Scouting locations by Eve Edwards

One of the joys of being a writer is that you have a job that includes all the best roles in film making.  The script writing part is obvious.  As director, you plan the story, the look of your concept, set the tone for the whole.  You cast your movie without having to worry about including the latest flavour-of-the-month hottie even if he is not suited to the part.  The only fly in the ointment preventing this being a one person show are the equivalent of the studio producers and distributors: the publishers and the shops. But, hey, I suppose us authors have to be kept in check somehow, don't we?

In the gallery at the Globe

One of the jobs I enjoy most is location scout.  Sometimes this is straightforward: I have an idea and go and seek out the places that I know I am going to use.  For example, when writing about Tudor London, I took the decision to include the first theatre - helpfully known as The Theatre - in the third book of the series.  I had the star-crossed lovers idea at the heart of the book.  The heroine was to be a daughter of an early English Puritan household so her opposite is, naturally, one of the players.  In this era, Puritans denounced the stage as the work of the devil and blamed them for all social ills and the earthquake of 1580 with which I start the book (The Rogue's Princess).  The Tudor theatre is not hard to find thanks to Sam Wanamaker's Globe.  Although located north of the river, The Theatre was the same structure that was dismantled and reassembled as the Globe (see a brilliant account of this in James Shapiro's 1599), so a trip to the South Bank was obvious.

Chocks away!

Some research trips take a little more planning.  I'm now writing a two part series for the anniversary of the outbreak of World War I.  The first part, called Dusk (out Summer 2013), entailed a trip to the Somme area.  If you are interested in this period, I can't recommend too highly the museum at Peronne. As well as a clear narrative, they have full kit for different kinds of soldier, officers and men, laid out as if for inspection and lots of very personal items that bring the individuals into focus.

 For the second part Dawn (which I'm in the process of researching at the moment) I intend to use some of the experiences of the early aviators.  Well, naturally, there was only one thing for it: find out what it was like to fly in an open cockpit.  I went up in a Tiger Moth in June - designed in the Twenties so fairly close to the planes my characters would use.  I hope you like the full Amy Johnson look.  And to prove that, yes, I really did go up, here's a shot from the air.  It may look as if I'm the pilot but in fact I'm in the observer's seat - the pilot sits behind in these two-seaters.  Alex, my guide for the day, entered into the spirit of the thing as we looked for 'Jerry' over the Cotswolds.

These were planned locations but very often the chance-met location inspires the story that follows.  We are fortunate in the UK to live in a country seeded liberally with little historic gems.  The manor at Snowshill owned by the National Trust provided me with unexpected inspiration when I went there with my family on an Easter egg hunt.  It suggested what life in the ranks below the highest would have been for Tudor gentlemen.  It wasn't the manor itself but the hidden corners that spoke to me about the texture of this life - here the studded nails and horse shoes.  This set the tone for my inner director and was used in The Other Countess.

Perhaps you have a favourite location.  If so, do tell me about it.

REMEMBRANCE by THERESA BRESLIN

It’s that time of year again.

Mist wraithing through the trees, harvest fields the colour of old gold, and leaves resonating every shade in the register of ochre. Autumn: glorious September, brisk October, segueing into the bittersweet melancholy of November. My favourite season. Always. From when I was a very young child, fortunate to live close to woods where we went berrying, tumbling about in piles of Autumn leaves. Now it has extra poignancy as I have my memories of visiting the World War One Battlefield sites one November while researching my book REMEMBRANCE.

It was just after November 11^th. Remembrance Day parades had taken place and wreaths, still fresh, with bright ribbons, decorated the monuments and memorials. Travelling through France and Belgium: Albert, Amiens, Beaumont-Hamel, Langemark, Passchendaele, Peron, Thiepval, Ypres, - a litany of loss.

The deep sadness of the German graves at Langemark, sombrely guarded by rows of majestic trees.

Allied cemeteries everywhere. Stark in the landscape. An arresting uniformity of layout, yet empathetic individuality in the inscriptions and epigraphs, with a peaceful home-garden appearance of well tended flowers.

The ages on the tombstones of the dead on both sides heart-breakingly young.

And the book, which had been conceived as a single-main-character-plot-driven-tale of a young boy who lies about his age so that he can join the army becomes something more, much more. I felt I had a duty to those whose graves I stood by to centre the book in their experiences, physical and emotional.

REMEMBRANCE is the story of two families from vastly different backgrounds who live in the Borders. In one family, Francis, complex and sensitive, is older brother to Charlotte who is gently yet resolutely pulling away from her mother’s influence. In the other family it charts the awakening of Maggie’s self-awareness, the idealism of her twin brother John Malcolm, and of her young brother Alex, and the result of this idealism. The lives of these two families enfold with each other at home and abroad during World War One plus the shock of a battlefield meeting by young Alex with an equally young German soldier.

It’s a tribute to youth.

A Remembrance.

Photos / extracts copyright from Theresa Breslin Author Presentations: ‘Fact into Fiction’ and ‘A Sense of Place - Landscape and Location in Theresa Breslin novels’

Theresa Breslin’s latest historical novel PRISONER OF THE INQUISITION has won the teenage section (12+) of The Historical Association, Young Quills Award. It is also shortlisted for the Scottish Children’s Book Award.