Blog Posts

If I say ‘seventeenth century naval history’, what’s the first place which springs to mind? The Vasa Museum in Stockholm, perhaps? Amsterdam? Chatham? Ampthill?

(OK, yes, that last one would just be me, then…)

Wherever you’ve thought of, I’ll bet it’s not Southend-on-Sea, home to shrimps, Kiss-me-Quick hats and the longest pleasure pier in the world. But all that might be about to change if a group of dedicated enthusiasts get their way.

Last Saturday, I attended a superb event in Southend called ‘Discover the London: Southend’s Time Capsule’. This took place on the exact 355th anniversary of the destruction of King Charles II’s great ship London by an accidental explosion off Southend, and showcased the history and archaeology of the wreck. This has been dived for the last fifteen years or so by local man Steve Ellis and his team, and some of the finds they’ve brought up have been absolutely stunning. But the wreck is under serious threat. It lies at the very edge of the dredged channel up to the huge new dock developments to the east of London, and ever larger ships are now using these waters, gradually rapidly destroying the wreck and making each dive a hair-raising experience for those involved. So the situation is urgent, and the ‘Discover the London’ event was intended to showcase it and to raise awareness among the local community.

I was delighted and privileged to have been asked to be one of the speakers, and was third up in the morning session on the history of the ship. First to speak was John Goldsmith, chairman of the Cromwell Association and former curator of the Cromwell Museum in Huntingdon. John provided a quick and clear overview of Cromwell’s life and career, setting the building of the London in the context of the political troubles of the 1650s. Next up was my old friend Richard Endsor, speaking about the construction of the ship. I know just how much effort Richard puts into preparing his talks, and the hard work certainly paid off on Saturday, when he delivered an impressive and fluent study illustrated with his own exceptionally detailed drawings of the various stages of the ship’s construction. (More of Richard anon.) That left me as the last speaker before lunch, talking about the later career of the London, Samuel Pepys’s dealings with it, and the impact of its sinking. Nobody booed or threw anything, which is always a good result, and I even fitted in a blatant plug for the third Quinton book, The Blast That Tears The Skies, which includes the blowing up of the London as the backdrop to scenes with both Matthew Quinton and Pepys. This had the desired effect as I sold out of my copies of the book during the lunch break!

The interval gave opportunities both to find somewhere good to eat (I now have an excellent pub recommendation if you ever find yourself in Southend) and to explore the stalls which had been laid out for different organisations. Then it was back for the afternoon session, chaired by living legend Phil Harding of Time Team fame. First up was the hero himself, Steve Ellis, the man who found the wreck and who has dived it with unfailing dedication and good humour no matter what brickbats officialdom has thrown his way (of which also more anon). Steve showed images of the shocking conditions experienced by the divers, but also of some of the stunning finds which have been brought up from the wreck. It’s always salutary and uplifting to hear a true enthusiast talk about what’s become a real passion for him or her, and Steve certainly fits that bill. Then came Hefin Meara of Historic England, who presented an outline of HE’s involvement with the wreck over the years. In some ways he had something of a thankless task, for HE’s policies have sometimes caused disquiet and appeared, rightly or wrongly, to be somewhat inflexible. Hefin received some pretty direct questioning from Richard Endsor about HE’s current perceived reluctance to recover and record artefacts from the wreck; as Richard pointed out, the rapid destruction of the wreck means that invaluable and potentially hugely important items are literally being destroyed before the eyes of the divers, which can surely only be heartbreaking. The spontaneous applause which Richard received suggested that not a few of the audience shared his opinion.

A disclaimer – when it comes to such matters, I’m a complete layman. I’m a historian, not an archaeologist (although I did once go on a dig, spending a week in torrential rain during an excavation which culminated in the professionals getting very excited about a single small piece of charred wood). But to a historian, the notion of priceless evidence being allowed simply to disappear, when other options are available, is complete anathema. If there’s no funding to conserve raised items, so be it; but I’m afraid I simply don’t understand why recovering items, properly recording them, and then maybe reburying them to await (perhaps) more generously funded days in the future seems to be problematic. Partly, though, that was the entire idea of the ‘Discover the London‘ day, namely to launch an ongoing campaign to raise £200,000 a year to allow the recovery and proper conservation of artefacts – after all, saving an item and putting it on public display is surely the best option by a considerable distance!

Before some of us got too depressed, though, the day ended with a barnstorming performance from Mark Beattie-Edwards, CEO of the Nautical Archaeology Society, putting forward his radical – and as he freely admitted, incredibly expensive – solution to the problem of the London, namely sinking a large box to surround the wreck, then bringing it ashore and excavating it at leisure. This may sound like science fiction, but it’s actually been done – by the Chinese, with a fabulous medieval wreck called the Nanhai One (see Sam Willis’s short film about the wreck). Mark even showed designs for a futuristic museum which could become a real showpiece for Southend, allowing the public to watch divers excavate the wreck. The two problems, of course, are the amount this would cost (Mark referred to it as ‘the big number’ which is so huge it’s not worth thinking about, preferring people to focus on the more attainable £200,000 a year instead) and the time it would take to deliver such a solution, given the speed at which the wreck is being destroyed by ever-larger monster ships bringing the great British public all their absolutely indispensable must-have items. Nevertheless Mark presented the case with infectious enthusiasm, even if Phil Harding had an impossible task to keep him to time!

So all in all it was a really excellent day, and I’m proud to have been a part of it. I’ll also continue to support the project in every way I can, so this definitely not the last you’ll hear about it in this blog!

In conclusion, though, a somewhat iconoclastic thought occurred to me as I was driving home via the delights of the M25. I have absolutely no doubt that those involved with the ship from Historic England (and the purse-string-owning ‘powers that be’ above them) are well-meaning, and that their decisions and policies are based on what they genuinely believe to be good practice. But I have a sneaking suspicion that at some point in the future, they may come to be viewed as we now tend to regard Victorian ‘restorers’ and ‘improvers’ of medieval churches, not to mention those earnest souls in the 1950s and 1960s who decided that cement was an absolutely ideal material to use in the repair of historic buildings. So I really hope the London project gets the support it deserves – you can find out even more about it, and make donations, here – while I also hope that everyone who has dealings with the wreck ends up on the right side of history, instead of coming to a terrible realisation…

 

The naming of warships has always been highly political, and in Britain, with the exception of one interval of eleven years, it has always been royal. For many centuries, monarchs have taken personal responsibility for naming at least some of their ships, particularly the most prestigious ones…Both in their names and their elaborate decoration, King Henry V’s great ships, the likes of the Holighost and the Grace Dieu, reflected both his profound religiosity and his political ambitions. Henry VIII personally dedicated the Henry Grace a Dieu on 13 June 1514, and famously named the Mary Rose after his favourite sister. He also named the Virgin Mary in 1515, dressed in a sailor’s coat and carrying a large nautical whistle; a mass to bless the new ship was celebrated by the Bishop of Durham, an age-old practice that ceased when Henry broke with Rome. Warship launches then became exclusively secular affairs, a situation which persisted until an Anglican ceremony was belatedly introduced in 1875. Elizabeth I attended launches, such as those of the Due Repulse in 1596, but it is less clear whether she actually bestowed the names herself.

So wrote Historian Me in Kings of the Sea, but that last sentence has niggled at me ever since I wrote it.

Of course, I should have known better. The idea that Queen Elizabeth I, of all people, would have willingly delegated one of her royal prerogatives to some lesser man or other is patently ludicrous – which is a good enough excuse to quote the Blackadder version of the Virgin Queen, ‘I may have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a concrete elephant’. Having said that, a serious academic historian will now step forward and say ‘Ah, but where’s your proof, drawn from absolutely unimpeachable primary sources in obscure repositories, written in an unbelievably turgid manner and published in an august peer-reviewed journal with a circulation of 23 and charging £50 a time to download a PDF of each page?’ At this point, Historian Me would retreat, bloodied and defeated, because again as I wrote in Kings of the Sea, referring to King Charles II, ‘The question of how and why a particular name was chosen at a particular time is unlikely ever to be answered satisfactorily, essentially because the naming process seems to have taken place entirely in the king’s head.’ Now, I’ve never studied primary sources from the reign of Elizabeth in anything like the same quantity as I have for the Restoration period; maybe there’s some obscure letter out there in a neglected archive in which Elizabeth writes to Leicester, Burghley or Walsingham, ‘Hey guys, I named a galleon Revenge today! Cool name or what? LOL!’ However, working on the assumption that there’s probably no such source brings one to the best evidence of all, the names of the ships themselves, and this was how my ‘lightbulb moment’ occurred.

In the new Stannard novel, which I’m writing at the moment, I’ve got a couple of scenes set aboard the Rainbow, flagship of Lord Henry Seymour, commanding the Narrow Seas Fleet during the Spanish Armada campaign in 1588. The reasons for having scenes set there are currently subject to the strict Ninja-enforced author’s code of omerta (aka ‘I might bin them during the edits’), but this got me thinking about exactly why some of the English ships of the time had the names they did. After all, Rainbow isn’t a terribly warlike name. But then I thought about the famous ‘Rainbow Portrait’ of Queen Elizabeth and wondered about a possible connection, so I did a bit of digging. In fact, the rainbow was a symbol of considerable political or religious significance, depending on which historian you read – of course, it might well have been both, but historians are innately incapable of accepting that another historian might have an equally valid point of view and body of evidence to set against their own perfect and unchallengeable theory. The rainbow can be seen as a symbol for the queen as a bringer of peace, or of God’s promise to the world and Elizabeth’s role as His representative. (For any historians reading this and who are getting twitchy, here’s a kosher footnote to keep you happy – *) Either way, it was a symbol that was clearly important to the queen, as both the portrait and the ship’s name suggest.

If my hypothesis about Rainbow, namely that the queen chose the name herself, is correct, then it’s possible that other iconic warship names which made their first appearance in Elizabeth’s reign – Dreadnought, Warspite, Victory, Triumph, Revenge, Repulse, Merhonour and the rest – represented qualities which the queen particularly valued, or which reflected her sentiments at a particular moment. (A closer analysis of the correlation between the date of a ship’s launch and contemporary events than I have time to do in a weekly blog might bear some interesting fruit.) Again, proof that this was so is far too elusive for a peer-reviewed article, but there’s more circumstantial evidence which can be brought forward. Another of Elizabeth’s great ships, albeit a rebuild of one originally launched in her father’s reign, was the Antelope. Why use the name of a beast which wasn’t native to the British Isles and wasn’t especially ferocious, unlike the obvious Lion and Tiger? Because, I’d suggest, the antelope appeared on the coats-of-arms of the Lancastrian kings, especially of the famous hero-king Henry V. Navies know this sort of thing instinctively, even if historians don’t. On 14 May 2018, it was announced that the seventh Astute-class nuclear submarine would be named HMS Agincourt. Its ship’s badge? Yes, the antelope.

My final piece of completely circumstantial evidence, though, is the name of the large man-of-war launched in 1563, the White Bear. Surely just ‘Bear’ would have been sufficient to convey the essential ‘more ferocious than an antelope’ quality, along similar lines to the names Lion and Tiger? But in 1563, Queen Elizabeth was probably the closest she ever came to marrying anybody. The object of her affections? Robert Dudley, soon to be Earl of Leicester. His family crest? The white bear which now adorns the coat of arms of Warwickshire. Unless Elizabeth delegated the naming of the ship to Dudley, which as I suggested above is surely unlikely, then the name can only have been bestowed as a tribute to the man who might then have been within touching distance of becoming her husband.

So, then: Queen Elizabeth I named warships herself, thus giving the Royal Navy some of its most famous and abiding ship names. FACT, as a head of a different state from a different era might put it.

 

(* R Graziani, ‘The “Rainbow Portrait” of Queen Elizabeth I and its Religious Symbolism’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 35 (1972), 247-59.) 

 

It’s not often that an opportunity comes along to simultaneously talk about your subject, meet old friends, eat cake and, most importantly, raise money for an excellent cause. But that’s exactly what I’ll be doing on 29 May, the 360th anniversary of the Restoration of the monarchy in the shape of King Charles II. This excellent event is the brainchild of Claire Hobson, a huge fan of the period who’s very active on social media, and is in aid of the mental health charity Mind. More details and a booking link can be found here – it’s all happening at Canada Water library, which is new territory for me, although of course it’s very close to my regular stamping ground in Greenwich (definitely peak ‘Restoration era’ territory!) I’m going to be talking about writing fiction set in the period, and the other speakers are established authorities as well as being people who know how to deliver interesting talks with real ‘zing’. I’m really looking forward to catching up with some people I haven’t seen for ages, such as Rebecca Rideal, author of the brilliant book 1666: Plague, War and Hellfire, and Andrea Zuvich, whose new book on sex and sexuality in the Stuart age should be an absolute must for anybody interested in the era or just, umm, sex. It’ll also be great finally to meet in the flesh some people who I only know from social media, such as Dr Jonathan Healey from Oxford University, whose tweets about 17th century history are always among the best things in my Twitter feed. So if you fancy what should be a fun and informative day in aid of a great cause – and, let me emphasise this once again, with cake too – then do come along!

***

In other news, I’m hard at work on the third book in the Stannard trilogy, i.e. ‘the one with the Spanish Armada in it’, hence the relatively intermittent blogging at the moment. But it’s interesting how writing fiction sometimes provides ‘lightbulb moments’ which cross over into my serious academic work, and next week, I’ll be blogging about one such interesting insight which recently came along unexpectedly, slapped me in the face and demanded to be publicised to the world. Let’s say no more for now other than it presents an insight into Queen Elizabeth I which no other historian or, indeed, novelist, has ever presented. David Starkey, eat your heart out.

I’m delighted to welcome a guest blogger this week, namely my old friend Richard Endsor, who has contributed to this site before. Richard will also be a fellow speaker at the event in Southend on 7 March commemorating the London wreck of 1665, which I blogged about on this site last week. Today, though, he introduces his new book – so take it away in your own inimitable style, Richard!

***

Some ten years ago I published my first book about shipbuilding, entitled The Restoration Warship. It was the result of many years of study about the process of building a seventeenth century warship based on the considerable written sources for the 30 new ships of 1677. At the Mountbatten Maritime Awards for Best Literary Contribution 2010, held in London at the Institute of Directors, the book was awarded the Certificate of Merit for the best illustrated title. However, the book was not quite the complete story about shipbuilding as I was aware of one or two unpleasantly difficult subjects I had not really addressed. I skipped over them at the time being fairly confident that no one would notice and take me to task. My conscience troubled me, and considering myself a reasonably decent sort of fellow (guffaw! – ed.) I felt obliged to spend countless hours putting things to rights in this new book, The Master Shipwright’s Secrets.  While I used the Third Rate Lenox as the star character for The Restoration Warship, I used the Fourth Rate Tyger of 1681 for The Master Shipwright’s Secrets.

The first difficult subject to address was how the Master Shipwrights obtained their rising and narrowing lines used to control the hull shape. A number of contemporary treatises on the subject exist, such as Anthony Deane’s Doctrine of Naval Architecture. Although incredibly useful, its explanations are in basic form using simple arcs of a circle when they must have been much more complex in reality. One of the great engineers of the Restoration age, Sir Henry Sheers, Fellow of the Royal Society, wrote to Samuel Pepys concerning shipwright’s secrets and their mysterious lines “the rising and narrowing of the breadth, floors, etc are all marked up on moulds and rods which lay up and down among the workmen and marked upon the timbers themselves which marks and measures are the results of those mysterious lines as they are called by which a ship is built.”

The ever-inquisitive Samuel Pepys kept a paper written by the shipwright, John Shish, containing the three-dimensional digital co-ordinates of the mysterious lines for every frame position defining the hull surface of a fourth-rate ship. By working backwards from his calculations, the jealously guarded formulae used by Shish has been revealed for the first time in 340 years. Doing the sums for this would require the mathematical genius of an Isaac Newton or Alan Turing. Without their help I resorted to the modern computer and tested possible formulae in a loop which gave instant results and at the same time comparing the computer-generated test results against the seventeenth century originals. Although of fundamental importance and interest to the Master Shipwrights in building their ships, it is probably a sad fact that books about sums may not be hugely popular. (I don’t know, it worked for Stephen Hawking… – Ed.) Happily, the formulae are based on geometry and I was able to describe them with illustrations. With some ingenuity I managed to use only 11 pages on the subject out of the 304 available.

Almost as elusive is the way moulds were made and used to mark out the frame timbers. These fundamental skills have almost been forgotten and required considerable research along a neglected and almost forgotten path. Contemporary or near contemporary descriptions are almost impossible to follow and reading the works before bedtime is not recommended as they can lead to frightening nightmares. (He gets them from Teletubbies too – ed.) A bit like watching a television programme about quantum mechanics (= Teletubbies) and realising how very simple minded you really are. Once the penny eventually dropped I realised how much easier it is to understand the different types of moulds by illustrating them rather than using the written word alone.

The book follows how King Charles enthusiastically embraced ship development and was interested in fast ships suitable for use in the Mediterranean. He unsuccessfully tried true galleys, then hybrid sailing ships that could be rowed, the galley frigates. (You can read more about all this in a book called Kings of the Sea, by an author whose name now escapes me – ed.) After they were criticised, he developed the concept which was to result in the Tyger. Under mysterious circumstances following the political turmoil caused by the Popish Plot, Charles rebuilt the old Tyger of 1647 which had, in fact, been broken up years earlier. The only person privy to his devious plan was his Master Shipwright at Deptford, John Shish. This beautiful ship is fully reconstructed and illustrated with many large-scale drawings. Charles’s experiments were a path that led to the evolution of the frigates of the eighteenth century.

Similar ships to the Tyger built along the same stretch of Thames during the same period are also described and illustrated in detail. Also examined are other successful and unsuccessful developments of the age and the manner of rebuilds and alterations. The time and expense taken to keep a wooden ship repaired and maintained ready for sea service is also studied. Among the findings in the book is a particular style of ship model making used at Deptford which helps in the identification of surviving models from the period.

A daunting task for the student of seventeenth century shipbuilding is reading and understanding contemporary contracts. The difficulty is due to the obscure words used and barely legible writing.  In order to interpret and make them usable, five important surviving contracts for fourth rate ships have been transcribed with headings while every mentioned ship part is indexed with reference to a visual glossary. They span the years from 1649 till 1692 and expose all the changes and developments that took place during that time.

The large format book has four sections of fold out plans at 1/72 scale of three fourth rate ships built during the 1680’s, the Tyger, Mordaunt and the St Albans. All are in colour as are the hundreds of other illustrations. The book is primarily aimed at ship technology historians, archaeologists and those who delight in the beautiful ships of the seventeenth century. Another community who may be interested are the model makers. I hesitate to mention them as this is primarily a book about ships and not about models. One model maker criticised The Restoration Warship as I used the Dutch artist van de Velde’s drawing of the stern of Lenox rather than use an inferior plan of my own. Having said that, there are scale plans enough to build a model of any one of a number of ships.

I really do have to thank the publisher, Osprey, an offshoot of Bloomsbury Publications for producing such an impressive book at such a modest price. To lay out such a book with so many foldouts and illustrations, many of which had to be in precisely the right place next to the accompanying text, took an awful lot of hard work. One or two minor illustrations had to be dropped to save space while in other places one or two fill in images were added. It is to all our credit that the publisher, author and the poor guy who did the layout, all kept our nerve and patiently toiled away until we got it right. Right up to version 18. I received a pre-order copy recently and announced the happy event to my friends. David Davies (who he? – ed.), himself a much-published author knowingly made the following observations based on long experience:

1/ Joy

2/ Pride

3/ Bragging to other friends

4/ Starts inspecting book in detail

5/ Discovers errors

6/ Denounces gross incompetence of publishers

7/ Sobs quietly in corner

8/ Tries to think up jokey email to friends and make light of it

9/ Fails

10/ Becomes even more bitter and twisted

(I deny all responsibility for this, it was my evil identical twin wot did it – ed.)

For more of the double act once described by Dan Snow as the Laurel and Hardy of naval history (yes, seriously), come to Southend on 7 March!

Here’s a thought: what you’ll really, really need after a long winter is a nice day out by the sea, preferably with lots of seventeenth century naval history thrown in. Well, now you have your chance! On 7 March, in Southend, there’s an entire day of talks about one of the most important shipwrecks in British waters, the mighty Second Rate man-of-war London, originally built for the navy of Oliver Cromwell. The timing is no coincidence – it marks the anniversary in March 1665 of the accidental destruction of the ship, blown up in the Thames estuary on the eve of the second Anglo-Dutch war. But the fate of the London is much more than a footnote in the history of ‘Pepys’s navy’. The rediscovery of the wreck by a hugely enthusiastic and committed diver, Steve Ellis, has revealed it to be an astonishing time capsule of seventeenth century Britain – indeed, it’s no exaggeration to say that it’s very much in the same league as the likes of the Mary Rose or the Vasa. But whereas they could be raised and preserved, the prospects for the London are very different. It lies off Southend, close to the major shipping lanes of the Thames, and the destructive effects of ever larger hulls mean that the remains of the London are fast disappearing. So it’s a real race against time to record what’s there and to bring up as much as possible. A tremendous amount has already been done, and some of the artefacts brought up from the wreck are both remarkable and poignant – take a look at the ‘Finds Gallery’ page on the website of the London Shipwreck Trust, where you’ll find much more information about the wreck and its discovery, as well as Steve’s own compelling account of how he got involved.

I’m delighted to have been invited to be one of the speakers on the day, and to say I’m in very good company is a considerable understatement!

 

 

Of course, I’ve publicised the London and its fate in both my non-fiction and fiction. Readers of the ‘Quinton Journals’ may recall that in the third book in the series, The Blast That Tears the Skies, the colossal explosion that tore the ship apart is the first of the two ‘blasts’ from the title, and I had Matthew Quinton embarking on a desperate mission to try and save any survivors from the wreck. Here’s how I envisaged the scene:

…we veritably raced down Gravesend Reach, and there were still perhaps two hours of daylight remaining when, over toward the Essex shore and the isle of Canvey, an appalling spectacle began to unfold before us. At first I blinked, for in the distance I seemed to see nothing less than an aquatic Calvary: three crosses, protruding above the water. A moment later, I recognised them for the masts of the stricken London, still shrouded in smoke from the vast explosion that had destroyed the great ship.  It was another mile or so before I could make out the remnants of upperworks beneath the farthest cross. The roundhouse and quarterdeck of the London remained above the surface of the Thames, although no such evidence of the forecastle could be seen. The water around the wreck was full of debris: timber and planking, the remnants of flags and sails, the detritus of all those who had lived and died aboard her. The air reeked of gunpowder, burned wood and burned humanity. All around the remains of the London were craft of various sorts, wherries, yawls and the like, as well as a big Levanter. Aboard all of them, men were peering into the waters. Occasionally arms pointed excitedly, and what appeared to be large lumpen shapes were pulled from the Thames.

‘Sweet God,’ said Pepys, ‘the poor, poor creatures. God rest their souls.’

 

All in all, then, 7 March in Southend should be a terrific day, I’m really looking forward to it, and I hope that a few readers of this blog might be inspired to come along, too. Booking and venue details can be found here.

First and foremost, a very happy new year to you all! Secondly, apologies for the lack of blogging of late – a combination of the exigencies of the festive season (which seemed to pull off the unique feat of both creeping up on me unexpectedly and then lasting for far longer than usual) and a concentration of my remaining non-present-hunting, non-wrapping, non-relative-visiting time on making as much progress as possible on the third book in the Stannard trilogy. Still, that’s all done and dusted now, so it’s time to return to the blogosphere!

Inevitably, the last few days and weeks have seen a surfeit of those ‘review of the year’ programmes and newspaper articles, with the added bonus this time of their inevitable ‘review of the decade’ cousins, so I thought I’d jump on the bandwagon – especially because on 1 January 2010, this blog didn’t exist (the first post wasn’t until August 2011) so I haven’t been able to do this before. So, then, it’s time to climb into the Tardis and journey back to a time when there was still a Labour prime minister and a Democratic president, Boris Johnson was Mayor of London and Donald Trump was presenting The Apprentice, Ed Sheeran was an unknown teenager and Sunderland were still in the Premier League.

• On 1 January 2010 I’d published precisely one novel, Gentleman Captain, which had come out in the previous summer, and two non-fiction books: Gentlemen and Tarpaulins, published nearly twenty years earlier, and Pepys’s Navy which had recently won the Samuel Pepys prize. Since then, I’ve somehow published twelve books in ten years – three non-fiction, including another prize-winner in the shape of Kings of the Sea, and nine fiction titles, seven more in the Quinton series and two in the Stannard trilogy, with the third to come some time in 2020. Looking back, I’m not entirely sure how I did all that…
• …especially as in 2010-11 I spent a fair bit of time out in Dubai, where the ‘LadyQJ’ of my Twitter feed was working at the time. I’d actually been there at the previous new year, when the ruler cancelled the celebrations in solidarity with the Palestinians. We had some terrific times out there, fitting in extended trips to Egypt and most memorably to Syria, just three months before the devastating civil war broke out there. I’m particularly thankful that we were probably among the last westerners to visit Palmyra before ISIS destroyed so much of it.
• Other travel highlights of the last decade included Sweden in 2011 (principally to research The Lion of Midnight), Venice in 2012, Sicily in 2015, Amsterdam, Copenhagen and Karlskrona in 2017, France in 2018 (chiefly to pay my respects at my great-uncle’s grave on the centenary of his death in the First World War), and the USA and Germany in 2019. There were plenty of trips within the UK too, but the standout destination of the decade has to be Orkney (never, ever, ‘the Orkneys’), which we first visited in 2013, instantly fell in love with, and have returned to several times since (this blog, passim).
• And finally, some of my completely biased, subjective and one-eyed* highlights of the decade…
  • Best novel that I’ve read which was written by somebody else – tricky, especially as Wolf Hall is technically disqualified because it was published in 2009…so I’ll just have to cop out and settle on its sequel, Bring Up The Bodies. And yes, like much of the English-speaking reading public I can’t wait for the publication this coming March of the final book in the trilogy. Hmm, March is just in time for my birthday. Just saying.
  • Best non-fiction book that I’ve read – undoubtedly Great Minds and How to Grow Them, by somebody with whom I have no connection whatsoever (ahem).
  • Best film I’ve seen – undoubtedly Adult Life Skills, starring the delightful Jodie Whittaker and produced by somebody else with whom…etc etc. (Seriously, being at the Edinburgh film festival for the European premiere was a highlight and a half.)
  • Best TV – tricky, as there’ve been so many terrific shows, so I’ll pick out an entire genre which didn’t exist ten years ago, when Welsh TV consisted chiefly of programmes about hymn singing, farming and rugby (as indeed it still does on some evenings). Enter Welsh Noir, which makes Scandinavian Noir look like Mamma Mia. If you haven’t yet caught up with the likes of Hinterland, Keeping Faith and Hidden, why on earth not?
  • Most notable arrival – a baby produced by somebody else with whom…etc etc.
  • Most notable departure – my late mother, whose life and loss I blogged about here.

Plans for 2020? Well, I’m contracted to get the third Stannard book to the publisher by the end of April, but after that, there’s nothing firm in the schedule – indeed, it’ll be the first time in over ten years that I’ve not had at least one book contract on the go at any one time. So watch this space for developments!

 

* This metaphor has a particular resonance for me. My grandfather was a rugby referee, so was well used to the insult regularly flung by players and spectators at referees in all sports, along the lines of ‘oi, ref, you’re a one-eyed cheating ****!’ However, he might have been the only referee in the country who had the absolutely perfect response to this – he literally did have only one eye.