Island stamps celebrate megalithic heritage

A set of stamps recently issued by the Post Office in Jersey celebrates the island’s megalithic heritage and, in doing so, provides a glimpse of some of the places that lie at the heart of my novel, Undreamed Shores.

The stamps (www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-jersey-20184370) show five megalithic sites: Mont Ubé; Le Couperon; Ville-ès-Noaux; Grantez and Faldouet.

Mont Ubé, which one has to imagine with its original capstones and covering mound, is the 6000 year old site, already ancient when the story opens, that features in Chapter 3 as ‘the Shrine of the Gannet Clan:’ “In his dream, he found himself in a confined space, crouching on the ground. Water dripped onto his shoulder from the crack between the heavy capstones…The quartz and mica crystals of the stones twinkled in the flickering light of his uncle’s lamp. He felt he was falling backwards, being pulled back into the belly of the earth. The signs of the ancestors flashed before his eyes: bindweed tendrils, spirals, whirlpools in the air. Gero…reached into the depths of one of the stone boxes that lined the wall of the shrine and produced a skull, handing it to Amzai…”.

 

Mont Ube (top left), Le Couperon, Ville-es-Nouaux (top right), Grantez & Faldouet

 

The construction of Ville-ès-Nouaux takes place during the story, and is described in Chapter 19: “She pointed to the spot where the magpie had fallen.’Please bury his body separately over there, and cover it with the largest rock you can find, so his spirit cannot walk the Earth. Cover the rock with clay and place a circle of stones around the mound. I will cast a spell on that circle that will contain his poison forever…’”.  

The Faldouet dolmen, already shown on one of the island’s coins, features in my short story, “The Thread that Binds (www.etherbooks.com).”

 

 

 

Undreamed Shores, the paperback edition, is available at £8.09 from www.amazon.co.uk/Undreamed-Shores-Mark-Patton/dp/1908910410/ref=sr_1-1.

Oral Tradition and Historical Fiction

However far back in time a historical novel may be set, the characters that feature in it must have an awareness and an understanding of times that came before them. Their narratives about those times will, almost invariably, be different from ours. They will frequently be based on oral tradition rather than written sources, raising the fascinating question of how long an oral tradition might survive.

One of the turning points in my novel, Undreamed Shores, comes when an old man recites a poem that tells of a voyage made by ancestors more than a thousand years before his own time. The book’s ending (which I do not intend to give away here) is loosely based on a legend, first written down in the 16^th Century, and bearing all the stylistic hallmarks of a Medieval romance (a gallant knight, a dragon, a treacherous betrayal; a noble and constant lady). By adapting this legend in a story set in 2400 BC, I explore the possibility that the story itself might be based on a tradition that goes back millennia, rather than merely centuries. J.P. Reedman, in her recently published novel, Stone Lord, goes even further, in taking the familiar legends of the Arthurian cycle back to the age of Stonehenge. Neither Reedman nor I has evidence, of the sort that would convince a historian, to support such a contention but that, in a sense, is the point about writing historical fiction:  it enables us to explore aspects of the past that historians and archaeologists have no means of reaching.

So how far back might oral traditions go? Some of the descriptions of weapons and armour in Homer’s Iliad seem to predate the poem itself by four or five centuries. Among the folk songs collected by Cecil Sharp are some that appear to go back as far as the Hundred Years War. The French archaeologist, José Garanger, working on the Pacific island of Vanuatu, found material evidence in support of a legend concerning a powerful chief, Roy Mata, who had lived seven hundred years earlier. Is this a truly exceptional case, or just one of many stories that endured?

The grave-marker of Roy Mata on Vanuatu, evidence that the precise details of a historical event can survive in oral tradition for many centuries.

 

Our own “collective memory,” as Europeans, goes back around 2500 years: Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great and Socrates all have a place within it. Going back beyond this, we may still have names (Achilles, Odysseus, Jason), but it becomes increasingly difficult to separate out the fact from the fiction. Perhaps, indeed, it is the fictional element, the fantastical, that has allowed these stories to survive at all? All of these stories, of course, have survived with the aid of written records. If we imagine, however, that oral traditions might have allowed a British contemporary of Julius Caesar to see back into the past as far as we can: that person might be connected by these traditions to the builders of Stonehenge; and they, in turn, to the first farmers in this part of the world.  

Undreamed Shores, the paperback edition, is available at £8.09 from www.amazon.co.uk/Undreamed-Shores-Mark-Patton/dp/1908910410/ref=sr_1-1. Further information, including two short stories linked to the novel, is available from my website: www.mark-patton.co.uk.

Launch of Undreamed Shores - The Paperback Edition

The paperback edition of my novel, Undreamed Shores, is published today by Crooked Cat Publications (www.crookedcatpublishing.com).

 

Set in 2400 BC, and ranging over southern England, Northern France and the Channel Islands, Stonehenge features prominently in the novel. Coincidentally, just as the paperback edition went to print, English Heritage announced the results of new research using 3D laser scanning technology (http://blog.stonehenge-stone-circle.co.uk/2012/10/8/the-solstice-connection-laser-scanning-uncovers-new-stonehenge-evidence/), including a detailed analysis of the way in which the stones were shaped by the builders of the monument. Whilst previous research on Stonehenge has emphasised the monument’s alignment towards the rising sun on the day of the Summer Solstice, the new research suggests an equally important focus on the setting sun on the day of the Winter Solstice.

Stonehenge at Sunset, by John Constable (Yale Center for British Art). 

 

Whilst Undreamed Shores includes both a summer and a winter ceremony, it is the winter ceremony that I have chosen to imagine in greater detail, because this is the first ceremony that my protagonist, a stranger to British shores, witnesses at Stonehenge. This ceremony is likely to have involved a boat journey along the River Avon from Durrington Walls (the closest large settlement), followed by a procession along the Stonehenge Avenue, with the sunset being observed from the north-east, and this is precisely what I describe. The following extracts are from Chapter 9.

“When the day came for the Winter Sun Ceremony, Amzai emerged from the house into a world transformed by snow. It was only a light dusting, but the sun’s rays reflecting off the clean snow created a brilliance of light that made the land itself seem to vibrate, like a low musical humming…”

“…On the riverside, a large ceremonial boat was moored, close to the village gate…On either side of the river, the white snow of the hillsides gleamed and glistened like quartz dust…They alighted by the carved posts…and…processed along the avenue, their shoes crunching the crisp but shallow snow…The sun was already low in the sky ahead of them, casting long shadows on the snow, as the shrine came into view…In the entrance to the shrine, just in front of the large, bulky stone that stood there, a small fire burned. Beside it, on the snow, lay a thick blanket of fox-pelts…”

“…Only when the gathering night had extinguished the tiny puddle of red light that lingered on the horizon, did the drumming and the ululating cease, leaving the shrine in silence once again…”

The Stonehenge that Amzai visits is not the monument we see today. The bluestones, transported from west Wales, are present as a double circle, with a monolith at its centre, but the larger sarsens, including the great trilithons, exist, at this stage, only as an idea in the mind of one of the characters, Amzai’s brother-in-law, Gwalchmai. There is scope, here, for a sequel, but that is far into the future!

Undreamed Shores, the paperback edition, is available at £8.09 from www.amazon.co.uk/Undreamed-Shores-Mark-Patton/dp/1908910410/ref=sr_1-1. Further information, including two short stories linked to the novel, is available from my website: www.mark-patton.co.uk.

"The Next Big Thing"

This questionnaire, entitled “The Next Big Thing,” seems to be doing the rounds on the internet (it was brought to my attention by fellow writer Nancy Bilyeau – http://nancybilyeau.blogspot.com), so I thought it would be interesting to answer the questions and introduce my next major writing project.

What is your working title of your book?

An Accidental King.

Where did the idea come from for the book?

When I was a child, growing up in Jersey, we used to take a two week holiday most years, spending the first week in the New Forest and the second week with my grandfather in East Sussex. My parents did everything they could to encourage my interest in archaeology and history and, since Fishbourne Roman Palace (near Chichester) was roughly midway on our journey, we generally stopped there. I must have been 8 years old when I first saw it, and immediately wanted to know more about it: why it was built, and who lived there. Since then I have studied and taught archaeology, but those questions have kept coming back to my mind.

What genre does your book fall under?

Historical fiction.

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

Difficult to answer, since the book covers the events of four decades (43 AD-80 AD). Essentially, my protagonist, the client King, Tiberius Claudius Cogidubnus, looks back on his life from his late 60’s, so I’d love for that role to be played by Sir Ian McKellan. We might need to find someone else to play him in his younger days. It would be great for Sir Derek Jacobi to return to his earlier role as the Emperor Claudius, and for Sir Patrick Stewart to play Vespasian.

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

Tiberius Claudius Cogidubnus, the pro-Roman client King of Southern Britain, looks back on his life and reign; at his friendship with the Emperor Claudius, and the future Emperor, Vespasian; at his attempts to maintain peace & prosperity in his kingdom, to prevent the Boudican Revolt (and, later, to limit its extent and deal with its aftermath); and at the shifting nature of the relationship between Britain and Rome.  

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

I don’t intend to self-publish. Whether or not it will be represented by an agency is subject to on-going discussions.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

I think it took about a year (working full-time for around half of this) to write the first draft. It has taken me a further three years (working part-time) to get it to its current point (i.e. the submission stage – Draft 12), with professional assistance from The Literary Consultancy (www.literaryconsultancy.co.uk) and help, also, from an online critique group.

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

It is written in the first person, so the obvious points of comparison are Robert Graves’s Claudius novels and Marguerite Yourcenar’s Memoirs of Hadrian, both of which I love. It is written, however, for a 21st Century readership, so the writing style is quite different. Also, the focus is specifically on Britain and, in this sense, it comes closer to Manda Scott’s Boudica Dreaming series, though told, of course, from the completely opposite point of view.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

Apart from my early visits to Fishbourne (which many archaeologists and historians believe to have been built for Cogidubnus by Vespasian), my subsequent academic studies and countless conversations with colleagues and students, I have frequently made connections with more recent events.

This, in one sense, is my response to 9/11. I can so easily imagine someone like Cogidubnus being seduced by elements of Roman culture (the architecture of the Forum – which my fictional Cogidubnus sees as a young man, the beauty of the written word in the poetry of Virgil & Ovid) in much the same way that, all over the world, people of my parents’ generation were seduced by aspects of American culture (Jazz, Rock & Roll, Hollywood, not to mention the charisma of politicians such as FDR and JFK).

A Mosaic floor at Fishbourne, probably from Cogidubnus's time (photo: Immanuel Guel).

 

 The Roman Forum, through which my fictional Cogidubnus rides alongside Vespasian, in the Triumph of the Emperor Claudius (photo: Carla Tavares).

 

The ancient mine-shaft on Iceni territory, where the protagonist is held hostage in the aftermath of the Boudican Revolt (photo: Ashley Dace).

 

The realisation of the unequal nature of the “special relationships” that arise from such a seduction comes later, and draws a variety of responses, which are not easy to reconcile.

 
What else about your book might pique the reader's interest?
 
The central part of the book gives a graphic account of the Boudican Revolt, from the perspective of its victims (most of whom would have been British, rather than “Roman” in the strict sense), and in a way which, I hope, has strong contemporary resonances.

Historical Fiction and the 2012 Man Booker Prize

Here is the 2012 long-list for the Man Booker Prize. Those high-lighted in blue are those that have made it onto the short-list. The final result will be announced on 16^th October.

 

Bring Up The Bodies                                      Hilary Mantel

Narcopolis                                                       Jeet Thayil

Swimming Home                                             Deborah Levy

The Garden of Evening Mists                         Tan Twan Eng

Umbrella                                                         Will Self

The Lighthouse                                                Alison Moore

Communion Town                                           Sam Thompson

Philida                                                             André Brink

Skios                                                                Michael Frayn

The Teleportation Accident                             Ned Beauman

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry          Rachel Joyce

The Yips                                                           Nicola Barker.

 

Of the twelve books on the long-list, three can be considered as historical fiction (Bring Up The Bodies, The Garden of Evening Mists and Philida), and two of these have been short-listed. To return to an earlier discussion (my blog post of 6^th May), this does not quite suggest “a somewhat gimcrack genre, not exactly jammed with greatness.”

 

Of the books on the short-list, one of the historical novels, Hilary Mantel’s Bring Up The Bodies seems to be emerging as the hot favourite to win the prize. My money was on this book from the start. To my mind, it is a worthy sequel to Wolf Hall, and I can’t wait to read the third book in the series. Mantel pulls off brilliantly the difficult task of getting the reader to see a past world through the eyes of someone who could so easily be seen (and so often has been seen) as a villain. She does not make Thomas Cromwell a hero: his ruthlessness and vindictiveness are not glossed over by any means; but she also shows another side to him – a caring family man; loyal to his true friends; capable of pity and compassion as well as cruelty; in short, a three dimensional human character. The reader is continually confronted with the question (as I have heard the author herself remark) “if you were Thomas Cromwell, what would you have done in this situation?” The easy answer might be to say that I would never have become the kind of person that Thomas Cromwell was; but this is a 21^st Century response, and Mantel does not allow her readers to get away so easily. This is historical fiction at its challenging best.

 

 

 

The judges, of course, might prefer to back a less well-established writer (Mantel has already won the award for Wolf Hall and is, I suspect, set for yet more exalted heights of international literary recognition in the future). If there is one author on the short-list who could give her a run for her money, I think it is probably Tan Twan Eng, with his second published novel, The Garden of Evening Mists, set against the background of the Japanese occupation of Malaya.

As a recent reviewer in The Guardian pointed out, it is “impossible to resist” a book which begins: “On a mountain above the clouds once lived a man who had been the gardener of the Emperor of Japan." That same reviewer, however, describes the book as “bland,” a sentiment with which I cannot possibly agree. It charts the growing relationship between this old man and a retired Malayan woman judge, Teoh Yun Ling, as they build a garden together amid the mists of the mountain. It is a book with an almost magical sense of place. I don’t envy the judges their task of choosing between such different books (not to mention the contemporary fiction works on the list, not all of which I have read), but I look forward to hearing the result, and am glad to see historical fiction holding its own amid such a wealth of diverse literary offerings. 

Are there books on the long-list that you think deserved to be on the short-list but aren't? Are there other books that you think should have been on the long-list (mine might include Andrew Miller's Pure and Katie Ward's Girl Reading).    

Guest Blog with Nancy Jardine

I'm delighted today to introduce my fellow author, Nancy Jardine, who will tell you a little about her book, The Beltane Choice. I'm currently writing about this period myself, so very much looking forward to reading Nancy's book!

 

 

Why Celtic Britain?

 

I’m delighted to be with you today, Mark, to explain a little background to my first historical adventure-The Beltane Choice-released yesterday by Crooked{Cat}Publishing.

 

 

 

Why did I set The Beltane Choice in AD 71 when the Romans were invading Britain? Researching for a Regency, or a Victorian, novel might have been easier, but the truth is my Celtic and Roman studies weren’t undertaken for writing a novel.

 

During my teaching career I taught 11-12 year olds who typically learned about World War 2, and The Victorian Era-though on rare occasions I taught about the might of the Roman Empire swooping onto the shores of Celtic Britain. Since I live in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, ancient history is on my doorstep. I used local archaeological evidence; collected information from public library sources; bought suitable books to use with the kids, and scaled it down for classroom use. Those were my first Roman /Celtic researches.

 

Archaeological digs, at the Deer’s Den site, in my home village of Kintore during 2002 to 2004 sparked my imagination further. The digs had been funded because the Victorian built village school was being replaced by a brand new building. The foundations for the new school would encroach on land long-designated as a historical site of Roman occupation, and no building work could happen till the digs were undertaken. The results were spectacular. Evidence of more than one Roman occupation of the area was uncovered- over two hundred and fifty bread ovens unearthed a stunning amount. The findings from Neolithic times were numerous, too.

 

Since I live opposite the school building, I was involved as a village resident and as a teacher. We were invited to view the excavations a few times over the duration of the dig. My class worked on stories where an invented character lived in a Celtic roundhouse village near the Deer’s Den site when the Romans attack- a short story of my own having been drafted as an example for the kids. Though an avid reader, I hadn’t been serious about writing fiction before then. That dig was the catalyst!

 

My fledgling writing career began, though it had a very shaky start. I wrote the first draft of a time-travel novel where contemporary children travel back to the Kintore of AD 83/84, and are involved in the battle of Mons Graupius – Romans against the Celtic tribes of the north. I sited the battle at Bennachie, a range of hills with a distinctive conical peak which lies 9 miles away from our village.  Sadly, that draft was abandoned since non-fiction writing projects took up my vacation time for the next few years.

 

In 2008 I wrote the first draft of a Celtic/Roman adventure. That eventually evolved- I’m delighted to say- into The Beltane Choice now published by Crooked{Cat}Publishing. Though, instead of setting my historical novel in Aberdeenshire, I set it in the border areas between Scotland and England, at an earlier time of AD 71. Any knowledge of Celtic life I’ve used in the writing of The Beltane Choice is my own interpretation of historical facts I’ve learned through my teaching. My hero and heroine are, respectively, from Brigante and Selgovae tribes. I used the Roman mobilisations around Eboracum (present day York) as a reason to bring what were warring Celtic tribes together. This scenario is a total fabrication on my part, though I have made a conscious effort to make the novel appear as authentic as possible.

 

However, I have started a sequel to The Beltane Choice which will take the protagonists on to the Battle of Mons Graupius…

 

Some readers may be interested to know my children’s novel has also been redrafted, but now covers the Roman Severan Campaigns of AD 210, in north-east Scotland-the action happening around Kintore and Bennachie. I’m hoping to see that work published some time, too.

 

I’d be very interested to know what might have been the catalyst that spurred other authors to take up their pen. What was your trigger?

Blurb for The Beltane Choice:

Can the Celtic Tribes repel the Roman army?

Banished from the nemeton, becoming a priestess is no longer the future for Nara, a princess of the Selgovae tribe. Now charged with choosing a suitable mate before Beltane, her plan is thwarted by Lorcan, an enemy Brigante prince, who captures her and takes her to his hill fort. Despite their tribes fighting each other, Nara feels drawn to her captor, but time runs out for her secret quest.

 

As armies of the Roman Empire march relentlessly northwards, Lorcan intends to use Nara as a marriage bargain, knowing all Celtic tribes must unite to be strong enough to repel imminent Roman attack. Nara’s father, Callan, agrees to a marriage alliance between Selgovae and Brigante, but has impossible stipulations. Lorcan is torn between loyalty to his tribe and growing love for Nara.  

 

When danger and death arrive in the form of the mighty Roman forces, will Nara be able to choose her Beltane lover?

 

Buy links for The Beltane Choice: http://www.crookedcatbooks.com/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=63 Book Trailer for the Beltane Choice: http://youtu.be/igJmfBoXRhQ

 

Tags: historical, romantic, Celtic, adventure

 

Author Bio:

Nancy Jardine lives in the picturesque castle country of Aberdeenshire, Scotland, with her husband who feeds her well or she’d starve! Ancestry research is one of her hobbies, as is participating in exciting events with her family which drag her away from the keyboard. In her large garden she now grows spectacular weeds, which she’s becoming very fond of! She cherishes the couple of days a week when she child-minds her gorgeous granddaughter.

 

 

Author Links: http://nancyjardine.blogspot.com   http://nancyjardineauthor.weebly.com    http://facebook.com/nancy.jardine.56    Twitter @nansjar

Other books by Nancy Jardine:

MONOGAMY TWIST Amazon.co.uk: http://amzn.to/OmXH3V Book Trailer for Monogamy Twist: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJVzbrkJQzA

TAKE ME NOW  http://bit.ly/MQJXvw   amazon.co.uk http://amzn.to/TPynpq  Book Trailer for Take Me Now:  http://youtu.be/stDC4Yhm2r0

 

 

Why Paulo Coelho is wrong about Joyce's Ulysses.

Paulo Coelho is one of the World’s greatest living writers. He deserves his place alongside Homer, Dante, Shakespeare and (at the risk of offending him, but risk has always been my friend), James Joyce.

On the subject of Joyce’s Ulysses, however, I believe that Coelho is, quite simply, wrong. He says that it has “harmed literature.” How can any book do this? Bad books (history alone will judge whether any of mine, or Paulo’s, fall into this category) fade into obscurity and harm nobody. Occasionally one of my postgraduates unearths one, and uses it to make some comment on the time in which it was written. Will people still be reading Ulysses in a thousand years’ time? I don’t know, but if there are bookmakers in Heaven (or in Hell), I will put a few pounds on it (as I will on Coelho’s Aleph).

Ulysses is, according to Coelho, “pure style,” by which, presumably, he means that it has no real substance, just, perhaps, some sort of literary eloquence. Well, I accuse Coelho of literary eloquence, and would even like to claim some measure of it for myself! But there is substance, also, in Ulysses, an attempt to create an epic from the mundane: to say that, in the lives of the most ordinary people, there hides an Odysseus, a Telemachus, a Circe. If this does not ennoble the human spirit (which I think is what literature ought to do), then I don’t know what does.   

One of my friends, a fellow writer, commented recently that she would have to live 142 years in order to read all the books she would wish to read. My response was that it would take me far longer. But perhaps, if I were immortal (which, of course, I’m not), I could spend 142 years or more just reading and re-reading Ulysses. I’ve read it, I think, six times now, each time discovering new and different things. The Irish-American writer, Frank Delaney, has a fantastic podcast (www.frankdelaney.com) which puts a new gloss on it, even for me. He is taking his time, as the book deserves, aiming to finish, I think, in his hundredth year. At that point, I think I might just be ready to take on his mantle, and do something similar with Finnegan’s Wake.