Normal service will be resumed tomorrow

Lucy Inglis, the History Girl whose post should go up today, is without reliable Internet access because of storms. Bear with us and you will be able to read Lucy's post next month.

Thanks

Mary Hoffman

Christmas, Paris and Kate Beaton Catherine Johnson

There have been some fantastic posts here, so thoughtful and entertaining and erudite. This will not be one of those. I am currently in Revolutionary France in my head and as with all writing sometimes it is the hardest thing and sometimes you have to stop yourself thinking too hard and give in to the impulse of the story and just let it carry you away and onwards and mop up the mess afterwards.

I use a lot of maps when I write historical novels, and there are some cracking maps of Paris before, during and afterwards, when road names changed to things like Rue de l'Hommes Arme, Rue du Contrat Social and Rue des Droits de l'Homme.  

This one's from's 1792. I've used it extensively, imagining how you'd get around, gauging distances and doing a sort of analogue version of Google Streetview which involves dragging your brain down to street level and looking around.

But because of this I have rather let Christmas drift by. I was hoping I might squeeze in a very late present to myself which involved long walks round the city. But alas I've been writing and there are no decorations, the tree is still outside and the freezer is empty. I haven't even bought all my books.

So on that note I thought I'd recommend some disparate and diverting reading. Rush along to your local independent bookshop quick sharp.

Georgian London  Into the Streets  by Lucy Inglis.  I so wish this book had been published when I started writing historical novels. It would have saved me a lot of time. This is a wonderful book with so much useful and fascinating information, law and order, the stink of the tanneries, the bustle of Covent Garden and the mystery of Bow Wow Pie amongst many others. I knew nothing of Southwark's melon pits or Hackney's orange trees and there's loads of wonderful pictures and maps. It's a really useful guide for any reader who's interested in how the metropolis came of age. And I've just noticed it's been shortlisted for the Longman History Book of the Year.

The Big Con by David W. Maurer. Jump forward a couple of hundred years and immerse yourself in the argot and culture of late nineteenth and early twentieth century America. This is a book written by a linguist about the world of Confidence Tricksters. The Sting - the film with Robert Redford and Paul Newman was made on the back of the information in this book. It's full of wonderful and specific criminal slang too, which is always a plus.

Hark! A Vagrant by Kate Beaton.  If you have never come across the drawings of Kate Beaton you are in for such a treat. She is a Canadian cartoonist who draws (not always) historical cartoon strips. My personal copy is adorned with a hand drawn sketch of Matthew Henson heading north. I wrote loads of sentences trying to explain them, but you're better off having a look yourself. But consequently I have not done any work at all this afternoon re reading them, and laughing. Here's the link  http://harkavagrant.com/

Happy Holidays

My book Sawbones is out now too http://www.booktrust.org.uk/books/view/33334

Paper, Print and the Georgians - Lucy Inglis

The British Library’s new Georgians Revealed exhibition is now open. It is a wonderful exploration of works on paper throughout the Georgian period, and the whole thing has a dynamic feel to it that reflects the spirit of the age.

Last month, I gave a Sunday lecture there focussing on the importance of paper during the eighteenth century, but also on the broader themes of life in Georgian London. What makes a Londoner? How was that identity forged? And what part did paper play in it?

Londoners had always been financial animals, but they were becoming consumers on an international scale. For that, they needed a currency they could trust. The foundation of the Bank of England in 1694 saw the beginning of a move towards standardised bank notes; the first ‘modern’ ones appeared in 1725. That, coupled with recoinage to get rid of the vast numbers of brass fakes swimming around the system, helped to stabilize the pound and create confidence in it. As an aside, the most famous of the Wardens of the Royal Mint, Isaac Newton aged nineteen, made a list of his sins which, along with stealing, ‘punching my sister’, ‘falling out with the servants’ and ‘having unclean thoughts’ was ‘Striving to cheat with a brass halfe crowne’.

International trade required that this money had a value not only at home, but when compared to other currencies, so, in 1698, a Huguenot named John Castaing began writing up a news-sheet called The Course of Exchange and Other Things. The sheet included stock prices, bullion rates and exchange rates. It was published on Tuesdays and Fridays and sent to the Hook of Holland the same day in bulk.

Owing to the power of commerce, literacy was rising fast. Parents and orphanages found that their children were simply more employable if they could read and write. This rapid rise in literacy was accompanied by a boom in print culture. Thousands of news-sheets, papers, ballads and broadsides were printed in London’s Moorfields, where Grub Street was a real place specialising in tabloid-type publications. Newspapers came to prominence in the reign of George I. They were key to London trade and social life, but politicians were becoming aware of how the press could be used to influence the electorate. Though the government was becoming increasingly aware that it could not control the press, it could - through the Post Office - control its distribution. It franked and sent out the newspapers which were most supportive and least inflammatory to those ‘who keep coffeehouses, that they might be furnished with them, gratis’.

Moorfields was not only the centre of production for the popular press, but it was also the home of many of London’s producers of pornography. Most of this was retailed south of the Strand, where two streets, Wych Street and Holywell Street were almost entirely given over to the sale of London’s saucier material. Samuel Pepys probably represents the average consumer: he had a copperplate print of a naked Nell Gwynn above his desk at the Admiralty; and in the early part of 1688, he purchased a copy of L’École des Filles from John Martin, his bookseller. On a February Sunday, ‘the Lord’s Day’, as he noted in his diary, he went to the office to do some work and have a little read of his new purchase, ‘which is a mighty lewd book, but yet not amiss for a sober man once to read over to inform himself in the villainy of the world’. Women also played a part in the production and sale of pornography: Elizabeth Nutt ran a cluster of shops in the Royal Exchange where she sold her more respectable stock, such as Swift’s Tale of a Tub. She was also listed as a ‘Mercury-woman’, printing cheap and often seditious or salacious ballads in Grub Street; in the 1730s, she was printing pornography there, aided by her daughters.

The rise in popular, accessible music was pioneered by John Walsh and his son, also John, from their shop the Harp and Hoboy in Catherine Street off Drury Lane. There, they held the monopoly on producing Handel’s work. Walsh started publishing in 1695 and was soon innovating: using cheap and quick-to-work pewter instead of copper and punches for notes to speed things up.  He had instant success, but his real opportunity presented itself when Handel appeared on the scene. Handel came to London in 1711 with the ink still wet on his opera Rinaldo, which he had been engaged to write for performance in the 1710-11 season at the Queen’s Theatre, Haymarket.  Aaron Hill, the manager, had decided upon an ‘Italian’ season, and Handel was the man to deliver, his reputation already known in the city. Opera was relatively new to London’s sophisticated set and attempts to establish an English style were damp squibs in the main. Rinaldo - a consciously Italianate opera written by a German - was an instant hit. The quick, cheap production of Handel’s music was key to his success. Hear it at a recital or on the stage, go to the Walsh’s shop, buy the sheet music for your instrument and go home and play Handel’s music.

But paper wasn’t only used for commerce and entertainment. It was also used for education and huge advances in medicine and science were recorded in ambitious manuals and treatises which went on to save thousands, if not millions of lives after their publication. The most important of these was arguably the collaboration of man-midwife William Smellie, surgeon William Hunter and artist Jan Van Rymsdyk. It resulted in two defining works: Smellie’s A sett of anatomical tables, with explanations, and an abridgement, of the practice of midwifery of 1754, and William Hunter’s Anatomy of the Human Gravid Uterus, Exhibited in Figures twenty years later. These books are still regarded as the moment modern obstetrics was born.

No lecture on paper, print and the Georgians would be complete without the Romantic poets, and we ended with Keats, Shelley and Byron. Keats was the only true Londoner, described by Byron as a ‘Cockney’ and a ‘dirty little blackguard’. Both Keats and Shelley had backgrounds in medicine. Shelley in particular was interested in Galvinism and the reanimation of the body. The lectures he attended on it coincided with the beginning of his love affair with Mary Godwin and she listened, rapt, as he talked about them afterwards. Later, Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein, telling the story of a monster brought to life through reanimation and of a need for love that could not be conquered by death. I gave the last words to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, whose writings, both his poetry and private letters, gave his contemporaries a powerful insight into the dangers of addiction. He died in 1834, in the lull of the reign of William IV. The Georges had gone, and Victoria was still to arrive, but London had changed immeasurably. Coleridge wrote from a small room in his doctor’s house in Highgate, where he was treated for addiction. The view from the window was of the ‘ocean of London, with its domes and steeples definite in the sun, big Paul’s and the many memories attached to it hanging high over all...Nowhere, of its kind, could you see a grander prospect on a bright summer day.’

Interview with Cornelia Funke - Lucy Inglis

In October, I was lucky enough to interview author Cornelia Funke for the History Girls. Cornelia is the author of many books for children and young adults, including the Dragonrider series and the Inkheart trilogy, the first of which became the subject of a film in 2008.  Her latest book is Ghost Knight, set in Salisbury and starring Jon Hartgill. Jon narrates the book, looking back on his eleven year old self from his late teens. Young Jon is a spoiled boy, sent away to his late father’s old boarding school because of his jealousy directed towards his mother’s new boyfriend. He arrives in Salisbury and takes up a place the cathedral school, where he soon gets more than he bargained for; an ancient grudge against the male members of his family brings ghosts back from the grave. Soon, Jon and his new friend Ella are in danger. They turn to another ghost for help, that of William Longespee, the Plantagenet bastard brother of Richard and John. Longespee is a medieval knight, handsome, armoured, chivalrous and in centuries-old mourning for his dead wife, Ela of Salisbury, interred in Lacock Abbey. Yet history tells us Longespee has a chequered past, filled with betrayal. Is Longespee the man Jon and Ella take him for? Or will he betray them in death, as he betrayed his brothers in life?

I’ll be honest, I’m a big fan of Cornelia Funke and jumped at the chance to interview her. I had written down a long list of questions about the book and her writing process, but in the end it felt more natural to follow the conversational hare. Her books are for the 9+ market, but possess deceptively complex structures and address difficult emotions. Ghost Knight is no exception: Jon is not immediately likeable, revealed honestly by his appealing older self as narrator. All Funke’s books have a strong plot and drive the reader forward, and again, Ghost Knight keeps you turning the pages. I asked Cornelia how much of this structure she planned before writing. About half was the answer, with the other half being allowed free rein. 

This led on to the intriguing choice of William Longespee as both Jon’s hero, and the hero of the book. There is, throughout, the sense the Longespee may not be the shining protector he appears and may, as so often happens with our childhood heroes, let Jon down. He entered into a marriage of convenience with a child (Ela was anywhere between nine and twelve at the time), but history also tells us they lived happily and Ela bore him as many as ten children, all of whom survived. After his grisly death at the hands of a poisoner she refused to marry again and retired to Lacock Abbey, becoming beloved amongst her followers there. Amongst the conflicted Plantagenet brood, William was no exception: violent, self-serving, charismatic and passionate. His life was lived in the extremes of warfare, deception and royal politics. Not, on the surface, the man to play the hero in a book for young adults. I asked Cornelia first, what made her choose Longespee, and second, how obligated did she feel to a man history has not painted kindly? ‘Very’ was the immediate answer! Longespee came as a kind of compulsory gift after Cornelia was captivated by Salisbury on a visit to England. She researched the character thoroughly (I sensed throughout the interview that meticulous research and planning are what allows her to let that ‘other half’ of the book write itself), and it really does feel as if she knows him. She summons him as a youngish man perhaps thirty or so, in love with his wife, torn by his compromises. I was intrigued by this choice; William died as a battle-hardened old war dog of around fifty. This was part of the obligation Cornelia felt towards him, that he was still a young man, trying to make things right. The quest for William to find his lost heart is the grail quest of the book. It becomes Jon’s journey too, and in helping William to be reunited with his heart (and of course, his wife), Jon finds himself.

I liked very much the way Funke does not shy from the compromised reality of a medieval knight’s life. The chivalry and glamour were there to put a gloss on medieval warfare. One of my favourite moments in the book is when Jon experiences war through William’s memories. The recreation of the horrors of a medieval battlefield brings a new level to the story: it takes a children’s ghost story into the realms of real danger and is a wonderful achievement. The danger isn’t only physical, but emotional. When I put this to Cornelia she agreed, and said she had tried hard to create that feeling of true danger. Children have become accustomed to peril, through video games or television, but the idea of mortal danger for young boys on a battlefield was something she deliberately summoned. Gone are Jon’s petty concerns at the outset of the book. He must not only acquit himself with honour in what lies ahead, but protect his own Ella. 

The story works on so many levels, and is a compelling and satisfying read for fans of YA fiction, of all ages. Cornelia Funke’s skill in rendering it so is clear, but I think the sheer effort she puts into her books is cleverly concealed. Even the illustrations scattered throughout the pages are a reflection of the care lavished on this story, and Orion have produced a beautiful book. Cornelia Funke’s standards are high: her earlier career was as an illustrator and she had definite ideas about how the characters and settings should appear. 

Finally, eager to keep chatting but anxious not to outstay my welcome on a busy day, I asked Cornelia if she believes in ghosts. Her reply was that she had never seen one, but that there are many things we cannot explain. An expert in the paranormal (whom she had contacted when researching the book - see what I mean about dedication?) had once described ghosts to her as recordings of a moment in time when someone, somewhere, felt something so extreme it became implanted in the fabric of that particular place. 

As I got up to leave, Cornelia signed my copy of Ghost Knight. As she opened the front cover revealing the crimson endpapers, I was reminded of Inkheart’s Mo Folchart, a bookbinder and master storyteller who brings characters from books alive by reading aloud. Mo thought that all good books should have endpapers in ‘dark red or dark blue...when you open the book it’s like going to the theatre. First you see the curtain. Then it’s pulled aside and the show begins’. I wondered for a moment at such a happy accident and was about to mention it, before realising I would be telling a master storyteller something she already knew.

The Importance of Remembering by Lucy Inglis

Last week a friend flew in from Charleston. He wanted to spend a couple of days sightseeing in the City of London before he spent the weekend with friends, so we decided to take in St Paul’s Cathedral and the Tower of London. 

I started working in the City of London almost fifteen years ago and I’ve lived here for seven. It is, as people often observe, a very lovely but peculiar place to live. It doesn’t have the obvious appeal of somewhere like Paris, Rome or Venice. There are no green spaces, people hurry everywhere all the time. It’s either too crowded, or deserted. There are too many offices and Tesco Metros, but it does have a thick crust of time that clings to almost everything. Even the new buildings are tinged with it, like a creeping moss. In the fuss and inconvenience of the Olympics, the endless construction work, I had forgotten, but it only took a few hours to rediscover.

We went first to St Paul’s cathedral, where my guest was somewhat shocked to see a service starting as tourists walked around, chatted and took photographs, although, he reasoned, in a place the size of St Paul’s what else could you do? We looked at everything, and climbed to the Stone Gallery for the incredible view of the City below (not the Golden - vertigo beat us). In the crypt we visited the tombs of Nelson, Wellington, Turner, and of course, Wren as we discussed burial rituals in Georgian London and in the American South, as well as the most macabre tombs we’d seen. He won by some margin after regaling me with the image of the rotting corpse carved in stone he’d seen in New Orleans.

Then it was to the Museum of London, via the medieval and Roman London Wall. I had forgotten it was there. Seeing it on the street was almost a surprise. The grey squirrel sitting on the top of it seemed equally unimpressed, looking at us as if to say ‘What do you want?’ Around every corner we seemed to find something else. At the Museum we saw London from prehistory to the modern in what was literally a whizz around before we went over to the Guildhall to look at the Roman amphitheatre. I feared I had history’d out my companion, already weary from his flight. But no, back he came for more the following day.

At the Tower of London we sat by the river, had a cup of coffee looking at Tower Bridge, and marshalled our resources. There is, after all, far too much to see on one visit. We debated the Princes in the Tower, the recycling of crown jewellery, and how long it would take to carve a shield and motto into the stone wall of your cell. All the ravens were annoyingly camera shy. How and why did Walter Raleigh ultimately get it so wrong? For my friend, visiting the church where Thomas More is buried was an unexpectedly moving moment. 

At Tower Hill, we said goodbye. I had decided to walk back, past the end of the street where Samuel Pepys lived, past the Monument to the Great Fire of London, the Bank of England, the Mansion House and streets with names such as Huggin Lane and Old Fish Street Hill. All these things I had forgotten were there in my rush for a pint of milk and the often elusive dog food. 

The photos in this post are not of the big things but of all the little things we saw, neglected corners of the City. A memorial tablet bedded into a wall where a churchyard once stood, the chapel on Aldersgate, and the interior of St Stephen Walbrook. Rediscovering all the good things about where I live turned sightseeing with a friend into something really memorable. Now I have to be sure not to forget again!

Hello! by Lucy Inglis

This is my first post, and I’m very excited to be part of The History Girls line up.  You won’t know me yet, but wait, don’t go!  I’m currently ‘book pregnant’ to two publishers.  As a historian for adults, I’ve written Georgian London, which will be out with Viking soon.  Then, next summer, Chicken House will be publishing my first novel for Young Adults, which is based in the City of London and full of folklore.  

So, I thought I would begin at the beginning, where my love for historical fiction was born.  Like thousands of others, it started with Kathleen Winsor’s Forever Amber.  Published in 1944, it sold over three million copies and was also banned in Boston as ‘obscene’.  Winsor’s Amber, a headstrong girl from the country who follows the inappropriately-named aristocrat Bruce Carlton to Charles II’s Restoration London, is a wonderful heroine.  She is also infuriating, obtuse, and not always entirely convincing but Winsor’s research into the period was meticulous.  As Amber bounces from one disaster to another and indeed, one lover to another, she carries the reader through one of the most interesting and vibrant eras in London’s history.  From streetlife to domestic scenes, the city comes alive.  The book is also soaked in romance and elaborate descriptions of everything Amber wears.  Love and sex are central, and as the Boston book-banners noted there are seventy references to ‘intercourse’ and numerous ‘objectionable passages’.  But no matter how many lovers she takes, her heart remains with Carlton.  He, meanwhile, is intent on keeping his social status and improving his fortune, and so has no intentions of fulfilling Amber’s dreams of marriage, even after she risks her own life to nurse him through the plague.

‘The plague bit’ of Forever Amber was the moment I realised historical fiction, and history itself, was for me.  For some, it’s the romance, Amber’s devotion to her charismatic idol.  For others, the rich fashions.  For the fifteen year old me, it was the sweating, the vomiting and bloody buboes, the squalor.  As Amber and Bruce fight for survival, around them London falls silent except for the tolling of the bells and the rumble of the dead-cart.  I was hooked.  

Twenty-something years later, here I am, a historian who writes about ordinary people with a borderline unhealthy interest in the underbelly of long ago London.  Is Forever Amber great historical fiction?  In parts.  Is Amber a successful heroine?  Essentially, no.  Did Kathleen Winsor influence my life?  Definitely.  It wasn’t the fashions or the sex or the (clearly) doomed pursuit of an unattainable man, but a vivid portrait of a terrifying moment in history.  I’ve read hundreds of historical novels since and many very good ones, but Forever Amber has a place in my heart.  And every time I open a new historical novel, I hope that somewhere inside will be the next plague bit.