The Right to Write by Elizabeth Laird

There's been a lot of chatter lately about "cultural appropriation". The term doesn't refer to the natural take-up of one group's culture by others who live in proximity, when such markers as cuisine, art, music, language, costume and so on begin to be exchanged. It describes what happens when members of a powerful group exploit the culture of less dominant groups, without any true understanding of their history, traditions or even religious symbols. In the USA in the 1950s, for example, record companies hired white musicians to copy the rhythm and style of black musicians, who were never credited with (or paid for) the music they had pioneered.

A small British "Red Indian" innocently practising cultural appropriation

Thinking about this matter always makes me a little anxious. I have written about cultures other than my own for years. I've written in the voice of a Kurdish refugee girl living in Saddam Hussein's Iraq, a street boy in Addis Ababa, a young Pakistani camel jockey, a Palestinian boy living under occupation and a child enduring the civil war in Beirut. I have to say that I've always researched my characters carefully, drawing on my own memories of living in those countries, and interviewing people whose experiences match my characters'. Some day, though, I know there'll be a tap on my shoulder, and a voice will say, "Who do you think you are? What you've written is patronising/demeaning/exploitative/
insulting." (Insert your own choice of adjective).

If that happens I shall stand my ground. Writers write the stories that enter their heads, the stories that demand to be told. Readers choose whether or not to read them. And everyone has the right to reply, to object or to correct.

When it comes to writing historical fiction, we're faced with a double dilemma. We must not only create characters that are true to the cultures in which we set them, we must also make sure that they inhabit the often vastly different mental and emotional world of the past.

My greatest challenge was during the writing of Crusade. My twelfth century characters included the dog boy of an English baron, a Saracen boy apprenticed to a  Jewish doctor from Baghdad, the doctor himself, a Mameluk knight, and a whole cast of knights, squires, servants, kings and lords, both English and Saracen.

More recently, in The Prince Who Walked With Lions, I dared to speak in the voice of Alemayehu, the (real) Abyssinian prince whose father was defeated by the British and who became the ward of Queen Victoria. There were, fortunately, several accounts of his short life by people who had known and loved him. I could draw heavily on these.

My latest short novel (for younger readers) was an easier proposition. Its title is Dindy and the Elephant. The story is set in a tea garden in Kerala at the moment in 1947 when the Raj is coming to an end and the British are about the leave, The main character, Dindy is a British child who, with her family, is about to return to England. One day she daringly encourages her little brother to step outside the protective wall surrounding the garden of the bungalow in which she's always lived, and venture out  to explore the tea plantation beyond. In the course of the next few hours, Dindy learns that the India she thought she knew is a different place altogether, and that her mother's racist and arrogant attitudes towards her servants and the plantation workers are mistaken.

It was not difficult to put myself in Dindy's shoes. My great-great-grandfather grew tea in Assam. He was a dashing and romantic figure to me once, though now that I know more about conditions for the tea pickers in the nineteenth century his gloss has rather faded. The deed of sale of his estate mentioned four elephants, a fact which had always fascinated me. To research the book, I went to stay in a bungalow in a tea garden in Kerala. With its chintzy rooms, deep verandas, rose gardens and views over hillsides clad in brilliant green tea bushes, it seemed unchanged since the days of the Raj. Dindy herself wasn't hard to bring to life. I can dimly remember the world in 1947 myself.

A tea garden in Kerala

 So here's my conclusion. We writers have a duty to do our research with the greatest care when we create characters from cultural backgrounds not our own. We should not misrepresent, belittle, or repeat ignorant misconceptions which feed hostility or prejudice. However, we have the right to invent the characters we choose, to speak with their voices and walk in their shoes. After all, if that's not the case, we would be forced to write only about ourselves.

Celia Rees will be back next month

The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2014 by Elizabeth Laird

In the five years since its inception, the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction has grown in every way, reflecting the increasing importance of historical fiction in the literary output of the English speaking world. Historical novels, once disdained by the cultural establishment, now regularly appear on major shortlists and scoop up the biggest prizes. Last year, for example, Eleanor Catton's extraordinary novel The Luminaries won the Booker, while Kate Atkinson's thought provoking and engaging Life After Life won the Costa.

The six judges: Kirsty Wark, Elizabeth Laird, Elizabeth Dalkeith, Alistair Moffat,
Louise Richardson and Jonathan Tweedie

More and better entries come the way of the judges every year, and 2013 produced the strongest longlist ever. It was a tough job to whittle it down to a shortlist of six, and passionate opinions flew about the table as the judges met.

THE SHORTLIST

Life After Life by Kate Atkinson

This unusual novel is sharp, funny and profound. In another writer's hands, the constant re-spooling and re-enacting of scenes to bring about different outcomes might have become tricksy, but Kate Atkinson makes the device a compelling commentary on the tiny coincidences in our lives that can have life-changing consequences. The spine of the book is the character of Ursula, who plays out the different possible events of her life with consistent courage and feeling. A very good novel and a terrific read.

The Luminaries  by Eleanor Catton

The hype over this Booker Prize winning novel has focussed on its cleverness, the youth of its New Zealander author and its length. It's true that the architecture of the book is unusual and brilliant, the author is indeed young, and the book very long, but the judges were gripped by the story, by the diverse and well-rounded characters, the hysteria of the gold rush in Hokitika, and the playing out of each of the many characters' needs and desires, all within the framework of a mystery that needed to be uncovered. This novel perfectly captures the tone of Victorian antipodean dialogue. It evokes vivid images of the gold rush town, the diggings inland, the ships that connect the miners with the outside world, and it brings to life the complexities of the place and time: the despised and exploited Chinese miners, the few options open to women, the bullies, the crooks and the honourable men. It takes a little time to get into this complex novel, but it richly rewards the effort.

Harvest by Jim Crace

Jim Crace's Harvest is as much a poem as a novel.  A remote English village is caught up in a frightening series of events after three strangers arrive and the manor house goes up in flames. The narrator, Walter Thirsk, who is himself a relative newcomer, watches his village fall victim to the brutal economies of the English clearances as the feudal order of medieval England, its kindly squire and its subsistence tenantry, are swept away.
There is a mythical, mystical quality to Jim Crace's writing. His story takes the reader beyond its particular time and place. Its depiction of a society in the grip of a profound and destructive social change is chillingly relevant to us today.

Fair Helen by Andrew Greig

This is a rumbustious adventure story, bang on the tradition of Walter Scott and R.L.Stevenson. Set in the Border region between Scotland and England in the turbulent sixteenth century, the novel tells the story behind the ballad of Fair Helen of Kirkconnel and her lover Andrew Fleming. It was a time of banditry, or "reiving" as it was known, when lawlessness ruled in the border lands, and the feuding families, intense in their loyalty to each other and their hatred for their rivals, were not unlike the Mafia clans of today.

Some people will be daunted by the Scots dialect in which the novel is written, but a little effort in the early pages pays off, and you quickly get used to the rhythm and the few unfamiliar words. The glossary at the end of the book is useful.

A good old-fashioned yarn in the grand tradition.

An Officer and Spy  by Robert Harris

The Dreyfus affair, in which a Jewish officer in the French army, Alfred Dreyfus, was wrongly convicted of being a German spy and consigned to viciously cruel prison on Devil's Island, still resonates today. It caused a trauma in France which still hasn't quite healed, and the continuing existence of Guantanamo Bay provides a dreadful modern parallel. 

Robert Harris, whose historical fiction includes his Cicero novels (Imperium and Lustrum) and his World War Two thriller Enigma, has surpassed himself in this powerful and shocking story. The characters of Georges Picquart, Major Henry, Count Esterhazy and Alfred Dreyfus leap off the page. The characterisation is vivid and the dialogue pitch perfect. This book had me reading until three o'clock in the morning.

The Promise by Ann Weisgerber

The Galveston Hurricane that hit Texas in 1900 killed an estimated 8000 people, four times more than those who lost their lives in Hurricane Katrina. It was the worst natural disaster ever to hit the United States. Ann Weisberger's tender novel evokes the small island of Galveston perfectly. Her characters are caught up in their own complicated lives. Catherine and Oscar, from widely different backgrounds and with very different needs, try to create a family for Oscar's son, observed by the beautifully drawn Nan Ogden, all of them unaware of the disaster soon to strike. The reader lives with the characters in this fine novel, and will never forget the description of the hurricane itself.

Three of the judges at work: Kirsty Wark, Elizabeth Dalkeith and Elizabeth Laird

Literary Travellers Then and Now by Elizabeth Laird

Just back from travels in Kerala, around the south western corner of India. Here's a picture to set the scene:

The backwaters in Kerala

Florence Nightingale

I've been musing on the nature of tourism. The modern experience of travel is, frankly, shallow and artificial compared to that of our literary forbears. I've been reading Winter on the Nile by Anthony Sattin, which follows the journeys of Florence Nightingale and Gustave Flaubert, who both (though they never met) happened coincidentally to be sailing in the leisurely fashion of the day up the Nile to visit the antiquities. Their journeys took months. Nightingale, in particular, prepared herself assiduously.

She learned to decipher heiroglyphics. She read everything she could find on the religion of ancient Egypt. She recorded every thought and every impression in her letters and diaries. She had time to do it, too. Her journey took many months. She spent days in each place, sometimes returning again and again to a particular temple to allow its charm and meaning to soak into her mind.

Flaubert took a more laddish approach, spending much time in the local brothels, fascinated by the women he met there, then spending hour after hour lounging on the deck of his Nile houseboat, ostensibly doing nothing, while, no doubt, Mme Bovary began to take possession of his mind.

On the very evening of the day that my husband and I left snow-bound London, we were sweltering in the heat of Cochin as if transported by a genie. Victorian travellers would have found our approach hopelessly frivolous. I can't pretend to have learned a single word of Malayalam, and certainly never tackled its script. Instead of writing letters home, we skyped our children from time to time, and babbled to them (forgettably) about what we'd been doing. Instead of sitting for hours with a sketchbook on my knee and a pencil in my hand, I snapped away with my camera, taking far too many photographs.

It's clear from Nightingale's letters that her experience in Egypt had a profound effect on her. She had time to muse, to gain insights into the places she visited and her own reactions to them. We, on the other hand, spent no more than three days in any one place, and then sped on, afraid of boredom. We simply didn't give Kerala time to change our lives and our perceptions as Nightingale did in Egypt.

We had one great advantage, however, over Nightingale and Flaubert. They would not have found any novels by Arab writers in bookshops in Cairo or Thebes which could have given them instant yet profound insights into the minds and lives of the people they encountered. We were luckier. In India, especially in Kerala, there is a wealth of fiction that offers us mental short-cuts, taking us into the heart of people's lives.

Arundhati Roy's justly famous novel, The God of Small Things celebrates Kerala in unforgettably beautiful writing, taking one to the heart of the place and the people.

The backwaters near near Arundhati Roy's
childhood home in Kerala

David Davidar'sremarkable historical novel, The House of Blue Mangoes, follows the lives of one family from colonial times through the travails of the independence movement to the India of the present day. It's a book of great beauty, of atmospheric descriptions and memorable characters.

And for those who want to laugh out loud while they learn more about India than they ever thought they could, Shashi Tharoor's masterpiece, Show Business, takes Bollywood by the throat and shakes the truth out of it, in ways that you'll never forget.

        

(Michelle Lovric is experiencing IT problems and will be back in this slot on 10th December. We are grateful to of our Reserve History Girls, Elizabeth Laird, for providing us with today's post).

The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2013 by Elizabeth Laird

Sir Walter Scott

Stop the presses! News news news!

The longlist for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2013 is completed, and the shortlist will be announced on Thursday 18th April.

Why doesn't the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction make more waves?  It should be front page literary news with spangly stars on. It should be avidly followed by anyone who loves historical fiction, and should cause flutters in the heart of every writer of the genre. It was founded in 2009 by the Duke and Duchess of Buccleuch, who are kinsmen of Sir Walter Scott and keen supporters of his legacy and of the arts in general. With a whopping £25,000 pounds going to the winner, the Walter Scott Prize is one of the richest literary awards in Britain. Past winners are Hilary Mantel for Wolf Hall (2010), Andrea Levy for The Long Song (2011), and Sebastian Barry for On Canaan's Side (2012).

So what makes a book eligible for this award? The Walter Scott Prize has borrowed Walter Scott's own definition of historical fiction: the majority of the events described must have taken place at least 60 years ago. Books must have been first published in the UK, Ireland or the Commonwealth in the preceding year. The judges look for originality and innovation, good writing, and the ability of the book to shed light on the present as well as the past.

 It's easy to be cynical about literary awards, and having been shortlisted for many, won a few and judged several (including the Walter Scott Prize), I know that a good dollop of luck is as necessary as anything else. There are many shoals and weirs to be navigated before the winning book makes it into harbour. The first hurdle is to get the publisher to actually submit the book. This is surprisingly difficult. Some publishers are smart about this, others irredeemably dozy. The judges can and do call in books which publishers don't get around to submitting, but even then a publisher may take an unconscionably long time, or even, in some infuriating cases, refuse to let a book go forward at all.

Reaching the long list is the next goal. In the case of the Walter Scott Prize, several knowledgeable and enthusiastic sifters read through the entries and put forward the ones they think deserve to get through. The books are then circulated to the judges, whose postmen stagger up garden paths during January and February, their shoulders drooping under their book-laden bags.

The meeting to decide on the shortlist is always a humdinger of literary argument. Anyone who belongs to a book group will know how many radically different views a single book can evoke. The judges for the award this year, chaired by Alistair Moffat, are Kirsty Wark, Professor Louise Richardson (Principal of St Andrews University), Jonathan Tweedie of the sponsor Brewin Dolphin, the writer Elizabeth Buccleuch, and myself.

The award is ceremonially announced every year at the Borders Book Festival in Melrose. This takes place in the gardens of Harmony House, an elegant Georgian Mansion which is a stone's throw from the abbey and a few minutes' walk from the centre of Melrose. If you've never been to Melrose, or indeed to the Borders, you've missed out on one of the loveliest parts of Britain. There's a delightful intimacy about the Borders Book Festival, which is surely one of the most civilised annual events in the literary calendar. If you haven't booked up to go already, earmark the dates in your diary: 13^th to 16^th June. Check the website for the programme at www.bordersbookfestival.org. You really won't regret it.

 And here's the long list for 2013:

TOBY’S ROOM Pat Barker

BEAUTIFUL LIES Clare Clark

DAUGHTERS OF MARS Thomas Keneally

BRING UP THE BODIES Hilary Mantel

THE GIRL WHO FELL FROM THE SKY Simon Mawer

THE STREETS Anthony Quinn

AN HONOURABLE MAN Gillian Slovo

THE LIGHT BETWEEN THE OCEANS M L Stedman

THE GARDEN OF EVENING MISTS Tan Twan English

MERIVEL Rose Tremain

POISON TIDE Andrew Williams

THE POTTER’S HAND A. N. Wilson

   

    

     

    

A historical character you might not know by Elizabeth Laird

This is a variant on our occasional series of "Historical characters we just don't get" by sundry History Girls and a wonderful opportunity to introduce you to Elizabeth Laird, who has just joined us as a Reserve HG. (You can read all about her on the About Us Page).

Photo by A Mortensen

                                            Prince Alemayehu of Abyssinia 

Prince Alemayehu of Abyssinia

If you've never heard of Prince Alemayehu of Abyssinia, I feel quite proud to introduce him to you. He's gripped my imagination for many years, and I hope he'll touch your heart, too. A poignant, romantic figure during his short life, Alemayehu's story just won't go away.

The scene of his childhood was the mountain fastness of Magdala, the seat of his father, the Emperor Tewodros of Abyssinia (modern Ethiopia). A man of great vision, intelligence, drive and erratic temper, Tewodros had muscled his way to the throne, subdued his enemies and united Abyssinia under his strong rule. But he wanted, more than anything else, to make alliances with the European powers who were increasingly influential in the lands and seas bordering the Highlands of Abyssinia in the 1860s.

Emperor Tewodros's capital at Magdala

To this end, he wrote letters to Queen Victoria. They were in Amharic, the ancient, beautiful script of his mother tongue. No one in the Foreign Office could read them, and no one thought they were important. They were put into a drawer and forgotten.

Tewodros waited impatiently for an answer. He grew increasingly frustrated, and at last, irritated by what he perceived to be the arrogance of the few Europeans who had made their way to his capital, he threw them into prison and clapped iron chains round their ankles. They included the British consul.

The Emperor Tewodros

It took years for the British to respond, but when at last they did, their reaction was extreme. They assembled a huge army consisting of British and Indian troops along with their horses, elephants, rapid assembly guns, a build- yourself-a-railway kit, and, most important of all, the new weapon of choice for an imperial army – the Snider rifle. Journalists accompanied the army, and artists sent back their depictions of the country and the people by means of the newly established telegraph system.
It took this extraordinary expeditionary force months to sail to the port of Zulla on the Red Sea, unroll their railway across the desert (one of the hottest places on earth), and ascend the narrow, treacherous paths that led hundreds of miles up into the Highlands where Tewodros was waiting, filled with excitement at the thought of seeing a modern European army in action.

The British Expeditionary Force on its way to Magdala

The outcome, of course, was never really in doubt. In spite of the incredible courage of the Abyssinian soldiers, the Snider rifles were invincible. A short, sharp battle soon gave the British control of Magdala, which would be immortalised by the triumphalist British in the name of many a Victorian street and pub. Tewodros, having fought to the very end, until he was almost the last man standing, saw that the game was up, and shot himself.

He left one legitimate son, the seven year old Prince Alemayehu, and a young queen, Tiruwork. Before he died, the Emperor is said to have instructed Tiruwork to entrust Alemayehu to the care of General Napier, who was in command of the British forces (and whose statue glares into Hyde Park from the top end of Exhibition Road). He probably guessed that in the power vacuum that would ensue after his death, the boy's life would be in danger. He also wanted his son to learn what the west could teach him, to become a new, modern kind of ruler.

General Sir Robert Napier

In the aftermath of the battle, the British shamelessly looted the imperial treasury. Tewodros had amassed in Magdala a huge hoard of works of art, exquisitely painted manuscripts, gold crosses, church vestments and icons. Ethiopia is the oldest Christian country in the world, and its artworks are unique and of enormous value. These treasures were picked over by an expert sent especially for the purpose from the British Museum (they're still there), and the rest was auctioned off to the troops.
When the conquering army had reduced Magdala to a smoking ruin, they set off down the mountain paths for home. Alemayehu and his mother went with them.

Queen Tiruwork was already ill, and after a few days of being bumped along in her litter, she died, probably of TB. Little Alemayehu, who had already lost his father, his home and the world he had grown up in, was now entirely alone.

General Napier put the little boy into the care of Captain Speedy, one of those wildly romantic Victorian soldier adventurer figures, who had learned Amharic in an earlier expedition to Abyssinia. Over six feet tall, with red hair and masses of whiskers, Speedy and the little boy formed a deep and unlikely friendship.

Captain Charles Speedy in Abyssinian dress by Julia Margaret Cameron

Back in Britain, little Alemayehu was taken at once to meet Queen Victoria, who adored children and rather fell in love with him. She saw that Alemayehu was comfortable with Speedy, and arranged for him to be paid to foster the little prince. When Speedy married, shortly afterwards, he and his new wife became loving surrogate parents.

Speedy, a career soldier, was posted to India are year or so after returning to Britain, and Alemayehu went too. He seems to have been happy enough in the cantonment, playing with the other children, but it was not to last. The Chancellor, Robert Lowe, insisted that he be brought back to Britain and sent to a proper English public school. After all, thought the good Chancellor, he would only be morally corrupted by associating with Indian children.

So Alemayehu was put into the charge of the headmaster of Cheltenham School, Dr Jex-Blake, who had nine daughters and a cold wife. When Jex-Blake transferred to Rugby School, Alemayehu went with him.

The Entrance to Rugby School

It has to be said that Alemayehu did not shine at school, at least not in his academic work. He came bottom of every class. But he loved sport, especially Rugby football, and was popular with his classmates. His holidays must have been rather bleak. No one knew what to do with him. He was shunted round between the families of courtiers and government officials, and often taken to see the Queen at Osborne on the Isle of Wight, or Balmoral.

Prince Alemayehu as a schoolboy at Rugby

The army seemed to be the obvious destination for Alemayehu. He duly started officer training at Sandhurst, but he was very unhappy there, and Victorian racism meant that everyone assumed that a black officer could not possibly be put in command of white troops.

Before any further decisions could be made, Alemayehu developed pleurisy while staying with his tutor Cyril Ransome (the father of Arthur Ransome) in Leeds. After a short illness, he died. He was nineteen years old.

Queen Victoria was very upset to hear about the death of "dear, good Alemayehu". "It is too sad!" she wrote in her journal. "All alone in a strange country, without a single person or relative belonging to him... His was no happy life".

She arranged for him to be buried in the Royal Chapel at Windsor. There is a plaque to his memory by the west door.

The story doesn't end there, however. British historians, writing from the point of view of conquerors needing to justify their vastly expensive military adventure, wrote off the Emperor Tewodros as a blood thirsty madman. Modern Ethiopian historians have revised this view. Violent and erratic he may have been, but Tewodros is now widely admired as a social innovator, powerful soldier and clever politician.

A (rather fanciful) depiction of the Emperor Tewodros giving audience accompanied by his lions

There is, and always has been, widespread indignation in Ethiopia at the looting of the national treasury, and increasingly urgent calls for it to be returned. There is a move, also, to have the mortal remains of Prince Alemayehu removed from the Royal Chapel at Windsor, and reburied alongside later emperors in the Holy Trinity Cathedral in Addis Ababa.

I have always been fascinated by the "Abyssinian campaign" (as the Victorians called their imperial adventure. I gave in to inner urgings at last, and wrote a novel about Prince Alemayehu. It's called The Prince Who Walked with Lions, and it was published earlier this year by Macmillan.

We're destined to hear more about this tragic young prince. The poet Lemn Sissay (himself an Ethiopian) has chosen him as the subject of his Great Lives broadcast with Matthew Parris, coming soon on Radio 4.

(All photos Creative Commons or out of copyright)

Ferreting About - Celia Rees

I spent this weekend at the Children’s Writers and Illustrators ‘Joined up Reading’ Conference organised by The Society of Authors . The Conference is a wonderful chance for authors to get together, catch up with old friends, make new ones and attend various talks and sessions about writing related things. There was a good showing of History Girls (past, present and (maybe) future) and many of them came with me to a session on Sunday morning run by authors, Gillian Cross and Elizabeth Laird.

The title of the session was: The Art of the Soluble: how do I ferret out what I need to know? Gillian and Liz are very experienced, highly acclaimed writers. They have won major prizes, been short listed for everything, written I don't know how many books between them on all sorts of subjects. Neither is 'grand', although they could be; neither show any trace of arrogance, although in terms of achievement and reputation, they have every right to do so. They are the opposite: disarmingly modest and generous to a degree.

I like them both enormously, but what I admire most is their courage.They are brave writers committed to following the idea, no matter how difficult, or how big a challenge. They are also very versatile. Following the idea means that neither of them will be pinned down to one genre, one age group, one subject. They are also pretty fearless. They don't back away and they don't back down.

There are lots of things to be scared of in writing, mostly to do with different kinds of failures from minor to epic, and it's good to know:

a) That other writers feel this way.

b) What they do about it.

Gillian nailed the first, confessing to feeling 'terrified' when she first had the idea for Where I Belong, a book that was going to involve Somalia and Fashion when she knew almost nothing about either, but once she had the idea, it wouldn't let her go, so she set about finding out. This is what she does, no matter what the subject or setting: going to libraries, Amazon, AbeBooks, the internet, talking to people, watching films, studying maps and clips on YouTube, building up information, gathering detail, until she's got enough to write with accuracy and authority. As she spoke, the table in front of her piled up with maps of the Horn of Africa, fashion magazines, every kind of book from Somali poetry to The Devil Wears Prada as well as the fashionista's mood book she kept while writing.

As for b) (see above) Liz Laird said that we have to find what we're frightened of, face it and do it anyway, because the idea won't go away. She speaks from experience. Her novel A Little Piece of Ground was written from a Palestinian point of view and some of the responses to it were extremely hostile and deeply upsetting, but she knew that might happen and had to deal with it. Liz added her own material to the growing heap on the table. Not least, a volume of the diary that she has kept for many years. This is a uniquely personal and valuable personal resource. She doesn't have to wonder what she was doing on a particular date, she knows, so she didn't have to struggle to remember the incident that sparked her book, Oranges in No Man's Land, all she had to do was go to the appropriate diary.

Neither writer was at all 'precious' about the amount or kind of research they undertook for their books, whether they were writing contemporary or historical fiction. They did not really differentiate between the two forms, using similar resources for both. Liz warned against including too much research when writing historical fiction, citing the lack of period detail in Jane Austen. If J. A. didn't feel the need to fill page after page with minute descriptions of dress and modes of transport, then maybe the historical novelist should take a leaf out of her elegant notebook. On the other hand, a thorough knowledge is vital. Gillian mentioned the writer, Jill Paton Walsh who, to her horror, discovered a vital piece of information which could have invalidated an entire historical novel. 'What does it matter?' someone said to her, 'No-one will know.' To which she answered, 'I will know.'

This is a blog about historical fiction so I have to mention the closing speaker at the Conference,. Allan Ahlberg. He is a writer who combines all kinds of qualities: modesty, playfulness, courage, intelligence, wit and grace. I regard his book, Peepo, as one of the great works of historical fiction and it never fails to make me cry.