J D Davies - Historian and Author

The website and blog of naval historian and bestselling author J D Davies

Welsh history

The Sailors’ (and Soldiers’) Graves

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Last week’s post about naval and maritime graves in west Wales got a very positive response, so I thought I’d return to a similar theme this time. I spent the second half of last week further north, on the shores of Cardigan Bay, dodging torrential downpours, visiting a few places of naval interest (both expected and unexpected) and doing some research in the National Library of Wales at Aberystwyth. As I think I’ve said before in these blogs, the latter must be one of the nicest study environments anywhere in the world – where else can you sit at your desk and look out over a glorious vista of sea, hills and a medieval castle? (My runner up would be the library of the National War Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, where you can get a stunning view over Princes Street, the Scott memorial and the Firth of Forth to the hills of Fife – but only from the gents’ loo…) It turned out to be a really productive session, perhaps the best discovery being the autobiography of a Victorian seaman from Aberdare who provides some fascinating information about naval life in the 1870s and 1880s. He’ll be one of the ‘stars’ of Britannia’s Dragon!

Other ports of call included Barmouth, where I arrived during a near-monsoon; diving out of the car, I got a picture of the new memorial to local man Harold Lowe, fifth officer on the Titanic (played, appropriately, in the film by fellow Welshman Ioan Gruffydd!). Lowe was an officer in the Royal Naval Reserve during World War I and was aboard HMS Suffolk in Vladivostok in 1919, during the Russian Civil War. There’s a good account of this, and of his life as a whole, in Inger Sheil’s new biography of Lowe. The other intriguing naval memorial that I came across was in the somewhat unlikely setting of the church of St Peter ad Vincula (‘St Peter in Chains’) in Pennal, near Machynlleth. Pennal is a tiny village now, but it was once a really important place; the church was a chapel royal for the Kings of Gwynedd and then for the Princes of Wales, including Owain Glyndwr. Indeed, Glyndwr held his second parliament here and signed the ‘Pennal letter’, a document asking for recognition and support from the King of France. But on the wall of the church is a memorial to Commander Edmund Wybergh Thruston, Royal Navy, second-in-command of the cruiser HMAS Sydney when she encountered the German raider Kormoran on 20 November 1941. The Sydney won the engagement but was also lost during it, and for decades her fate was a mystery and a source of considerable debate in Australia. The wreck was finally discovered in 2008, but it was both strange and moving to discover such a poignant reminder of one of Australia’s great national tragedies so many thousands of miles from where it took place. (I was able to do some research on the Thruston family at the National Library: Captain Charles Thruston, RN, of Suffolk, who died in 1858, married the heiress of the Talgarth estate near Pennal, and Edmund was their great-grandson.)

Finally, here’s one of the places I visited on my way home: the tiny, ancient church of Pilleth, near ‘Offa’s Dyke’ and the English border. The hill behind it is Bryn Glas, and it was here, on 22 June 1402, that the Welsh army under Owain Glyndwr fought and defeated that of Edmund Mortimer. The mass grave of those who died is still marked in the churchyard. Mortimer defected to Glyndwr’s side and married his daughter, a story taken up by Shakespeare in Henry IV Part I (which coincidentally I studied for A-level and which has just been given a brilliant new treatment by the BBC, first broadcast last weekend). Shakespeare called him ‘Owen Glendower’, and that name was used twice by the Royal Navy – firstly for a frigate built in 1808, which distinguished itself in anti-slavery operations off the African coast, and secondly, without the ‘Owen’, for the training base established at Pwllheli in the second World War (perhaps better known in its later incarnation as a Butlins’ holiday camp!). Both HMS Glendowers feature prominently in Britannia’s Dragon, but the very fact the name was used at all is surely pretty remarkable, and must partly be due to his appearance as a character in Shakespeare. Maybe one of the readers of this blog can provide evidence to the contrary, but I don’t know of any instance of, say, the French or Spanish navies ever naming warships or important shore establishments after the leaders of failed Breton, Corsican, Basque or Catalan independence movements. Even the United States Navy, which has had no difficulty in naming warships Robert E Lee and Stonewall Jackson (albeit only once in each case, 100 years after their Civil War), has baulked at naming one after Confederate President Jefferson Davis!

The Sailors’ Graves

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It’s OK, minions of the Carmarthenshire County Council damage limitation department, you can stand down – this one isn’t about you.

A reblog of one of my old posts (from July 2012) this week because of pressure of work, but I hope it’s one that will appeal to both my followers who are into maritime history and those who have started following this blog recently because of the Carmarthenshire archives situation. Since I originally posted this, I’ve received more information about Lieutenant William Williams from Brian Vale, the acknowledged authority on Britons serving in early 19th century South American navies, and this appears as an additional section at the end of the post.

Later this week, I’m going to be attending the big conference on 16th/17th century maritime history at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, and hope to report on that next week. (There’s a bit of a hiatus on the archives front at the moment while I wait for replies to correspondence and Freedom of Information requests.)

I’m currently in west Wales, and over the weekend I revisited the glorious old St Ishmael’s church (above), overlooking the Tywi estuary. This is a very special place. The church overlooks the site of a lost village now largely swept away by the sea (perhaps in the great flood of 1607). More personally, ancestors on my mother’s side were being christened, married and buried there from at least the middle of the sixteenth century (probably long before, as this branch of the family was in the area from the fourteenth), and my cousin’s family, who live a few hundred yards down the road from it, still worship there. But St Ishmael’s also has one particularly interesting grave. This is that of Hugh Williams, a prominent Carmarthen lawyer who supported the Chartists and was rumoured to have been the secret leader of the ‘Rebecca Riots’ in west Wales in the 1840s. Williams, a close ally of the radical leaders Cobden and Bright, also went to America in the 1850s and was involved in some business transactions with an obscure lawyer who became a friend: the lawyer’s name was Abraham Lincoln.

Williams’ grave also contains the remains of his brother, William Williams, ‘a lieutenant in the Brazilian navy’. who died on 11 February 1832, aged 37. His body was carried down the River Tywi in a waterborne procession and then buried in the graveyard of St Ishmael’s; his passing was also marked by the poet Thomas Jenkins, who penned ‘The Sailor’s Grave’ in his honour:

The Sailor’s Grave

Lieutenant Wm. Williams, of the Brazilian Naval Service, died at Carmarthen, and was interred at St. Ishmael’s, on Carmarthen Bay, being the most convenient spot for carrying into effect his dying request, to be buried as near as possible to that element to which he had from early life devoted his existence.

I reach’d the spot – I saw the mound
‘Neath which the sailor lay;
And as the freshly-heaped-up ground,
Soft whispering, bade me stay:
Is this, I said,
The brave one’s bed –
The kind – the faithful friend?
“‘Tis here he lies,”
A voice replies,
“Here all his wanderings end.”

The heartfelt sigh – the silent tear,
Have sacred made the spot;
And, long as worth to man is dear,
‘Twill never be forgot.
The sea ne’er bore,
From shore to shore,
A soul more kind or brave;
And with a sigh
Each passer by
Beholds the sailor’s grave.

In every hue – in every form,
Did death to him appear;
He rode the whirlwind – rode the storm –
The ball – the pointed spear:
He steered his way,
By night – by day,
No superstitious slave; –
When ebb’d life’s tide,
He calmly died –
As die the good and brave.

The brave and good, as they pass by,
Where rests this seaman true,
Will drop the tear – will heave the sigh,
When his green grave they view:
And each will say,
While on his way,
He was as kind as brave:
On each return
They still will mourn
Above the sailor’s grave.

Though countless throngs may pass that way,
Morn – noon – and ev’ning late;
None more than he who writes this lay,
Laments his early fate.
Though wave on wave
The churchyard lave,
Where rests the sailor’s head,
Old ocean’s roar
Shall rouse no more
The brave one from his bed.

This is a treacherous, storm-wracked coast (it’s certainly lived up to that reputation during the last few days!), and just across the estuary from St Ishmael’s lies the village of Llansteffan, nestling in the hollow beneath the walls of a Norman castle built to protect the estuary that led to Carmarthen, the seat of royal power in south Wales. In the churchyard, almost hidden behind the gravestone of ‘Richard Moris, mariner’ of St Ishmael (who died in 1728, aged 82), is a small memorial to two men lost in 1886 when the Teviotdale was wrecked on Cefn Sidan beach, which has clearly been moved from its original position and is now sadly neglected. For centuries, Cefn Sidan (pronounced Kev’n Sheedan) was a notorious graveyard of shipping; the young niece of Napoleon’s Empress Josephine perished there in 1828, and there were persistent local legends to the effect that at least some of the wrecks were induced by gangs of ‘wreckers’ setting false lights. Several of the wrecks, including that of the Teviotdale, are still clearly visible. The dangers of these waters led to the establishment of a lifeboat station at Ferryside in 1835, and at the weekend I was privileged to be given a tour of the new station and a close-up look at the crew’s wonderful new boat. Many thanks to Terry and Matt, and it’s good to know that old Lieutenant William Williams can rest easy knowing that the coast which his grave overlooks is looked after so well!

 

As part of the research for Britannia’s Dragon, I received more information on William Williams from Brian Vale, a colleague on the Council of the Navy Records Society, to whom I’m very grateful for sharing his research so generously:

‘…there was no Lieutenant William Williams in the Brazilian Navy.  However there was a Lieutenant who called himself John (ie Joao) Williams, and I have no doubt from one thing and another that it is the same man. Changing names was not unusual and he may have felt that the Brazilians would have been bamboozled by a man whose first name was the same as his second!  On the other hand further research may establish that he bore both names, William and John.’

His career went as follows:

Williams, John

Recruited in London.  Appointed as Volunteer on arrival in Rio 26 May 1823.  Served on Cochrane’s flagship  Pedro I (74) at the Blockade of Bahia and the capture of S Luis of Maranhão June-Aug 1823. Prize master of the Ventura Feliz. Sub-lieut 22 Jan 1824; appointed to the frigate Paraguassú during the suppression of the rebellion in Pernambuco. Served on the frigate  Niterói and Pedro I 1825.   To River Plate on the outbreak of war with Buenos Aires.  Lieutenant on brig Caboclo under Commander John Pasco Grenfell 1826.  Commander 12 Oct 1827. O/c Constança schooner at the Plate 1828 enforcing the blockade. Assisted in the capture of the Argentine privateer General Branzden.  Not on 1832 List.

Brazilian warship Pedro I in the 1820s
Brazilian warship Pedro I in the 1820s

The Comfort Zone

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One of the challenges and delights of working on my new non-fiction book, Britannia’s Dragon: A Naval History of Wales, is that it’s taking me into all sorts of uncharted territory and, in some cases, territory I’m revisiting after many years. The book is meant to cover the entire time period from the Romans (AD 60, to be exact, and Suetonius’ attack on Anglesey) to the present day, so large areas are well outside what I’d regard as my comfort zone. I suppose that said zone would extend from the sixteenth century through to about 1815, with the core being my principal specialisation from about 1640 to about 1700. But as I’ve said before in this blog and elsewhere, I originally started out with an interest in twentieth-century warships, so the period from roughly 1939 onwards is also an area I’m very comfortable with. Over the years I’ve also done various bits and pieces of work on aspects of the Victorian period and World War I, so getting up to speed there isn’t a problem at all.

All of which still leaves huge swathes of history that are relatively new to me, and very exciting. The American civil war has always fascinated me – I remember collecting picture card series about it when I was a boy, I recently read Amanda Foreman’s vast and very impressive study of Britain’s relationship with the conflict, and, yes, I own the DVDs of both Gettysburg and Gods and Generals – but I had no real idea of just how many Welshmen served, or of the part that Welsh waters played in the fitting out of some of the Confederate raiders. There were Welshmen aboard the Monitor, the Virginia (aka Merrimac) and the Alabama, and from my point of view, the recent reconstruction of the face of one of the Welsh crewmen on the Monitor has been really timely. I’ve also had to find out more about the various wars between the South American states in the 19th century – Welshmen and other Britons served in pretty well all of their navies and all of their wars, and one of the early heroes of the Chilean navy was an ‘Admiral Bynon’, originally a Beynon from the Gower.

But the really big leap outside the comfort zone has come with what could be termed ‘the early stuff’. My knowledge of the Romans is probably pretty similar to that of most people, i.e. nice walks on Hadrian’s Wall and occasional visits to the likes of Caerleon, watching Gladiator and episodes of Time Team, and Monty Python’s rant about ‘what have the Romans ever done for us?’. I suppose my opinions were jaundiced by my experience of school Latin, which was taught by a formidable gentleman who possessed a truly Roman nose, was inevitably nicknamed ‘Caesar’, and seemed old enough to have actually known his namesake at first-hand. (A corrective – he later became the Headmaster pro tem, very much in ‘Goodbye Mr Chips’ fashion, and I got to both know him very well and to respect him greatly.) Despite Caesar’s best efforts I never became much good at Latin (nor any languages, come to that), although I loved the historical aspects, so getting up to speed on the Saxon shore forts, the Classis Britannica and last year’s exciting archaeological discoveries at Caerleon has been hugely enjoyable.

The same is true of that period which it was still politically correct to term ‘the Dark Ages’ when I first studied it at Oxford. I’d forgotten how much I enjoyed the period from 410 (when, according to the university’s Modern History Faculty, ‘modern history’ began) to 1066 and beyond – I was taught the Venerable Bede by a bouncy ex-nun and the really Dark Ages by James Campbell, a wonderful, inspiring Oxford don of the old school whose rooms were a battleground for domination between books and cats. It always intrigued me how historians of the period could disagree so violently over a tiny number of sources – at the time the great controversy was over James Morris’s Age of Arthur, which built an enormously complex and ambitious interpretation of the period by making some remarkably imaginative assumptions (some of his critics preferred ‘ludicrous guesses’) based on minute fragments of evidence. In getting myself up to speed on such topics as the ‘Strathclyde Welsh’,  King Edgar’s famous rowing ceremony on the Dee in 973, and whether the Vikings were really the horn-helmeted pillagers of my recollection ((but said recollection might be over-dependent on the Kirk Douglas / Tony Curtis film, The Vikings…) or else the nice peaceful cuddly-bunny traders that modern orthodoxy seems to favour, I see that little seems to have changed – historians still seem to be arguing over exactly the same phrases in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, etc, that were causing them so much angst over thirty years ago! And then again, something strange seems to have happened to Norse names; the king I’ve always called Harold Hardrada now seems to be known as Haraldr harðráði, so do I have to adopt the latter? Of course, the added complication with Welsh history is the astonishing proliferation of petty kingdoms and kings with pretty similar names. So remind me again – which was which out of Gruffydd ap Llywelyn, Gruffydd ap Cynan and Gruffydd ap Rhydderch, not to mention Llywelyn ap Iorwerth and Llywelyn ap Gruffydd, when did Deheubarth replace Dyfed, and can I attribute any naval history of any sort to the kingdom of Rhwng Gwy a Hafren? But seriously, getting outside the comfort zone is good. It’s refreshing. It’s exhilarating. Historians and authors everywhere should try it!

Below: the estuary of the River Tywi, site of the naval battle of Abertywi in 1044 between the Dublin-Norse fleet recruited by Hywel ap Edwin, King of Deheubarth, and the native fleet of Gruffydd ap Llywelyn, King of Gwynedd, the only native Welsh ruler in the era of independent kingdoms to establish his own powerful naval force; Gruffydd won a decisive victory and Hywel was killed. On the right-hand headland stands Llansteffan Castle, built in the 12th century to guard both the navigable river leading to Carmarthen, then the largest town in Wales and the seat of royal government in the south, and the important ferry across the Tywi estuary (part of the major pilgrimage route to St David’s cathedral). Behind the left-hand, or southern, headland is the estuary of the Taf, leading to Laugharne of Dylan Thomas fame.  

Coast of Ages

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I spent the whole of last week on a Britannia’s Dragon research trip in north-west Wales. Coming originally from the south-west of the country, where it’s far easier and quicker to get to London than to the north, I knew Anglesey and Snowdonia quite well but didn’t really know the Llyn Peninsula, and this proved to be a revelation – in terms of stunning scenery, fascinating history and a sometimes total absence of such alleged requisites of modern living as mobile phone reception and internet access. We were staying in a converted chapel on the old pilgrim route along the peninsula to Bardsey island, and evidence of the importance of pilgrimage was everywhere, nowhere moreso than in the astonishing church of St Beuno at Clynnog Fawr, larger than several cathedrals I’ve visited yet located in a village smaller than the one where we live. The week also involved some walking, notably a strenuous climb up to the Tre’r Ceiri hill fort, and a visit to Sir Clough Williams Ellis’s surreal creation at Portmeirion, best known of course as the setting for the cult TV series The Prisoner. 

But of course I was in the area primarily to work. My days at Anglesey and Caernarfon record offices were very productive, particularly the former (which produced inter alia what must be the most graphic description ever written of the state of the toilets on a World War I battleship). Both proved to be very pleasant working environments, both manned by really helpful and friendly staff and with that at Caernarfon enjoying some of the best views of any repository I’ve ever worked on; the search room looks out directly onto the quayside of the old dock, now filled with yachts and with the waters of the Menai Straits beyond. ‘Fieldwork’ took me to many places with direct or indirect naval connections. By far the most poignant of the former was the huge memorial and mass grave in Holyhead cemetery to those who died aboard the submarine HMS Thetis in 1939, which failed to surface after her first trial dive; the vessel was subsequently recovered, beached in Moelfre Bay and eventually put into service as HMS Thunderbolt. Other locations which will feature in Britannia’s Dragon included the site of HMS Glendower, the wartime training base on the south coast of the Llyn Peninsula, far better known in its later incarnation as Butlin’s Pwllheli. It’s unfortunate that there’s no memorial marking its naval service, in contrast to the situation at Butlin’s Skegness which was the wartime HMS Royal Arthur; both bases were the result of deals struck between the far-sighted but somewhat unscrupulous Billy Butlin and the Admiralty. (The book will include an account of the deliciously fraught meeting in 1945 when the local MPs, including Lloyd George’s daughter Lady Megan, discovered just how comprehensively Butlin had outmanoeuvred them, driving a coach and horses through planning regulations – suspended in wartime – and creating a vast holiday camp in the midst of the heartland of the Welsh language and culture.)

A site which certainly does proclaim its naval heritage is the astonishing Parys Mountain on the north coast of Anglesey, once the largest copper mine in the world. The discovery of this huge resource in 1768 coincided providentially with the Royal Navy’s adoption of copper sheathing and with the outbreak less than a decade later of the American revolutionary war, which hugely increased the demand for that sheathing. The nearby port of Amlwch was transformed into the world’s largest copper port and the second largest town in Wales, about half the size of late C18th century New York. Parys Mountain is remarkable but somewhat unsettling, a vast scar on the landscape literally carved out of the heart of a hill – and, in the early years at least, carved out principally by manual labour and hand tools alone.

So all in all, it was a very good week which contributed a substantial amount of material to the book. Although a considerable amount of additional research still lies ahead, the writing phase starts tomorrow!

Aristocrats

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When this post goes ‘live’ I’ll actually be beavering away in the search room of Anglesey Archives in Llangefni, where I hope to obtain some useful material for Britannia’s Dragon. I’ll report back on my North Wales research trip next week, but in the meantime I thought I’d explore a theme that connects my current fiction and non-fiction projects.

One of the key themes underpinning the ‘Journals of Matthew Quinton’ is the hero’s complex relationship with his tangled family history, which often impinges on his progress as a ‘gentleman captain’ in the navy of King Charles II. This was one of the very first plot strands that I settled on when I started to develop the first book, Gentleman Captain, so as well as mapping out Matthew’s own character and immediate relationships, I also developed an intricate ‘back story’ which involved creating an entire Quinton dynasty dating back to the Norman Conquest and which is granted an earldom for service rendered to Henry V at Agincourt. Several aspects of this back story have already surfaced in the books – the death of Matthew’s father at the Battle of Naseby, and the impact this has on him; the importance of the role model provided by his grandfather the eighth earl, a larger-than-life swashbuckling Elizabethan seadog; and enigmatic references to court scandal involving his mother in the early years of Charles I’s reign. The new Quinton book, The Blast That Tears The Skies, develops several of these strands and adds some new ones that stretch even further back into the family’s history. Ben Yarde-Buller, my publisher, suggested that it might be helpful to readers to provide a family tree, so this is duly provided at the start of the book – commencing with the fourth Earl of Ravensden, a tough old warrior who fights in Henry VIII’s wars before marrying a former nun who lives to a very great age, outliving all her sons in the process.

Of course, in creating the ‘back story’ for the Quintons I had several real aristocratic families and actual individuals in mind. An obvious ‘dynasty’ with a similarly distinguished record of service over many generations would be the various branches of the Howards; others like the Dudleys rose, flourished and fell, while some like the Churchills produced outstanding figures a few generations apart. On Anglesey I’m not far from Plas Newydd, seat of the Pagets, Marquesses of Anglesey. The first Lord Paget was a prominent statesman of the middle Tudor period; his descendant the first Marquess of Anglesey led the cavalry charge at Waterloo, losing his leg in the process (the artificial replacement is preserved at Plas Newydd). Two of his brothers and two of his sons were prominent naval officers, all of whom will feature in Britannia’s Dragon, while several others, including the current marquess, served in the army, in Parliament, and so forth. I know this is a familiar story in many respects – wander around many a stately home in Britain and you’ll see endless portraits of younger sons in army or naval uniforms. But it’s actually quite an unusual story in Wales, partly because the Welsh aristocracy was so much smaller than its counterparts in the other constituent parts of the United Kingdom and partly because their history has been much more neglected. The Scottish nobility, owning grand castles and estates larger than many an independent country while being perceived as responsible for such injustices as the Highland Clearances, has been hugely prominent in the country’s history, has been studied in depth in many books and retains considerable influence; it’s hardly surprising that the first hereditary peer to be elected to the House of Commons should sit for a seat in the far north of Scotland that his family has represented for most of the period since 1780.  The Irish aristocracy of the ‘ascendancy’ has been studied and vilified in roughly equal measure; the shells of their great houses, burned down by the IRA in 1918-22, stand throughout Ireland as testimony to their dramatic downfall.

The Welsh aristocracy has no equivalent history of power, oppression or doomed romance. Apart from the occasional rant by Lloyd George or the odd Communist, the class as a whole has been virtually ignored. But then, for long periods of Welsh history there was no aristocracy at all; for much of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the counties of Pembrokeshire and Carmarthenshire, two of the most prosperous in the Principality, had no noble families domiciled in them, and for most of the rest of that period there was only one in each county. There was a gentry and squirearchy, but generally they were far poorer and less influential than their English equivalents. Their houses were more modest, too – the vast exceptions like Penrhyn and Cardiff Castles were often built by outsiders or those with ‘new money’.  But the stories of Welsh aristocratic families are worth telling, and in Britannia’s Dragon I’ll be focusing both on the seamen on the lower deck and on the likes of the Pagets and Sub-Lieutenant Micky Wynn, RNVR. Who he? In 1942 Wynn commanded one of the MTBs on the St Nazaire raid, supporting HMS Campbeltown (Lt-Cdr Stephen Beattie, another Welshman, who was awarded the VC) and performing heroics before losing an eye and being captured by the Germans, eventually ending up in Colditz. Wynn later inherited his family’s title and became the seventh Baron Newborough, owner of the Rhug estate in Denbighshire. Let Wikipedia’s bare entry record the bizarre sequel:

In 1976 he was called before the magistrates for allegedly firing a 9 lb (4.1 kg) cannon ball across the Menai Strait…the shot went through the sail of a passing yacht and he was charged with causing criminal damage. Even though it was his mother-in-law’s birthday, he denied the charge, protesting that it must have been someone else. He was found guilty and fined. He died in Istanbul in 1998 and his ashes were shot out of an 18th-century cannon.

I think both Matthew Quinton and his grandfather the old Elizabethan sea-dog would have thoroughly approved of Micky Wynn, Lord Newborough!

By Any Other Name…

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I’m back in full writing harness after a few days away in the Weald of Kent, visiting the likes of Hever Castle and Chartwell as well as making the obligatory jaunt over to Calais to pick up some cheese and one of those nice French apple tarts (and, yes, possibly the odd bottle of wine or two as well…). It was the first time I’d been to Chartwell, the home of Sir Winston Churchill from 1922 until his death, and although the house itself wasn’t open, a couple of exhibition areas were. One of them included a copy of a memo written by Churchill in 1945, shortly before he left office, in which he embarks upon a gloriously full-blooded Churchillian rant on the subject of foreign place names:

I do not consider that names that have been familiar for generations in England should be altered to study the whims of foreigners living in those parts…Constantinople should never be abandoned, though for stupid people Istanbul may be written in brackets after it. As for Angora, long familiar with us through the Angora Cats, I will resist to the utmost of my power its degradation to Ankara.

With the surrender of Germany still some days away and the war against Japan still in full swing, the Prime Minister warmed to his theme.

You should note, by the way, the bad luck which always pursues peoples who change the name of their cities. Fortune is rightly malignant to those who break with the traditions and customs of their past…If we do not make a stand we shall in a few weeks be asked to call Leghorn Livorno, and the BBC will be pronouncing Paris Paree. Foreign names were made for Englishmen, not Englishmen for foreign names.

One wonders what Churchill would have made of the recent transformation of Peking into Beijing, Bombay into Mumbai and Calcutta into Kolkata. My attitude to such things is a bit more relaxed than Winston’s (perhaps because when I was only nine my home town changed its name from Llanelly to the Welsh version, Llanelli), but even so, it took me quite some time to realise that Chennai was not some sort of vast Indian version of Milton Keynes that had suddenly sprung up from nowhere but was in fact the city I had always called Madras. The more I thought about it, though, the more I realised just how much this question of ‘political (or historical) correctness’ in the selection of names impinges on my own work. For instance, in the fourth Quinton novel The Lion of Midnight, which I’m writing at the moment, a lot of the action is set in and around the city known to its inhabitants as Göteborg; but Quinton would undoubtedly have called it to Gothenburg, as most Britons still do to this day. (Of course, Churchill was quite prescient about this: the BBC and other media, which take such pains to get the spelling and pronunciation of the ‘new’ PC Asian and African names absolutely spot on, balk at applying the same approach to European names, presumably because they know that their audience would revolt if confronted with the likes of Göteborg and ‘Paree’.) On the other hand, Quinton would undoubtedly have called the Kings of both Sweden and Spain in 1666 ‘King Charles’, but I decided that this might cause confusion with the many references to his own king, Charles II, so the Swedish monarch has been rendered as Karl and the Spanish one as Carlos; but then, what to do about earlier Kings of Spain, as readers accustomed to think of the latter as ‘King Philip’ might be confused by ‘Felipe’?

Ultimately, my solution has been to apply a principle of selective inconsistency – to use the name that I think will be most easily recognisable to the majority of my readers, even if it doesn’t necessarily correspond to either absolutely accurate historical or modern practice. But I have much worse to come later in the year, namely my naval history of Wales, Britannia’s Dragon. Believe me, the minefield that is getting the terminology of the modern Third World correct is as nothing when compared with the dilemmas presented by Welsh placenames. Should it be Swansea or Abertawe (or, in the spirit of Derry/Londonderry, both?). Should the river be spelt Towy – probably still the form most familiar to non-Welsh readers – or Tywi, the correct modern (and ancient) version? Should I place Pontypridd in its current administrative region, the county borough of Rhondda Cynon Taf, or in the historical county of Glamorgan? I have a feeling that the somewhat idiosyncratic solutions I’ll be adopting might enrage a few purists with both Welsh linguistic and English historical sensibilities, and will almost certainly have Winston spinning in his grave, but I guess it’s a risk I’ll have to take!