Byams House

We had a family Christmas this year, staying in Byams House, the Officers' Mess of 17 Port & Maritime Regiment, Royal Logistic Corps.

Staying at Byams House was not just a lovely way to spend the holiday, but it brought together my interests in the 19^th century and the history of the British Army.

17 Port & Maritime Regiment is the regiment that concerns itself with things naval. In the same way as the Army has its own air wing (the Army Air Corps), it also has a sea-going capacity. In the past, this has been much more extensive than now, with Army ships (flying the Blue Ensign with crossed sabres) forming a significant fleet. Nowadays the Army's fleet is much reduced, with most military transport being contracted to private vessels. Even so, while the Navy is responsible for fighting on the sea, the transport and landing of military supplies across water is the responsibility of the Army's seamen navigators. (Don't call them sailors: they don't like it.)

British commitments in Afghanistan and the Falklands mean that supplies are continually being shipped to and from these overseas operations and many of these go through 17 Port & Maritime's own docks in Marchwood, just outside Southampton. In fact, while the Army has seen regular cuts since World War II, these docks have been expanded.

Although there are no stables at Marchwood, the British Army (traditionally run by generals from the prestigious cavalry regiments) is still not sure that the day of the horse is over. So Marchwood is not referred to as an Army Port, or a Maritime Logistic Centre. No, it is the Sea Mounting Centre (and RLC officers in mess uniform still wear spurs to remind them that their job is all about horses). In fairness, Wikipedia refers to it as Marchwood Military Port but no one working there does.

The port was built in 1943, to support the Normandy landings. It was 17 Port & Maritime who were responsible for the Mulberry Harbours. This was a system of prefabricated jetties that could be towed to Normandy to provide a working harbour within hours. It was crucial to the success of the Allied attack and remains a core element of 17 Port & Maritime's capability.

Byams House was a rather splendid house conveniently close to the docks. There was a house there before the 19^th century, but it was rebuilt as a grand home in 1878. The Army has built a new accommodation wing, and decorated the exterior with cannon, but the feel of the place is much as I imagine it was in the  

Modern entrance to Byams House. The original building is on the left.

latter part of the 19^th century. The number of people staying there varies as officers pass through or are posted away, but at any one time around seven or eight will view Byams House as home. It being Christmas (we don't start wars at Christmas) only our host was at home, so we spread ourselves on the leather sofas round the log fire in the grand hall and unwrapped gifts we had left under a tree that, although around ten 

feet high, was sitting unobtrusively in a corner. We didn't get to use the reception rooms: two rooms separated by folding doors so they can convert to one grand ballroom. The rooms are still used for formal dinners and regimental balls, their elegant proportions and enormous windows ideal for such occasions. Beyond the windows there is a lawn, rather sad in a rain-soaked December, but ideal for summer parties. Byams House also boasts a traditional walled garden, now largely unloved except by officers' dogs who enjoy the chance to run off the lead in safety.

Walled Garden at Byams House.

© Copyright Peter Facey and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

We strolled up and down the grand staircase, or clattered less splendidly on the servants stairs that provide a convenient short-cut. We admired the oil paintings (mainly military vessels) and the regimental trophies, and for two days we allowed ourselves to slip back to the 19^th century. By 1878, the end of the great houses of Britain was already in sight, but William Gascoigne Roy Esq didn't know this when he rebuilt his family seat. Thirty-six years later the Great War would end the way of life that had supported these grand homes. Now most that remain are corporate headquarters, hotels or nursing homes. A few have become military property. There, in a world where tradition is valued and dinners still end with a loyal toast, we can catch a glimpse of what life then must have been like.

Jingle Bells

It's coming up Christmas so here, for no other reason than that I like the music, are three CDs you might want to buy for a loved one. (All are available as downloads.) And yes, all are by independents who need your support. And I know two of them in real life and one virtually. But they really are lovely songs.

First up: Michael Timothy's Inside Out. Lovely chill-out music. There's a decent amount of sample on the website if you want to check it out.

Next: Bianca Vrcan's Tango for London. If you like tango music, it's lively and danceable and fun to have. If you've never met tango music, give it a whirl. It's not a great classic of the genre, but it's more accessible than a lot of older stuff.

Finally: Amy Saia's Meadowland, channels Carly Simon very sweetly. I must confess that I haven't got the whole CD, but the tracks I've listened to are really nice. And Amy is an unsigned artiste with real talent, so why not support her?

Xmas reads

Every newspaper and magazine seems to be suggesting books you might like to give as Christmas presents, so this year I've decided to join in.

I'm not going to tell you that you ought to be buying all your friends copies of The White Rajah and Cawnpore, because, of course, you've already done that. So here are a couple of alternatives from other authors you probably won't have heard of.

I have mentioned S A Meade here before. She wrote Lord of Endersley, which I reviewed earlier in the year. Like Cawnpore, it's the story of a gay man caught up in the Indian mutiny, but the resemblance pretty well ends there. Lord of Endersley is very definitely a gay romance and will appeal principally to people who like that kind of book. This is, apparently, not only gay men but also straight women, so if you have a female friend who will enjoy an explicit story of forbidden love, this one's for her. S A Meade does also write occasional heterosexual romances (as S A Laybourn) and her latest, Christopher'sMedal, is a well told tale of a man with post-traumatic stress disorder who is redeemed by love. Like Lord of Endersley, this is a story with graphic sexual detail, so possibly not one for your maiden aunt, though the "naughty" bits are easily skipped and the rest of the story is, in its way, quite charming.

I know I'm getting hung up on explicit romance here, but I'm going to mention one more: Where My Love Lies Dreaming by Christopher Moss. It's another gay romance, set on a Mississippi paddle steamer in 1859. Again, it's sexually explicit and not everyone's cup of tea, but Christopher Moss writes well and if you like tales of beautiful men falling in love, it may be yours.

For something completely different, I still love Tracy Franklin's Angst, Anger, Love, Hope. Tracy is a poet and a bloody good one. Tracy has published another collection, Looking for the Sun Door since then. If you like your poetry soulful and sort of poet-y, Looking for the Sun Door might be your thing, but I preferred the earthiness of Angst, Anger, Love, Hope. Both allow you a preview on Amazon, so read a couple and decide which style you prefer. I wouldn't generally buy anyone a book of poetry but I really do think Tracy is terrific, so give her a shot.

If you're buying for a teenage girl, you might consider Amy Saia's The Soul Seekers. It's part romance, part ghost story and part thriller. It's set in a small town in Indiana. Amy Saia knows a lot about growing up in small-town America and she writes about it beautifully. She's another writer who will never get the audience she deserves, so bear her in mind. The paperback has to be shipped from the USA, so you'll have to hurry if you live in the UK and want it by Xmas.

Amy is a lovely singer, too, with definite echoes of Carly Simon. Perhaps I'll recommend some CDs in my next post.

Christmas cacti

The Christmas cacti I keep at home are just coming into flower. While most cacti flower rarely as pot plants, the Christmas cacti bloom regularly at our house, the first sign here that it is time to start thinking of holly and ivy, tinsel and mistletoe.

It's also time to think of Xmas shopping. Now that I have books to sell, I can't ignore the fact that this is the time of year when people are most likely to go on to Amazon (other online stores are also available) and buy a paperback for a friend. For much of the year, I write about all sorts of things here, but I hope you'll understand that the next few weeks will see a certain concentration on the value of buying books, especially books published by independent publishers. Books are inexpensive gifts, but show you have given some thought to what your friends would like to read. And Xmas sales make a huge difference to less well-known authors.

Do historical novels exist?

Another historical novelist was asking recently what historical novelists could do to market their genre. I'm not sure it's entirely the right question. Is there really a genre of historical novels?

I keep reading that historical novels are madly popular right now. This seems to mean that there is a lot of enthusiasm for Hilary Mantel and Phillipa Gregory, partly because of success at the Bookers and on TV respectively. But an enthusiasm for what I (showing my age) still call mediaeval and Tudor fiction is not necessarily going to help me. I did hear on Radio Four that there is a fashion right now for what they called neo-Victorian books, which would help me if anybody had heard of this fashion outside the more aesthetic reaches of the BBC. But that's not necessarily going to sell the books that friends of mine have written set in revolutionary Russia or on the old paddle steamers of the Mississippi.

My point is that because you like the Falco stories set in ancient Rome doesn't mean that you'll like Bernard Cornwell's Napoleonic Sharpe tales. And you might think that a story based in the Korean War isn't historical at all – although, according to many definitions, it quite definitely is. In fact, a recent survey suggests that readers' favourite period is the 13th to 16th centuries (presumably the Mantel/Gregory effect) with the least favourite time periods being prehistory and the 2nd to 5th centuries. So I think we have to get away from the idea that there is one genre of "historical fiction" that people are buying into.

Apart from the whole question of period, there's the issue of subgenres. With historical fiction, the subgenres are not a trivial or artificial distinction. There is a massive market for what is called in the trade "Regency Romance". It is unlikely that a reader of Regency Romance is going to rush to buy my own The White Rajah, although it is set only a few decades after the Regency period. Some of Bernard Cornwell's Sharpe books actually take place during the Regency, but I think that Romance readers will not want to read his military fiction. Military fiction is, of course, another subgenre of historical fiction. Cornwell is a particularly strong presence here, but so are the naval adventures of CS Forester and Patrick O'Brian. But is it sensible to assume that same people that enjoy Forester's Hornblower stories are going to read the Empire series about the Roman legions?

The problem is that genre fiction sells. It is much easier to market a book that can be presented as a "thriller", "crime story", "romcom", or whatever than simply as a novel. In fact the books that are left over after genre fiction has been taken out tend to be lumped together as "literary novels", which get far more critical attention but, usually, much lower sales. Unsurprisingly, people like me, who write books that are not set in the present day, would rather have ourselves described as authors of "historical fiction" than as of (in my case) authors writing novels dealing with issues of colonialism and exclusion but with some quite exciting bits in. But I suspect that for every Regency Romance reader who looks my book before recoiling in horror, there is another potential reader who never gets that far because they "don't read historical novels".

What's the solution? I have no idea. If you have, please respond in the comments below and you will have my undying gratitude.

Why words count

Last week's post about word count seems to have attracted more interest than most. The original Linked In discussion was also noticeably more involving than a lot of them. This set me to wondering why so many writers are quite so obsessive about word count.

I was listening to a programme on Radio Four last week (for US readers, Radio Four is the main UK talk radio channel) and it was discussing the difficulty of defining "work". It turns out that most people like to be thought of as doing quite a lot of "work" but nobody is quite sure what to include in it. My personal bete noire is when businessmen say that they work 16 hour day in which they include lunch and dinner because they're talking to colleagues, so this is obviously "work", isn't it? When I was working as a freelancer, there was always the question as to whether journey time counted as "work" or not. Given that I might be expected to travel from London to Manchester as part of the job, this was hardly a trivial issue. For writers, the whole question of what is "work" is even more difficult to pin down. Donna Tartt has apparently said in an interview that she "works" all the time, partly on the grounds that she carries a notebook with her and constantly jots down things that she might put into a novel. Given that she has written three novels in 21 years, her definition of "work" does, I think, stretch it about as far as you can. And in that last, ever so slightly bitchy, comment, we come to the nub of the concern about word count. For when I say that three books in 21 years hardly seems like full-time employment, what I am saying is, ultimately, that she doesn't write a lot each day.

Now I spent my last post ridiculing the idea that your creative effort can be measured in words per day, but here I am, doing just that. Why? Because, like all writers I want to be taken seriously as a writer and, until I win the Booker, how do I define the "work" of writing?

I could, of course, just say that a writer is anybody who writes. But, every so often, someone comes up with the idea that almost literally everybody in the country has, at some stage, started to write a book. I can quite believe it. I have even seen computer programs being sold that claim to enable you to turn your brilliant idea into prose even if you do not really have a plot, any characters or the first clue of how to write. On this definition, we are all, it appears, writers now.

I have a friend with an English degree who decided that she would like to write. She joined a Writers Circle, because people in a Writers Circle will be writers, yes? After weeks of listening to a group of not noticeably talented people reading their Special Words to each other, she gave up. The worst thing, she suggested, was the unspoken social contract whereby you agreed that the other person's Special Words were evidence of real talent in exchange for them doing the same for you. It's quite possible that some of the people in the group had real potential, but in the atmosphere of mutual onanism, nobody was ever going to find out. It does seem fair to say, though, that membership of a Circle does not make you a writer.

Once upon a time, the test of whether or not you were a writer was whether or not you had a book published. But that's hardly a test any more. Many really rather good writers are self-published or published by independent publishers that no one has ever heard of. Unfortunately, so are some people whose work, by any standard other than their own, would struggle to be judged as a "proper book". Some people have tried to replace the test of "had a book published" with "had a book published by a mainstream publisher". But, looking at the books published by mainstream publishers, I don't see that as being any test of quality either. Even after you've taken out the celebrity books (often written by someone whose name is not on the cover) you are left with some works of dubious worth. I'll name no names because it's a grey area, but we can all think of some very doubtful stuff that is getting mainstream publication these days.

So if the test isn't "I've had a book published", what defines somebody as a "real" writer? It would be nice to suggest that it is whether or not you make a living out of writing. Unfortunately (he said with feeling), the last time I looked, which was, admittedly a few years ago, the average amount made by somebody who actually writes for money was £7000 a year. Obviously Dan Brown and JK Rowling manage rather more than that, but for most writers, the idea of it paying a living wage is just ridiculous. At one level, this is quite a good definition of a writer, but it suffers from the opposite problem of defining it as "somebody who writes". While almost everybody is in the first category, practically nobody is in the latter.

I think it is the absence of any useful definition that makes us so obsessive about word counts. It's almost as if, in the community of "serious writers who haven't had a bestseller yet", we define a writer as "somebody who writes down about 1000 words a day". It's a measure of our insecurity. And we are all so very insecure. It's a lonely life and we look for all the validation we can get. And in the absence of Amazon reviews (hint, hint) and massive sales (even bigger hint), we look to our word count for the validation we aren't getting anywhere else.

That's a thousand words.

I'm a proper writer, I am.

Change of address - for one week only

I'm not doing a regular blog posting this week because my blog on the rise and fall of the East India Company has just been published on 'English Historical Fiction Authors'. Go and visit and read it there.

If you enjoy posts about the history of India and the events leading up to Cawnpore, you could check out these earlier blog posts here: Indian Mutiny or War of Independence?, Nana Sahib, It was 155 years ago today, and The aftermath of Cawnpore.