No blog this week but enjoy a photo.

Nothing to see here ...

A couple of weeks ago was one of my casually rambling blogs. I try not to do those too often but I'm afraid that today has a certain rambling element to it as well. I do have an excuse, though, because this week I appear as a guest blogger for Karen King, writing about Argentina and the adventures I had researching Burke in the Land of Silver. Go and have a look!

I generally try to post on this blog once a week, but I am going to take a bit of a break from social media, including blogging. I'm not Steven Fry: I'm not storming off in a Twitter sulk, refusing to speak to any of you ever again. But there is a lot else going on in my life at the moment, so I'm going to row back a bit on Twitter, Facebook and this blog. Never fear: I'll still be posting occasionally and I have some exciting guest posters lined up to go some way to filling the gap my absence might leave in your lives, so please do check back here from time to time.

It will be interesting to see what happens to readership of this blog when I'm not writing about it on Twitter and Facebook. I know that a Facebook mention or a tweet does generate more hits on the blog. Relatively few of you 'follow' me on Blogger, which is understandable as following on Blogger only seems to make sense if you have a Google+ account and so few people have. Still, it makes me feel wanted and impresses publishers, so if any of you could, there is a 'Follow' button at the bottom of the right hand column. And if you could call by even if you don't see it mentioned on Twitter, that would be lovely.

To make up for taking a break from writing to you every week, I will be talking to anyone who wants to come and listen at Waterstones in Windsor on 25 May. Yes, I know that's a long way off, but I'm not going to be on social media plugging it for a few weeks, so here's the advance notice. I'll be talking about James Brooke, the hero of The White Rajah. There's no official publicity for it yet, but I've been assured it's really happening and it's at 7.30, so if you live near Windsor and are free that evening, it would be nice to see you.

OK, I'm starting as I mean to go on by keeping this post short. Normal service will be resumed eventually. Until then, enjoy the peace and quiet.

Random ramblings

Friday already and time for another blog post. I doubt that whatever I say is going to get as much attention as last week's on 'Historical Notes'. That was one of those that seemed to catch people's interest for some reason. It hardly "went viral" but it got far more views than most of my posts do. This week's post is, I think, going to be one of my occasional mild rambles.

It's odd what does and doesn't draw people in. I'm still trying to work out why a post on how we spent our Christmas holiday in 2013 is by now easily the most read item on my blog. I've asked if anyone knows why but no one seems to have any idea.

Claims or denials of expertise seem to be quite popular.  One of the most widely read posts here was by Kirsten McKenzie who wrote about how her experience in the antiques business provided her with the expertise she needed to write her historical/time slip novel, Fifteen Postcards. There was a lot of interest, too, in my own post about why, although I spend a lot of time researching my books, I don't feel I'm an expert at all. Two writers; two very different points of view – yet both pieces stand out for the number of people who read them. I think there's a lot of interest in what does or doesn't make an expert nowadays with books written  about the need for constant practice and motivational posters telling us that if we only work harder we can somehow excel in our chosen fields. As the person who wrote the piece denying my expertise, I'm a bit cynical about all this, but there's no doubt that the idea of immersing yourself in a subject and becoming a leading authority certainly fits with the zeitgeist whether you're Stephen Hawking writing about theoretical physics or Zoella, who is now a recognised authority on make up the teenage girls.

One thing I am definitely not an expert in is writing blog posts. Practised: yes.  I generally post about once a week  and nowadays I regularly get over 2,000 page views a month –  small beer by the standards of many of these things, but gratifying to me. I have been known to point out that if visitors to my blog bought 2,000 books a month that would do remarkable things my sales figures. If some of you would take the hint I'd appreciate that. What I write, though, attracts very different levels of interest week by week and when I post, I have very little idea what sort of response I'm going to get.

Of course it's gratifying to think that I'm reaching a lots of people through these posts but it's the responses that I really enjoy. Writing can be a very lonely business and it's always good to hear from people. Apparently there were technical issues with commenting on the blog, but I think these have been cleared up and anybody should now be able to type their response in the 'Comments' box below where everyone can see it. If you do  want to write to me but don't want to share your thoughts with the world you can reach me by e-mail at jamesburke.confidentialagent@gmail.com.

I wrote a few weeks ago about the excitement of getting my first payment for Public Lending Rights. Since then, my local library has added The White Rajah to the books that it has available for loan electronically. By now, I think, most London libraries have at least some of my stuff  available online. I do recommend this service. The book is downloaded to your phone or tablet (you may have to install some free software, but it is easy to use) and then you have all of the advantages of Kindle but without having to pay anything. And, unlike the case when my boys are pirated (and, sadly, they all too often are) I get paid every time you download it. If your local library doesn't have my books, could you ask them to make them available? There's usually an online form to do this and it does make a real difference to me.

Speaking of excitement: it seems that I'm going to be giving a talk on James Brooke, the eponymous White Rajah, at Waterstones in Windsor on 25 May. There is a date for your diaries. I'll be writing much more about this once it's all officially confirmed.

That's about it for this week. (I told you I wasn't an expert at writing blog posts.) I have noticed that posts with photos of Tango dancers tend to be well received so, before I go, here's a picture of my amazing tango teacher, Alexandra Ward, with her partner, Guillermo Torrens.

Original photo: Tom Mason

Alex is currently touring in Tangomotion. If you can't make Waterstones in Windsor, see if she's playing near you. It will be an evening with less history but more music. And she's certainly much prettier than I am

Tangling with tango

I have a guest on my blog this week: fellow Accent author Jennifer Macaire. Jennifer has been inspired by my posts about tango to tell us about her own experiences. Her husband was a professional polo player, so she had lots of opportunities to learn in Argentina. Unfortunately, she ended up in France with a less than satisfactory experience. 


Hello Tom! Thank you for having me as a guest on your blog. I saw you liked tango, and I admit, I love it too. Once, I even got the chance to learn with a professional.

When I was six, my parents enrolled me in the local ballet school. They were fans of Alvin Ailey and Twyla Tharp; the American dance theater had come to our town and we'd been entranced ... so off I went, my expectations soaring. Reality is cruel. I couldn't tell my left from my right. Even when watching the teacher I'd raise the wrong arm, put the wrong foot forward, trip, and generally bumble about. When the time came for the annual show, we students lined up to get our tutus. My name was called. I dashed forward. Scarlet! - I wanted deep ruby red with a sparkle of sequins on the bodice. My heart pounded. My ballet teacher handed me a gray-green package. Surely there was a mistake? I tore it open. No. It was verdigris. I choked back tears and stumbled off to put it on. The show must go on. In the audience, my parents who had gotten there early, sat in the front row and craned their necks. Where was I? I was hidden behind the curtain in the far back. I could see the teacher, I could see the students, performing our pliés, jétés, and whateverétés - I could not see the audience from where I stood, and no one could see me. The teacher smiled happily. The ugly duckling was not going to ruin her show. After, my furious parents pulled me out of the school and I never attempted ballet again. But many, many years later, an Argentine neighbor organized a two-day tango class in our humble village.

Dancing the dream: Buenos Aires

I signed up. I'd been to Argentina several times, spent my honeymoon there, and had watched people dancing tango. It looked so mysterious and gliding, sexy and daring. Women were invited to wear high heels and skirts. I happily dressed and went to the town banquet hall, where twenty villagers stood in various postures of shyness. I joined the line and we were introduced to the teacher - a daunting elderly man with a military bearing and piercing dark eyes. He lined us up, showed us how to walk dragging our toes, turn, fling our legs out, and turn again. You can tell already, by my vocabulary, that I was not the best student. He paired us up, and the music started. basic steps at first, then twirls and whirls. He tapped me on the shoulder."No. Like this. Come here." He took my hand, placed my other hand on his shoulder, and we started to dance. After about two minutes he stopped. "You must learn submission. I am the man. I lead." We tried again. I let my body go all loose, tried to imagine my arms and legs were tied to his, and I couldn't move without following. I stepped on his foot. He stopped."Hopeless," he stated. "Next!" I moved to the back of the line. My tango days were over. I watched until the end. The next day, there was a show with professional dancers, and some of the more talented villagers. I applauded, and ate alfajores. There are some who are born to dance - and there is me. But tango bug stayed with me. I love the music, and I love watching it.

The nice thing about being a writer is having imagination and being able to write about doing something impossible. So, without further ado - I present Jennifer Macaire - tangoist exceptionnelle! The basic tango walk is 2 slow beats, two quick beats, and a slow beat. The quick beats are 1 beat of music. Slow, Slow, Quick, Quick, Slow. Three full walks forward, followed by a side step and lastly a drag step. I'm wearing high heels and a scarlet dress with sequins. My hair is pulled back in a chignon, and there is a red rose in it. I have ruby lipstick. In the crowd, Robert Downey Jr is watching and thinking he's going to ask me to star with him in his next film about a modern woman who is sent back in time to the early 1900's in Paris to spy on the Nazis - she's a dancer at a nightclub, and her name is Mata Hari...as you can tell, I love time slip books!


 Alas! Jennifer’s experience is all too common, which is a shame, though it makes an excellent story. There are some terrible tango teachers around, but there are many very good ones as well. If you are interested in learning the dance, I can recommend teachers in London (and Berlin, Reykjavik, and Istanbul, for that matter). I’ve even been known to teach beginners myself. If you want advice on starting tango, feel free to email me on jamesburke.confidentialagent@gmail.com

Jennifer blogs at https://jennifermacaire.wordpress.com. Her book, The Road to Alexander, is the first in a series of time-slip books. The second will be published by Accent this summer.

About the book: After winning a prestigious award, Ashley is chosen to travel through time and interview a historical figure. Choosing her childhood hero Alexander the Great, she is sent back in time for less than a day. He mistakes her for Persephone, goddess of the dead, and kidnaps her, stranding her in his own time. What follows, after she awakes under the pomegranate tree, is a hilarious, mind-bending tale of a modern woman immersed in the ancient throes of sex, love, quite a bit of vino, war, death and ever so much more.

St Helen's, Bishopsgate: history in stone

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After last week’s depressing post about publishing I'm returning this week to history.

One of the things I really like about living in London is the continuity you can feel with the past. Some buildings are pickled in aspic by the heritage industry, but the best adapt and change, their architecture reflecting the social changes since they were built.

Last year, purely by chance, I stumbled upon St Helen’s in Bishopsgate, a church set in a little pedestrianised square a few yards and a thousand years from the modern City.

St Helen's traces its history back to the twelfth century when it was a small parish church. About 1210 a nunnery was established nearby and the nun’s church was built alongside the existing building. St Helen’s therefore has two naves, the southern nave being that of the old parish church with a northern nave alongside where the “Nun’s Quire” was.

There were changes in the building which I don’t think there is any detail of, but the essential shape remained. There was a line of arches and a screen between the Nun’s Quire and the parish church and the arches were replaced around 1480. They still stand.

The Nun’s Quire. The original parish church is on the right, the other side of the arches

The nunnery stood until 1538 when it fell victim to Henry VIII's Reformation. The screen that had separated the nun’s quire from the parish church was removed so the building became as we see it today. The result is a church that has the shape of an old Saxon church, albeit with a south transept added on around 1250, rather than the cruciform shape that we associate with most traditional churches.

The layout of the church reflects the changes in worship over hundreds of years. The pulpit (1615 or thereabouts) is on the side wall of the church (you can just make it out on the right of the picture) with the chairs facing it so that everyone can see and hear. It’s a more inclusive approach to worship than that which we see in later churches where the rows of pews are arranged in lines across the nave, with the great and the good seated nearer the preacher and the poor huddled at the back, a safe distance away.

In Victorian times the church was rearranged in what we now think of as a more conventional way and the floor was lowered, so that the congregation was suitably subservient to the preacher. Windows were filled with dark stained glass, giving the gloomy air we tend to associate with churches.

In 1992 and 1993 the church was badly damaged by two IRA bombs. All the windows were blown out and the roof was lifted. The enormous damage meant that substantial rebuilding was required. The Rector and churchwardens at this time represented a more evangelical branch of Anglicanism and they wanted the church returned to its medieval layout. The heavy stained glass was replaced by windows which admitted much more light and the floor was raised to its medieval level. The reredos, which had been added in the 19th century to separate the altar from the masses, was moved to a purely decorative function against the east wall. (You can just catch a glimpse of it hidden by the second column in the photo above.) Instead of celebrating communion at an altar where the vicar stands separated from his flock, they have reintroduced the idea of celebrating at a table, moved into the body of the church when the last supper is celebrated. Unfortunately I have no photograph of the table which is tucked away in the south transept when it is not in use. Although the evangelical tone of the services would be well served by a table from IKEA the communion table is 17th-century.

The changes from a small parish church where Catholics practised their faith, to a larger well-lit parish church in the Anglican tradition, to a gloomy Victorian place of worship and now back to a more medieval layout, albeit with modern lighting and an excellent public address system, provides a physical reminder of the way in which Christian worship has changed over almost a thousand years. The church is full of memorials, fragments of ancient glass, architectural details and sword rests which reflect the changes along the way. There is a font from about 1632 which is no longer used as the current congregation prefer total immersion and have built a small pool to facilitate this.

Finally, here is a photo of a brass plate from the 15th century defaced in 1644 because it called on worshippers to pray for the dead – contrary to the biblical teaching that those who died believing in God go immediately to be with him. St Helen's provides a reminder in stone and metal work of the way in which London and the churches of London have changed through the centuries. If you are ever near Bishopsgate, I do recommend a visit.

 A Word From Our Sponsor

The third and final book about John Williamson (don't worry, you don't have to read the other two if you don't want to) Back Home is set in London. My characters are a godless lot and churches don't feature, but the streets where the story is set are still there and I walked them often. I’ve travelled to Argentina and to Borneo to research the background for my books, but I'm lucky to live in a city where there is so much history so much closer to hand.

Death of a book salesperson

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This week's blog post is about the business of selling books. It's quite depressing. If you're not interested in why over 99% of authors make no money out of writing, enjoy this photo of a ferret and then come back next week when we’ll be looking at something more fun.

This last week I have had to pay rather more attention than usual to the sordid details of sales figures. They did not make me happy.

There's no doubt that e-book's have dramatically transformed the way that publishing works. The rules have definitely changed. The problem is that nobody knows what the new rules are.

E-publishing has changed the way that writers write, but it has had even more effect on the way that books are sold. There are so many e-books that it has become impossible to browse even a fraction of them. So how do you make your book stand out and be seen?

The books that are most easily picked up are those which Amazon recommends or which appear near the top of Amazon's charts. The easiest way to get recommended is to sell an awful lot of books. So books that are near the top of the chart tend to sell better than others – but, of course, that's why they were near the top of the chart in the first place. But how to get there?

The easiest way to get a book into the charts is for it to be very like a book that has done really well already. Hence the plethora of series novels that you see on Amazon. Mine are no exception. Burke in the Land of Silver was followed by Burke and the Bedouin, followed by Burke at Waterloo. If you haven't got your own book in the charts already, the next best thing is for your first novel to be very similar to somebody else's. Hence the massive number of ‘me-too’ books about. One year it's vampires, then it's were-wolves. This year it’s damaged girls, preferably on some form of public transport.

There are problems with series books. For me, it's simply that in order to build on the success of my first bestseller, I have to start with a bestseller. Burke in the Land of Silver did get sold, read and (according to its reviews) enjoyed, but it didn't sell in the numbers required to top the charts. Burke and the Bedouin sold OK, but it certainly wasn’t able to ride the coattails of the first book. For those authors trying to ride the charts on the back of somebody else's bestseller, the problem is that if a particular kind of book becomes fashionable, everybody writes it. If you sit down now to write a book about a girl who breaks away from an unhappy relationship and is then driven to drink/murder/faking her own death, by the time you've finished it it will be one of several hundred books with remarkably similar outlines. Why should anybody read yours?

Well, why should they? One answer would be because it's free. Giving books away free on Amazon used to be a very popular way of trying to get visibility. The problem is that people build up huge stocks of books that they haven't paid for and which they never get around to reading. If they do read them, because they're the kind of people who like to read books but don't like to buy books, the odds are that they won't buy your next book when there are so many alternative free ones. Free books used to be seen as a valuable promotional tool, but they have fallen out of favour. My publisher, Accent, no longer uses them, claiming that they just do not work. I'm inclined to believe them.

You can advertise, of course. The thing is that a proper advertising campaign – even quite a small one – is expensive. My books are not unusual in that the e-books sell for between £1.99 and £2.99. You'd have to sell an awful lot of books for the profit to pay for a small poster campaign or one advertisement in a popular magazine. One way round this is to design a nice ad (Accent are good at this) and then put it on Twitter and post about it on Facebook. Hence the banner that appears at the top of my pages on Facebook and Twitter. Some people will even insert your cover into photos of street scenes so that it looks as if you have a real poster campaign but without the costs of buying all those poster sites.

In order for it to be seen on Facebook you either have to pay for it (and we’ve already established there is no budget) or you just post it on your wall. So posting on your author page it is. Unfortunately, in order to see this, people have to have already "liked" your page, so they're probably aware of you and of your books. The advert might have some effect, but it is probably very marginal.

What about Twitter? Maybe the answer is to tweet it and to get as many people as possible to re-tweet it.

The easiest way to persuade people to re-tweet your advertisement is to reciprocate by re-tweeting one of theirs. The result is many authors whose Twitter stream consists almost entirely of re-tweets of other writers’ advertising. This is, of course, spectacularly boring and their streams are therefore often read, I suspect, almost entirely by other authors desperately reciprocating away with their own re-tweets. If an actual customer wanders into the stream by mistake, they still won't see your advertisement, as it is now submerged in a welter of ads from every other writer your writing friends know.

So what to do? I write this blog. Besides posts like this, which I admit is likely to appeal to a rather specialist market, I write a lot about 19th-century history. I'm wondering whether to produce a short book based largely around posts that I have already written on Waterloo. I produce over 50,000 words a year, which is a good part of one of my novels and thousands of people read what I write. Presumably some of them find it enjoyable or useful but there is no evidence at all that my blogs sell any books.

I took myself to the middle of Wales, which is always a pleasure, and gave a talk about James Brooke, but there was no sign of any significant increase in sales of The White Rajah. I have been to a couple of book groups in the London area and this, I think, does improve sales, if only by selling copies to the people who are members of book group. I'm happy to do this again (you can contact me at jamesburke.confidentialagent@gmail.com). It does lack potential as a mass-market tool, though.

Books are, of course, competing with all the various forms of electronic entertainment that vie for our limited leisure time. I have piles of books, both real and virtual, by people whose work I would really like to read, but which I haven't got round to yet. I know many other people are in the same situation. I even know friends who have bought my books but who simply haven't had time to read them yet. “I'm saving them for my holiday," is a fairly common refrain but, thanks to Kindle, even on holiday you have a whole library of books to choose from.

What's the answer? I really don't know. Self-publishing, recommended by many friends, has the advantage that you keep a higher proportion of the money your book makes and have more control over its sales. Because you are focused on just your titles you will probably give them more attention than a publisher who has a range of books to look after. But, on the other hand, you won't have the publisher’s experience and you presumably started writing because you enjoy writing, rather than because you wanted to become a bookseller.

You can concentrate on becoming famous. It's a fair bet that if I were on Big Brother or assassinated the Prime Minister or walked naked down Whitehall, some people would pick up my books out of curiosity. Tempting as some of these options are (particularly the second, if I'm honest), I don't think I'm going to go for them. What I do instead is to reveal rather more of myself than I'm particularly happy with here and on Twitter in the hope that you'll decide that I'm a nice person and be interested enough in me to read my work. Hence my posts about my Christmas holidays and my tango adventures. Some people make this work for them. Zoella famously became a bestselling author without actually writing a word herself simply because she is so attractive in her videos. I don't think it really works for me: I’m not nearly as pretty as Zoella and considerably less bubbly.

Over the next few weeks I will be thinking quite hard about the direction to go. If you enjoy reading my blog, now might be a good time to buy some of the books and convince me that it's worthwhile. If you don't have £2.99, you could at least write a comment to persuade me to continue with this.

I'll keep writing because, like most authors, I have an almost obsessive need to do so. How my writing is going to reach my readers, though, remains an open question.

Tango Fire

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Regular readers of this blog may have noticed that I can get quite enthusiastic about Argentine tango. This week I went to see ‘Tango Fire’ at London’s Peacock Theatre and I thought I’d take the opportunity to chat about it, not least because if you live in London and dance tango the current conversational opener is “What did you think of ‘Tango Fire’?”

Quality tango shows (and this is definitely a quality tango show) cater for a very wide audience. There are those of us who know and love Argentine tango. There are Strictly fans, who want to see the same sort of showy tango (or, more often showy sort-of-vaguely-tangoish) dancing they see on Saturday night TV. There are people who might want to learn to dance themselves. And there are people who just want a good night out with beautiful women flashing their legs in spectacularly acrobatic poses.

The best tango shows have to cater for all of these audiences at once and ‘Tango Fire’ did about as good a job as you’re going to see. That hasn’t stopped friends of mine denouncing it as a Vegas style travesty of the dance and I'm sure that other people will have complained that it was not nearly flashy enough. The sets are simple, the lighting effects sophisticated rather than brash, and the concept almost minimalist. Five couples danced on a bare stage with a classic tango quartet playing behind them. It could so easily be a disaster, but the skill and commitment of the dancers and the range of the choreography (by German Cornejo) produced an evening that ended in a well-deserved standing ovation.

The performance starts with the sort of exhibition that you might see performed at tango clubs around the world, although you will be lucky if you see this standard of dance. Gradually, as the dancers work through a repertoire of traditional tango music, the kicks get higher, the speed gets faster and the moves get more and more outrageous, while still remaining true to the basics of traditional tango.

It helps that the company is made up of experienced tango dance couples. I have seen tango shows where the performers have come from other disciplines and learn the tango just for that show. However good they are as dancers, the lack of experience usually shows. (This is also part of the curse of Strictly.) Then, in some companies, dancers will move between partners during the evening, while here the fact that people were mainly dancing with their long-term partners meant that they danced with the intuitive understanding and connection that such relationships bring. That meant, too, that while the show was tightly choreographed, each couple was able to express their response to the music in their own styles. It went some way to dealing with the problem of stage tango, which is that the dance is essentially about improvisation and this is often difficult in the setting of a theatrical performance. Here I felt that I was watching couples expressing themselves in dance, rather than stepping mechanically through choreography that had been laid down for them, which can unfortunately sometimes be the case.

After the interval, the music changed to more modern tango with Piazzolla featuring prominently. For some reason Piazzolla seems to be out of fashion in London at the moment, so it was lovely to hear his music and see the dancers pushing the boundaries of tango. Sometimes the boundaries were less pushed than trampled over as numbers moved way beyond anything I have seen described as tango before. Still, you had to admire the astonishing athleticism shown as women were lifted above heads, thrown across shoulders and tossed down onto the ground in performances that were as much gymnastic display as dance. Yet the movements, however extravagant, were always smoothly executed and spot on the beat. Was it tango? Much of the time, it was not, and purists were duly horrified. But the first half clearly was tango and if we want to go a little wild (says the man who likes to dance his partner up and down any convenient staircase), why shouldn’t we? Not everyone in the audience accepts the authority of the Tango Police and Strictly fans paid for their tickets too.

There were legs, of course: lots and lots of unbelievably long legs, doing things that most people’s legs will never do. The women were shown off in a succession of stunning costumes. Yes, some of them probably crossed those boundaries again. A body stocking with a few tendrils of glittery green plant providing a minimal degree of modesty probably could have been rethought. And hot-pants raised a few eyebrows (though I’ve seen women dancing in very short shorts socially and the men they danced with never objected). We’re back to the fact that you have multiple audiences. There were (it seems a rule for tango shows) an astonishing number of costume changes catering for people who like yards of billowing fabric and for those who consider that the average erotic dancer is hideously over-dressed. Again, you must accept that the show has to appeal to everyone and that therefore not all of it will appeal to you. Let a thousand costume changes bloom, as Chairman Mao almost said.

The orchestra, in these things, can sometimes be a bit taken for granted. Here, though, they were astonishingly good and the audience loved the occasional breaks from the dancing when we just had the chance to listen to them. The musical arrangements allowed each performer the chance to shine, showing themselves as wonderful soloists as well as generous members of a quartet. The singer, though, did not appeal. Tango singers are not as other vocalists. The tradition of tango songs is built on loss: loss of place, loss of love or, as in the Piazzolla classic ‘Adios Nonino’, loss of a parent. The singer’s voice should convey experience and loss and, often, the influence of far too many cigarettes. In Argentina you may be told that to truly understand tango you must have suffered and Jesus Hidalgo has clearly not suffered enough. His boyish charm and beautifully modulated voice would have been great in another show but it was the most obvious weak point in this one.

Altogether, a brilliant evening, rounded off with the chance to dance in the bar. The lesson there may not have transformed respectable English couples into tangueros and tangueras in one evening, but I was impressed by the enthusiasm of both teachers and pupils and the progress made from a standing start. It’s a shame that there was no advice given on where people could go to learn more. Based on my own experience (other teachers – good, bad and indifferent – are also available) I recommend that people in London could try Bianca (https://www.rojoynegroclub.com/) who can be demanding but who will really improve your dance, or Alex (http://www.alexandrawoodtango.co.uk/) generally regarded as one of the nicest people on the London scene and a wonderful teacher.

Health warning: dancing tango can take over your entire life. You are at serious risk of having far too much fun, meeting lots of lovely people, learning Spanish and spending all your money on flights to Buenos Aires. Shows like ‘Tango Fire’ can be the first step on a pathway to addiction. Probably best to stay home with a nice cup of tea.

A word from our sponsor

Burke in the Land of Silver grew, in part, from my love of Buenos Aires, where most of the story takes place. But there is no tango in it at all, because in 1806, when the story is set, the tango had not yet been invented. It was an interesting time, though, with a British invasion in which a real-life James Burke played a significant role. If you're interested in the history of Argentina, or just want a good read with cunning spies, wanton women and a small war, give it a go.