Lady Unknown

What links the British bee-keeping association, Ragged Schools, dog water fountains, the Royal Marsden Hospital and a refuge for prostitutes?

As you can read in my post for the ever-brilliant English Historical Fiction Authors crew, all these disparate causes – and many more – were patronised by the Victorian philanthropist Angela Burdett Coutts. Often, Miss Coutts worked anonymously, simply appearing as ‘Lady Unknown’ in the list of benefactors.

I have been working on a play with Untold Theatre, Lady Unknown, about the life of Angela Burdett Coutts, and particularly her working relationship and friendship with Charles Dickens. As the director Anna Ehnold-Danailov says in this video about the project, while Dickens remains a celebrated public figure, Angela herself has been largely forgotten.

(National Portrait Gallery)

And yet many of the charitable works and political concerns she was involved in are still relevant today: she built new housing estates specifically designed with affordable rents and decent sanitation, to combat the spiralling London rents forcing out the working classes; she provided lawyers for the poor costermongers (street-vendors) of London during ongoing disputes with their landlords, in parallel to the desperate situation of those lacking legal aid today; she helped fund the building of what became the Royal Marsden Hospital, an institute designed to research and treat cancer; she encouraged practical training and education to break cycles of poverty and destitution. (She also imported llamas to encourage the use of alpaca in weaving and was heavily involved in the RSPCA.)

Angela fervently believed in helping others to help themselves, and thoroughly investigated philanthropic ventures before she invested in them. She travelled with a writing desk at all times, which you can see in the portrait here, so that she could stay informed about her projects and communicate with her agents about potential new ideas.

I hope that this play, which will be shown at the Charles Dickens Museum, London on 16 November, will introduce more people to Angela.

You can buy tickets here.

Lady Unknown is partially crowd funded.

We are currently just over half funded but we need more help! If you are able to donate even a small amount to the project it could make all the difference to us being able to bring Angela’s story to wider audiences in the future.

24 October 1537: Death of Queen Jane Seymour

On 24 October 1537 Henry VIII’s third wife Jane Seymour died at Hampton Court Palace.

Only twelve days earlier Queen Jane had given birth to a long-awaited prince and heir – the child who would go on to succeed Henry as King Edward VI. Jane’s chosen royal symbol had proven to be eerily prophetic: like the Phoenix on her crest, she was destroyed in the creation of new life.

Her sacrifice was remembered and her memory cultivated by her grieving husband. Even a decade – and three royal remarriages – after her death, when Henry had a great dynastic image of his family painted Jane was the queen who was chosen to sit alongside him. It was with her that he chose to be buried at his own death.

In collective imagination, Jane is the ‘mild’ one – bland, meek and generally considered rather dull. Yet she married a man within weeks of the execution of his previous wife, she argued consistently for key dynastic and religious policies, she was associated with a clear court faction. And we know that for all Henry’s post-mortem romanticising, his relationship with Jane had been far from perfect.

If she had not died in childbed I’m convinced that Jane would have developed into a political force to be reckoned with. She was anything but meek and mild.

Read more about Jane, her turbulent relationship with Henry and her political interventions here.

The Dynasty Painting: Henry VIII surrounded by his family, part and present. By the time this was painted Jane had been dead for almost a decade.

Jack the Ripper, ‘interesting history’ and masculine violence

The revelation that a museum promising to be ‘the only dedicated resource in the East End to women’s history’ is instead opening as a Jack the Ripper Museum – telling the story of a Victorian serial killer – has rightly sparked outrage and astonishment. But eschewing social history in favour of misogyny and murder is far from uncommon in our public historical storytelling. One of those behind this museum, Mark Palmer-Edgecumbe, explained his decision to change its focus:

‘We did plan to do a museum about social history of women but as the project developed we decided a more interesting angle was from the perspective of the victims of Jack the Ripper.’

(You can read more of the original planning application here.)

This project is only the furthest extreme of a general trend in historical presentation, which takes ‘interesting history’ to mean ‘violent and masculine’. I had assumed that the issue here was confined to the Middle Ages, where so often historical events are regurgitations of scenes of (occasionally chivalric) violence. But the case of the Jack the Ripper Museum suggests that even the Modern Age – with its photographs, newspapers, written testimony for all walks of life, and concrete stories of political struggle between classes and sexes – has fallen victim to this trend.

I would argue that there needs to be a serious examination of our public history and the story it is telling. Too often, ‘interesting’ history means ‘violent’. How else to explain the endless posters covered in armoured or khaki-clad men that litter heritage events? Why else does ‘bank holiday weekend’ in heritage terms so largely mean ‘imitated fisticuffs on a lawn by a castle’? Where are the narratives of women in these events? In fact, never mind half the population – a good 90% are excluded from these stories. The poor, the labouring, the enslaved of both sexes; they didn’t participate in tournaments or head off to war on noble steeds, glistening in their full metal jackets. They did, however, till the land that fed the upper classes. They received, sought and occasionally abused the lords’ and ladies’ law courts. They brewed, they baked, they sang, they danced, they told stories and jokes, they went to the toilet on mysteriously constructed middens – in short, they undertook any number of fascinating and now arcane activities that intrigue and enthrall modern audiences. So why is there no ‘serfs weekend’ to set against the ‘knights tournament’?

Because the domestic and the working class have for some reason been deemed ‘uninteresting’. Take it from a convert: I also grew up thinking dungeons were more interesting than wells, then met teachers and interpreters who made me question that assumption and yearn to learn more. No history is boring. What matters is the way it’s told.

Leaving aside for a moment the extraordinarily distasteful victim-blaming that seems to be behind the Jack the Ripper Museum’s narrative (they want to look ‘at why and how the [murdered] women got in that situation in the first place.’ – um. Because someone chose to murder them), the moving of the historical goalposts here is a real shot in the foot.

A real East End woman – my great grandma.

Because I for one – and the twitter outcry suggests I’m far from alone – would LOVE a museum about women of the East End, not about half a dozen tragic victims. My own family was part of the myriad mobile communities who populated the East End for generations. I know nothing about them. Because they were poor and died young, they didn’t live long enough to tell me their stories nor did they live ‘interestingly’ enough to leave marks in most written records. (Although the presence of a single ‘burlesque performer’ called Robert in our family’s 1901 census does rather intrigue.)

I would dearly love to know how they lived, what they ate, where they went, what they did with their free time – basically, what their common or garden, unremarkable lives consisted of. THAT is the impulse that we should be fostering in ourselves and in future generations – empathy, interest, exploration, curiosity, extrapolation from the few scattered threads of ‘fact’ to weave together a tapestry of experience and possibility. Not the prurient interest in torture, misogyny and death, in men who kill women and get away with it.

Does this really matter though? Shouldn’t people be free to learn about murderers and watch kings on horseback if they want? Is this not just a case of – brace yourself for the inevitable – ‘PC gone mad’? Well of course it is fine to hold knight’s tournaments and Jack the Ripper exhibitions, if they are one event among many that reflect a more inclusive past. But too much time, money and attention is consistently spent on these masculine, exclusive representations, leaving little alternative narrative offered in public history. (Honourable mention here to Audley End House’s service wing and Beamish Living History Museum’s varied rural and urban landscapes – I’d be very happy to hear of more. *)

And if you are not offered a history that incorporates your own – or your family’s – experience, how can you feel invested in it? Tales of serial killers and monarchs are woefully unrepresentative of the reality of our collective history. We are a world, and especially a nation, who were historically and remain predominantly made up of workers. Men, women and children who moved in search of work, who settled in hopes of brighter futures, who agitated for greater liberties – in nothing else, this year when we commemorate and question Magna Carta should have achieved a sense of that. To present a version of history that is glaringly white, rich and male (not to mention brutally violent) is an aberration from historical reality far more than interpreting one that is multilingual, labouring, half female and predominantly peaceful.

These stories are a crucial part of our collective historical narrative, and they deserve to be told.

If you would like to be involved in the movement to found a real Museum for East End Women, you can get involved here.

* Please use this opportunity to comment below with places that you love or have visited who DO tell social history narratives, or of events that moved away from the purely monarchial, male or violent.

Making the Castle a Home: Creating an Immersive Medieval World Using Live Costumed Interpreters

Medievalists.net have blogged the talk I gave at the International Medieval Congress last week.

Read on for an explanation of how Live Interpretation works, and how I feel it can engage the public with the sometimes weird and alienating – but always fascinating – medieval world.

Henry VIII’s First Joust: 12 January 1510

On 12 January 1510 Henry VIII took part in his first joust as king.

Henry VIII as an adolescent.

During his youth the prince had been carefully cossetted, as befitted the only male heir of the first Tudor monarch. Henry’s life was precious, and if he had been killed engaging in the violent martial pursuits of other noble youths it risked pitching the country back into bloody civil war. Popular imagination claims that the ‘Wars of the Roses’ were ended when Henry VII slew Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth and united the warring families by marrying a princess of the house of York – but in reality there were still many ‘white roses’ knocking around Europe during the reigns of the Tudors. At the jousts to celebrate his coronation in June 1509 Henry VIII had played the part of spectator and patron – the same role his father had filled for his entire reign. But it was not a part young Henry was prepared to play for long. In January 1510 he was eighteen years old, had been king for over six months and he believed his wife Catherine of Aragon was pregnant. Perhaps the possibility of an heir spurred him on – or perhaps he simply could not frustrate his masculine pride any longer. Only days after Epiphany 1510 Henry VIII entered a tournament at Richmond. He went in disguise with his Groom of the Stool and childhood friend William Compton alongside him. Dressed as ‘stranger knights’ they jousted alongside their peers, Henry acting the part of a hero in his own chivalric tale. But when Compton was pitted against Sir Edward Neville – an expert jouster, with height and build to rival Henry’s – he was bested. And badly injured. Other attendants at the joust must have known the secret identity of the ‘stranger knights’ and fearing that it was the King himself who had been hurt cries of ‘God save the King!’ went up, creating a panic. Men rushed to the stricken stranger knight, believing Compton to be their mortally wounded monarch. In the scrum Henry had to reveal himself as uninjured, apparently to general rejoicing – although one suspects there was more relief than joy.

Henry VIII jousting before Queen Catherine in 1511.

Had Henry VIII been injured that day – as he was to be, seriously, later in his reign – the Tudor dynasty might have been a short one indeed. The teenage king was reckless. This joust set a pattern for his behaviour throughout his reign. For Henry VIII, his own passions came first. War, tournaments, women – involvement with all were heavily influenced by Henry’s heart rather than his head. At Henry’s first joust in 1510, we see the beginnings of the king Henry VIII was to become. Lauren is working on a history of the year 1509 for Head of Zeus, which will be published in 2016.

Twelve Days of Tudor Christmas

Happy New Year everyone! In celebration of the arrival of 2015, I’ve put up a tasty blog post for you all.

If you enjoyed my piece about early Tudor feasting at Christmas then find out more about Christmas and New Year customs during the reigns of Henry VII and Henry VIII in my post for English Historical Fiction Authors:  Celebrating the Twelve Days of Christmas in Early Tudor England.

Sneak peak:

In the household of Henry Percy, fifth earl of Northumberland, New Year’s Day dawned with a cacophony of trumpet blasts. First they belched out their tunes outside the Earl and Countess’s door, and then their children’s. Unpleasant as this sounds to us perhaps it wasn’t so bad for Harry Percy – he didn’t celebrate the turning year (and work on his ‘morning after’ headache) until that night, when he sat in state in his great hall at Wressle Castle and had largesse proclaimed by his heralds. The Earl celebrated the Twelve Days of Christmas in style: his half-dozen musicians played, there were dances, pageants, disguisings, plays, wassailing, carol-singing and gambling. He even had his own bearward to bring ‘his lordship’s beasts for making of his lordship’s pastime’.

Read more about Tudor japes, both high and low, here.

‘Farewell Advent, Christmas is Come’: Early Tudor Festive Feasting – Christmas Party Blog Hop

The Christmas Season is the time for merry-making and parties. So come and join some wonderful authors (and their characters) for an Online Virtual Party.

Browse through a variety of Blogs below for a veritable feast of entertainment! 

(And just as with any good party, you’ll find a few giveaway prizes along the way.)

To get things rolling, let’s enjoy some early Tudor festive feasting…

For me the run-up to Christmas is signaled by the taste of advent calendar chocolate before breakfast. For others this is the season of dieting, ‘getting ready for party season’ as certain magazines insist on calling such abstinence. Whether fasting or feasting, food is still intrinsically important to our celebration of the Christmas season. For our early Tudor forebears this was even more the case.

Stockfish: “Petr Šmerkl, Wikipedia”

For them, December days until Christmas itself were a miserable period of denial and dearth. Advent was considered akin to Lent – no meat was allowed, and for most of the population stockfish would be the order of the day. These revolting hardened, cured fish needed to be hammered and soaked for hours before eating. In great houses, as darkness crept in, meals were made up of piscine feasts: fresh salmon and cod, dog-fish, tench, bream, whiting, plaice – even fresh eels and porpoise. But for those who were further inland and could not afford to have fresh fish delivered to their door, salted and cured fish were the main source of calories.

The feelings of most of the populace during Advent are probably summed up by this fifteenth century carol:

‘Farewell Advent, Christmas is come

Farewell from us both all and some.

With patience thou hast us fed,

And made us go hungry to bed,

For lack of meat we were nigh dead,

Farewell from (us both all and some).’ [i]

Darkness, dreariness and the stink of fish – it’s no wonder that when Christmas finally arrived it was celebrated for a full twelve days. You’d want to squeeze as much joy from the occasion as possible too if all you’d eaten for three weeks was ‘stinking fish not worth a louse’. After one last fast on Christmas Eve, greenery was brought into the household to signal the beginning of festive cheer – holly and ivy were pre-eminent as backdrops to the celebrations then, just as they are today.

Tudor mince pie: Dr Annie Gray

The Twelve Days of Christmas were jam-packed with potential celebrations. After Christmas Day itself there were the feast days of Saints Stephen, John the Evangelist and Thomas Becket to enjoy – sandwiched between the latter two came Childermas or Holy Innocents Day, commemorating the massacre of the innocents by Herod. This not altogether jovial theme was the occasion for misrule, when children were elevated to mock-bishops and abbesses, preaching sermons, processing around the shires and gathering money for their churches. 31 December was the feast day of St Silvester although it was then, as today, more famous for being New Year’s Eve. New Year’s Day and Epiphany or Twelfth Night (1 and 6 January respectively) were, with Christmas, the major days of celebration. These were the occasions for great feasts for those who could afford it and dancing bears, drunken singing and parish-sponsored plays for those who couldn’t.

In my forthcoming book 1509 I write about the feasts of the great and good in this festive period:

Roast fowl: Dr Annie Gray

‘During the Christmas of 1507-8 the Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham invited almost 300 to Christmas supper – and his Epiphany banquet on 6 January hosted 459. Roping in two additional cooks from Bristol to assist, Buckingham served an incredible feast of swans, peacocks, suckling pigs, herons, quails ‘from the store’ and a veritable massacre of small feathered birds: 23 widgeons, 18 teals, three dozen larks… The party got through almost 700 loaves of bread. Swans (plural) also featured on the Christmas menu of Buckingham’s brother-in-law, the earl of Northumberland, who served deer alongside them. In other great households – and even in university colleges – boar’s head was served. Already this impressive dish was becoming associated with Christmas meals in popular song:

‘The boars head in hand I bring

With garlands gay and birds singing

I pray you all, help me to sing,

Qui estis in convivio.’ [ii]

The ‘birds singing’ mentioned here could well be live creatures garnishing the great charger of meat and chirruping as they enter the hall.

Gingerbread: Dr Annie Gray

Other foods and drinks were considered particularly ‘festive’. The Wassail Cup, containing warm spiced alcohol, was paraded into great halls on Twelfth Night. There it was greeted by the steward crying ‘wassail’ three times, to which the household chapel responded with a song. Twelfth Night also saw the enjoyment of a voidee of spiced wine and sweetmeats, ceremonially presented to the lord and lady of the household. In Furnival’s Inn in London the lawyers enjoyed venison and brawn with baked pears for their Christmas meal.’

Lower down the social scale, Christmas meals become more difficult to trace. In all likelihood the mere presence of meat on the menu once more was probably a cause for celebration – whether that was in the form of stew, pie or (for the middling sort) a roast. For those working on the estates of hospitable lords, they might get to join the great hall of their master for a Christmas or Epiphany feast. The Duke of Buckingham invited ‘42 from the town and 90 from the country’ to eat at his table (well, at a table safely down the other end of the hall or tucked away in a corridor) on Epiphany.

Although few of us will be chowing down on boar or swan this Christmas, or dressing up as a bishop, there is a connection across the years at this time of year. Smells, tastes and sounds may have changed subtly over the past five centuries, but crucial to the early Tudor Christmas was a communal celebration over the dining table. And that is surely something we all still appreciate.

Bibliography

• Images of Tudor feasts from the inestimable Dr Annie Gray
• John Elliott Jr, Alan H. Helson, Alexandra F. Johnston, Diana Wyatt (eds.), Records of Early English Drama: Oxford (British Library & Toronto University Press, 2004), 2 volumes
• J. Gage (ed.), ‘Extracts from the household book of Edward Stafford… 1507-8’ Archaeologia, xxv (1834)
• Ian Lancashire, ‘Orders for Twelfth Day and Night c.1515 in the Second Northumberland House Book’, English Literary Renaissance, Vol.10 (1980)
• Richard Leighton Greene, The Early English Carols (Clarendon Press, 1977)
• Olga Horner, ‘Christmas at the Inns of Court’ in Meg Twycross (ed.), Festive Drama: Papers from the Sixth Triennial Colloquium of the International Society for the Study of Medieval Theatre, Lancaster, 13-19 July 1989 (D. S. Brewer, 1996)
• Ronald Hutton, Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain (Oxford University Press, 2001)
• Thomas Percy, Bishop of Dromore (ed.), The Regulations and Establishment of the Household of Henry Algernon Percy, the Fifth Earl of Northumberland, at his Castles of Wresill and Lekinfield in Yorkshire. Begun anno domini M.DXII (London, 1827)

 Thank you for joining our party – now you’ve had your amuse bouche, follow on to the next course in this festive feast of entertainment…

1. Helen Hollick : “You are Cordially Invited to aBall” (plus a giveaway prize) 
2. Alison Morton :“Saturnalia surprise – a winter party tale” (plus a giveaway prize) 
3. Andrea Zuvich : No Christmas For You! The Holiday Under Cromwell 
4. Ann Swinfen : Christmas 1586 – Burbage’s Company of Players Celebrates 
5. Anna Belfrage : All I want for Christmas (plus a giveaway prize)
6. Carol Cooper : How To Be A Party Animal 
7. Clare Flynn :  A German American Christmas 
8. Debbie Young :  Good Christmas Housekeeping (plus a giveaway prize) 
9. Derek Birks :  The Lord of Misrule – A Medieval Christmas Recipe for Trouble
10. Edward James : An Accidental Virgin and An Uninvited Guest 
11. Fenella J. Miller : Christmas on the Home front(plus a giveaway prize) 
12. J. L. Oakley :  Christmas Time in the Mountains 1907 (plus a giveaway prize) 
13. Jude Knight : Christmas at Avery Hall in the Year of Our Lord 1804 
14. Julian Stockwin: Join the Party 
15. Juliet Greenwood: Christmas 1914 on the Home Front (plus a giveaway prize) 
16. Lindsay Downs : O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree
17. Lucienne Boyce : A Victory Celebration 
18. Nancy Bilyeau :  Christmas After the Priory(plus a giveaway prize) 
19. Nicola Moxey : The Feast of the Epiphany, 1182
20. Peter St John:  Dummy’s Birthday 
21. Regina Jeffers : Celebrating a Regency Christmas (plus a giveaway prize) 
22. Richard Abbott : The Hunt – Feasting at Ugarit 
23. Saralee Etter : Christmas Pudding — Part of the Christmas Feast 
24. Stephen Oram : Living in your dystopia: you need a festival of enhancement…(plus a giveaway prize) 
25. Suzanne Adair :The British Legion Parties Down for Yule 1780 (plus a giveaway prize)

 

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[i] Cambridge University Library, possibly written by James Ryman, c.1492. Reprinted in Richard Leighton Greene, The Early English Carols (Clarendon Press, 1977), pp.1-2.

[ii] Balliol College, Oxford MS of the early sixteenth century. Printed in The Early English Carols, p.80.

 

BOOK GIVEAWAY: WIN ‘THE ARROW OF SHERWOOD’

This week I am offering the chance to win a signed hardback of The Arrow of Sherwood over at the excellent English Historical Fiction Authors blog.

All you have to do to be in with a chance of winning is comment on THIS PAGE, leaving your contact details.

The giveaway draw ends at midnight on Sunday 7th December.

Ten Tips for First Time Authors: AKA. What I wish I’d known last year…

One year ago this weekend, my first book The Arrow of Sherwood was published. Almost exactly two years ago, I first approached Pen & Sword Fiction with the idea of a Robin Hood story set in the real, historical Twelfth Century. It’s been a crazy couple of years, and I feel like I’ve been on the steepest learning curve since my first term of university (‘How many books do I have to read a week? And wait – I have to write an essay as well…?’)

I recently told a friend that what I was most looking forward to in the year ahead was just doing something for the second time. But of course, it has been as rewarding as it has been hard work, otherwise I wouldn’t still be doing it.

So if I could give some advice to myself of two years ago (and any other writers going through the same exhausting process), what would it be?

 

1. Just do it. From the Nike (™) school of creative writing – and publishing pitches – and probably, in fact, life in general. Every opportunity that comes your way, take it. Small-scale publisher looking for submissions but you’ve only got half a book? Just send it. Scared of speaking on the radio for the first time to your childhood hometown? Just do it. Get the chance to pitch for a fascinating book but feel supremely unconfident in your knowledge and abilities? Hey, give it a try, you might just get to write it. All of these things require effort for no certain pay-off. And at times, there will BE no pay-off. But the wasted hours won’t be wasted if one of your efforts hits its mark.

And whatever else you ‘do’, for the love of God, just keep writing. Otherwise your partner will install Write or Die on your laptop and you will live in fear for the rest of your scribal days.

 

2. If (when) you decide to take up running, maybe get a knee support. A psychic once told my older brother – no joke – that he had a sister who was romantic, but had bad knees. I confess I doubted that psychic’s abilities, but I was the fool in this equation. Turns out a combination of sitting at a desk all day and running several times a week does bad things to your joints. Who knew?*

(*Everyone. Everyone knew. Especially that psychic from Weston-Super-Mare.)

(Still go running though. You will slowly turn into Slimer from Ghostbusters if you just sit at your desk all week.)

 

3. Get up early. You’re not great at this one. And come 6am when you’re writing your 2,000 words of guff before breakfast and have forgotten what the word for ‘forest’ is, never mind how to construct sentences, you will hate yourself for following this stricture. But it’s worth it for the smug satisfaction of checking your wordcount at 3pm. Particularly in light of the following.

 

4. Stop writing at 3pm. Statistically, writers called Lauren Johnson are 70% stupider between the hours of 3-4 pm than at any other time of day. Everyone has this ‘dead time’ when their mind completely atrophies. For some, it’s first thing in the morning, for others post-lunch, for me… Well, you’ve probably worked it out. So at Stupid o’Clock STOP WRITING. Take a break. Go for a run (with a knee support), go shopping, attempt to make conversation with other humans, have a bath. Just stop work and have a break. Your brain will thank you later.

 

5. Have a party. I originally wasn’t going to do much of a book launch for The Arrow of Sherwood. Maybe go to a bookshop, have some crisps, invite my friends. It was forcefully explained to me that that was not the way to sell books. Duly chastised, I organised a launch in London – after extensive searches for the right venue – and also a reading and talk back in my native Bristol for good measure. I think I found these two activities more stressful than writing the thing – turns out planning a book launch is basically like planning a wedding, but totally alone and with the proviso that white dresses are discouraged due to all the red wine sloshing about. However, they afforded some excellent photos, gave me a chance to meet some lovely #Twitterstorians and – of course – forced people to buy my books. It was like Christmas, but I was simultaneously Santa and Tiny Tim.

 

6. Send just one more launch invitation. So here’s a true story. I invited a lot of people to my book launch – ‘industry types’ as I believe they are termed, although I understand little of such things. Unsurprisingly, when faced with the offer to come out in London on a freezing, monsoon-season Friday night and meet a first time writer they’d never heard of with a story about Robin Hood (even though there was free wine!) most politely declined. Feeling rather dispirited, I took a punt on sending out one more launch invitation to a historian I’d never met but whose interests overlapped mine. Said historian couldn’t come either, but he was delightfully positive and we kept in touch. A little while later, he mentioned that a publisher he worked with was interested in getting a new writer to work on a history project and asked if I was interested. Following the mantras of Nos.1 and 10+1, I responded effusively and with a very un-British lack of humility. Several months down the line, having essentially moved into the British Library and written both a pitch and full proposal for the book, I got the gig. I’m currently writing the book and enjoying it immensely – so thanks to Lauren-of-last-year for not totally wussing out of sending that final invite.

 

7. Offer people free wine. Everyone loves that stuff. Except – contrary to popular opinion – ‘industry types’. When the bill comes in for the free wine you’ve offered at your book launch, you will blanch and fear that you have entered into the world’s most foolish and unlucrative vanity project. See points 1 and 6 for the reasons it’s still worth doing.

(Also, all your friends will get drunk and encourage everyone in attendance to buy a book immediately. Eventually they will be drunk enough that they buy up all the other booze in the joint, and your minimum bar tab will be met, thus meaning you get your deposit back. Aces.)

 

8. Brace yourself. Obviously, you know you’re not Hilary Mantel. And a first book by anyone is unlikely to be their life’s masterpiece. But once the book’s published, it’s no longer just yours. People are entitled to their opinions about the work that THEY’VE bought. They might not love it – they might not even like it – or they might REALLY like it and you wonder if they fully understand human language. Let them have their response, and you can have yours. Just remember not to vehemently disagree with either the haters or the lovers.

(My favourite review at the moment is written by ‘Sherwood1192yahoocom’ on Goodreads.com and I can’t relay much of it for spoiler-related reasons. Despite not being entirely complimentary, it was pretty on the nose and actually made me laugh. Extracted highlight: ‘all the laws and long boring trails and riding around getting nobles and nuns to agree to things and descriptions of the culture was nice.’ Thanks ‘Sherwood1192yahoocom’.)

 

9. Buy a better desk chair. Seriously. Your spine will be like Quasimodo’s at the end of this year. For whom does the bell toll? You, Lozzimodo. You.

10. Maybe write one more draft of the book. And then hand it in. I think I’m right in saying that everyone, in whatever industry, feels like there’s one more edit they could do. That chair could be just a little better varnished. That lasagne could have a touch more salt. The stitching on that monkey onesie could be neater around the tail. So no matter how finished a project feels when you hand it over, a way down the line there is always something you feel you could change. But ultimately, you have to stop. If you don’t, the book will never be published. And if it isn’t published it doesn’t really matter how good it is, because no one will ever see it.

 

(And one for luck…)

10 + 1. Pat yourself on the back. British people hate congratulation, and self-congratulation is the absolute nadir of human behaviour as far as we’re concerned. All the same, you bloody wrote a book and people bought it. Not ‘bought it to burn in condemnation’ but bought it to read and possibly even to like. So tell yourself well done. Maybe write a blogpost that ends with that as its final message for anyone else in the same position: keep working, slugger. And no matter how hard it all was, sit back and say ‘well done’ when you’re finished.

Update: ‘The Arrow of Sherwood’ now available as an eBook

Break out the Lincoln Green in celebration, one and all, The Arrow of Sherwood is now available to download as an eBook. You can get your lightweight, and extremely reasonably priced, copy from Pen & Sword’s online shop for a mere £4.99.

CLICK HERE TO BUY THE BOOK!

 

A Kindle version will be coming out imminently, but in the meantime if Amazon’s your bag, the HARDBACK is reduced to just £11.99 on their site.

OR CLICK HERE TO BUY THE BOOK!