The Last Lancer, Now Published in the USA

 

On 11th July The Last Lancer will be published in the USA and I'm really hoping that the Polish diaspora, many of whom are US based, will get behind it. This is mainly because so many of my Polish friends, here in Scotland, have told me that reading it reminded them of their own fathers and grandfathers, the pre-war childhood and tragic wartime experiences they seldom spoke about. People would tell me how they wished that they had asked their parents about the past, but so often hesitated, and now regretted all those stories left untold. 

These good friends were in my mind as I researched and wrote this book. I did ask my father, thank heavens, although he died much too young, back in 1995. I still miss him. Still wish I could chat to him. Walk with him. Hug him. Nevertheless, he wrote all kinds of vivid and fascinating details down for me. Later, I visited Poland myself, worked there for a year, and managed to piece together even more of the story. 

With my dad in 1950s Yorkshire.

My father, Julian Czerkawski was born in 1926 near Lwow, in Polish Galicia, on his father's large and fairly prosperous estate. He was the son of a Polish lancer - one of the celebrated cavalrymen who inherited the legacy of the famous 'winged hussars'. For hundreds of years, they had made their home in these heavily disputed borderlands. It seemed to me, hearing and reading about it later, as though these were people who were living on the slopes of a volcano. Dormant but rumbling away. 

The Czerkawski family in 1926 -
my grandfather in the centre.

 War devastated the family in ways which are seldom fully understood, here in the UK. Fortunate to   escape with his life, Dad eventually made his way to England as a refugee, an 'alien' as they were   called. Poland might as well have been outer space. His identity papers reveal that under 'next of kin' he had entered a Polish phrase that means 'closest family to nobody.' He was fortunate to meet and marry my Leeds Irish mother. (You can read about her family story in my book called A Proper Person to be Detained.) But an ache remained for the people and places of his childhood, even if he spoke of them only rarely.

In 2022, Putin's war in Ukraine and the sight of refugees passing through Lviv, formerly Lwow, added urgency to my desire to uncover something of what had been lost a generation before.

This book is the result, a book that Neal Ascherson, expert on the history of Poland and Ukraine, has called 'very moving and intensely interesting.'

Sadly, there is a sense in which Poland is still, for most people here in the UK, a 'faraway place with strange sounding names'. But perhaps for that wider Polish diaspora  (20 million people worldwide) especially in the USA, it will fill some achingly large gaps in people's family history. 

I do hope so. 

Meanwhile, I would dearly love to find a US and/or Polish publisher who would be interested in translating and publishing this book in Polish. Enquiries here in the UK have so far failed to elicit any interest. There seems to be an inability to understand the nature of the shifting borders in this part of the world, which results in an equally fixed inability to understand that this is a book about Ukraine too. It is also a book that goes some way towards explaining why Ukrainians fleeing Putin's war received such a warm welcome from Poles. We knew. We understood. We felt for and with them.

Please feel free to contact me for further information about the book.

If you're interested in translation rights, do please contact my publisher Saraband.  

The Winger Hussars by Alan Lees

Whatever Happened to Creative Writing?

 

Edinburgh days.

The writing career I embarked on many years ago seems unrecognisable to me now. I studied English Language and Literature at Edinburgh University where there was a thriving community of young people who wrote in their spare time or who just loved literature, poetry, theatre, for itself and not as a means to an end, not as a way to promote 'wellbeing' or primarily as a way to tackle various 'issues' - although we did write about issues that seemed important to us. But the practice itself, the 'doing' was the thing. We seemed to enjoy books, plays, poems with less angst, less fear of censure, more freedom to just be ourselves. Sensitivity readers were unknown. Beta readers were unknown. We wrote because we needed to write, loved to write. We learned by writing a lot, and by working with a trusted editor or - in the case of drama - with a trusted director. And if that seems like nostalgia, maybe it is.

A friend of mine organised poetry festivals and they were sold out. Young people came along in droves to listen to poets. The vast majority of my fellow students were, like me, from comprehensive schools. Years later, when I was working at another Scottish university, they organised a poetry event, with a few well known poets. Even with the benefit of social media, hardly anyone came. An experienced and successful playwright, working in the department for a while, generously offered one to one advice sessions to students on film and theatre courses. Again, nobody came. He couldn't understand it and neither could I.

It sometimes seems as though the focus on the formality of the actual courses, the pressing need to get the degree at the end of it, means that the joy in actual creative practice has disappeared.

The original Writers in Residence schemes meant that a writer with a certain level of experience would be given a residency at a university, and would be expected to do some hours of teaching. This would normally be a mixture of workshops, tutorials, one to one advice sessions and the very occasional lecture which would often be open to the public. Writers were autonomous and organised their own timetables. It would be no more than, for example, 15 or 20 hours per week, including preparation time, but the salary would be for 30 or 40 hours, so it was assumed that the writer would have a room of their own and about 20 hours of paid time to write. When I was at Edinburgh, Norman MacCaig was writer in residence, with Robert Garioch before him. They were there to encourage creative writing within the student body, and they usually did. 

As the years went by, there was a sort of 'mission creep'. You started to hear that universities were taking advantage, paying for 15 hours, expecting 30. The paid 'time to write' practically disappeared. On new campuses, individual rooms were hard to come by. At some new campuses, lecturers' rooms were often shared and (appallingly, even though I love my Kindle!) without bookshelves. 

Partly to address this problem, partly, I think, to raise its profile, Creative Writing became an academic subject. I remember that the change was just beginning as I was finishing my Masters in the 70s. Now there are degrees in Creative Writing all over the place, but these courses are - in my opinion - seldom practical enough. The Uni Guide admits that 'unemployment rates are currently looking quite high overall, with salaries on the lower side.' Typical graduate job areas, the site goes on to admit, are as 'sale assistants and retail cashiers.'  

Many graduates emerge into ever more shark infested publishing waters, thinking they are going to get an agent and a deal, but few do. And nobody ever seems to tell them that getting an agent won't even guarantee getting a publisher.

I saw an ad for a so called Writer in Residence for Edinburgh University a few years ago and realised that Norman MacCaig, arguably one of Scotland's finest poets, wouldn't have been qualified to apply, because the position required a degree in Creative Writing. That seemed to me to encapsulate what writing at university level has become. This is nothing to do with quality or talent, because many of these lecturers will be very talented indeed. Writing pays so little nowadays that most of us have to do something else to make ends meet. (Sometimes as sales assistants and retail cashiers!) But once you subject your creativity, your words and ideas, to the kind of rigorous academic analysis demanded by these courses, it can disappear like snow off a dyke. It's not the teaching that's the problem. I taught EFL for several years and wrote plenty while I was doing it. It's the intensive and persistent involvement in other people's creativity that can damage your own.

Every year a handful of graduates will get publishing deals, but many more won't, and even those who do will seldom make any money. Which wouldn't matter too much, as long as they loved what they did and used it elsewhere. I was astonished some years ago when speaking to a class of young people doing a Creative Writing course, to find that only two or three of them ever did any writing of their own, (nor even much reading) beyond the amount prescribed by the course. They had none of the passion for the work that dedicated writers, young and old, still have. The desperate compulsion to write.  Which made me think that they might have been better doing a good general arts course and reading widely - as we did back when we still queued for cheap theatre tickets, went to poetry festivals and - if we were so inclined - wrote whatever we liked, obsessively, whenever we could.

Fine Bears for Sale

 

It's no secret that I love old teddy bears. Especially my own old bears, Mr Tubby and Teddy Robinson that are almost as old as me. You can see them in the picture at the bottom of the page. Mr Tubby (in red) is a Chiltern Hugmee and Teddy Robinson is (I think) an even older and very threadbare Chad Valley ted. Very well loved. Others have joined the family over the years including an original 'Gabrielle' Paddington Bear, complete with his 'please look after this bear' label - a 21st birthday gift from my parents, and all the more precious for that. 

These days, trying hard not to acquire any more bears for myself, because we just don't have the space, I still occasionally buy them for rehoming. It's so nice to rescue them and sell them on to 'arctophiles' like me. The two most recent acquisitions above have obviously been much loved in their lifetimes. The bear on the left of the picture is a very old and large  Merrythought ted - he has his Merrythought button in his ear, and the company only copied Steiff in using ear buttons for a short time. The bear on the left is - we think - a German bear, but we don't know the maker. Not a Steiff but with certain recognisable features of old German bears, including a protruding, shaved muzzle, a very solid body, small ears and quite large pads to his feet. He also has a growler - sort of! He grunts in protest every time you tip him up. 

They'll be for sale in our Etsy Store very soon. We sell my husband's art and my antiques and collectables on there - in my case as a way of helping to fund and to buy time for the thing I love even more than teddy bears - my writing! 

Teddy Robinson and Mr Tubby -
definitely not for sale!

My Late Neighbour's Rose

 

This has been a very good year for roses. A warm dry June helped, and this old white rose has done incredibly well this summer. It's still flowering - just. 

It reminds me of my late neighbour, Mary Mackenzie, who gave it to me from her own garden. She called it the Jacobite Rose - not the small, sweet, wild rose of Scotland, but (I think) Rosa Alba which is also known as the white rose of York. Certainly a rose that has been cultivated in Europe since ancient times. 

It had grown very leggy over the years and I pruned it back quite a bit but it seems to have had a new lease of life this year.

Mary had several of these in her garden, along with masses of daffodils in early spring - she used to give me huge bunches of them to take up to the village cemetery after my mum and dad died - and then a little later on lots of crimson tulips and poppies.

She was one of the first female graduates in accountancy from Glasgow University. She was still doing accounts well into her eighties, including ours, and I vividly remember her finding an error on the self employed tax return (back when these forms were on paper) and phoning the Revenue to tell them. 'Oh no, Mrs Mackenzie,' they said. 'That couldn't happen.' But she was right. And many forms had to be recalled. 

She was formidably intelligent and formidably intrepid. Her husband, Bill, had been on the 1953 ascent of Everest, and although he wasn't with the party that got to the summit, he did reach the camp just below the peak. As a world class ski-er, he had also been involved in helping scientists to escape Nazi occupied Norway and had run training sessions for troops in the Highlands. But no shrinking violet herself, Mary had been a spy in German occupied France, had gone on many expeditions to remote parts of the world, and had survived a plane crash by crawling several miles through inhospitable terrain with a broken leg. 

When Bill died,  Mary was determined to walk up the hill with the funeral procession, but - then in her eighties - nabbed a lift in the funeral car half way up. 'I said I'd go on with him to the end,' she said to me, mischievously, 'But this might be a bridge too far!' 

I miss her and her wisdom. When, during her own memorial service, some years later, the minister alluded to her bravery during the war, we breathed a sigh of relief, because somebody had been spreading malicious rumours that this was untrue, that she was 'just an old dear, imagining things.'

Well, she was very dear to us, but she hadn't imagined or made up her extraordinary life. It's sad that sometimes, you only find out exactly what people have been and done at their funerals. 

We are all so much more than what we become. You only need to ask. 

Blending Fact and Fiction - Writing Advice

This is one of my occasional 'how to' posts, although I don't ever presume to tell people how to write - so it's more of a 'how do I do it' kind of post. Or even 'how did I do it' because there's no guarantee that I'd do it the same way in future. Writing is always a learning process. The theme of this blog was suggested by writer friend Wendy Jones. It was originally intended as a podcast, but fell victim to various unforeseen circumstances earlier in the year. I'd already drafted out some notes in response to Wendy's questions  - so just in case they might be useful - here they are - and the podcast may still happen at some point. 

To illustrate this, I'll be considering a couple of novels published some time ago, but still available online: The Physic Garden and The Jewel.

The Physic Garden was inspired by the true story of a Scottish gardener, but it evolved into a tale of friendship and terrible betrayal, set in late 18th and early 19th century Glasgow. It's a first person narrative, told by an old man looking back on his life.  The narrator, William Lang, had a voice so strong that he simply had to tell his own story. One of my (disappearing) agents suggested that it would work better as a third person narrative and I tried it, but I just couldn't. William wasn't having it. During one of my book group sessions, after publication, a woman asked me how I could have written 'a whole book about such an unpleasant old man.' I was gobsmacked. William may be crabbit. A little tetchy from time to time. A man whom bitter experience has changed irrevocably. But this is the story of his youth, of tragic events that have made him the man he is. I loved him from start to finish. 

In the Physic Garden, (physic as in medicinal, NOT psychic as in supernatural, even though everyone thinks that's what it is!)  the garden itself is a backdrop, and the novel is inspired by a true story. Years ago, I found an old book called The Lost Gardens of Glasgow University and one of the chapters was about William Lang, who was made head gardener of the university physic or herb garden, at a very young age, after the death of his father. Sadly, the garden was dying because of industrial pollution from the Type Foundry that the university had permitted to be built nearby. Soon, young William was blamed for something he could do nothing about. It was clear that the real William had support from one of the university professors, Thomas Brown. I thought he was an older man who had taken William 'under his wing' but when I did some further research, I realised they were quite close in age. Close enough to become good friends in spite of the difference in their respective statuses. 

That relationship was the basis for my novel. I used fact - that original book - as a springboard. I also went to the Hunterian museum, and the Glasgow University library to look at various books that are key to the story. Then at a certain point in the tale, I gave myself permission to make things up. I didn’t know what the (fictional) great betrayal was that tore the friendship apart till quite close to the end of the story and this is not the place for spoilers, but I knew it was something horrific and unforgivable. 

By contrast, the Jewel is a third person narrative, the untold story of  Jean Armour, the wife of  Scottish poet Robert Burns, but with the focus, the 'experience' of the story very much told from Jean’s point of view. In this novel, I stuck to the truth as far as was humanly possible. There is a mass of information 'out there', but very little about the poet's wife. I went back to primary sources: the highly illuminating Kirk Session Minutes from Mauchline, for example, or accounts from people who had known the couple, but I did lots of online research as well. The result is that everything I wrote about in this novel either did happen (you’d be surprised by how much!) or could have happened. I even found out one or two things that aren’t in the public domain at all - for example, the fact that the whole village seemed to know that Jean was expecting the poet's twins well before they were born.

One of the keys to writing historical fiction based on fact is to realise that you can’t put everything in.  The research is just a means to an end. My advice would be to immerse yourself in the time and place as far as possible, but then write the first draft of the story without checking too many facts. You’ll soon find out what you don’t know and you can go back and fill in any gaps later, before revising and editing. You need to get inside your characters’ heads, to allow them to speak, to listen to them. 

William Lang seemed to dictate his story to me. With Jean, the poet's jewel of them all, I needed to know more about her, to explore her emotions, how she felt about her talented, mercurial, lovable and sometimes reprehensible husband and why. Fiction gave me the elbow room to do just that. 

If your book features a well known character, like Robert Burns, you will find yourself defending your point of view and sometimes your protagonist too. So many men and a few women have written about Burns. Almost all of them ignored Jean. I knew that there would be some challenges to my version of the story – and there still are!

Above all, you have to choose something that obsesses you, something you love. You are going to be living with these people and in this time and place for a very long time. (My husband swore he saw Jean in our bedroom one night, because I’d spoken of nothing else for months!)

An important point: don’t allow your characters to have thoughts and feelings they could never have in that time and place. Jean Armour was a strong and admirable woman, but she was an 18th century woman who had terrible trouble defying her parents. If I had written her as too feisty, too modern, nobody would have believed in her. I wouldn’t have believed in her. Ditto Burns, who was a man of his time and place, but one who liked women, made them laugh, charmed them. Back then, I expect I'd have fallen for him too. In the Physic Garden, William is an intelligent and imaginative man born into the wrong class at the wrong time. But he can only tell his story from the perspective of his emotions at that time, disliking the constraints, celebrating the successes, lamenting a betrayal that he still knows he himself could never have committed, but even so mourning what might have been. 'It is as though something was planned for me, some pathway I could not find, could not take,' he says. And later acknowledges that he has 'a sense of regret so profound, so bitter that it is like a physical pain in me.' 

Above all, be prepared for your research to change your mind about characters and events. Because it will. Inevitably.  That’s half the pleasure of it. We all write to find out.

 

Cava Sangria

Doggy, leading his best life in Sitges.

 I didn't know about Cava Sangria until we went to Barcelona last year, and a friend we were lunching with, on a very hot and beautiful day in Sitges, suggested that Cava Sangria might be a good idea.

I love Cava. Like it better than Prosecco, if the truth be told. It always seems drier, but also gentle, floral, slightly citrussy - and very much itself. I could happily drink too much of it, although I try not to!

Anyway, that happy day in Sitges, we had a very big jug of Cava Sangria. We may even have had two, to go with our excellent Paella. 

Last summer, back home in Scotland, I tried my hand at making it. A couple of weekends ago, I made it again for a big group of friends, and it went down very well indeed. If you're having a BBQ this weekend, you might like to try it. It's easy to make and all too easy to drink.

You will need:

Good chilled orange juice to taste - half a litre is enough to go with two or three bottles of Cava but you can make up your own mind and use less if you like.

Chopped summer fruit. I cannot tell a lie, I had a pack of frozen chopped fruit I had bought earlier in Aldi or Lidl, but it's easy enough to chop up fruits of your choice. In fact you can make and keep some in your freezer, because the frozen pieces will keep your Sangria nice and cold. There could be apples, oranges, peaches or nectarines and - at this time of year - strawberries. Strawberries are best used fresh, though, because they go mushy when frozen. Pineapple is nice too. There are no hard and fast rules.

A glass of brandy - Spanish if you have it.

A couple of tablespoons of any orange liqueur if available - although in my opinion it tastes just as good without.

Two or three bottles of Cava Brut. Aldi and Lidl usually have decent Cava at reasonable prices. I think I got the one below in Morrison's because I liked the bottle! I'll stick a candle in it, once it's empty, and use it outside for the summer. You can use Cava Rosado if you like as well. 

About an hour before you want to drink your sangria, marinade your iced or, at the very least, chilled fruits in a bowl with the orange juice, brandy, and liqueur. Keep this in the fridge if possible.

About five minutes before your first visitor arrives, add two or three bottles of dry thoroughly chilled Cava. If your bowl is too small, you can add the third bottle later on. Or you could use less orange juice and one bottle of Cava, if you're expecting a small number of guests. Although be warned - it can disappear very quickly.

Not for drivers, of course, although you could make something very nice with a non-alcoholic fizz such as Nozecco, leaving out the brandy, but including all the fruit. 

Salud!

The gorgeous Can Laury in Sitges

Wouldn't it be Great?

 

The picture is only there because I like it a lot, my husband Alan Lees painted it, it reminds me of some very happy winters spent working in the Canaries - and it's also going to be used as the cover image for one of a pair of novels, coming soon. Watch this space! 

Meanwhile, back in the real world ...

Many writer friends seem to be in the process of trying to secure the services of an agent, a process that involves sending out the dreaded 'query letters'. Dozens of them. It's a hideous process that involves browsing agency websites and how-to posts, trying to draft out the right letter, sending it out in whatever form the agency demands, keeping records and waiting. It's demoralising not least because, although it's a bit like job hunting, getting an agent doesn't necessarily mean you'll get a publishing deal, and getting a publishing deal doesn't necessarily mean you'll make any money ...

I've posted quite a lot about the hunt for an agent already on this blog, especially in 2021, with a post titled Disappearing Agents, and a follow up post here, a week later. 

A quick Google of that term 'query letters' throws up - I kid you not - 87 million results. That's a lot more than the entire population of the UK. Vast numbers of people are busy telling other people how to write query letters. On the other hand, a search for 'how to be a good literary agent' results in 23 million results, and of those, the vast majority are still about how to get an agent, or where to find an agent, with the rest focusing on simply 'becoming' an agent.

Anyway, in contrary mood, I thought, wouldn't it be great to find pieces online with titles such as:

You're claiming to be an agent? Why is your website such a mess?

How to design an agency website that wows your potential clients.

Five essential elements of a good agency.

How to be a darn good literary agent.

The essential traits of agents that work.

What not to do as a literary agent.

Five things that make a competent agent.

Ten marks of a poor agency.

Highly effective agencies and how they do it.

How to become the perfect literary agent. 

and in view of my own past experiences

Agents: how not to disappear. 

Well, we can but dream, can't we? 

 

Medicus by Ruth Downie

I used to review professionally for various magazines and newspapers, but I seldom do it now, unless I've fallen in love with a book so completely that I just have to tell people. Which is what happened with Medicus by Ruth Downie. 

I wouldn't have known about this book at all if it hadn't been recommended by a member of our village book group. She suggested that she had enjoyed the whole series. I went home, downloaded it onto my Kindle where I read almost all my fiction these days, started it that night, and loved it so much that I could hardly bear to go to sleep. I finished it quite quickly, moved on to the next in the series (I'm on Book Four right now) and at some point, went back and read Medicus again, this time wearing my writer's hat, just to see how she had done it.

Why am I enjoying the books so much?

Partly, it's because Downie has created a pair of thoroughly (and instantly) engaging central characters. Gaius Petreius Ruso is an experienced army doctor posted to Britannia. Tilla (Darlughdacha, but he finds the name difficult) is the British girl he rescues from a fate worse than death. Somewhat reluctantly, he treats her broken arm. Also reluctantly because he's strapped for cash, he buys her from the rogue who is ill-treating her. We see the world mostly through these two believable characters. The last time I was so invested in the central character of a novel was when I read Fred Vargas's Commissaire Adamsberg novels, during the pandemic. Now, I love Ruso. Nothing more attractive than a man who makes you laugh. And I love the subtlety of the growing and occasionally problematic attachment between him and Tilla, more credible than so much manufactured 'sexual tension' in other fiction. 

I can hardly do better than quote from a New York Times review. 'With a gift for comic timing and historic detail, Ruth Downie has conjured an ancient world as raucous and real as our own.'

It is. It's realistic, but never anachronistic. Years ago, I wrote a drama series for BBC R4 called Voices from Vindolanda, and did a hefty chunk of research about Roman Britain, as well as visiting Hadrian's Wall and Vindolanda itself But even before that, I'd been interested in the time and place. My first degree was in Mediaeval Studies, but I'd always been fascinated by the centuries before, and by the interaction between the incoming Romans and the native British culture, as well as what came after. 

I remember being fascinated by a poem called The Ruin by an Anglo Saxon poet, contemplating the ruins of the 'works of giants' - aka the Roman city of Bath. Downie has extensive knowledge of the time and place, but she wears it lightly and handles it perfectly. Some  historical writers seem to feel the need to cram every last bit of research into their books. This is far more subtle, more immersive, more true to life - and far more funny than that. 

Ruso manages to be both hilarious and sexy, which is quite an achievement. Tilla is clever, brave, enterprising and passionate. Downie explores the tensions between two races and cultures occupying the same space, one dominant, the other mutinous, sometimes overtly, sometimes subtly. She is fully aware of the the cultural differences, the reluctant or self interested accommodations that must be made, the mistaken assumptions  - all of these are part of the rich mosaic of each book, but she never loses her deft, storytelling touch. 

I loved it. 

Try it and see what you think. In the UK at least, you'll probably have to get it on Amazon. A friend here in Scotland asked for it in Waterstones and was told it was unavailable, even to order. A quick glance at their website shows that to be the case. I don't know the full history of this novel or its excellent British author, but I suspect it and at least some others in the series may have been traditionally published at first, (to rave reviews). Subsequently, Downie seems to have republished under her own imprint. If so, I'm very glad she did. Bookstores don't know what they're missing, but thank goodness for Amazon! 

Boswell Book Festival 2023 - A Ukrainian Experience

 

Last Friday I spoke at the Boswell Book Festival alongside Ukrainian refugee Liudmila Proniakina and her sister Olga, at beautiful Dumfries House, here in Ayrshire. The event was sensitively chaired by Georgina Adams in the centre of the picture above.

Liudmila and her five-year-old daughter fled Ukraine in 2022. Helped by Lara, who translated for her, and Mila's sister, Olga, who was already living in Scotland, she told story of that perilous journey. Among much else that was horrifying, it involved seven days in a freezing cold basement with bombs falling around them. The most moving and chilling moment was when Mila pointed out that her worst fear was that the adults would be killed, leaving her infant daughter to the Russian soldiers. At that moment, the hideous reality of the situation Mila and her family found themselves in struck the whole audience. 

For me, who has spent some years researching my grandfather and my father's WW2 experiences in Lwow (now Lviv), reconstructing lives that were torn apart and, in my grandfather's case, cut short by war, Mila's account had an added resonance. Dad was in the Warsaw Uprising, was liberated from a Nazi labour camp and finally settled in the UK. My book The Last Lancer shares his story. But hearing intriguing stories from much loved family members is one thing. Hearing similar stories in the present day has an immediacy that no historical account can ever quite equal. 

The thing that struck me in speaking to my father about this - and still strikes me listening to Mila - is the incredible suddenness of invasion. I don't think we, who live on an island that has seldom known invasion, can ever understand how instantly everything can change. The normal, the precious mundanity of everyday life, changes overnight. 

Even while I was writing my book, I was seeing TV pictures of a little Ukrainian boy, trudging alone towards the Polish border, clutching his passport, and weeping. I wept with him and for him, but I think I was also weeping for the brave boy that my father had once been, heading for another border that turned out to be closed, and then heading back to the city, all by himself, clutching his little brown suitcase. 

I was so grateful to Liudmila and her sister for sharing something of these experiences with us. I've found myself thinking about them and everyone else caught up in this situation every single day. 

Also, profound thanks must go to all involved with The Boswell Festival for organising and facilitating this most relevant of sessions.

At Dumfries House

The Fiction and the Fact - how a true story inspired a novel

 

My great grandmother Anna 

Many years ago, when I first started researching my Polish family history, I heard the tale of my great grandmother, Anna, a lady of high status even among the szlachta, the Polish aristocracy. All I knew then was that she had, somewhat scandalously at the time, married her estate manager. I was intrigued, and the more I discovered, the more intriguing the story became. 

The real Anna was left a youngish widow, after the death of my great grandfather, Wladyslaw Czerkawski. By then, she had five children, of whom the eldest was only fourteen, and two large estates, some fifty kilometres apart, to maintain. All this was in the uncertain and often dangerous borderlands of what was then Eastern Poland, but is now Ukraine. For a woman who had been cossetted for most of her married life (my great grandfather seems to have been quite a romantic) it was challenging to say the least, especially since most of the cash was tied up in land. 

One thing I did manage to discover back then, well before the internet made things so much easier, was that her youngest son, my grandfather, also Wladyslaw, had inherited the second estate, at a place called Dziedzilow, from a wealthy but unmarried great uncle, at an extraordinarily young age. Seven, in fact. Leaving Anna with a set of intractable problems, little ready money, and many people relying on her for their very livelihoods. Not to mention the demands of her own children. I promised myself that in future, I would find out more. A lot more.

Meanwhile, this information, of which I knew tantalising little real detail, fermented away in my head and the result was a novel called The Amber Heart. Because I knew so little about the real people who inspired the story, I decided to set it very firmly in the more distant past, in the early to mid nineteenth century rather than in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century of the true story. And because I had an inkling, even back then, that some people who knew the truth of the relationship might still be alive, I used the story as a springboard for the novel. Anna became my fictional Marianna, a landed lady, and her lover, Danilo, started life in extreme poverty. I loved telling that story, even though it was to take a long time to come to print. (You can read a bit about it on this blog, here.) 

Cue forward many years, and I found out all kinds of interesting and moving things about the real relationship between Anna and her much younger Jan - facts which gave me considerably more sympathy and understanding of the real estate manager than (I suspect) the family had ever accorded him at the time. Which was a pity, because he had been an intelligent young man and their saviour in more ways than one. You can read all about it in my new non-fiction book, The Last Lancer.   As ever, truth is often more messy, more nuanced, more difficult than fiction, in which we always have the impulse (and, let's face it, the permission) to shape things into a satisfactory story. 

All the same - I'm very fond of the big family saga that The Amber Heart became. I was as much in love with Danilo as Marianna, and there are things about it that can still, when I read them again, make me cry. As readers have told me, they too cry over it.

If you want to download it on Kindle, it's only 99p from now until 19th of May. A bargain, because it's a big book. If you'd rather read it in paperback, that's available too, although you'll have to pay full price for that, I'm afraid. 

The point I want to make for any writer just starting out, though, is that your 'material', whatever that is, can inspire many different ways of writing. Just follow your heart. 

My Novella Rewilding - Free on Kindle for Five Days

 

My novella, Rewilding, which is a modern day fairy-tale, is free on Kindle for five days from today. Ideal length for a shortish train journey, or a good bed-time read, although in that case, you might find it a bit disturbing to your sleep. I certainly did when I was writing it.

Here's the extraordinary and beautiful song about the Each Uisge that inspired it. 

Our wild places, here in Scotland, are wonderful, but they can also be frightening. And who knows what you might encounter there? Or what their intentions might be. 

The Amber Heart - The Long, Long Story of a Story and Pardon Me While I Scream.

Yesterday, a friend who had just read my new book The Last Lancer, was telling me that she had enjoyed reading it - but she didn't love it as much as one of my novels called The Amber Heart. She went on to tell me how and why she loved it, which is always cheering for an author to hear. And perhaps doubly so, when it was praise for a novel with a long and chequered history. 

Now that it's available as an eBook and in paperback, at long last, I think it's time to revisit the tale of how we got here, what inspired it - and what the connection is with the true story of The Last Lancer. 

Once upon a time, when I was young and optimistic, my first full length adult novel, titled The Golden Apple, was accepted for publication by The Bodley Head, an old and distinguished publisher. To be clear, this wasn't my very first novel. There were others, tucked away in folders, never to see the light of day. Practice novels. And there was a young adult novel, published in Scotland, before young adult was even a thing. But this was my first grown up novel that was fit to be seen.

I considered myself very lucky. My agent for fiction at the time was Pat Kavanagh, and she was a fine agent with a wonderful reputation. Among other things, and unlike almost all agents now, who will tell you that publishers are looking for an 'oven ready book' (that's a direct quote from one of my subsequent agents) she didn't consider it her job to edit. That was the publisher's job. If a book was good enough, she would sell it. Beyond that, the editorial relationship was with the publisher.

Half way through the publishing process, the Bodley Head was taken over by what was then Century, an imprint of mega conglomerate Random House. What should have been a thoughtful, typical Bodley Head novel, about a cross cultural marriage, was published as a beach bonkbuster and sank without trace. It was an early lesson in the power of branding. And the disaster of the wrong branding. My editor at the time, with whom I had no quarrel, wrote to me later to say that she felt guilty about what had happened to my novel, and the knock-on effect on my career.

Still, with Pat's encouragement, I embarked on a new project. That new novel was - in essence - The Amber Heart. Back then. I think it was called Noon Ghosts. It was an epic and passionate love story, a family saga, very loosely inspired by what I knew of episodes from my own family history, not least a somewhat scandalous liaison between an aristocratic forebear and her estate manager, one which you can read all about in The Last Lancer. Knowing that at some point in the future, I might want to tackle the true story of that relationship, I deliberately set my fictional love story in the previous century. 

To my relief, Pat approved. She quickly sent it out and the responses were wonderful. She related some of the reader and editor comments to me. 'I literally could not put this book down,' one of them said. 'I read it through the night and wept buckets at the end.' There were lots in the same vein. They loved it and said so. Cloud nine loomed.

Pat couldn't sell it. 

And she could have sold sand in the desert. 

You know what the stumbling block was? It was the Polish setting. It always fell at the last editorial hurdle. The consensus in every publishing house she tried (and there were already diminishing numbers of possibilities) was that nobody would want to read a piece of historical fiction set in Poland, especially one that was aimed at a largely female readership, never mind that some of those same readers had compared it to a Polish Gone with the Wind, never mind that it was a big, sexy and ultimately tragic love story. It was too foreign and that was that.

Years later, Pat told me how frustrated she had been that she couldn't sell the novel. For her too, it was the 'one that got away'. Sadly, she died far too young. I put the manuscript away, stored all the research in a big box under the bed, and got on with other writing. I forged a pretty successful career as a playwright but I was also working on more novels, finding the pull of fiction irresistible. Many have now been published by Saraband. I'm a compulsive teller of tales, so I finished up with more novels than Saraband could ever reasonably publish.

Three in particular fell through the cracks in the publishing business: Ice Dancing, Bird of Passage and, of course, The Amber Heart.  Sadly and inexplicably, I think these three are among the best books I've written, and I don't say that lightly. Other people have told me so too. 

Time passed. 

I found and retyped the old manuscript of The Amber Heart. You can tell how long this has been going on by the fact that its first faded incarnation was on old fashioned perforated computer paper - the kind that ancient printers spat out in long reams. I expanded it, wondering if it would make a trilogy. Realised that the answer was no. Filed it away on the computer, instead of in the box under the bed. Changed computers. Lost the file. Found it. Opened it up. Cut and edited it. A lot.

Throughout this time, I had several agents. One left the business. One of them decided that she could make more money with other clients (true) and jettisoned me.  My last agent was enthusiastic, but he  disappeared before he could send it out. For all I know he may have gone out for a loaf and never come home because I never heard from him again. All of them read The Amber Heart in its various incarnations, liked it very much, but still pointed out that nobody wanted to read a piece of fiction set in Poland. Two of them told me that it needed pruning. They were right about that, at least, but the problem was that one wanted me to lose the first third, while another wanted me to lose the last third. 

So why didn't I give up?

The answer came to me when, over lockdown, I realised that Pat and all those readers had been right. It is a good book. But the others were right too. It was much too long. Stodgy in places. Going back to it, years later, and with a lot more experience as a writer, I could see clearly enough that it needed rewriting. Just not the kind of pruning that destroys the whole tree. I took about fifteen thousand words out of it, here, there and everywhere. I killed a few darlings. I think now it's tighter, more readable, less verbose. A better book.

I'm still in love with my main characters. Still love the story. And I'm still quite proud of some of the writing in it. Interestingly, I did this while I was deep into research for The Last Lancer, just published by Saraband. My very last enquiry to an agent referencing this proposed new non-fiction book (why on earth did I do it?) elicited the faintly bored response that there were 'so many similar stories out there'. That was not long before the Russian invasion. Since my grandfather was born in what is now Ukraine, in a sleigh, grew up to look like a younger version of Olivier's Maxim de Winter, was a cavalryman who drove a Chrysler and died at the age of 38, at Bukhara on the Silk Road, I suspect that there aren't all that many similar stories out there, but what do I know?

All the same, if I ever again publicly express a desire to find an agent, you will know that it's code for 'I've been kidnapped. Send help immediately.'

Meanwhile, Saraband were at the London Book Fair. I'd have thought the Last Lancer might have been a good candidate for translation into Polish and publication in that country. Poles certainly keep telling me so. And I just got a heartening and glowing testimonial from my hero Neal Ascherson. But my publisher reported no interest in it. 'All the focus is now on Ukraine,' they said. Which is, of course, where the book is set, exploring the troubled history of that region through the history of one family.

Pardon me while I go away and scream.

Before I do though, you can download the Amber Heart as an eBook for the bargain price of 99p, from May 12th to May 19th. It's available in paperback as well. And if you want to know where the idea for the love story at the heart of that novel came from, you might like to read The Last Lancer as well. 

Team Harry

 

I enjoyed this book. It's extremely well ghost-written by Pulitzer prize-winning journalist J. R. Moehringer, and it shows. 

I'm not much of a royalist. Think it would be better if we had the kind of low key monarchy that you find in other parts of Europe, instead of ours with all its pomp and circumstance and hangers on. But the thought of an elected President Johnson is discouraging. 

All the same, I have a great deal of sympathy for Harry and his wife. I know the royals are immensely privileged but the price for this young man, at least, seems to have been just too much to bear. I am, of course, pretty much alone in this among my friends. Even - or perhaps especially - among the dyed-in-the-wool royalists, who will never read the book. 

Meghan had a raw deal from the media. It's not hard to find the evidence, if you look for it. Everything from the crazy comparisons between Meghan and her saintly sister-in-law to the exploitation of her rather vulnerable father. But even I, approaching this story with a certain amount of sympathy, didn't realise the full extent of the press intrusion on Harry, from the day of his birth, through the death of his mother, to the present day. Comparisons with other members of the family make no sense when it comes to the 'spare' - Diana's son.  Privacy is an impossibility when the press are determined to hunt you down. Even in the army, (where among other things he learned to fly a helicopter in record time) the media found him, casually and deliberately exposed his presence, and carelessly put those serving with him at risk. 

There was and remains no way in which this couple and their children could ever maintain the kind of low, private profile that people keep telling me should have been their aim. Maybe it should, but the media simply won't allow it. Therefore, the only option is to come out fighting. It may not be advisable. But it's all too human. 

This is the story of a sweet natured boy, who lost his mother in an appalling and public way at a young age and who has been unable to properly process that bereavement. Who has never been allowed to process that bereavement. Whose every adolescent and young adult error has been picked over by the world's press and is resurrected at every opportunity. No saint, no demon, no fool either. If a dysfunctional family is one where 'there's no open space to express your thoughts and feelings freely' then the Royals certainly are dysfunctional, and Harry has seldom been allowed any space at all. 

Incidentally, and inexplicably, his father and his brother seem to persist in calling him Harold, when his name is Henry. As in God for Harry, etc, etc. That Henry. So why? It doesn't sound much like a pet name, an affectionate family nickname. The only Harold that springs to mind for an oldie like me (and, presumably, Charles too) is young Steptoe, stymied at every turn by a demanding father. 

We're on Team Harry in this house.

Read the book. You might just find it enlightening.  

Ben Hur - At Last!

It's taken the BBC a very long time to get this out on audio but here it is at last. My dramatisation of Ben Hur was - almost unbelievably - made back in 1995. If not exactly a cast of thousands, it has a big, brilliant and very starry list of actors. Where else can you hear Sam West, Jamie Glover, Michael Hordern, Freddie Jones, Michael Gambon, Phyllis Calvert and many more, in one space, with specially composed music as well? 

They really don't make them like that any more. 

Alas, the great producers I worked with back then: Glyn Dearman, Marilyn Imrie, Hamish Wilson, are all gone and soon after that production, I found that my face no longer fit as far as radio was concerned. I had younger producers who wanted to work with me, but no proposal was ever accepted. At first, I would say, 'well you can put it forward if you like, but I fear you'll be wasting your time' and I was usually right. Eventually, I realised that, after more than a hundred hours of produced radio drama, the time had come to move on, so I did. It was hard as far as income was concerned, but very good for me as far as work was concerned, because it made me focus on theatre, but more importantly, on fiction and non-fiction writing, with some success. 

Besides, the great days of radio drama were ending, and I don't think they'll ever come back. Big productions of the classics, such as Ben Hur, Kidnapped and Catriona, The Bride of Lammermoor, Treasure Island, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, all of which I dramatised back then, could still be made and disseminated on audio,  but I don't think the budgets to pay writers, actors, skilled technicians and producers are there. Besides,  I suspect many of the unique radio skills of producers, sound engineers, radio actors (it's a very special talent) and dramatists have been lost. Which is a pity. 

Ben Hur was made at the old BBC studios in Maida Vale. Glyn had approached me to see if I would be prepared to do it and I'd jumped at the chance. It was a more demanding project than I'd thought it would be, not least because the original novel, while a wonderful story, was written in a sort of archaic pseudo biblical English and had a plot with significant holes in it. Holes that had to be filled, without damaging that fine story. Back then (unlike, say, the recent Great Expectations dramatisation) while recognising that we were working in a different medium, with its own demands, we did respect the original text as far as we could. So just as in my dramatisation of Kidnapped, we really had to find a way to make David climb that perilous tower at the House of Shaws, we couldn't possibly do Ben Hur without the chariot race. Even on radio. You cheat listener expectations of well loved stories at your peril.

I think we managed it, mostly down to some fine acting and directing, but an equally brilliant sound picture from Wilfredo Acosta. I remember that when I was deep into writing that scene, my PC crashed, and I had to do it all over again. I type so fast that back then, I routinely caused the computer to throw a wobbly. Doesn't happen now, thank goodness.

Working with such stars presented its own set of problems and challenges too. With a big radio drama project like this, you don't record in sequence. Often, actors will have other commitments that the producer has to work around, so scenes from different parts of the production will be recorded on the same day. I often thought that the production assistant had the most difficult and unenviable job of the lot, co-ordinating all this. She must have had  nightmares about getting to the end of a production only to find that a key scene with, say, Michael Gambon, had been missed out! 

Glyn Dearman was a pleasure to work with. Ben Hur stands out in my memory as one of the highlights of my radio career and that was, I think, largely down to his eccentric and charming personality, his ability to make difficult things seem easy, his extraordinary talent. 

They don't make them like him any more either. 

 David Rintoul and Paul Young in my and the late Marilyn Imrie's dramatisation of Kidnapped 

Here Be Dragons? - Writing About Poland

 

First things first. My Polish historical saga The Amber Heart is free on Amazon Kindle for three days only, from Wednesday 29th - Friday 31st March. If you haven't read it, now's the time! It's available to buy in paperback too, if you prefer to read in that format. 

Given that my new non-fiction book The Last Lancer was published a month ago, the response to it has been quite low key here in the UK. So far, I've done a detailed interview for Emma Cox for her excellent Journeys into Genealogy podcast. You can read my short guest blog about the process, with links to the podcast here. You can listen to the whole podcast from the links at the bottom of that piece  - especially useful if you plan to research your own family history in Central and Eastern Europe. I'll also be doing a session at the Boswell Book Festival in May, alongside a Ukrainian refugee, of which more later.

Perhaps predictably, the most enthusiastic responses have been from my fellow Poles. Two friends brought flowers and chocolates. A lovely Polish writer friend spread the word - and copies of the book. I sent copies to Poland and elsewhere, to the friends and relatives who had helped with my research. Not the easiest process in the world since Brexit. 

Early days, of course. But I suppose it's inevitable that my Polish friends will 'get it' in the way that many of my UK friends perhaps never will, even when they enjoy the book. Or as Polish Leftists more robustly wrote, on Facebook, at the time of the Russian invasion of Ukraine - 'you will never understand us and how the experiences of multiple occupations shaped our societies and how that historical experience is present in our every day conversations and in our system of values.'

I fear that many of my UK friends might find the time and place I've tried to evoke in the Last Lancer just too foreign. Hic sunt dracones. Here be dragons. I had the same problem many years ago, when I first wrote the Amber Heart. 'Loved it, couldn't stop reading it, wept buckets' said potential publishers, among much else that was positive. 'But ... Poland?'

I thought times might have changed and maybe they have. We'll just have to wait and see. Meanwhile, if you've read The Last Lancer or The Amber Heart and enjoyed it - do please leave a review on Amazon or elsewhere, even a short one. Once we've done the hard work, good reviews are our lifeblood. 

A Nice New Kindle

 

Here's my nice new Kindle in its nice new case. A fairly bog standard Paperwhite. 

This is my fourth e-reader to date. The first was even more bog standard - an early Kindle - but did sterling service. The second broke down but Amazon replaced it immediately. The third one has lasted for some six years of constant use. It was used for several hours every day, it was routinely dropped on the floor when I fell asleep while reading. It got lost among the bedcovers. It is a well travelled Kindle. But alas its time had come. 

It is still working. Just rather slowly as befits its age. And crashing a bit too much. And developing strange foibles. (I sympathise. Me too.) 

The case was in worse condition than the Kindle. We'd find odd bits of pink plastic in the bed. 

Anyway, I was attached to it, and postponed replacing it till - having been paid for some work - I thought the time had definitely come to find a new one. 

If you have an Amazon account, and buy your Kindle from Amazon, it is the easiest thing in the world to set it up. In fact my only problem was with our 200 year old house, with its immensely thick walls, and trying to set it up in in a part of the house where it wasn't picking up the hub properly.  As soon a I moved downstairs it worked like clockwork. Or better than clockwork, let's face it.

I love books. Have a room full of them, and overspill on shelves in the other rooms too.

But I love my Kindle even more. It goes without saying that the availability of books is wonderful - but I love the way I can dim the light a little, if I want to read in the early hours without disturbing my husband. Or change the font size.  I love the way it switches itself off when I fall asleep (even if it is tangled in the bedclothes.) But remembers my place for me. I love the way it is slim and simple and reasonably light, and allows me to take a whole library away with me when I'm travelling. 

Of course I can read on my phone and on my laptop if I want to and I sometimes do. But nothing beats my Kindle for ease of use. And no - I'm not being paid to write this! 

A Salutary Experience.

 

My latest non-fiction book, The Last Lancer, was published by Saraband, here in the UK, a couple of weeks ago. It's something of a companion volume to my previous book A Proper Person to be Detained, (the paperback is on special offer on Amazon right now) about the Leeds Irish side of my family, and the mystery of a murder in the family on Christmas Day, 1881. 

The other side of the family, the Polish side, was much more exotic, but even more tragic. I'd planned to write about it for many years, collecting material along the way. Fortunately I'd asked my father (that's him on the cover, with the goat) to write down what he remembered of his childhood on the family estate in rural Eastern Poland, a part of the world that is now Ukraine, all the borders having shifted. I'd done a lot more research since his early death in 1995. His anniversary is on 20th March, so he's very much on my mind as I write this. I researched and wrote in earnest during Lockdown. Then, last February, with the book almost completed and about to be submitted to my publisher, Russia invaded Ukraine. And the book suddenly became much more relevant in the saddest possible way. 

Our local branch of Waterstones in Ayr had very kindly hosted launches of my previous Saraband titles over many years. They had been joyful experiences, well attended, (local author and all that) and the shop had sold a lot of books.  Some of those attending had bought two or three copies as gifts for family members. However, since this year I've been invited to speak at the Boswell Book Festival, at Dumfries House in May, we thought that we might 'launch' Lancer at that event - for which Waterstones supplies books. All the same, because people have been asking me about copies, I'd assumed, in my innocence, that my local store would at least have a few in stock. 

Yesterday, finding myself on the High Street and doing my bit for bricks and mortar, I went into the shop, and had a brief look around. No sign of the Last Lancer. So I approached the young man absorbed in his computer behind the counter and asked - very politely - if they were going to be stocking my book. I had a handy copy in my bag. I may have waved it at him in friendly fashion. 

He glanced up at me and said 'Is this Boswell?' 

It seemed an odd response and I was a little taken aback, but I soldiered on. 'Well yes. I'm doing Boswell in May this year. But I wondered if you were going to be stocking any copies before then.' 

He shook his head.  'No. Just for the festival.' He glanced down at his screen. 'I could order you a copy if you like,' he said helpfully. 

I declined his kind offer. I have plenty of copies, ordered from my publisher's distributor. I've been sending them out to those who inspired the book or helped with the research and to a few close friends. That very morning, I'd received a beautiful postcard of thanks from one of my literary heroes, Neal Ascherson, whose novel The Death of the Fronsac had been an invaluable source of information. 

In fact I've been clinging to that postcard like Jack clinging to Rose's floating door, as evidence that I'm not some elderly imposter. 

Still processing the young man's 'just short of rude' response to me, I asked for a copy of HAGS by Victoria Smith - a book that has been widely praised and publicised across social media. This morning, Victoria was on BBC R4, speaking about it. I'd had a look for it while I was hunting for The Last Lancer, and hadn't seen it. 

'We should have it,' he said. 

As far as I could see, they had a single copy. We found it tucked into a corner, spine rather than striking front cover facing out, low down on the New Non-Fiction shelves. I bought it. 

Reflecting on this experience in the sleepless early hours of the morning, it struck me that there could be no better illustration of the thesis of this excellent book. I wasn't looking for recognition. Just a certain amount of interest and engagement. I hadn't become invisible. I had been all too visible, but as an older woman, I was utterly negligible. Or to quote from the introduction to HAGS 'You're still an object. You've just changed in status from painting or sculpture to, say, a hat stand.' 

Reader, I was that hat stand. 

By the way. You can find The Last Lancer, eBook and Paperback here. And if you'd like to read my novel on a very similar theme, you could try The Amber Heart also as an eBook or Paperback.

You could also buy HAGS while you're at it. I can recommend it. 

A Tragic Anniversary

 

I'm reblogging this on my own blog, from my publisher's website. You can read more about my new book  here. 

As the anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine approaches, I find myself thinking about a remote family member, one I rediscovered when I was researching The Last Lancer. Jerzy, living in Lviv with his wife, was no longer young. He was the son of my grandfather’s stepfather Jan, by his second marriage, After my great grandmother Anna died, her second husband remarried. Complicated relationships.

When I began to write The Last Lancer in earnest, and dug out the mass of research I had done over many years, I found an old letter from Jerzy, hand written in Polish. It had arrived during a time of family illness and bereavement, when I had temporarily shelved my research. I had never had it translated but had filed it away and – unforgivably – forgotten about it. In any case, there was no return address, no internet searches back then, no way of finding out where he lived.

Then, early in Covid lockdown, a Polish friend translated it for me and pointed out that this lovely man had once known my grandfather, when he himself was a child. My grandfather, Wladyslaw, the Last Lancer of my book, a kindly young father at that time, had given him lifts in his fancy Chrysler Open Top Tourer, to the village where his family lived, something that he still remembered all those years later. Jerzy had been so fond of Wladyslaw that he had named his own son after him.

A few years later, my grandfather had found himself in a Russian prison, followed by a Gulag and then, in 1942, trekking east after Stalin changed sides, had died, probably of amoebic dysentry, at the age of 38. He is buried near Bukhara on the Silk Road. Jerzy and his family had spent many years in a Gulag too, which explained why he had married and had his own children rather late. His had been a life interrupted. LinkedIn miraculously allowed me to get in touch with his daughter, and she said that her father, in his nineties and rather frail, was nevertheless excited at the thought of writing to me about that side of our family history and seeing if he still had any photographs and documents.

Very soon after that, Putin made his move.

With two young children herself, Jerzy’s daughter fled to Poland, where she had already spent time working, but her parents refused to move. Russian invasion, occupation and extreme brutality had disrupted Jerzy’s life once before and he wasn’t going to allow it to happen again. We seize whatever agency we can in such situations. Soon after Christmas 2022, his daughter messaged me to say that he had died. Peacefully in the end. He should have been able to get palliative care, except that the hospitals, even in Lviv, are full of wounded soldiers, so he had to make do without.

I find myself occasionally having to fend off over-confident pronouncements from friends here in the west who think they understand the realities of occupation. They don’t. Frankly, I don’t either. But I know more than they do. And when anyone tries to tell me what Ukraine should and shouldn’t do in these circumstances, I find myself thinking of this man, with his fine, ordinary, precious, cheerful life interrupted yet again by the deluded dreams of a dictator. There is no excuse, no possible justification for a foreign regime to inflict such horrors on the innocent and there never will be.

Bad Advice, Good Advice

 

A few years ago, it struck me that I had probably been given more bad than good advice about writing over the years, all of it from well-meaning 'experts'. I've been known to hand out quite a bit of writing advice myself over the years and sometimes I find myself thinking 'have I done more harm than good?' and not being at all sure of the answer. Although when I have commented on a piece of writing, I do tend to do so with a huge proviso that nobody should ever take anyone's else's opinion as gospel. Not ever. 

One of the most worrying aspects of my time spent as Royal Literary Fund Writing Fellow, at the University of the West of Scotland, where my job was to help students with their academic writing, always came when that academic writing involved some aspect of creative writing. I vividly remember telling one student that she needed to take her script away and 'play with it'. 

She looked horrified. 'But we can't play with it,' she said. 'We have to get it right!' 

How could I possibly explain to her that most professional writers spend hours, days, weeks 'playing' with an idea, trying to find out if it's viable, trying to find out what works and what doesn't. And more to the point, why were her lecturers telling her that there was any one way of 'getting it right'. Bad advice indeed. 

Bad advice I've been given over the years? 

Don't turn this radio play into a stage play. (It was crying out to be turned into a stage play.)

Nobody is interested in the supernatural. (You're kidding me, right?) 

This is a library novel fit only for housewives. Bin it. (You can read that novel here. I still get messages from people telling me how much they like it - but perhaps they're housewives!) 

Listen to your script editor. They have your best interests at heart.  (Some do, some definitely don't. The trick is knowing the difference.) 

Don't self publish. Nobody will ever read it. 

We don't have any development money in the budget. (There is, in fact, a budget. They just decided not to pay the writer.) 

Best advice I've been given over the years? Two gems that have never lost their power to inspire.

Stop watering your Dylan Thomas adjectives and watching them grow 

The only way to learn how to write is to write. And read. A lot.

Which leads me to the unexpectedly worst possible advice I've had. I used to believe it. Hell, I've probably said it myself to emerging writers. 

Write about what you know about.

That way, boredom and madness lies. I know there is some truth in it. If you're writing about - for example - Scotland, it helps to know a bit about the country. If you're setting your novel or story in an unfamiliar city, you'd better find out what you can about it. If your feisty 18th century heroine is doing things that no 18th century woman would ever do, or knowing things that she would never know, you might need to have a rethink. 

But for heaven's sake, don't be afraid to use your imagination. Stretch it. Make some leaps into the dark and see where you land. Even when I was routinely telling people to write about what they knew about, I would always qualify it with 'but you know more than you think.' Not only that, but you can find out almost anything.

Use that knowledge in a million imaginative ways. That's what writers do.