years ago. They didn't show horrifically mutilated bodies or linger on scenes of agony and terror in death.

And as we expose ourselves more, there's also a culture against protecting children. If you choose to enforce film certificates in your home, you are far more likely to be laughed to scorn by friends and acquaintances than praised for obeying the law or protecting your children. The implication is there's something wrong with you.

I have learned over the past few years that books I would hesitate to give to children because of the appalling images they've left in my own mind, sometimes don't bother children nearly as much as they bother me. A child living a secure childhood may enjoy vicariously experiencing grim scenarios, abuse, neglect and even death. It doesn't upset them as much as an adult who's been through it in real life and has a fuller knowledge of the distress involved, or who reads the book as a parent, imagining his or her own child in the situations.
Nonetheless, the trend concerns me. Childhood is short, it's unspeakably precious and it never comes back. The security you get as a child stays with you throughout your adult years. A child who is protected and happy, who feels secure, is less likely to suffer from depression, anxiety and low self-esteem as an adult.

You have the rest of your life to see the bleakness, the misery and the lack of hope - if that is your lot in life, or if that is where you choose to focus. Because it is partly a choice. Sometimes life can throw dreadful things at you. But it can be how you deal with them. And that's what fiction can offer us above all.

For example: you can look at a scene in the park and choose to admire the beautiful autumn colours, the rich green grass or the children playing happily on the swings. Or you can spend your time in the park focusing on the dead squirrel under one of the trees and dwell at length on much it must have suffered before it died. Is that deeper or more meaningful than the beauty? I don't think that it is. Let's make sure we don't forget to teach children to see and value the beauty.

The Horrors of History – what do we tell the children?

Barbara Mitchelhill

I’d already written this blog when I read Katherine Langrish’s blog posted on September 5^th on Torture as Entertainment and I agreed with everything she said. But I decided to give you all a double dose of this subject by telling it as it happened to me.

I had never written about WW2 before starting my novel Run Rabbit Run and I gave a great deal of thought as to how much detail of those gruesome years I should reveal to children of 9 to 13 years.

Although my readers are young, they are sophisticated in many ways. On their televisions they view war as it happens in Iraq and Afghanistan. They have seen the violence of the Arab Spring with people left homeless, their families destroyed - but I asked myself where should I draw the line in a book about WW2? I simply decided to avoid the more horrific happenings which could traumatise my readers. Not avoiding the truth but treading somewhat carefully.

Soon after the first draft of the book was completed, a librarian friend asked if I’d read Morris Gleiztman’s Once and Then. I hadn’t but I knew him as a wickedly funny writer for my readers’ age group. I bought the book and settled down to an enjoyable read.

‘Once I was living in an orphanage in the mountains and I shouldn’t have been and I almost caused a riot. It was because of the carrot.’

So began the story in Morris Gleiztman’s delightful, inimitable style which would surely draw in any nine or ten year old. I was already hooked.

This book is set in WW2 and is told in the voice of Felix, an achingly naïve little Jewish boy. But the author soon takes the reader into the horrors of Germany in WW2 , seeing terrifying events through Felix’s innocent eyes. People being captured and shot. A river running blood. Seeing a young friend and his surrogate mother hanging by their necks in the town square. I read on and I felt bad. Really bad. And if I felt bad, what about the nine or ten year old? Although the book is beautifully crafted and elegantly written, this cannot make up for scenes of horror one after another. I’m not saying that we always need happy endings. But I believe that to leave children without hope, is unforgivable.

Michael Morpurgo has written many books for this age group on the subject of the two World Wars and does not hold back from telling the hard truths of conflict. Some of his books do not have happy endings. Some leave the reader feeling sad – but, I believe, not traumatised.

As I came to the final chapter of Once and Then, I hoped (oh how I hoped!) that Felix would find a refuge and someone to protect him. Surely, surely the relentless horror must come to an end, I said to myself. But no. In the last pages, I found that Felix had been living in a hiding hole for three months, his legs growing weaker and his eye sight failing.

End of story.

And this is the reason why I am writing this blog. I am asking the question, where do we draw the line? Is it right, that a book written for young children can be without hope? Do we as writers not owe it to young children to exercise duty of care? To use the equivalent of a ‘nine o’ clock watershed’? I think we do.

Two into one won't go

by Barbara Mitchelhill

Writing is never easy. Often in the middle of creating a book, you find that you need to bring a certain object or a new setting into a story. Something a little bit out of the ordinary that would appeal to children.

This happened to me while I was writing Run Rabbit Run which is set in World War Two. I was well on in the book, having already done lots of research before starting. The story was progressing nicely. My characters had already run away from home, had been separated from their father and now I was about to send them away as evacuees. It was at this point that I thought they should experience an air raid and head for the safety of an air raid shelter. (Isn’t it wonderful being able to manipulate people like that?) I needed to describe the shelter but I didn’t want to write about an ordinary one. I wanted a special, interesting, memorable shelter. There must be some, I thought, although I had only seen small Andersen shelters made of corrugated iron or, worse, brick-built rectangles. They would not do.

Then, after searching for a solution, two came along like proverbial buses in the space of one morning.

Solution number one arrived when a neighbour suggested that I meet her old friend, Joy, who was coming up from Wales to stay for a few days. She had lived through the war and had great reminisces. I would find her very interesting, she thought. So I happily agreed to meet her the next day.

Solution number two came minutes later during a conversation with a friend. She’s the kind of friend who obligingly listens to problems of any sort and has the knack of coming up with solutions. Hadn’t I heard about the Air Raid Shelter Museum in Stockport? she asked. Marvellous place. Well, no. This was the first I’d heard of it but I was anxious to see it and that afternoon, I jumped in the car and drove fifty miles north.

The Air Raid Shelter Museum was in a narrow street in the middle of the town. From the outside it was decidedly un-impressive but the inside was very different indeed. This was no modest shelter. This one was huge. A mile long labyrinth of passages hewn out of the sandstone hills on which Stockport stood, providing shelter for an astounding six and a half thousand people. The locals called it the Chestergate Hotel. The passages were lit with electric lights and, if you got there early, you could grab one of the metal bunk beds. There was even a medical room lined in sheeting to prevent dirt falling off the rock and onto the sick.

But without doubt, the Jewel in the Crown was yet to come. (Sound the trumpets!) Around a corner, I found a row of toilets. Sixteen in all with a constant flow of water in an open pipe beneath. I couldn’t believe my luck! Toilets are incredibly popular with children and, if that weren’t enough, these came with a story. The guide told me how sometimes the children would play tricks by blocking the pipe at toilet no 1 so that the water built up, finally bursting out in a mini tsunami, drenching the backsides of those who were sitting on toilets 2-15 at the time.

I drove back home happy that I had found my special shelter.

The following day, Instead of working on Run Rabbit Run, I went to meet my neighbour’s friend, Joy. She turned out to be a delightful, garrulous Welsh woman in her seventies.

‘Shelter?’ she said, when I broached the subject. ‘Oh no, we didn’t bother with the shelters in the war. We all went into the old mine, see.’

She began to tell me how, when the air raid sounded, the children would run to the cave-like opening of the old coal mine and pile into the waggons which their parents would push along the rails into the hillside. Once well inside, the mine opened out into a cavernous space which the villagers, mindful that they would have to spend time there, had made comfortable with sofas, mattresses, old carpets and chairs. They lit it with lanterns and passed the time singing or playing cards or reading.

‘Great fun it was,’ said Joy. ‘Like home from home.’

Now I had two wonderful shelters for the book. Which one did I chose? It was a close call but I went with the fully furnished coal mine in the end. I shall save the story of the interconnecting toilets for another time.

Tripping Over Ideas

Barbara Mitchelhill

‘Miss! Miss! Where do ideas come from? How do you know what to write?’

My readers are young – nine years and upwards. They sit open-mouthed waiting for the answer, hoping to hear how inspirational lightning strikes or how I wake in the night with a marvellous, exciting dream that will translate easily into a novel. For me, this couldn’t be further from the truth. I often don’t know where ideas come from. Some drift into my head like an autumn mist or, if I’m desperately searching, I might find one tucked away in my memory bank, like an old photo album in a box in the attic. But then there are some ideas that arrive on a given day at a given time and I have a clear memory of that moment when the germ of an idea sprouted ready to create the story.

Last year, I was thinking about writing a children’s book set in WW2. I had vague ideas but no special focus. Many books have been written on this subject and so I knew I had a have a different angle. Then one afternoon I went to visit my Aunt Sarah, a frail old lady of 93. As we talked, she reached into a drawer and gave me a small round brooch containing a photo of her brother, Fred, and she began to tell me a story I had never heard before. When war broke out, she said, all the lads in the street received their call-up papers – Fred included. Some had already left for the front others, like Fred, were waiting to do their training. But Fred was anything but keen and one day confessed to his sister that he didn’t want to join up. He was against war. He didn’t believe in killing and he wanted to be a conscientious objector. Sarah insisted that his refusal to fight would bring disgrace on the family and he would be called a coward. Poor Fred. What was he to do? After a good deal of soul searching, he took his sister’s concerns to heart and, against his better judgement, joined the army. Months later he was captured and died as a prisoner of war along with thousands of others on the Burma Railway while Sarah was left to wonder if her words had sounded Fred’s death knell.

I had never considered writing a WW2 story from the angle of a conscientious objector but after hearing my aunt’s story, I realised that I had found the focus for what became Run Rabbit Run. I began to research the lives of conscientious objectors and discovered how their lives were affected by their choice. To begin with they had to go before a panel of local dignitaries and who weren’t easily convinced that they were anything more than a coward. If an application was rejected, the alternative was to go to fight at the front or go to prison.

So, I thought, what about the family of COs? What about the children? How would it affect them? Run Rabbit Run starts with Lizzie being bullied because her father hasn’t joined the army. In fact, her father has had his application to be a CO rejected. With a prison sentence looming, Dad takes Lizzie and her brother, Freddie run off to a place called Whiteway where they go into hiding.

The novel is a far cry from my aunt’s story but it was that which led me to an exciting WW2 adventure all about choices, posing many questions question including what is bravery?

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