THE WHEEL OF LIFE

     A couple of days ago I typed the most beautiful words in the English language:  The End.

     It's always a relief to finish a book but this one - the tenth novel in the Simon Fonthill series and the thirteenth of mine in all - had a kind of modern resonance.  As I finished it, signing off after Simon had fought with the Gordon Highlanders in the great Pathan Revolt in the North West Frontier of India in 1897, I heard on the radio that three Scottish soldiers had been killed by the Teleban in Afghanistan.

     My book - BAYONETS ACROSS THE BORDER, due out next year - has the British fighting against Muslim fundamentalists, stirred up by Afghan preachers.  The events in Helmund Province and, indeed, the assassination of a Pakistani candidate in the elections there, virtually at the same time, were caused by the same breed of religious fanatics in roughly the same place.

     Can any other war have lasted for 116 years, albeit intermittently, fighting over the same ground?

     Talk about the Wheel of Life!  Makes you weep, doesn't it?

LAST WORD ON MAGGIE

     This is being written on the eve of Lady Thatcher's funeral and I do hope (I don't pray) that no lunatic(s) attempt to wreck her last Great Day.  But I do wish that a State Funeral had not been planned for her.  It's not just the excessive cost of it at a time when the country is so deeply in debt that bankers are rumoured to be thinking of waiving .01% of their bonuses.  Or that she was one of the most divisive prime ministers of her time.  No.  It's just that I don't think she deserves it.

     If Clement Attlee, who left a legacy of "making the political weather" far greater than any premier of the 20th century with the exception of Churchill, could be buried quietly and without fuss, why should this former very average Education Minister in a bad year deserve a Gun Carriage and the attendance of the Sovereign?

     Beats me.

TWO MORE FONTHILLS!

     A couple or three blogs ago I speculated idly about writing short stories, given that STARSHINE was on the slipway ready for launching and that a new Fonthill was virtually written.  The short story scene is a genre that has always fascinated me and one that I have dabbled in over the years without much success.

     Well, that's the way it must stay for the moment.  With STARSHINE now on the retail shelves and  the latest Fonthill - FIRE ACROSS THE VELDT, set against the background of the second Boer War, the one that ended in 1902 - due to be published in April of this year, my publishers are demanding two more novels about Simon, Alice and 352 Jenkins. 

     I have just signed the contract for these and they will be published in 2014 and 2015 respectively.  I have had to slip back in time a touch to accommodate the first of the two, which is set in 1897 at the time of the great Pathan Uprising along the North West Frontier between India and Afghanistan - definitive Fonthill territory.  The second, which will in fact be the eleventh in the series, concerns the remarkable and rather neglected invasion of Tibet by the British in 1904.  The more I have researched both of these twists in the story of the late development of the  British Empire, the more fascinated I have become in the unravalleling of the events.

     I do hope that fans of Fonthill & Co will enjoy them.  As for me, it is a treat to be back in the saddle with Simon again, thinking, with Fonthill, that I will fall off but managing somehow to hang on!

    

WELCOME BACK HILARY!

     I am hoping that Santa might bring me     Hilary Mantel's "Bring Up The Bodies" on Christmas morning so I haven't yet read the 2012 Mann Booker prize winner.  But - on the ball and up-top-the-mark as always - I have recently put down her previous winner, "Woolf Hall," with a sigh of satisfaction.  What a splendid book and a worthy winner of the God-knows-how-many-quids that come as the prize!  (Actually, I've just looked it up and the award is £50,000.)

     Hilary won the much-covetted prize in 2009, of course, and I can't help reflecting that "Woolf Hall" is a far better novel than either of the two that followed it:  Howard Jacobson's "The Finkler Question" in 2010 and Julian Barnes's "The Sense of an Ending" in 2011.

     I admire both of these latter two writers.  Barnes brings a depth of intellect to his work that staggered and intrigued me when I read his first novel, "Flaubert's Parrot" all those years ago, and Jacobson has a wit that always delights me when he appears on the box.  Yet their winning novels disappointed me.  I could never quite work out what sense of an ending Barnes was trying to depict and H.J.'s book - much vaunted as the first humourous novel to win the Booker - failed to raise a smile with me.

     But Mantel!  Ah, now there's a story!!  Her story telling is direct, incorporating pace and a sinuous development of character; her dialogue is a delight, overcoming the historical novelist's problem of period speech simply by using straightforward modern language but seamlessly weaving in the odd Tudor phrase or term; and her scholarship makes you never question each seemingly unbelievable twist of the plot.

   The book set standards for the Mann Booker competition that seemed to slip away in the following two years. Judging from the reviews I have read, "Bring Up the Bodies" should restore them.  Three cheers for the old fashioned historical novel!

     A very happy Christmas and a splendid book-filled 2013 to all the readers of this all-too-occasional blog. 

NEW SIGNINGS

     Another new book, another round of signings.  I shall be signing copies of my newly launched novel, Starshine, at Waterstone's, Salisbury, next Tuesday, 20th November, from 11am until 1pm.  I would be delighted to see readers there during that time.  You don't even have to buy a book - just drop by for a chat if you are in the area, to help me avoid dropping off...

     I shall also be putting pen to the title page of the book at Beatons, in Tisbury, from 2pm until 6 on Saturday 1st December.  All welcome!

SHORT - BUT TO THE POINT

     Short stories. You know, the easy-to-write stuff. Just like novels, except that they are shorter and take up less time and effort. And nothing, of course, could be further from the truth.

     I have now had thirteen full length books published (counting STARSHINE,which comes out on 11th November)and have written dozens of short stories, but only one of the latter have seen the light of day.

     This is probably due to two reasons: I was not very good at writing 'em and there are very few publications left in the UK that publish short stories. I feel now that one of the mistakes I have always made in trying to create the short stuff is in regarding the form as - as stated above - really novels in a diminutive form; i.e. with a defined beginning, middle and end. Now, I am not sure that that is right. In fact, I think it is wrong.

     Re-reading some of the past masters of the genre - V.S.Pritchett, William Trevor, Hemmingway, Katherine Mansfield, Scott Fitzgerald et al - I have become increasingly aware that they depict what is, in effect, a slice of life; their tales are observations on the human condition as revealed by glimpsing a happening, often not one of high drama, that illustrate what it's all about Alfie. Some of the earlier successful specialists, such as O'Henry and de Maupassant, employed the device of a slick, surprise ending to lift the tale, but the basic technique remained the same: one of revealing an episode that depicted some great truth.

    So, having STARSHINE, my World War I novel poised on the slipway for launch next month, and the latest Fonthill safely put to bed for publication in the Spring of 2013, I have a little time in hand. I will, then, dip my arthritic toe into the seemingly so placid waters of short story writing.

     I'll let you know how I get on.

AN APOLOGY

At the beginning of this site, I invite readers to respond to my blog and let me have their comments on what I have written. Many of you have accepted the invitation and posted your views. They have all been passed onto me via my e-mail address and I have always responded directly to the writer via the same route. The trouble is that none of this correspondence has appeared on the web site, so that it looked as though my blog meanderings were disappearing into thin air, evoking no responses. The general readership, then, were prevented from observing the interchange of views. All my blasted fault! I have just discovered that there is a small device on the site which, if clicked, would have allowed the correspondence to be published on the site. And, of course, myopically, I failed to see it. So my apologies to regular correspondents like Trollman for tucking him and his fellow writers away into the ether - and double, triple apologies if my responding e-mails failed to reach them as a result. From now on, all buttons will be pressed and inter-changes - for better or worse - will be made public.