Historical Fiction: The Next Big Thing?

I recently attended the conference of the Historical Novel Society in Oxford. In one of the plenary sessions, a panel of literary agents and publishers were invited to give their views on "the next big thing" in historical fiction. One agent is keen to receive proposals for "epics or sagas of the Second World War," believing that we are now "far enough away in time for a sweeping saga to be possible." Another expressed interest in fiction set in ancient Greece. There was some consensus around the idea that more fiction reflecting the cultural, ethnic and sexual diversity of past societies would be welcome.

The book stalls at the conference told their own story, although perhaps about the "next big thing" of yesterday, rather than today. What struck me most was the predominance of biopic novels, focusing on prominent individuals and narrated, either in the first person, or in "close third person," from the point of view of those individuals. This trend is not entirely new, of course: one thinks of Robert Graves's Claudius novels, or of Marguerite Yourcenar's Memoirs of Hadrian, and Margaret George's (2011) Memoirs of Cleopatra is in similar vein, as, quite consciously, was my own (2013) novel An Accidental King (about the 1st Century AD British king, Cogidubnus).

Bust of Cleopatra, Antikensammlung Berlin. Photo: Sailko (licensed under CCA).

What surprised me more was the number of biopic novels featuring protagonists whose lives ended quite recently. This inevitably raises questions about the definition of "historical fiction" - the Historical Novel Society  defines it as fiction " ... that has been written at least fifty years after the events described, or ... by someone who was not alive at the time (who therefore approaches them only by research)." By these criteria, some of the Twentieth Century biopic novels showcased at the conference are only partly historical, although, interestingly, given the comment quoted at the beginning of this post, many of them deal with protagonists whose lives were profoundly touched by the Second World War. The fact that almost all of these protagonists have non-fiction biographies (and, in some cases, autobiographies) seems not to have deterred either the authors or their publishers.

The American novelist, C.W. (Christopher) Gortner, who entertained us with an after-dinner speech at the conference chose Marlene Dietrich (1901-1992) as the protagonist of his latest (2016) novel, having previously fictionalised the life of Coco Chanel (1883-1971):

"The first time I fell in love, I was twelve years old. It happened at the Auguste-Viktoria-Schule in the suburban district of Schoneberg, southwest of Berlin. Here, in a squat building defended by wrought-iron gates, whose extravagant plaster facade concealed a warren of icy classrooms, I studied grammar, arithmetic, and history, followed by house-making skills and an hour of bracing calisthenics before ending the long day with a perfunctory French class ... I stood alone before the teacher's pensive gaze. The late afternoon sunlight filtering through the dusty classroom window burnished her unkempt chignon with copper. Her skin was rosy, with a slight down on her cheeks. My knees weakened ... " (C.W. Gortner, Marlene).

Marlene Dietrich entertaining American troops in 1944, US Army Center of Military History (image is in the Public Domain).

Another speaker at the conference, the British writer, Jo Baker (whose earlier novel, Longbourn, I have featured on this site), chose Samuel Beckett (1906-1989) as the protagonist for her latest novel, A Country Road, A Tree:

"The tree stirred and the sound of the needles was sshh, sshh, sshh. The boy swung a knee over the branch, heaved himself up, and shifted round so that his legs dangled. The scent of the larch cleared his head, so that everything seemed sharp and clear as glass. He could still hear the faint sound of piano practice, but he could see out across the fields from here; he could see for miles and miles, and the sky was wide open as a cat's yawn ... " (Jo Baker, A Country Road, A Tree).

Samuel Beckett, by Reginald Gray (image is in the Public Domain).

Other examples of this emergent sub-genre include Julian Barnes's The Noise of Time (about the composer, Dmitry Shostakovich [1906-1975]), and Jill Dawson's The Crime Writer (about Patricia Highsmith [1921-1985]). As the first generation of Millennials edge their way along the library bookshelves towards their initial encounters with adult fiction, the century into which I was born is emerging more fully into the domain of the craft that I have learned in the century in which we now live.

Dmitriy Shostakovich in 1950. Photo: Roger & Renate Rossing (image is in the Public Domain).

It is easy to be wise with hindsight, but I wish now that we had spent some time at the conference considering the ethical issues that arise when we fictionalise the lives of real people, who may have close relatives, friends, and lovers, still living. The American author, Margaret George, was kind enough to invite me to share her taxi as we left the conference. "We have to hope that our characters will forgive us," she said the previous day, "because we are doing the best that we can." That must surely apply, not only to our protagonists, but to all real people, living or dead, to whom we ascribe words and actions in our novels.

Mark Patton's novels, Undreamed Shores, An Accidental King, and Omphalos, are published by Crooked Cat Publications, and can be purchased from Amazon. He is currently working on The Cheapside Tales, a London-based trilogy of historical novels.

A History of the World in 50 Novels. 43 - "Vanishing," by Gerard Woodward

The first half of the Twentieth Century, punctuated as it was by two world wars, saw the collapse of many of the moral and ideological certainties on which the Victorian world view had been based. Optimistic notions of inevitable social progress based on technological innovations were blown apart by conflicts in which those very inventions had been pressed into service as terrifying instruments of destruction. "Horseless carriages" had become tanks; aircraft that had once been the toys of rich men and women had evolved into bombers, raining death and destruction on civilian populations; even the notion of the production line that, in the hands of an industrialist, promised cheap manufactured goods for all, could, in a regime driven by hatred, become the machinery of genocide. Many looked back, with nostalgia, to the past (real or imagined), fearful of whatever new horrors a technology-driven future might have in store.

Nostalgia for simpler modes of production, dominated by people and animals, rather than by machines; by artisans rather than by factories; for a life lived "in harmony with nature" (if such had ever been, or could ever be, a reality); did not necessarily go hand in hand with a nostalgia for Victorian moral norms. The writings of Sigmund Freud, in particular, had changed forever the ways in which people thought about, and talked about, sex. The authorities might try to suppress books by D.H. Lawrence, Radcliffe Hall, even James Joyce, but the genie was well and truly out of the bottle: within bohemian communities in which discretion was assumed, men and women were engaging in sexual experimentation in ways that would have been unthinkable just a few decades earlier.

1927 gathering of the Kindred of the Kibbo Kift, a movement that looked to an imagined ancient past for ways of living in harmony with nature, and with all nations. Photo: Kibbo Kift Foundation (reproduced with permission). 

If the ideology of "Progress" lay in ruins, however, its reality was no less powerful. If peaceful technologies could be adapted for the most destructive military purposes, then the technologies developed for warfare could just as easily be commercialised in peacetime. By 1946, bombers were being adapted as airliners, and top-secret air-bases were transformed into airports for passenger and freight transport.

The Avro Lancastrian (a bomber adapted as an airliner), "Star Dust" (the aircraft crashed in the Andes in 1947). Image is in the Public Domain.

A Lockheed Constellation, another Second World War bomber adapted as an airliner. Photo: RuthAS (licensed under CCA).

Gerard Woodward's novel, Vanishing, is narrated in the first person by Kenneth Brill, a fictional artist who, at the beginning of the story, is in prison, on trial for possible espionage. He has been making sketches and paintings of the Middlesex landscape in which he has grown up, but the growing presence, in that landscape, of the military air-base that will ultimately become Heathrow Airport, makes this a suspicious act.

Over the course of his interrogation, three interwoven narratives gradually unfold: that of his upbringing at Heathrow, and his ambiguous response to the transformation of this landscape; that of his training at the Slade School of Art, and initiation into the bohemian artistic circles of pre-war London; and that of his service as a camouflage expert in the campaign leading up to the Battle of El Alamein.

"He came into my cell this morning. No knock, no announcement, just the approaching beat of nailed boots on a concrete floor, the oiled fuss of several keys in several locks, then the door swinging open, and Davies entering with a casual, off-hand saunter that contrasted with the military stiffness of the armed guards who preceded him ... Our eyes met each other's and locked themselves in a stare for several seconds ... 'So tell me again why you were out there in these godforsaken fields. In my humble opinion as someone who has had no artistic training the landscape you were painting has no aesthetic value whatsoever ...' His provocative dismissal of the landscape of my childhood couldn't help but arouse a passion of indignation in me. 'Those godforsaken fields, as you call them, happen to be very important to me.'"

The construction of Heathrow, 1939-45. Photo: Imperial War Museum, non-commercial license CHI 8206.

The Fairey Hendon K1695 night-bomber, a secret prototype flown from Heathrow in 1930 (image is in the Public Domain).

Heathrow in 1948. Image: Ordnance Survey (licensed under CCA).

 "Quite a picture, I could now see, was beginning to emerge from Davies's preliminary investigations. Over the next few days, more details were gleaned ... 'At the Slade you were expelled because, among other things, you and your mentor Mr Somarco were running a brothel for students at Old Compton Street. At Berryman's School in Somerset, where you were art-master, you were dismissed after an act of immoral conduct ... you spent a spell as what you call artist-in-residence at Hillmead Manor, run by the self-acknowledged Fascist sympathiser Rufus Quayle, and your friend Mr Somarco, we believe, has or had strong links with the Hitler Youth Movement in Germany ...'"

Life-class at the Slade, by Peter K.C. Oliver (image is in the Public Domain).

The Guild of Saint Joseph and Saint Dominic, an "art colony" founded by Eric Gill at Ditchling, Sussex. Though not a Fascist sympathiser, Gill may have been part of the inspiration for Rufus Quayle. Photo: Pricejb (licensed under CCA)

" ... Learmouth came to his main point for visiting ... 'We're expected to be making a move against Rommel in the next few weeks, and I've managed to persuade the authorities that camouflage could be of some use ...' It was Somarco who came up with the solution. If we couldn't conceal the railhead, then we should construct  dummy railhead, closer to the front line, and even bigger than the real one. If we could construct something that could fool a pilot a few thousand feet up in the air, then it could lure the bombers away to let their bombs blush unseen on the desert air ... So sweet was Somarco's idea that in the darkness of a tamarind grove, later that evening, I let him kiss me."

A dummy tank being constructed in the Western Desert. Photo: Captain Gerald Leat - Imperial War Museum 205018330 (image is in the Public Domain).  

Operation Bertram: dummy vehicles & filling station constructed in 1942, by the British Middle East Directorate of Camouflage (image is in the Public Domain).

The novel is, on each of these levels, a story of ambiguities: personal and political; moral and sexual; public and private; and these ambiguities are played out against the background of the vanishing of established realities, and the gradual and uncertain emergence of new ones.  

Mark Patton's novels, Undreamed Shores, An Accidental King, and Omphalos, are published by Crooked Cat Publications, and can be purchased from Amazon. He is currently working on The Cheapside Tales, a London-based trilogy of historical novels.

A History of the World in 50 Novels. 42 - "Ignorance," by Michele Roberts

Throughout the First World War, France had succeeded in defending most of her national territory against the German aggressor. Fundamental to this success was the fortress of Verdun, the garrison of which withstood a prolonged and bloody siege, initially under Colonel Philippe Petain. The story of France during the Second World War could hardly have been more different. By 1939, the German armed forces, equipped with some of the best aircraft (notably the "Stuka" dive-bomber), and some of the best tanks of their day, was able to pursue an entirely new form of warfare - the Blitzkrieg.

France capitulated within months, and Petain, who had retired from the French army with the rank of Marshal, emerged as a political leader willing to do business with the victorious Nazis. France was divided between an Occupied Zone, including Paris, in the north, and a "Free Zone" in the south, centred on Vichy, with Petain as Head of State. Quisling and traitor, or patriotic pragmatist, Petain's reputation remains contested within France today. What is beyond doubt, historically, is that his regime voluntarily rounded up and imprisoned "undesirables," including Spanish Republicans who had escaped across the Pyrenees (many of whom were later handed over as slave-workers to the Nazis); Jews, Romanis, and homosexuals (almost all of whom ended up being transported to the extermination camps of Germany and eastern Europe).

French (Vichy) Police registering Jewish and other detainees at a camp at Pithiviers. Photo: German Federal Archive, Bild 183-S69238 (licensed under CCA).

German soldiers in France (near Rouen). Photo: German Federal Archive, Bild 101l-494-3383-06A (licensed under CCA).

Blockaded by the Allied navies, and with more than half of France's agricultural production requisitioned to feed the occupying troops, the civilian population suffered terribly. Rations were set at starvation levels - fewer than 1300 calories per day. Those who could afford to supplemented this with purchases on the black market. Many women resorted to prostitution, an occupation that received a boost when, in November 1942, abandoning any pretence of Vichy "independence," German troops extended their occupation into the "Southern Zone."

French civilians in occupied France. Photo: German Federal Archive, Bild 101l-494-3383-06A (licensed under CCA).

German soldiers with Resistance captives, July 1944. Photo: German Federal Archive, Bild 183-J27289 (licensed under CCA).

Michele Roberts's novel, Ignorance, is set between two provincial towns in rural France, Sainte Madeleine and Sainte-Marie-du-Ciel (both of them apparently fictional). The two main protagonists are both young women, educated in the local convent school: Marie-Angele is the daughter of a prosperous local grocer; Jeanne, the daughter of a poor mother, who has converted from Judaism to Catholicism.

A French convent school. Photo: City Archives of Toulouse (image is in the Public Domain).

Growing up in a deeply conservative, Catholic community, in which the Jewish minority had faced persecution even before the outbreak of war: both are ignorant of the political realities that have given rise to it; but also of sexuality; and of the economic rules that apply when law and civil society have broken down. Each must negotiate her way through a new and alien world, in which all moral and religious certainties have broken down: in which nobody knows who is to be trusted. Who is a protector of refugees, a hero of the Resistance; and who is a racketeer, an exploiter of human misery? It is a story that reflects the realities of occupied France (and would almost certainly have reflected the reality of an occupied Britain, if such had ever come to pass): one with few heroes and many victims.

A German-authorised driving permit from occupied France. Photo: Classiccardinal (licensed under CCA).

French ration tickets of the Second World War. Photo: Daniel*D (licensed under GNU).

A food queue at a bakery (this is actually a post-war image, from liberated Paris). Photo: Imperial War Museum, D24161 (image is in the Public Domain).

"Monsieur Fauchon, the cobbler, kept his door propped open winter and summer ... his chin jerked up as I went by. A thin man, with a long face, big dark eyes and a beard, like someone in the Bible. He was a Jew, like my mother had been before she converted and got baptised. Maman had told me the tale of Madame Baudry clasping her hand: I'll be your sponsor! She gripped her too tightly. Maman yelped in pain, which Madame Baudry took for delight."

Jewish women in occupied France (the yellow star badges were required by the German authorities in the north, and by Vichy administrators in the south). Photo: German Federal Archive, Bild 183-N0619-506 (licensed under CCA).

"War fell out of the sky. Planes nosedived, dropping bombs. The local bakery blew up, rose in the air, collapsed. The baker and his wife and their two children vanished under a pyramid of beams and rubble. Hauled out by local men, the bodies were placed in the cobbler's shop along the street. Monsieur Fauchon was away fighting but his wife opened the door and took in the dead family. Maman was distressed: they should have been put in a Christian house. She and I dodged in, with other neighbours, to say a decade of the rosary. Waxy yellow faces; like shells ... The prayers made the corpses seem less frightening."

German JU-88 "Stuka" dive-bomber (image is in the Public Domain).

"Mid-June, in one way, was just like midsummer in other years. In the countryside all round the town the peasants got on with the haymaking, the cuckoo called from the woods. In another way, everything had changed: I had grown up. Maurice and I drove into Ste-Madeleine on business ... I spotted Jeanne in the bar, sitting in the far corner, with a German ... She'd painted her mouth dark red and rouged her cheeks. I pretended not to see her. My stomach burned with brandy but also with scorn. The make-up made her look so common ... Maurice said: my dear Marie-Angele, you don't know girls like that. They're nothing to do with you."

German soldiers swapping clothing with French mistresses or prostitutes (image is in the Public Domain).

Post-war retribution - women accused of collaboration humiliated in the streets. Photo: German Federal Archive, Bild 146-1971-041-10 (licensed under CCA).

Mark Patton's novels, Undreamed Shores, An Accidental King, and Omphalos, are published by Crooked Cat Publications, and can be purchased from Amazon. From the 7th to the 10th of July only, e-book editions of these, and other Crooked Cat books, are available at the reduced price of 99p/99c.

A History of the World in 50 Novels. 41 - "In the Wolf's Mouth," by Adam Foulds

If the First World War redrew the map of the world, sweeping away empires that had stood for centuries (Tsarist Russia, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire), and elevating new nations (Japan, the United States, the Soviet Union) to the status of great powers, the settlement that followed also contained within it the seeds of future conflicts.

The ensuing tragedy, played out over the course of four decades, followed different courses in different countries, yet held many features in common: ethnic and national resentment; recession, inflation, mass unemployment & economic division; powerful demagogues (Mussolini, Franco, Hitler, Stalin) offering deceptively simple solutions to complex social & economic problems; all of which combined to send the nations of the world hurtling towards a new and terrible conflagration.

In Italy, a late engagement in the First World War (with British encouragement, the country declared war on the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1915, and on Germany the following year) came at the cost of 650,000 Italian lives, but also widened the economic divisions between the industrialised north, which prospered from armaments manufacture, and the rural south, where wages remained depressed as prices soared. Emigration, especially to the United States, seemed to offer the only way out for many Sicilian, Apulian and Calabrian families.

Sicilian emigrants (image is in the Public Domain).

The end of the war brought civil unrest, strikes, factory occupations, and open conflict between right-wing and left-wing militias. Finally, in 1922, forced to choose between the Fascist Scylla and the Socialist Charybdis, King Victor Emmanuel III threw in his lot with Mussolini's black-shirts. In Sicily, Il Duce's "Iron Prefect," Cesare Mori, declared war on the Mafia, forcing many of its bosses to join the stream of trans-Atlantic emigrants.

When, in 1943, British, American and Canadian forces captured Sicily, and began fighting their way up through the Italian peninsula, they brought with them many naturalised Italian-Americans, keen to play their part in the "reconstruction" of their homeland. Inevitably, these included Mafiosi, some of whom had built substantial criminal empires for themselves on the streets of New York and Chicago, and now had scores to settle, not only with those who had been active Fascists, but with anyone who had ever crossed them. Denunciations came in thick and fast, but who was to be trusted and believed?

The sinking of the US liberty ship, Robert Rowan, by German aircraft, of Gela, Sicily, in 1943. Photo: Lieut. Longini, US Signal Corps, US National Archives, 531165 (image is in the Public Domain).

A US Sherman tank in Sicily, 1943. US Army Centre for Military History (image is in the Public Domain).

Adam Foulds's novel, In the Wolf's Mouth, tells the story of the 1943 Sicilian campaign through the eyes of four very different men: Angilu, a simple Sicilian shepherd, who remains loyal to his feudal overlord, Prince Adriano; Ray Marfioni, a young American-Italian infantryman; Will Walker, a British intelligence officer, who finds himself responsible for liaison with the local community; and Ciro Albanese, a Mafioso recently returned from New York. It ought to be (but probably isn't) required reading for anyone involved in post-war "reconstruction" in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan or Libya.

" ... at sunset Angilu saw his mule twitch its ears forwards and lift its head. He looked across the valley to see a man approaching on horseback, the horse's big, jointed shadow moving over the stones in front of them as it snorted and laboured under a large man. One of the field guards ... The horse shifted sideways a little, finding sockets for its hooves in the ground. 'This evening,' the guard said, 'it would be better to let fate take its course' ... Angilu picked up a small pink pebble and rolled it in his palm. 'Are they bringing or taking?' ... 'You've got a lot of questions ... You think too much up here. You worry. It's all arranged anyway. You'll be found in the morning ... It's best for your reputation if they tie you.'"

A peasant family at Limina, Sicily. Photo: Wilhelm von Gloeden (image is in the Public Domain).

 "The waiting to land, like all the interminable waiting, felt like it would never end and then suddenly did. Ray found himself on deck loaded with his equipment waiting to climb down into a landing craft. In a grid all around him in the darkness the others were waiting to do the same. So many of them, Ray felt for the first time the pent-up strength of the force. They couldn't lose. Men went over the side and everyone stepped forward. Then Ray went over the side, clambering down from square to warping square of netting. Beside him, a soldier Ray didn't know mistimed the jump and fell between the troopship and the landing craft. His helmet struck the hull with a ringing sound and before he had time to cry out, he was gone, disappeared into the black water, and din't resurface. A quiet, rapid, weird death - the first Ray witnessed - that no one had time to remark on. It made Ray pant with terror for a minute. This was it. This was battle. This was where men died."

Allied landing craft on the shores of Sicily, 1943 (this is the British 51st Highland Division). Photo: Imperial War Museum, Non-Commercial License A17916. 

"So the fighting was done in Sicily. Ruins and corpses. An apparently grateful population in a state of chaos it was now Will's duty to calm and clarify. The Allied Military Government was hastening into position and Will was with several others in the wrong place. Deploying the extra powers of their identity cards, they got themselves transport to Palermo. Having identified the headquarters, Will decided to delay a little longer and go for a stroll. He walked out among the American soldiers and the sunshine, the locals who were silent and stared and the beggars who approached. He looked around for the oriental beauty and the repellent pushing middle classes, but he didn't see them. Palermo looked like a grand old opera set of a place. There were avenues interrupted with massive piles of rubble where buildings had fallen. Pigeons spluttered from one balcony to another. There was a huge bomb crater near the encrusted cathedral. Hundreds had died there apparently."

Allied soldiers on Sicily (men of the Durham Light Infantry with a paratrooper of the US 505th Parachute Infantry). Photo: Imperial War Museum, Non-Commercial License, NA4614. 

British soldiers in Catania, 1943. Photo: Imperial War Museum, Non-Commercial License, NA5335.

Mark Patton's novels, Undreamed Shores, An Accidental King, and Omphalos, are published by Crooked Cat Publications, and can be purchased from Amazon. He is currently working on The Cheapside Tales, a London-based trilogy of historical novels.