One of the
speakers I was longing to hear at HARROGATE HISTORY FESTIVAL was author LINDSEY DAVIS. Best known her historical
whodunnit series about Marcus Didius Falco, she could not ignore her
well-loved hero, but she introduced some other of her titles too.
Like others
at this festival, Lindsey Davis credited Rosemary Sutcliff’s books for
inspiring her love of history and writing.
However, in 1989, when she started on her series, she was the only
author in England
writing about the Romans. Now she knows of thirty-five people who are, today, "writing in the Roman era.”
Lindsey
Davis worked as a civil servant for thirteen years, and suggested that it is
good for writers to have a career first. Often those hailed as writers at twenty
give up by the time they reached thirty five. Her first success was a romantic
novel that, to her surprise, was a runner-up for the 1985 Georgette Heyer
Historical Novel prize.
Having attended, she said, the kind of school that
taught her to be a good hard-working girl, Lindsey Davis decided that she would
set herself to write a book a year, and to write the kind of book that nobody else
was doing. After
finishing her first Roman book, THE COURSE OF HONOUR, about Vespasian and his
lover Antonia Caenis, she discovered that editors were unwilling to publish it,
saying “The Romans were too hard”. The book was not published for another ten
years, but she still believes it was her best book.
Just as importantly, this
was the work where she found her writing voice. She always felt that “Vespasian was a good
story” but it was published on the worst day of the year, the second of
January, the day where books are buried. Then,
needing to find something fast to write about, Lindsey Davis re-used her “Roman
background” research, and, as an echo of the world-weary detectives on the
radio, she found Falco’s distinctive, first person voice.
She was
pleased when THE SILVER PIGS - the first Falco story - was praised for its historical
accuracy. Back then she knew no academics. nor could she afford to take
public transport to study at a library, so most of her research was from titles found
cheaply in second-hand bookshops.
Lindsey
Davis said that she enjoys writing because “you can start off without knowing
anything at all about the story”. Those crime serials on the radio had made her
fond of baddies and heroes like Philip Marlowe. All she knew when she began was
that Falco “was a gumshoe who stops being a gum shoe”. She did the wrong things
too: she had no “body” until a third of the way through the plot and she killed off the blonde. By LAST ACT IN PALMYRA,
Falco’s character has developed and he is no longer a cheap tec, but has become
a spy.
Although the Romans are known for their
many gods, she views religion as a fourth generation atheist, and felt
that religious practice was, to Falco, mostly a social
duty.
Another
advantage of the series, Lindsey Davis found, was that she could go on holiday
to interesting places for research. Visiting Italy, she observed
that what was important to Italians was “family”, so as the books grew, so did the
Falco family, friends and relations until she decided the series was a kind of
“The Roman Archers”. She based Falco’s mum, who appears in Book Two, loosely on
her own mother but said that she got to know all the rest of the family by “colouring them in
as I went along”. She explained that the bankers and publishers were often the bad
guys. In fact, in that era, a publisher would be a banker, and Falco himself
would need the complication of patronage.
The early book was influenced by the fashion
for “makeovers” on television, and the archaeological discoveries on and around
the site of Fishbourne Roman Palace
in Sussex,
which Vespasian had probably visited.
Lindsey Davis’s training in the Ministry
of Works helped her spot some likely corruption. The small Roman villa down the
coast is made of exactly the same materials so perhaps the project manager was
creaming off the stock for his own uses?
This observation might not be true
but, as she said so inspiringly, “we can write the possible”.
The Romans,
however, are not "her" period. That is the English Civil War, whose history
she followed for her novel: ”REBELS & TRAITORS”.
Lindsey Davis’s family
comes from Birmingham,
where swords were made for the Parliamentarians so you can tell her view of the
Royalists.
Again, publishers told her “you can’t sell a story based in Birmingham” to which she
replied, “But you can sell a story with rape, pillage and murder”, all though
she also added that it was just a love
story between two people form different traditions.
Lindsey
Davis seemed to have found “MASTER AND GOD” a tough novel to write.
(At this point, my friend whispered in my ear that it was a terrific book and how cross she was that she'd lost her copy. Now she just has an e-book version. Me, I bought the book!)
The Emperor Domitian is, Lindsey Davis said, so horrible
that she had to put in other characters that she could enjoy writing. He is not some kind of “joke god”, but an obsessive man dangerously full of paranoia. She said that he was understandable once she saw
Domitian as the child born and treated as the “spare” heir, at a time
when that would make him very vulnerable, even to members of his own family.
Despite the requests, Lindsey
Davis felt that she had written all she could about Falco. He had reached the end of his story and got what he
had always needed: money to look after his family, and the uncomfortable burdens that brings. Falco had, she
said, become “a pinko liberal who can’t relate to having slaves.”
So, finally,
Lindsey Davis spoke of her newest character, FLAVIA ALBA, who is both Falco’s
adopted, British born daughter, and a female investigator, and who appears in THE
IDES OF APRIL, a spin-off series.
Lindsey
Davis warned fans that this new series had only the faintest links to Falco. This is
Flavia’s book and readers must not expect to find themselves in a Falco story.
Flavia has her own set of skills, and as a woman, she has the advantage of
being able to enter places where Falco could not. And more besides, I'd imagine.
Besides, in
a rather nice twist, Flavia Alba doesn't live in Falco’s villa. Lindsey Davis
has settled her in the disreputable Fountains
Court, where Falco lived so many years before. If
it has anything like the charm of Falco, this will be a treat indeed, and the
season of special book gifts has arrived.
Moreover,
Lindsey Davis is very proud of the short chapters in THE IDES OF APRIL,
especially the chapter that is just one word long: “OUCH!”
One day, she wants to write a
chapter that is just punctuation. Will that chapter be in the sequel, ENEMIES AT DAWN, I wonder?
SO, FLAVIA ALBA,
WE WHO ARE ABOUT TO READ,
SALUTE YOU!
Besides, how
can you not be intrigued by an author who has a section of her website designated
“RANTS?” A policy I might adopt!
Thank you for your talk, Lindsay Davis, and I hope that these notes
on your session at the Harrogate History Festival ring true, and apologies for any errors or omissions.
Penny Dolan
www.pennydolan.com
