Hijacking History or the Alarming Burglar Alarm of Ye Olde Cornwall Catherine Johnson

OK I'm starting with Poldark. Yes the new one. Calm down ladies this isn't Aidan Turner topless. This was in the paper. It's a screen grab. Cast your eye up to the house in the background. No, not Aidan Turner, the house. There between the down pipe and the shiny shiny modern glass window a boxy, twenty first century, burglar alarm.

BBC's new Poldark rescuing Demelza

No I didn't notice it ether, but I did read an article about the fabulous teeth of the lead characters and how the screenwriter  - congratulations Debbie Horsfield - argued that at least the peasantry should have some visible decay. I think we're all used to the glaring teeth on TV and I can forget most things if the story is good. (Although I was wondering about the bridles). And I thought Poldark with it's galloping and frocks and more galloping and tricorns was actually pretty enjoyable Sunday night fare.

So that got me thinking about the liberties I take with history. I expect most of you know my I am crap story by now, but yes, history lessons and me? Not a good mix. My report for History, aged 14 said;

'Catherine's written work is completely inadequate and disorganised...'

I did so poorly in what is now Year 9, I was barred from taking the O level. In fact, my mark for the end of year exam was the worst in the year. I am not a historian. So I can be excused if I don't get everything absolutely spot on, can't I? 

Well, let me say loud and clear I'm not talking about the big stuff, it's a matter of pride that mostly, nearly, almost, everything is as it should be, is as near to how it was as I can possibly make it. It irks when reviewers argue you got your facts wrong when you didn't. 

But I cannot lie. There are times when I have bent historical facts to my will. 

In The Curious Tale of The Lady Caraboo, out in July (I am sorry but you'll get a lot of this from me over the next few months) I took a real story and sort of riffed on it. Mary Willcox was real, but the story I've told has meant messing about with her age, shifting the time line around, in order to reference Frankenstein since you ask, and making up people who did not exist. I wanted so to tell her story as a novel but I ended up reshaping (crafting?) and embroidering and downright inventing so much that it is almost complete fiction. There is a disclaimer in the book, so that's OK, isn't it?

And the script I'm working on at the moment set in the latter half of the eighteenth century. I've stuck to the truth of the background facts. My characters are all inventions, but it could have happened. I'm worried about boats and sailings and desperately making sure it really could have actually worked.

I think that's all I aim for. Could have been. I wouldn't stick Queen Victoria on the mobile phone in the background or put someone in a regency frock with platform heels. I like to do the right thing.

But I have to admit in Sawbones there was one anachronism I couldn't get round. It wasn't revolvers rather than pistols, it wasn't any of the medical science. It was that most unremarkable piece of door furniture the letter box. Paris had them in 1790 but they weren't commonplace (note common place it could be argued that a modern man like William McAdam - my hero's master would have had one fitted) in London until the start of the nineteenth century. I tried to get around the letter box but couldn't. I needed one. So I kept it in.

Are there any things in your books that shouldn't be there? Have you noticed anything in your reading that's bought you up short?

Go on, tell all....

Belle - a film review Catherine Johnson

Sarah Gadon as Elizabeth and Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Dido

This film Belle, is remarkable for many reasons, it's directed by a black woman (and ex Grange Hill-er Amma Asante) it's historical and there is a woman of colour in the lead wearing what can only be described as Utterly Fabulous Frocks. These are the frocks of my nine year old dreams, the frocks that I longed to wear and now at last they're here larger than life and completely beautiful (as are the female leads by the way).

It uses the life of Belle as the starting point for a froth of romance and politics that entwines the case of the slave ship Zong  (a insurance scam in which ill slaves were drowned at sea rather than sold at a loss) with Belle's unusual social standing just as racism was being properly and fully industrialised. How fantastic to see another facet of British history bought to the screen in a stylish and entertaining manner. 

I'm not going to give you all the history, safe to say Dido Belle was bought up as a lady even though she was illegitimate and mixed race. She did marry, but her husband was not a preachers firebrand campaigning lawyer but a steward and they lived in Mayfair, were married at St George's that lovely church just by Hanover Square and she was buried in the burial ground behind Connaught Square.

Did I mention the clothes? i think I did, and I had been looking forward to this film for a very long time. My mother went to see it and loved it and she has good taste I took my best friend, she wept buckets while I myself did manage a moist eye.

I think the team did an excellent job with setting and costume, no mean feat for a British (read low budget) feature. The performances by the female leads and the older generation - Miranda Richardson, Tom Wilkinson and Penelope Wilton were all brilliant, sadly I found the love interest and the evil suitor a little lacking.

It was not the art house smash that is 12 Years a Slave but I would recommend it most wholeheartedly. Belle combines rock solid storytelling and a very handsome look at class and race constraints in 18th century Britain. Let's hope this is the first of many such films that explore all our history. There are so many stories that are waiting for this sort of treatment.

Of course if you'd like to explore this period in a book I can offer you Sawbones! Which by the way won the Young Quills 12+ best historical fiction award earlier this week. And I shall leave you with the portrait of Dido and her cousin Elizabeth which inspired the film.

Dido Belle and Elizabeth Murray 1779. Attributed to Zoffany

Catherine.

The Past is Now - Almost Catherine Johnson

In case you're worried this blog is simply a bit of puff for my lovely new book, please understand it isn't, but it does refer to it - ahem - quite a lot. But as the book isn't out for two weeks there's nothing you can do about it anyway and I assure you, as Emil and Gustav in Emil and Detectives knew in 1929, anything that's 'simply about advertising' isn't worth bothering with. 

 Last Saturday morning I had the honour of accompanying a Young readers' book group, they meet normally in the basement or the garden of Victoria Park Books in Hackney and they (joy of joys!) read, discuss and think about books. Each month it's a different title. They draw pictures, they ask very pertinent questions (they've read the books) and they are a great bunch of kids. I and some of their tame adults - the group ranges from around 9-13 - took them to The Old Operating Theatre, which is in an attic above a church (I am not lying) adjoining Guy's Hospital in London Bridge. The Operating Theatre was built in this attic, it's not a recreation, and although it dates from the early 19th century - 1810-20 - it's not so different from the operating theatres that Ezra McAdam, my protagonist would have known in the 1790s. Here we all are. 

We did talk about the book, which in short is a forensic murder mystery set in 1792 with teenagers. Silent Witness in costume with kids with plenty of body snatching and some Geo politics thrown in for good measure (that is sort of a joke, it's a romp). And they asked lots of wonderful questions about character - where do they come from, why Ezra and Loveday? And I was thinking more about this all week.

If you write I'm sure you recognise the two (I expect there are more) ways characters grow. With me they either spring fully formed into my consciousness or you kick them around until they take shape. Ezra sprung, this is how it was. I was in The Hunterian - another wonderful London museum when we passed a painting of some 'slave children with vitiligo' you know the skin disease? This was a particular fear of mine it was something  some of the more nasty minded girls at school used to swear would happen to my children, and it's always lurked at the back of my mind. Just along from the painting was a tumour in a jar. There are lots of tumours in jars in The Hunterian, this one was labelled 'cut from the cheek of a boy in St Kitts'. Now Ezra never did have vitiligo, but I immediately imagined John Hunter - or a man like him, in my book he's called Mr McAdam - visiting the West Indies to look for 'curios' and finding, not in St Kitts but in the Blue Mountains outside Kingston, a boy with a horrible tumour. John Hunter seeing the boy so miserable, bought him, took him back to London, whipped it off and trained him up as his apprentice. He's 16 now, clever, studious and always thoughtful,  the complete opposite to Loveday Finch, of course, who is a  magician's assistant and prone to rash and impetuous acts. To be utterly candid I think she grew out of Susan from the film Desperately Seeking....but honestly she's not Madonna at all, she's far more interested in swords and would slice you open if you started on pointy bras.

So there he was my hero, the story and the world just tumbled out (it doesn't always work like that believe me)

So why, another perceptive young reader asked, did you set the story in London? Well, to be honest London is a character of it's own. It's a true world city and, more importantly, has probably always been so. It's unlike the rest of England, an island of diversity, filth and opportunity attracting people from everywhere. And that got me thinking, if I was writing the story set now what would my protagonists look like? Who would they be?

The characters in Sawbones include Ezra, originally from Jamaica, his unlikely friend Loveday, who is British born but has made her living across Europe, Anna, the draper's daughter, from a family of Huguenot refugees and Mahmoud a prince of the Ottoman Empire on the run from school and much much worse. Yes, I do know he shouldn't be there, read the book if you want to find out why. Anyway I thought if I wrote the book nowadays and re cast the main players, Ezra would be the thoughtful overachieving overseas adoptee bought to London as a baby from China or Guatemala. Loveday might be Canadian, visiting with the Cirque du Soleil, Anna might be the hard working scion of a family of refugees done good, maybe from Somalia or Iran and Mahmoud would be the son of a Russian oligarch escaped from Eton with a price on his head from some or other of his Dad's dodgy colleagues. And apart from the improvised surgery and the grave robbing it still might work.