Your Favourite Books?

 I was part of a panel at a recent signing event in Stoke. One of the questions posed by our excellent MC, Donna Morfett, was on "What real love story has influenced you and your writing." 

 

Donna Morfett Toya Richardson, Ros Rendle and Me!

We had no advance knowledge of the questions, but this was still an instantly easy one to answer.

The story of Major Harry Smith and the young girl he found and married in the aftermath of one of the bloodiest sieges of the Napoleonic Wars may be known to many readers, particularly fans of Georgette Heyer, Her novel, “The Spanish Bride” details their story in her inimitable prose. Even her name is pretty unforgettable; Juana María de los Dolores de León!

Bajados was the scene of terrible savagery by the British troops after taking the city. In Harry Smith’s own words: “The atrocities committed by our soldiers on the poor innocent and defenceless inhabitants of the city, no words suffice to depict. Too truly did our heretofore noble soldiers disgrace themselves”

IMHO The Spanish Bride is a superb book, combining as it does the story of the Peninsular war from Bajados in 1812 right up to Waterloo. It is full of domestic details of their life with Harry’s regiment.

 

I had this edition. It fell to pieces many years ago!

Juana Smith

Harry, as a General

The storming of the breach at Bajados

One of the reasons the book maintains its attraction for me are the parallels between Harry and my gt-gt-grandfather, Henry Dumaresq, who took part in most of the same battles as Harry (including Bajados). Indeed, they would almost certainly have known each other, if only in passing. Harry was the older of the two by five years. 

It was Harry who had the romantic story, though. Henry did marry, but not for another 5 years, to the daughter of another Irish peer, Sophie Butler-Danvers who was aged 25 rather than 14!!

 

Henry Dumaresq's Military Record!

A clerk's handwriting was pretty unreadable even then. Luckily, we now have Wikipedia!

Henry Dumaresq

 

After the Napoleonic Wars Harry and Juana spent much of their time on various overseas posting, especially in South Africa where the town of Ladysmith was renamed in honour of his wife.

Henry ended up as ADC to General John Byng at Waterloo, and played a large part in the defence of Hougemont – a key part of the battle. He was wounded delivering a dispatch from General Byng to Wellington. He had taken a ball in the lungs, and “fell from his horse, a dying man”. Thanks to the attention of Wellington’s surgeon, he survived, but they couldn’t remove the ball. It eventually caused his death twenty years later.

The famous Duchess of Richmond's Ball. Henry Dumaresq was there. 

Closing the gates at Hougemont. 

 

 

Also on the panel at the signing was friend, fellow-author and RNA member, Ros Rendle. It turns out that she and her husband, Scott, live in the town that Harry was from, Whittlesey near Ely in Cambridgeshire. Scott taught at the Sir Harry Smith Community College!

Since coming back from the Tales on Trent signing, I’ve been reading The Spanish Bride again. Well worth it!! That’s probably 12 times I have read it (so far)! I celebrated finishing it again, with a glass of one of my favourite beers, Waterloo! The Beer of Victory! 

So what’s YOUR favourite book? How many times have you read it? How many copies have you gone through? 

Murder Your Darlings Dreckly!

As writers, we all know the agony of editing and erasing some of your favourite prose.



The phrase "Murder your darlings!" was coined by Sir Arthur Quiller Couch (“Q”), compiler of the Oxford Book of English Verse and a host of novels about his native Cornwall.

  A quick check on Wikipedia gives a list of 45 books associated with Cornwall. Lots of familiar names, too.



The list is dominated by Winston Graham, and the Poldark series, (the man solely responsible for the recent surge of interest in scything!) and by Daphne du Maurier, surely the doyen of Cornish authors. There are many others though. Enid Blyton set her “Mallory Towers” series of school novels in Cornwall.

Back in Victorian times, RM Ballantyne gave us “Deep Down! A tale of the Cornish mines.” A very readable story and the result of three months he spent at the Botallack in St Just. Coincidently, and a nice example of "what goes around, comes around," Deep Down is the title of a recent Jack Reacher story.

Rosamunde Pilcher hit a literary gold mine with The Shell Seekers; Victoria Holt, Mary Wesley and Susan Howatch too have fallen under the “Kernow Spell”

So why? What is it that brings these amazing authors to write of Cornwall?

For me, it’s the atmosphere. I find that the land and sea, the mines and manor houses, cast a spell. Its as if a parallel world exists when you cross the Tamar.

Many modern authors have set their stories there and use the land or its history as a foundation for their stories, including Victoria Cornwall, one of the Novel Point of View bloggers. I read her first novel – The Thief’s Daughter and loved it. An excellent historical romance adventure, and packed with bona fide detail! .

This is a county where history and legend can be found around every corner, and in every glade in the woods and every cove and bay along the coast. It’s a coast that has seen every phase of history from Phoenician traders coming for tin to make bronze, through raids by African pirates seeking slaves, the mining of tin, copper, arsenic and china clay, the rise and fall of a massive coastal fishing industry based on pilchards, flowers, farms and American soldiers and sailors for the invasion of France in WWII, and now a massive and growing tourist industry.

Some authors make the county their own. Liz Fenwick, American by birth, is now, according to the Guardian, “An award-winning author of eight novels, dubbed 'the queen of the contemporary Cornish novel' “ Her latest novel, The River Between Us, has just been awarded the Popular Romantic Fiction Award by the Romantic Novelists Association..

And so to come right up to date with the myriad of modern authors, across all genres and tropes who succumb to the mystic charms of this multifaceted corner of the country. Check out Melanie Hudson, Jane Johnson, Phillipa Ashley, Mandy James, Kate Ryder, Kitty Wilson! They and others ALL weave their tales using Cornwall’s magic to set their scenes, and very well done, too.

“Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley Cornwall again,” and we are off there on holiday in a couple of weeks!

An End of Year Post! or “How Was It For You?”

I don’t think many of us will look back on 2021 with unalloyed joy! We almost have a duty to look forward to 2022, in the not-very-convincing expectation that it won’t at least be worse!

Personally, my year has been bound by the forced realisation that I’m no spring chicken – no matter how much I try to convince myself otherwise. Sadly, my titanium knee has started to degrade, much as I expected. I also have been made acutely aware of how much my energy levels have fallen. To put it in a nutshell, my get-up-and-go has got-up-and-went! All this has been coupled with an equally savage falling off with my OHs health. As someone said, “Growing old is no game for cissies!”

One thing that makes it worse is that neither myself nor my OH are in the first flush of youth. Realistically, we don’t have that many years left (not complaining – just do the maths) and that’s two years now of lost and missed opportunities, mostly involving our granddaughter, then family and friends. Still, its no use trying to blame a virus. They are notoriously unsympathetic!

However, and this is the important bit, – NONE of this is going to stop me trying to wring every ounce of joy from every single incident, on every day of the year! I urge you all to do the same.

May All YOUR Tests Be Negative!

Meanwhile, back at the ranch……

Andrew Holgate, Literary Editor of the Times and Sunday Times, produced a list of the Best Books of the Year for “Every Genre”. In so doing he left off the LARGEST genre of all – Romance, in any of its tropes!

Like many friends who write, I was appalled by the pure snobbishness on display. Thankfully, the wonderful RNA strode in to bat for ALL of us authors of romance. Their letter is in the link.(I signed it too)

https://www.thebookseller.com/news/rna-writes-open-letter-sunday-times-after-romantic-fiction-excluded-best-books-roundup-1294270

Andrew Holgate himself seems to have gone to ground since he penned his original article. However, the RNA is made of sterner stuff. Four of their more successful members produced this excellent article:

https://romanticnovelistsassociation.org/2021/12/love-in-the-time-of-snobbery/

Thankyou to Milly Johnson, Phillipa Ashley, Heidi Swain and Rowal Coleman. Kudos to all! 

The article has garnered support from all quarters, This very readable riposte came through Harper Collins Australia, penned by https://www.facebook.com/VictoriaBrookmn

https://www.harpercollins.com.au/blog/2021/12/15/victoria-brookman-in-defence-of-womens-fiction/

 I also urge you all to keep up the struggle to stop the literary world ignoring what they like to label “Women’s Fiction!” I will continue the campaign mounted by the Romantic Novelists Association to bring the genre – OUR genre - to its rightful place. I also urge any writer whose work can be described as Romance – of any sort, or in any of its multitudinous tropes, to join the Romantic Novelists Association. Together we are stronger!

https://romanticnovelistsassociation.org/membership/

You and I can help by using the hashtag #RespectRomFic on ALL your book-related posts, whether in Facebook, Instagram or Twitter. Remember, Caring is SHARING!

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To close, for the New Year – 2022 - and still “Next Year” at the time of writing, there is always hope. We have been lucky here in that we haven’t, as far as we know, lost any friends or family to the virus. For that we are truly thankful.

Have a fantastic 2022 !