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A couple of years ago, I picked up a debut novel at the library called SWORN SWORD by James Aitcheson and was immediately hooked. Here I should say that I often try out new to me authors at the library and if I love them then I go out and buy their work. This is what happened with SWORN SWORD. I loved the rendition of post Conquest England and seeing it through the eyes of its personable hero Tancred a Dinant, an ambitious young Breton hearth knight. I've since gone on to buy, read and love the second novel THE SPLINTERED KINGDOM and the third KNIGHTS OF THE HAWK.
THE SPLINTERED KINGDOM is just being published in the United States by Sourcebooks and so I asked James if he would like to be interviewed on my blog and give me and other readers some insights into these fine works of historical fiction - how they came to be written and just what it entails behind the scenes.
Over to James:
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1. James, I’ve
thoroughly enjoyed your novels ever since picking up SWORN SWORD when it was
first published and THE SPLINTERED KINGDOM was no exception. I have become something of a fan of your hero
Tancred a Dinant. I’d love to know how
his character and his story came to you in the first place?
Tancred’s
evolution was a gradual thing. I didn’t start out with a fully formed protagonist
in mind, but rather the sketch of an outline of an idea that then grew and
developed as I began writing what later became Sworn Sword.
Right
from the beginning I decided that I wanted to tell the story of the Norman
Conquest from the unconventional perspective of the invaders rather than from
that of the native English. My main character should be a man of action, I
thought, and what better than a knight serving in William the Conqueror’s army?
Still,
though, Tancred remained something of a blank canvas, and in those early drafts
of the first few chapters, he wasn’t terribly well defined. It was only when I
made the switch from writing in the third person to writing in the first person
that I really began to probe his character and find out what made him tick.
As
soon as I began writing in Tancred’s voice, things began to click. I found it
easier to get inside his head and discover not just what drove him, but also
his fears, doubts and dreams. Over time this intriguing individual emerged: ambitious,
principled but tortured by guilt; an experienced warrior with a keen sense of
honour, who nonetheless a maverick streak that often lands him in trouble.
And
he continues to develop in each new book according to the various struggles and
triumphs that he undergoes. Thus the Tancred we see The Splintered Kingdom, the second book in the series, is a
different man in some respects to the one we saw in Sworn Sword. He’s maturing as he acquires new responsibilities but
at the same time growing more ruthless in pursuit of his goals.
2. Have you written
anything before and if so was it historical?
I’ve
always written stories since I was very young, and for as long as I can
remember I harboured ambitions of being a professional writer, although back
then I never imagined myself as a historical novelist. As a teenager I read a
lot of science fiction and fantasy, and so I used to write a lot in those
genres.
It
was only when I went to study History at Cambridge, where I became hooked on
the Middle Ages and the Norman Conquest in particular, that I started to consider
turning to historical fiction. Since then I’ve never looked back.
3. I particularly like
the way you paint the characters as individuals with dilemmas that a modern
reader can immediately identify with, but at the same time your people are
firmly grounded in the 11th century.
Is this something you consciously thought about while writing?
One
of the biggest challenges that the historical novelist faces is getting inside
the heads of his or her characters. To write convincingly about the Middle
Ages, you need to try to get yourself into a medieval mindset. Understanding
their thought-world – that is to say, their attitudes towards religion, family
and society – is vital, since all of those things will have an impact on how
your characters reason, speak and behave.
Unfortunately
there are no shortcuts you can take towards achieving this; I think it only
comes through deep immersion into the period and extensive research into all
the small details of life at the time. For me, it’s also essential that I go
back to the primary sources – the original chronicles, poetry and other
writings that provide us with the voices of the past – since these offer useful
glimpses into the preoccupations of people living at the time.
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| Offa's Dyke path overlooking the Teme Valley near Knighton, Powys, which is only a few miles to the west of where Earnford, Tancred's fictional manor is sited. |
4. You have a very firm
and visual sense of time and place. It’s so evocative that whatever it is, mist
or moonlight, or the wide fenland marshes, it’s there with me in the room. Did
you visit any of the locations or similar landscapes?
My
research takes many forms, and while I love nothing more spending time in the
library engrossed in the literature surrounding the subject, I also enjoy getting
out in the field. When it comes to visualising and recreating landscapes in the
novels, I find that there’s no substitute for going and treading the very soil
that my characters would have stood upon.
My
travels have taken me all over England, and I’ve used my on-the-ground research
to help construct a virtual guide to the country c.1066, which you can find on my website. It’s called Tancred’s
England, and it features mini-histories of several of the principal locations
featured in the series, for readers who are interested in finding out more.
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| Members of Regia Anglorum in 11thc Norman kit Photo courtesy of Rosemary Watson |
5. And you must have
intensively researched the weapons, warfare and tactics of the time to be able
to write such convincing battle scenes?
I got a real feel for being in the desperate thick of it that showed
emotional investment that went well beyond the technical blow by blow. These were always real people with too much
to lose. How do you do that element of
your research?
To
learn about the various elements of arms and armour and how they were used, I
not only turn to books but also speak with re-enactors. But when it comes to
trying to capture something of the feel of a medieval battle, that’s not
something that can be easily recreated in today’s world, nor would anyone want
to! However, reading and listening to interviews with modern soldiers are very
useful for getting an insight into how individuals deal emotionally with
fighting and killing. The historian John Keegan’s pioneering book The Face of Battle, an absorbing study
of the psychology of battle, was also an eye-opener for me.
6. The politics of the
time between the different factions was pretty complicated but you explain them
very well in THE SPLINTERED KINGDOM – no mean feat. I assume you had to do a lot of reading
around the subject in order to distill it for the readers? In broad brush strokes can you tell us about
some of the factions in play at the time.
As
you say, there were many different factions competing for power and territory
at this time. In the wake of the Norman victory at Hastings, everything
suddenly became very uncertain, and the invaders battled for several years to
consolidate their hold on England and put down various waves of native risings.
Taking
advantage of the uncertainty were the Welsh kings, who launched repeated raids
across the border, and the Danes, who saw in the chaos an opportunity for
plunder, and whose king, Sweyn Estrithsson, had long had designs on the English
crown. Meanwhile, the last in the ancient Anglo-Saxon royal line, Eadgar
Ætheling, who also believes he is the rightful king, is marching at the head of
a Northumbrian army to which the king of Scots has also lent his support. So
within a few years of their arrival in Britain, the Normans suddenly find
themselves in a very precarious position, under attack on all sides.
In
researching this particular episode of the Norman Conquest I had to open myself
up to completely new avenues of research. My specialism until then had been
largely in Anglo-Saxon and early Norman England, and so in order to write about
the Welsh March where the novel is largely set, I needed to become acquainted
in fairly short order with the complicated and turbulent history of early
medieval Wales. Naturally only a very small fraction of all my research made it
into the book, but without it I wouldn’t have felt properly equipped to begin
writing.
7. You clearly have a
love for language and I enjoy the light seasoning you use in your novels
including THE SPLINTERED KINGDOM. A
little allied to the above question, can you explain (in short!) about the
languages that would have been spoken in Britain at the time of the Norman
Conquest.
As
the Normans extended their reach throughout the British Isles, they found
themselves in contact not just with English, but with Welsh, Norse and Gaelic
speakers too. One of the key things I wanted to show in the series was how
disconcertingly alien the cultures of Britain would have seemed to the Normans
when they first arrived, and how strange its languages would have sounded to a
French-speaker.
That’s
one of the reasons I chose to refer to places by their contemporary names –
Eoferwic (York), Lundene (London) and Brycgstowe (Bristol), for example – and to
use old forms of personal names in favour of modern ones – thus Eadgyth instead
of Edith.
In
time, many of the conquerors, especially those who had been granted land under
the Norman kings, did learn to speak the native tongues, if only so that in
everyday life they could converse with the folk who lived on
their estates without needing an interpreter. But French remained the language
of the elite and continued to dominate court life for several generations after
1066.
8. If you could go back
in time and do your historical research on the ground so to speak, what would
be the things you would really like to know?
I know the reply is probably all of it, but could you give a couple of
examples? I know, from my own work that
I would love to go back to a 12th century tournament and see just
how they grabbed each other by the bridles in the thick of the fight. What would be on your wishlist?
That’s
a difficult question to answer! I think what I’d most like to see is how the
Normans went about constructing the castles and cathedrals that you see across
England today, and which are among their greatest legacies. They were well
practised in the art of building fortifications quickly, and indeed
contemporary chronicles suggest that the first castle at Dover (1066) and the
second at York (1069) were thrown up in just eight days, which if true is quite
incredible, given the scale of the work involved.
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| UK cover for Knights of the Hawk |
9. I understand KNIGHTS
OF THE HAWK is coming to Sourcebooks next year, and Tancred has more adventures
in store I am pleased to say. Can you
say a little about that?
Yes, the third book in
the series, Knights of the Hawk, is
due to be published by Sourcebooks in summer 2015. (It’s already out in the
UK.) Set in autumn 1071, one year after The Splintered Kingdom, it sees Tancred
waging war in the Fens, where a group of rebels, including perhaps the most
famous outlaw of them all, Hereward the Wake, are making one final, desperate
stand against the Normans.
There will be further adventures for Tancred – I’ve got
plenty more ideas for where his travels might take him in future. In the long
term I’d very much like to send Tancred on the First Crusade, although by that
point he’d be in his mid-fifties, so perhaps a little bit old for front-line
fighting.
For the time being I’m working on a new project, which is also
set during the Norman Conquest but which features an entirely new set of
characters. It’s slightly different in style and tone, but (I hope) equally
exciting. I can’t say too much about it just yet, but I will be posting updates
on my website in the following months.
10. Can you suggest a
good reference book for someone to read if they wanted to find out more about
the period?
Anyone
seeking a general introduction to 1066 and its significance would be
well-advised to try Marc Morris’s The
Norman Conquest, an up-to-date and accessible study that combines a
historian’s scholarship with a storyteller’s flair and narrative drive.
For
a more in-depth view of life in England during this period and the changes
wrought by the Conquest, I can highly recommend A Social History of England, 900–1200, edited by Julia Crick and
Elisabeth van Houts.
11. And for fun, what
was a fiction read you’ve recently enjoyed?
Any subject, doesn’t have to be historical.
Recently
I’ve very much enjoyed reading Gentlemen
of the Road by Michael Chabon. A light-hearted, swashbuckling novel, it
features Zelikman and Amram, two Jewish bandits and swords-for-hire, who are plying
their trade in the Caucasus c. 950 and
find themselves drawn into a campaign to restore the rightful heir to the
Khazar throne. It’s a slim volume – only a couple of hundred pages long – but
crammed with twists and turns, ploys and deceptions and feats of derring-do,
written in a grandiose and captivating style.
Thank you very much for those detailed and enlightening answers James. I shall certainly be looking up Gentlemen of the Road. The Marc Morris book is on my TBR; I'm definitely a fan of his.
Everyone, do add James Aitcheson's terrific novels to your TBR pile if your interest has been piqued!
