Guest blog from Jenny Kane

I'm very happy to have Jenny Kane back as a guest blogger this week.

Jenny is the author of the best-selling Cup of Coffee series (Another Cup of Coffee, Another Cup of Christmas, and Christmas in the Cotswolds), the modern/medieval time slip novel Romancing Robin Hood. Her latest novel Abi's House, was published by Accent this summer and a special Christmas novella, Christmas at the Castle will be available from 14 November.

With so many books to her credit, you could reasonably ask where all this creativity comes from. Apparently it's genetic.

Inheriting the Creative Gene

Officially, I have been a writer for the past eleven years. Deep down however, I suspect I have always been a writer; I have certainly always been a creative person. How could I not be, when I was influenced from childhood by my grandmothers? Both of them, like me, were physically incapable of sitting still and doing nothing. Plus they had imaginations that would have made Roald Dahl proud.

From an early age I remember watching my maternal Nan performing plays, poems, and comedy sketches on stage for the WI, all of which she’d written herself.

I vividly recall sitting in the audience of one charity production where my Nan’s poem, ‘Hats’ was performed to shrieks of laughter and delight. I was only ten, and as I sat and laughed alongside the rest, I was struck by how wonderful it would be to be able to make people happy like that- if only I wasn’t so shy...

My paternal Nan, on the other hand, was a knitter extraordinaire. There was nothing she couldn’t produce out of wool with just the aid of a pair of needles and a decent drama to watch on the TV at the same time. I never saw her glance at what she was knitting, and I certainly never saw a pattern. The jumpers, gloves, toys, or whatever she was making, seemed to magically appear at a speed that would be the envy of any conjurer. Her creativity boggled my young mind.

Both my grandmothers loved to read, but neither of them had any time for books that contained waffle. If a story didn’t grab them instantly it was jammed back onto the library shelf before the second page got so much as dabbed with a damp finger.

Standing with my Nan in Princes Risborough library, getting restless while book after book was dismissed with the words “If you ever write a book Jenny, make sure you get to the point faster than this lot!” ringing in my ears became a regular feature of my grandparental visits. This advice stayed with me, and I have always made an effort to grab my reader’s attention before the end of the first chapter. I have to confess, that as a reader, I’m just as picky as my Nan’s were. I am notoriously hard to please!

A love of words, crosswords, and word puzzles in general- usually completed at a coffee shop table - was something that was very much part of my childhood. This love of wordplay was inherited by my Mum, and has been passed on to me as well. I spent a great deal of my childhood (and indeed my adulthood) playing with words in cafes, so perhaps it is not surprising that I ended up writing a series of stories set in the fictional Pickwicks Coffee Shop.

My latest novel, Abi’s House (Accent Press, June 2015), was written in dedication to my grandparents. Set in the Sennen Cove area of Cornwall, Abi (recently arrived from London), creates a new life for herself not far from Penzance, where my paternal grandparents lived.

On Abi’s arrival in Cornwall, she meets Beth, a young woman who has recently inherited her grandfather’s cobblers shop. My maternal grandmother’s family owns Wainwright’s Shoe Shops in Buckinghamshire, where I spent many hours with both my Nan and my Grandad, who was the chief cobbler!

Both of my grandmothers influenced my writing, and the way I approach the production of my stories, more than they ever knew. Their creativity and encouragement (my maternal Nan was forever telling me I’d make my mark on the world with words, long before I even contemplated trying my hand as a writer) carried on into the next generation, with my Mum, an excellent artist and needlewoman in her own right, cheering me on.

And now, proving that the creative gene is strong on the female side of my family, my daughters have picked up the baton. Both had poetry of their own published before either of them reached their teens, and now one is writing a screen play. Watch this space!

But what about the male side of might family you ask? From them I hope I learnt the importance of something equally important- the value of always being a little bit kinder than you need to be.

Jenny xx

***

Links to all Jenny’s books can be found on her web site- www.jennykane.co.uk

Keep your eye on Jenny’s blog at www.jennykane.co.uk for more details.

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Five books I recommend - and an astonishing offer if you buy them this week

It's sometimes easy to forget that the point of this blog is to sell my books. So this week, I'm unashamedly selling books – though only one of them is mine.

Until next Wednesday (28 October) Accent are offering five of their historical novels for the bargain price of 99p (99c in the USA) for all five. One of them is Burke in the Land of Silver. So, effectively, you can buy Burke in the Land of Silver for 99p and get four other books thrown in for nothing. It's stunningly good value. Is there a catch? No, there isn't – except that all five books are by authors who have several novels out with Accent and if you enjoy them you may well want to read more.

What's included in the bundle besides the first of the James Burke series?

Best of the lot (and I hope I'm not offending any of the others) is Just One Damned Thing After Another. I keep on enthusing about this book. I read it because it's published by Accent, but I'm so glad that I did. Jodi Taylor knows a lot about history and sticks it into her novel, but it's hardly most people's idea of historical fiction. It's a time travelling romp that owes more to Doctor Who than any other literary source. The quintessentially English heroine hops from disaster to disaster as she travels through time, pausing to recuperate with regular cups of tea. The history is well-researched and interesting, the action is dynamic and gripping, but most of all it is very, very funny. I'm working my way through the whole series. It's brilliant and the bundle is worth buying for Jodi Taylor's book alone.

Jane Jackson writes historical romance. Unlike some romance writers, I know that Jane researches her books carefully. Crosscurrents is set around the Industrial Revolution and, while it has its share of ebony curls, broad shoulders and muscular thighs, it also has an astonishing amount of details about hot air-engines and their advantages, or otherwise, over steam power. Ms Jackson has a fine eye for clothing and furniture and fills her story with details of both, painting a deeply textured word picture of Cornwall two centuries ago. Her books are very popular and Crosscurrents is a good introduction to her world.

I haven't read James Green's Another Small Kingdom, but I reviewed a later book in his series set in the early years of the USA on behalf of the Historical Novel Society and I was impressed. His work is definitely worth a read.

George Rees is new to me. I've only had the chance to read the opening pages of An Eye of Death and that has certainly encouraged me to read more. It's a murder mystery set around the world of Elizabethan theatre.

So that's four books free when you buy Burke in the Land of Silver for 99p. Or, if you prefer to look at the other way round, Burke in the Land of Silver free when you buy four books for 99p.

Click on myBook.to/HistoricalSet to be taken to the appropriate Amazon page. But do be quick: the offer expires next Wednesday. Once you've bought the books, they sit in your Amazon library like any other and you can read them whenever you want.

HMS President

For five years I've been going to dances aboard HMS President at her permanent mooring on the Thames Embankment near Blackfriars Bridge. Only now, though, have I learned about her history, thanks to a tour by the captain.

The President was originally called the Saxifrage and was launched in 1918 as a Q-ship. Her mission was to patrol the sea lanes off southern Ireland (this was before an independent Eire) playing the part of a merchant vessel. German U-boats would surface to board merchantmen, placing explosives aboard any that held materials they considered as “war supplies”. The idea of the Q-ships was that once the submarine was on the surface, the Q-ship would run up its naval colours (a legal requirement) and open fire on the sub. Its main offensive capability, though, was not its gun, but its prow. As the ship was not really a merchantman, it carried no cargo and its lower deck was filled with a huge engine that allowed it a dramatic turn of speed. A hidden rudder allowed it to turn very tightly and ram the submarine.

Model showing her original appearance as 'HMS Saxifrage'

Q-ships were so called because they sailed from Queenstown (now Cobh) in Ireland. The ships had two crews: a civilian crew who showed themselves on deck, and a naval crew, including gunners, who had to remain out of sight below deck. (The fixing points for the navy’s hammocks are still preserved.) Even when ashore, the civilian crew had to behave as if they were the crew of a genuine merchantman and at sea one would even appear on deck dressed as a woman, to convince any U-boat captain watching through his periscope that what he was seeing was a genuinely civilian vessel.

Despite these efforts, the Germans soon grew wise to the idea of Q-ships and the Saxifrage was never threatened by a U-boat on the surface. Instead, like the other Q-ships, she started to patrol more conventionally armed with her deck gun and depth charges. Soon, though, the war ended. By 1922, Saxifrage’s sea-going days were over and she was permanently moored on the Thames as a Royal Naval Reserve drill ship. Royal Navy Reserve ships in this role are traditionally named President, so Saxifrage was re-christened and remains HMS President to this day.

During World War II the President was brought back into service for gunnery training. A wooden cabin had been built on her aft deck and this was replaced with a metal structure because of the danger of incendiary bombs. The cabin was later converted to the ballroom where I dance.

The President was decommissioned in the 1980s. She remained in the same berth and, being, by now, a London landmark, she was allowed to keep her name, although she is officially HMS President (1918) to distinguish her from the new naval shore establishment which has taken the same name.

View through one of the few remaining portholes.

The President’s engines are gone and her portholes have mostly been replaced with larger windows suiting her new life as a floating office and entertainment venue. Her lines can still be made out under the new superstructure (some of it added by the navy to provide more room for drill and offices in her shore-base role).

HMS President is one of only three Royal Navy warships surviving from the First World War. As part of the centenary celebrations of the war, she was painted in a modern interpretation of the ‘dazzle’ camouflage that she wore in her original role. Until 2014 she was painted in Victorian battleship livery with a black hull, white superstructure and a buff yellow funnel and masts She was the last Royal Navy ship to maintain this livery.

If you want to see her, you had best do so before January. Work on the new Thames sewer means that she will be leaving her berth at the beginning of 2016 and the owners are taking the opportunity to put her in dry dock. With luck, she will be back on the Thames, as good as new, later in the year.

The history behind Cawnpore: the final word.

I hope you've enjoyed my week of posts about Indian history. I've blogged about the siege of Cawnpore and the British reprisals afterwards quite recently, so I'm not reposting these: click on the links if you want to read them. There is a post about Nana Sahib, seen by the British as the villain of the piece, HERE.

Cawnpore, now called Kanpur, remains the largest city in Uttar Pradesh. It flourished for a while as a centre of the cotton trade, but cotton manufacture has moved on to cheaper countries and many of the mills are closed. It remains, though, a centre of industry with significant plants producing wool and leather, as well as factories supplying the defence industry.

The Cawnpore Memorial in 1860. Now demolished.

The memorial well, which marked the site of the second massacre, was demolished after Indian independence in 1947. A park was built in its place with statues of leaders of the independence movement, including Tatya Tope, who many historians believe was the man behind the massacre. The park is called Nana Rao Park, in memory of Nana Sahib.

A cultural diversion

I'm reposting a lot of old blogs about India this week, so I thought I'd give you all a treat with an extra blog about something completely different.

A few weeks back, I wrote about a production of Carmen at the Soho Theatre. Now, in my continuing attempt to inject some High Culture into my blog, I'm writing about the ballet. And I'm posting it now because Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo have just two days more in London before they vanish beyond the M25, and I'd like you to have the chance to see them before they go. You'll probably have to kill someone to get a ticket, but it will be worth it, I promise.

It's ballet, Jim, but not as we know it.

There are a few men in the history of ballet who have enhanced their reputations by dancing en pointe. Frederick Ashton famously choreographed the comic lead in Fille Mal Gardée for him to show off in the tortuous footwear that, for so many people, defines the classical ballerina. So when the curtain rises on the company affectionately known as “Les Trocks” there must surely have been some mistake. For this famous company of male dancers are draped around the stage ready to dance Les Sylphides, a classical ballet which seems designed specifically to test the ankles of even the slenderest ballerina.

It’s no mistake. Chopin’s music starts and the company glides, apparently effortlessly, into their version of this chocolate box ballet. What follows is, as ever with the Trocks, an astonishing mix of virtuoso dancing and brilliant comedy. They stagger, they fall, they miss their cues – yet when they settle to perform a set-piece dance, every step is perfect. In fact, their technique is significantly better than many a more traditional company. If you are to get a laugh by collapsing on your fellow dancers, the audience needs to know that there is no question but that you did it on purpose.

Much of the comedy is straightforward slapstick, but there is also a subtle (or sometimes less subtle) sending up of many of the conventions of classical dance: the pretty-boy principal who stands around propping up (or, in this case, not) his leading lady; the endless rearranging of ballerinas around the stage because, back in the 18^th century, moving around to make pretty patterns was much of what ballet was about. The audience roars with appreciative laughter as dancers fall to the ground, somehow landing in perfect splits. Splits? But these are men. For a moment, despite the chest hair peeping above some of the costumes, we’ve all forgotten. But splits? From a jump? One or two, maybe. But the whole company?

Photo: (c)Zoran Jelenic

Yes, splits, fouettés, spins, even high lifts (though the man doing the lifting is barely bigger than the “girl” he lifts). The Trocks do it all, with a passion and élan which lets their love for ballet shine through. Les Sylphides is almost a parody of classical dance and it deserves sending up, but never have I enjoyed a performance so much and, when I’ve wiped away the tears of laughter, I realise I am still sitting through some sublime classical ballet.

Next it’s Merce Cunningham’s turn. Older ballet fans, like me, may still vaguely remember when Cunningham was exciting and new. It was pretty strange, though, even then. The Trocks dance it wonderfully, though it is so far beyond parody that I'm not sure that there would be that much difference if they did it straight. A couple of live musicians accompany them in music that the programme describes as “after John Cage”. Let’s face it, getting a laugh out of Cage’s music is not difficult but, as the sound of rustling paper gives way to the popping of bubble wrap, the audience collapses. The pastiche of the music is crueller than the sending up of the dancing, yet, even at its cruellest, it is still recognisably music (of a sort) and unmistakably John Cage.

The Trocks on Wall Street    Photo: (c)Zoran Jelenic

The Balanchine parody is nicely done, but it is nothing to the Dying Swan. I'm old enough to have seen Margot Fonteyn dance the Dying Swan as a gala piece and it was very lovely indeed. But this dying swan was like nothing you have imagined in your wildest nightmares. Shedding feathers, clutching its stomach, palpitating at its chest, there’s no doubt this swan is in a very bad way and then, suddenly, the dancer is channelling Fonteyn with that lyric pose, held for a breath – before she breaks it to gesture for more applause. It’s classic Trock – technically brilliant, beautifully moving and then crashing straight into the crudest slap-stick. Brilliant!

Finally we get the peasants dancing in the village from – well, from every three act classical ballet you ever saw really. Ostensibly, this is Don Quixote, though the programme notes tell us that “due to economic reasons” neither Don Quixote or Sancho Panza features. Peasant girls do, though. And gypsies. And an ugly hag, a virtuous mother and somebody else who hangs around in the background doing not a lot, because classical choreographers always like to put in a part for their old girlfriends whose dancing days are pretty well over. There’s a handsome hero and an ugly old man who tries to steal away the beautiful heroine. And there are fairies. Why not? It’s a traditional classical ballet – why shouldn't there be fairies? The plot, such as it is, is communicated through those mime gestures that little girls learn in their ‘First Ballet Book’ and these are shoe-horned in whether they are appropriate or not, together with the odd gesture that definitely doesn't feature in the ‘First Ballet Book.’ There are solos and pas de deux and pas de quatre and dances for the whole company and, by the end, you have seen every village dance scene you will ever want to see and, if you stop laughing for long enough, you will notice some truly beautiful dancing sandwiched between the jokes.

Photo: (c)Zoran Jelenic

There is no other company in the world like the Trocks. What started as a joke in an off-off-Broadway show has become an institution in which an astonishingly talented multi-national cast of male performers dress up in tutus and dance their hearts out. And are really, really good. And funny. I did say that they’re funny, didn't I?

I doubt you can get tickets for the London run by now. (It closes on Saturday.) But they are just starting a UK tour that lasts until mid-November. Whether you are a ballet fan or just enjoy a really good laugh, do yourself a favour and go.

Fanny Parks: A Wandering Pilgrim in 19th Century India

Yesterday someone asked me about the journeys Williamson makes in India.

These were based on accounts of travelling in the sub-continent from the time. Several of the incidents are drawn directly from the book by Fanny Parks, who wrote about her own experiences in India in the first half of the 19th century. She was an extremely interesting woman and I recommend her book. (Avoid the expensive edited versions and read the original, which is available online for free.)

I wrote about her for 'English Historical Fiction Authors' in 2013. As Cawnpore is being promoted at the moment and I'm taking the opportunity to repost some of my notes about India, here's my account of Fanny Park's life.

Fanny Parks: A Wandering Pilgrim in 19th Century India

Fanny Parks went to India in 1822, accompanying her husband. Arriving in Calcutta, she and her husband lived respectably with the other Europeans, although she was quick to learn Hindi so that she could communicate with the servants.

After two years in Calcutta, her husband took up a post in Allahabad, 500 miles to the north-west. It was her first experience of rural India and she loved it. The time was, she said, "the most approaching to delightful that we had passed in India." Once there, her husband became manager of the ice works. The manufacture and storing of ice in the days before refrigeration was an important industry, but managing an ice plant must have had more than a passing similarity to watching paint dry. Fanny threw herself into organising the household, arranging an avenue of trees and digging a new well. (She quotes the local proverb: "Plant a tree, dig a well, write a book, and go to heaven.") It seems pretty clear, though, that she was bored.

Equipped with her workable Hindi and her horse, Mootee, she spent much of her time exploring the country. "Roaming about with a good tent and a good Arab [horse]," she wrote, "one might be happy for ever in India."

As a woman, she was allowed to socialise with Indian women in a way that local custom would have considered quite unacceptable for men. She formed friendships with many Indian women and was even able to visit them in the zenana (harem), an area completely forbidden to men other than the immediate family and therefore a continual source of exotic rumour amongst most Europeans. It was her accounts of life in the zenana that, in part, led to the success of her autobiographical Wanderings of a Pilgrim in Search of the Picturesque, two extraordinary volumes which gave an unparalleled insight into Indian life under British rule in the first half of the 19th century.

Her husband seems to have been, by the standards of the time, unusually relaxed about leaving her to travel on her own. When the two of them went to visit the Taj Mahal, he sent her ahead in her own boat and she writes about her experiences and adventures on the river as an unchaperoned woman. Her behaviour was considered improper by more conventionally minded memsahibs and she seems to have had few women friends among the European community, although she is always writing of the men she knows and visits. (Even back in England she shocked people by going out and about unchaperoned. "I shall never be tamed," she wrote "… to the ideas of propriety of a civilised lady.")

She took to wearing Indian dress, even having a burka made for herself (though she doesn't say that she ever wore it in public). She complained that "a lady in European attire gives me the idea of a German mannequin" and contrasted European women's stiff walk with "that snakelike, undulating movement, – the poetry of motion" that she saw in the Indians. Although the early 19th century saw generally good relations between the Indian and European communities, Fanny Parks was much closer to the local aristocracy than most and was regarded by many Europeans as having "gone native". She learned Urdu, which was the language of court and which she described as "Hindostanee, intermixed largely with Persian."

She was sympathetic to Indian religions and contrasted them favourably with Christianity.

"The fakir, who from a religious motive, however mistaken, holds up both arms until they become withered and immovable, and who, being, in consequence, utterly unable to support himself, relies in perfect faith on the support of the Almighty, displays more religion than the [bishop], who, with a salary of £8000 per annum, leaves the work to be done by curates, on a pittance of £80 a year."

Her enthusiasm for Indian religious observance did not, however stop her from stealing idols that she found in the countryside and adding them to her collection of Indian artefacts. On her return to England she proudly announced that: "My collection of Hindoo idols is far superior to any in the [British] Museum."

She was entranced by fabrics and fashion and learned the esoteric skill of dressing a camel. "There is but one thing in the world that I perfectly understand, and that is, how to dress a camel," she claimed. She was good enough at dressing camels to be asked to dress the camel of a local Rajah. The dress was made of "many yards" of black and crimson cloth covered in seven hundred bells, one hundred beads and thousands of cowrie shells. She drew the line, though, at actually riding the beast, saying that she would be frightened of tumbling off.

Much of her time was spent at entertainments, whether the balls given by the British or more elaborate entertainments provided by the Indians. Having animals fight seems to have been considered a great sport, with elephants and even rhinoceroses being pitched against each other. Nach dancers provided a more relaxed entertainment.

With no need to find herself employment, Fanny Parks gives the impression of a life spent in a continual round of exploring, socialising and being entertained. The realities of life in India do intrude, though. She is constantly reporting herself unwell, often through the effects of the heat. She matter-of-factly records the deaths of native friends, servants and Europeans as smallpox, plague, heatstroke and other unspecified illnesses take their toll. Even her substantial domestic menagerie suffers. "The sickness in our farm-yard is great: 47 … sheep and lambs have died of small-pox; much sickness is in the stable…" There is the occasional murder to break the monotony of death from illness sickness. The East India Company offered generous pensions. Fanny Parks reminds us of why they could afford to: most of their employees failed to survive to collect their pensions. A detailed study of the mortality rate amongst British troops in India in the 1840s suggested that almost 3% died every year. A 21-year-old soldier in the Bombay army was reckoned to have only an evens chance of surviving 25 years of service – much less than he would need to collect his pension.

The life expectancy of the native Indians was, of course, less than that of the Europeans. Besides issues of sanitation and general health, the natives suffered the effects of famine. Fanny Parks describes passing through a famine area:

"There lay the skeleton of a woman who had died of famine; the whole of her clothes had been stolen by the famished wretches around, the pewter rings were still in her ears, but not a rag was left on the bones that were starting through the black and shrivelled skin; the agony on the countenance of the corpse was terrible. Next to her a poor woman, unable to rise, lifted up her skinny arm, and moaned for food. The unhappy women, with their babies in their arms, pressing them to their bony breasts, made me shudder… I cannot write about the scene without weeping…."

In 1839, Fanny Parks returned to England to visit her family, her father having died. She complained that the country was small and dark. Even the mutton was compared unfavourably with that in India, although she was fascinated by her first experience of a steam train. Her visit was not a happy one. While she was in England, her mother died and she herself was seriously ill for three months. It was not until 1844 that she returned to India. She seems to have spent less time now exploring the country and complained of life being monotonous. Years in India had sapped her health and that of her husband. In 1848, both of them left India for England, arriving on New Year's Day 1849.

Her homecoming was unpropitious. "[I]t was bitterly cold, and I began to speculate if it were possible to exist in England." Exist in England she did, though, surviving until 1875, when she died at the age of 81.

Indian Mutiny or War of Independence?

In Cawnpore, I refer to the events of 1857 as the Indian Mutiny. The book is written from the point of view of a Victorian Englishman and "Indian Mutiny" is what Victorian Englishmen called it. Nowadays, though, what to call that uprising is an intensely political decision. To many Indians and Pakistanis the war was the First War of Indian Independence or the Freedom Struggle of 1857.

Leaving aside political considerations, part of the confusion as to what to call it is down to the fact that several conflicts coalesced into a single rebellion. There seems little doubt that the actual fighting started with a mutiny. That is, soldiers disobeyed a direct order and, when some were imprisoned, their comrades rose up to release them, murdered some of their officers and broke camp. Whether the soldiers were encouraged to mutiny by political activists seeking independence from the British is uncertain. Some Europeans were convinced that the whole thing was a calculated plot, but it is the nature of the political class always to claim that acts of rebellion were incited by "outside agitators" and there is no clear evidence on this either way. What is certain is that the first troops to mutiny decided to march to Delhi and put themselves at the service of the Mogul emperor.

With mutineers claiming to be acting in the cause of the deposed rulers, the conflict quickly began to take on a wider political complexion. Other rulers, like Nana Sahib, saw the opportunity to re-establish their power while the British, deprived of the support of their native troops, were weakened. The situation was further confused because these rulers did not all act in concert. For example, as mentioned in my novel, the troops who mutinied at Cawnpore first marched towards Delhi to put themselves at the service of the Mogul emperor, before being persuaded to return to Cawnpore to serve the Peshwa, Nana Sahib. Although the various leaders of the Indian forces made common cause against the British, their failure to act effectively as a single political or military force counted against them.

One of the first acts of the rebels in many places (including Cawnpore) was to open the jails. So beside the mutinying troops and the various forces of the native rulers, many of those who joined in the fighting were local convicts who simply saw an opportunity to profit from the general unrest. Thus natives who were associated with the British (such as Christians or other Eurasians) were often attacked and murdered, less to achieve military or political goal than because their attackers could then loot their property. With an almost complete breakdown of law and order and mass conflict spreading across huge areas of the country, there was an opportunity for many old scores to be settled.

There are clear modern parallels. In Iraq the fighting following the American-led occupation was blamed on elements of the Army (essentially mutineers), forces loyal to the old regime, criminal elements and those settling scores between different religious groups. In Britain, at least, commentators struggled for ages to find a term which encompassed all these different elements before they settled on "insurgency". Perhaps that is how we should refer to the events of 1857. But, whatever the best term should be, for the British involved, and for most historians, even today, the bloodshed and horror of that year are simply summed up as the Indian Mutiny.