Merry Christmas!

Well, that's all from me until after Christmas. I hope you all have a great one.

I took the picture below from across the Thames a few years ago. The building is Ham House, built in 1610.

It’s that time again …

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With Christmas falling on a Monday this year, I think most people are going to be taking an extended break for the winter holidays. That means that this will be the last "proper" blog post of 2017 (if these ramblings constitute a "proper" blog post). I usually post on Friday and next Friday everybody will be far too busy thinking about trees and mulled wine and mince pies and Christmas pudding. At least I hope you will be. It's been a funny old year, but if you're reading this you're still here and I hope that you're going to be able to enjoy Christmas with your loved ones.

It's been a particularly strange year for me as an author with six published books, none of which have been available in the UK for the past six months. This is because I've been changing publishers, a process which takes rather longer than I had realised. Accent (who used to publish my books) were amazing in getting me to sit down and write and their editorial team were great, but there have been a lot of changes there and both my editors have moved on and the company is being restructured. It seemed like a good time for somebody else to take responsibility for getting my books out. I have been very lucky to get taken on by Endeavour Press. Endeavour come highly recommended by writer friends as a new and exciting press with a lot of historical titles. I particularly enjoy Sally Spencer’s Inspector Blackstone books, set in the London of a few decades after Back Home.

I'm hoping that Endeavour will be able to get my books to a larger audience. They are republishing all six novels, starting with Burke in the Land of Silver on 5 January – so by the time you see the next blog from me, the book should be available. I had hoped it would be on pre-order by now, but some things are not to be, so I don’t have a buy link yet. I do have a cover, with a brooding Argentinian rider wrapped against the weather. It could be James Burke about to set off across the Andes, as he does in the story.

It does look vaguely familiar from our own trip where, like Burke, we faced snow covered passes and the joys of a night at 3,000 metres without electricity or gas. There’s not much in the way of shrub at 3,000 metres and what there is burns to ash in minutes, so it was a cold night.

I’m hoping that the final version of the cover will highlight Paul Collard’s comment: “James Bond in breeches.” (You can just about read it at the bottom of the page.) James Bond in breeches was pretty much what I was aiming for, so I did appreciate that comment from an author I admire.

In celebration of my new publisher, I've got a fancy new website. It's a work in progress at the moment, but here's a screenshot that gives you some idea what it's going to look like:

This blog will transfer there, hopefully early in the New Year, but don't worry – existing posts will still be available here and I'll be sure to let you know the new address.

So here we are at the end of a busy year with a pause for festivities after which I'll be rushing around promoting my books to an audience who haven't had the chance to see them yet. Given that I know far more people read this blog than have ever bought my books, I'm guessing that includes some of you. You have a treat in store. I'll be letting you know full details of the when, the way and the pitifully small cover price very soon. All I can say at the moment is that come 5 January, if you check out Amazon, you should find the e-book of Burke in the Land of Silver. The paperback will be along soon.

Until then, have a very Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year, with lots of great reading ahead in 2018.

James Burke

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People often ask where writers get their ideas from. In my case, they can come from almost anywhere but, because I write historical novels, my starting point is often a person or an incident that catches my eye in a work of non-fiction. I've been lucky in that I haven't had somebody sitting over me and demanding that I produce a book straightaway so I can usually be quite relaxed waiting for something to strike me.

The James Burke books, though, came from a straightforward search for a commercially viable historical character to write about. I mentioned to a friend that I was struggling and she said that I should look for inspiration in the lives of Europeans living in the area that is now Argentina during the period of Spanish rule and immediately afterwards. She had met me in Argentina and knew I was interested in the country and its history and she told me that there were fascinating lives amongst the early pioneers.

I started reading books about South America, looking for people who were doing exciting enough things to be worked up into a novel. I think my friend was hoping for a serious tale of exploration and triumph over hardship – something like Elizabeth Morgan’s Ticket to Paradise, a brilliant story about early Welsh settlers in Patagonia. What I found instead was the story of James Burke: soldier, womaniser, spy and a crucial figure in the little-known British invasion of Buenos Aires in 1806

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There is very little that is definitely known about James Burke, but the little that there is forms the basis for a wonderful story. Starting his military career fighting for the French, he changed sides and worked as a spy for the English. It seems likely that his lovers included a queen, a princess, and the mistress of a Spanish viceroy. He travelled extensively around South America, riding across the Andes in the snow and gathering vital military intelligence throughout the area. It's likely that the information he obtained was crucial to the British invaders in 1806. (He can hardly be blamed if the occupation was so badly handled that they were soon driven out again.)

With such gripping raw material, the first book about James Burke, Burke in the Land of Silver, sticks pretty closely to the facts – at least as far as we know them. The story takes Burke from the West Indies to Argentina, Brazil, and Spain. There are devious plots, thrilling fights, wicked women and a villain all the more deliciously evil for being a real historical character. Buckles are swashed and bodices are ripped. I had huge fun writing it and I hope you’ll have fun reading it. And at the end, you will find you have painlessly acquired a basic understanding of Spain’s role in the Napoleonic Wars and some of the early history of Argentina.

Burke in the Land of Silver will be republished by Endeavour Press on 5 January, to be followed by the other two books I have written about James Burke. Two new James Burke books are all ready to follow if all you lovely people buy the first three.

Nice things said about my books

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In my last blog post I reviewed a couple of historical fiction books by authors I enjoy. In this post, with the republication of my books drawing ever closer, I’m going to take the opportunity to mention some of the things that other reviewers have said about my efforts.

Burke in the Land of Silver

"James Bond in breeches" - Paul Collard

"A well-crafted adventure yarn with exotic settings and plenty of suspense." Historical Novel Society

Burke and the Bedouin

“A “Boys’ Own” adventure (but also very suitable for ladies who like a little derring-do!) … at its best in the vivid action sequences and set pieces, such as the Battle of the Pyramids and the climactic Battle of the Nile.” Historical Novel Society

“An entertaining light read, set in a corner of the Napoleonic Wars which is often neglected.”  The Review

Burke at Waterloo

“Historical fiction as it should be written.” – Paul Collard

The White Rajah

“An involving tale of adventure, intrigue and unlikely love.” Historical Novel Society

“This book works on so many levels.” The Review

“It's ages since I've started reading a book and then been 100% annoyed at the world that it won't let me just sit there and finish it all in one go, but The White Rajah by Tom Williams has totally been that book!” By Slanted Light

"An interesting tale, well told." Bloomsbury Review

Cawnpore

“All that historical fiction should be: absorbing, believable and educational.” – Terry Tyler in Terry Tyler Book Reviews

“For anyone who has a love for this period, Cawnpore is probably one for you.” Historical Novel Society

Back Home

Back Home was runner-up for historical fiction in the awards that Rosie Amber’s book review team give out following an on-line vote.

"I enjoyed every word of this novel. It's so cleverly written, with low-key humour in parts, the research used subtly and unobtrusively." – Terry Tyler in Terry Tyler Book Reviews

“It is perfectly paced and has an authentic voice which gives a real sense of time and place.” Whispering Stories blog

Save the date

Burke in the Land of Silver will be republished on 5 January and should be available for pre-order before that. I'll let you know the date as soon as I do. The other books will be coming out every couple of weeks, until early March.

If you live in North America, all my books are currently available through Simon & Schuster. Can I mention that they make excellent Christmas presents?

If you want to check out other books on these blogs, here are some useful addresses:

The Review: http://thereview2014.blogspot.co.uk

Terry Tyler Book Reviews: http://terrytylerbookreviews.blogspot.co.uk

Historical Novel Society: https://historicalnovelsociety.org/reviews

Whispering Stories: http://whisperingstories.com

Two historical novels you might be interested in

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The Last Legionnaire by Paul Fraser Collard

This is the fifth Jack Lark story. It starts with Jack coming back to his childhood home and takes a while to get into its stride with the return of Ballard, the spymaster from Lark's earlier adventures. Ballard, for reasons he refuses to explain to Lark, is determined to find a man who is serving with the French Foreign Legion in Italy and to bring him back, by force if necessary, to his home in England.

The plot rambles a bit, with some implausibilities here and there, but the point of it is to get Lark to the Battle of Solferino. Never heard of it? Neither had I, but I should have.

Ballard's summary of the politics behind the battle (basically the French and the Sardinians were trying to drive the Austrians out of northern Italy) neatly provides the historical background that you need. From then on it's just a matter of manoeuvring Lark into a situation where it seems perfectly natural for him to disguise himself as a French legionnaire and join the fighting.

Lark finds his man, who is duly returned to England, but the story does not quite resolve itself. I think there is supposed to be a shock revelation toward the end, but I doubt it will come as that much of a shock to many people and the end of the story leaves Lark very clearly set to start straight into another adventure.

One thing I have always respected Collard for is that he does not flinch from the brutality of 19th century warfare and, if there is a certain repetitiveness as Lark thrusts his bayonet into victim after victim, that probably represents the reality of battle. Solferino was, as Collard’s usual useful historical note explains, a battle that left nearly 40,000 casualties. For Lark, it represented his first contact with the reality of what we might think of as modern warfare, with rifled artillery enabling whole units to be mown down before they even engage the enemy. The historical note explains that the horror of Solferino led eventually to the formation of the International Red Cross.

This is far from the best of the Jack Lark books, probably because it is really about a single battle rather than a campaign, so much of the book is filled out with sub-plots, some more engaging than others. Still, it told me a lot about a battle that I had not known anything about before. Solferino did mark a development in the way that men wage war and it deserves to be better known. Collard has done us a service by writing about it, and, if the book does not entirely work on its own, it has set the characters up well for the next in the series. If you are Jack Lark fan, you will enjoy The Last Legionnaire, but if you have not read him before it's probably not the place to start.

Circle of Shadows by Imogen Robertson

It's always disconcerting to pick up a book and discover that it's the fourth in a series where you haven't read the first three. I would definitely have enjoyed the book more if I had started at the beginning of the Crowther and Westerman books, but Robertson provides enough background to the characters and their history for you to get along even if you are, like me, starting in the middle.

Circle of Shadows is a mystery set in late 18th-century Germany. Germany at the time had many tiny independent states where the rulers compensated for their relative obscurity, as rulers go, by building ever more elaborate palaces filled with courtiers who took part in ever more elaborate ceremonials. This fictional state is about to celebrate a royal wedding, so the amount of ceremonial has been dramatically ramped up. The last thing anybody wants in the middle of all this is a mysterious murder, let alone the series of mysterious murders that confront Crowther and Westerman when they arrive from England to sort all the confusion out.

Although the killings are ritualistic and quite unpleasant, this is essentially a traditional "cosy crime" story, albeit with a well realised historical background. I am generally irritated when books present 18th-century women doing things that they would be unlikely to have got away with in real life, but readers clearly enjoy female detectives and, in Harriet Westerman, Robertson has produced a credible character. Harriet is a widow – a position that gave women of the period a degree of independence. She is also presented as an unusually feisty lady and would probably be even more convincing if I had read the first book in the series. In any case, it is the background that is historically well observed. The story is not intended to be wildly realistic and there is a definite hint of magic about the resolution.

If you enjoy detective stories and you enjoy historical novels, this nicely written combination of the two should serve well for Christmas. But you might like to start with the first book in the series: Instruments of Darkness, as you ask.

A word from our sponsor

What of my own books? If you look at the next blog post, you will see some of the nice things people have said about them.

If you are living in North America, you can buy my books either as e-books or as paperbacks (because paperbacks always look better under the tree) from the Simon & Schuster website. If you are in the UK, you will have to wait until January when Endeavour will start republishing the book series, to be followed by the John Williamson Chronicles in February. Make a note in your diary!

Napoleon on Elba

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Last week's post was particularly popular (posts about Napoleon always are), so this week we carry the story on to Napoleon's time on Elba.

Able was I ...

When Napoleon accepted his defeat in April 1814, he accepted also the idea that he would go into exile. Exile was to me made a less onerous punishment because the French government promised to pay him six million francs a year as his pension.

It was suggested that he might go to Corfu or Corsica, the country where he was born. However he chose Elba, an island between Corsica and Italy.

Enfola Beach, Elba. Photo: Michael Joachim Lucke

Besides his pension he had been promised that he would retain the status of a sovereign, so the Emperor of France became the absolute ruler of this island of about 85 square miles, and a few smaller islands around it. As the ruler, he was entitled to his own army, although, compared to the armies he had once led, it was little more than an honour guard, with around 700 men.

At first, Napoleon seemed reconciled to exile. The pension, he had observed, was “a great deal for a soldier as I am”. He was to be joined by his sister, Pauline, who was too ill to travel with him when he first left France, and he expected his mother, his wife and his son to move to Elba later.

He threw himself enthusiastically into public works: building new roads, improving the quality of the streets, and making plans for the development of the iron mines that were the country's main industry. To the irritation of the Allied powers, he started to recruit new soldiers from Italy. Arguably, as the recognised ruler of Elba, he had a perfect right to do this. In any case, he pointed out that with Moorish pirates regularly operating in the area he had a duty to maintain an army large enough to garrison the defences of Elba and its surrounding islands.

Flag designed by Napoleon for Elba

Princess Pauline did not arrive until June, but her appearance at Elba substantially improved social life on the island with balls, concerts, and theatrical performances enlivening the place. What had originally been a guardhouse to the mansion that Napoleon had made his home was turned into a theatre, where plays were performed by the princess herself, her ladies and the officers of the guard.

Whether the 700 soldiers of Napoleon's private army were amused by the new social opportunities we do not know, but it is certain that they were bored and Napoleon himself referred to them affectionately as his "grumblers". The soldiers who had accompanied Napoleon to Elba were all volunteers – indeed, some officers had resigned their commissions and enlisted in the ranks so that they could go into exile with their leader. They constituted some of his most loyal troops, many of them battle hardened. Napoleon regularly reviewed them and insisted that they continue to train. Artillery enthusiast that he was, he had them practising regularly with both regular round shot and heated shot. Despite this, though, there is no doubt that they found life on Elba, though comfortable, profoundly dull.

Napoleon's enthusiasm for his new realm gradually waned. To his dismay, the French government reneged on the promise of a pension and the cost of maintaining his court and his army vastly exceeded the revenue that could be extracted from Elba’s iron mining and its other limited revenue-raising opportunities. Servants were let go, building plans were abandoned and Napoleon, from keeping himself busy inspecting his projects around the island, began to sulk around the house, putting on weight.

Napoleon on Elba

The arrival of his mother, to whom he was devoted, improved his mood, but he was genuinely distressed when it became clear that his wife and son were not to join him. His wife was Marie Louise (who had replaced Josephine in 1810). She was the daughter of Emperor Francis II of Austria and the Austrian government was unhappy with the idea of her and her son forming the focus of Napoleon's new court. She was persuaded not to join him and Napoleon seems to have accepted this, but he could not come to terms with the idea that he would never again see his son.

The shortages of money and the absence of his son soured his mood. He regularly received news of the situation in France from his supporters there as well as studying the French and British newspapers. By the spring of 1815, he was convinced that there were plans to force him from Elba – plans which he said he would resist by force. “Avant cela il faut faire une brèche dans mes fortifications, et nous verrons.” He believed that the Allies might send him to St Helena and subsequent events suggest that this may have been in their minds.

Faced with what Napoleon saw as a threat to his future on Elba, the refusal of the French to pay his pension or the Austrians to allow his son to visit the island, he looked at the disenchantment of the French with their restored monarchy and decided that he would be better off returning to Paris.

Napoleon's brief experiment with ruling a small island in the Mediterranean was coming to an end and the events that would lead to Waterloo were being set in motion.

An aside on that palindrome

Napoleon never created the famous palindrome, 'Able was I ere I saw Elba.' The first recorded use of it is from 1848, long after Napoleon's death. It appears in an American publication, Gazette of the Union, Where it is credited to an anonymous Baltimore author, known only as JTR.

Further reading

For a detailed account of Napoleon's time on Elba see The Island Empire by the anonymous ‘author of Blondelle’, published by T Bosworth in 1855 and available in Google Books.

A shorter summary is available in Life and Campaigns of Napoleon Bonaparte translated from the French of M A Arnault and CLF Panckoucke, published by Philips Samsung and Company of Boston in 1857 and also available in Google Books.

For a detailed discussion of the origin of the palindrome, see Quote Investigator: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/09/15/saw-elba/

A word from our sponsor

Napoleon was right to believe that there were many people in France who hoped for, and in some cases actively worked for, his return. Amongst other plots, there was one to assassinate Wellington, who was representing British interests in Paris. This period is the background to the beginning of Burke at Waterloo, which is to be republished by Endeavour Press on 2 February. (It should be on pre-order from early in January.)

Of course, Napoleon did leave Elba and eventually met the British at Waterloo were James Burke played a small, but crucial, role. [Spoiler alert: Napoleon lost.]

Losing an Empire - Take 1

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Another straightforward history blog this week. It's about Napoleon, as posts about l'Empereur seem particularly popular.

We all know that Napoleon finally lost his empire at Waterloo. What people often forget was that this was the second time he had lost it.

Napoleon was initially defeated in 1814. His series of brilliant military victories were followed by some dramatic defeats – notably the failure of his Russian campaign.

For the attack on Moscow, Napoleon gathered his forces into a spectacular Grand Army of 680,000 men. Although the force was hampered by the condition of the roads as the Russian winter approached, Napoleon successfully reached Moscow and occupied the city. The conventional wisdom of warfare at the time was that once your capital was lost you admitted defeat and sued for peace. Unfortunately for Napoleon, Czar Alexander was unsporting enough not to surrender, so Napoleon found himself stuck in Moscow with no obvious way forward. The situation would have been bad enough in any case, but much of Moscow was destroyed by fire – either as a result of carelessness by the French or deliberate arson by the Russians. Napoleon was now stuck there with winter setting in and no obvious way forward. After a month, he moved his forces out of the city and attempted to engage the Russians, but the Czar's army avoided a pitched battle.  

Supplies were running short and his army was no longer in any position to continue an offensive campaign. Napoleon decided to retreat.

Painting by Illarion Pryanishnikov

The retreat from Moscow has become the stuff of legend. The French army had a policy of living off the land, foraging for food in the countryside that it was moving through. The Russians adopted a scorched earth policy, destroying food stores in all the areas that the French would have to move through. Unable to find food, struggling with roads that had turned to mud under the weight of the traffic, trapped in the Russian winter without proper winter clothing and constantly harried by Russian troops who refused to form up for battle but who raided the column mercilessly, Napoleon’s Grand Army was reduced, according to some estimates, to just 22,000 men.

The losses suffered by the Grand Army were never to be made good – there simply weren't enough men of fighting age available to replenish their ranks.

Detail, "La Chef de la Grande Nation dans une triste Position", French copy of George Cruikshank's 1813 "The Head of the Great Nation, in a Queer Situation!"

Napoleon now faced the wrath of the Russians, the Prussians and the Austrians. What is often forgotten is that, by moving against Russia, Napoleon committed the classic error of European strategists and found himself fighting a two front war. When we talk about Wellington's Peninsular campaign we usually think of it as being confined to fighting in southern and central Spain and Portugal. Napoleon had had significant successes in Spain but once he left the country and concentrated his efforts on Central and Eastern Europe, the French armies there were noticeably less successful. By 1814 Wellington had driven them north and actually crossed the Pyrenees into France itself. He prepared to march on Paris, but was too late. The combined Austrian, Prussian and Russian armies had already got there.

Off to Elba, 1814 - classic contemporary cartoon by Gillray

With the fall of Paris, the French government (unlike Czar Alexander after the fall of Moscow) surrendered to the Allied powers. Napoleon, whose armies were south of the city, wanted to advance northward and try to recapture it, but the government no longer supported him and his marshals refused to carry out his plans. On 11 April 1814, Napoleon signed his abdication as Emperor and he then headed south to Fréjus (near Cannes) where he boarded the British ship HMS Undaunted, which was to carry him into exile on Elba.

A word from our sponsors

The Napoleonic wars provide the background to my series of books about James Burke. Napoleon's exile to Elba was, as we all know now, was not to mark the end of his influence in France. Even while he was exiled, Bonapartists were plotting his return and their attempts to assassinate Wellington is the starting point for Burke at Waterloo.

After being unavailable in the UK since summer, all three books about James Burke are being republished by Endeavour in January and February next year. I'm hoping that they will be available to pre-order in December and I will certainly be writing more about that over the next few weeks.

Burke served in the peninsula too. My book about his activities there has already been written, but publication depends on sales of the first three. In the past I haven't been able to work myself up into the paroxysms of anger that many authors show over book piracy, though I know that there are people who have stolen my books. Sadly, nowadays piracy is getting so bad that it is affecting people's ability to publish. If you enjoy the Burke books, please buy them. If you don't pay for them my publishers won't commission any more, which would be a shame as I've enjoyed writing them and I know many people have enjoyed reading them.

Thank you.