HNS Conference Report 2002

RICHARD LEE

The venue was bigger this year – for more than 100 delegates – and we had sold out again. The OUCC is a tall Edwardian building near King’s Cross, and we were on the top storey (mostly) with fine views (if one had time to look), sunlight streaming in, and a blandly architected, drop-ceilinged conference ‘space’.

     Barbara Erskine spoke first for us, with great warmth and charm. Barbara is the last person to set herself apart as an author. She readily admits early failures. She is wry about her own talent, grateful for success. She addresses the audience as a friend, and it isn’t an act: her audience, her readers do seem to be friends to her, and she is delighted to meet us. Her talk was wide-ranging. Time-slip novels, she says, are a chance to have her cake and eat it. She can write about the periods and places of history that she most enjoys (medieval England, Wales and Scotland, Ancient Egypt, pre-Roman Britain) but she can also have an active, modern female protagonist. Many of the historical figures that she is drawn to – from Matilda de Braose in Lady of Hay onwards – are women who were stifled by the mores of their times. Time-slip allows Barbara to draw their lives but also give the books the active, modern female protagonist that today’s readers (and writers) crave. Inspiration for Barbara, as her fans will readily guess, is at least three parts fey. She is moved primarily by place, by the lowering atmospheres that, she says, are almost tangible in certain haunted landscapes. This is research the way it should be done: damp, cold visits to the ancient places of Britain, shivering at the still potent scents of the past, warmed by the reliable companionship of a whisky bottle!

     Clare Conville, in a sense, had the hardest job of the day. Agents at literary events may one day be the last legal blood-sport in Britain. And think about it from her point of view: which members of her audience are a walking, breathing slush-pile? Clare spoke a little about her job – essentially, to sell writers to publishers – but mostly she addressed us as a fellow reader. She was uncomfortable with the genre of ‘historical fiction’. Is Gone With the Wind a great historical novel or a great romantic novel? She’d discussed historical fiction that morning with her publisher husband (Jonathan Riley of Faber) – who had just bought a novel that was to be one of a quartet about the empire of the Ptolemies (beginning at the death of Alexander, ending with Cleopatra). But this book, he felt, was literary, not historical. As a reader she pointed out that she is already spoilt for choice: a glance around any bookshop shows the number novels available, all enthused about by teams of people, all already sold to a publisher. On the other hand, as became clear through her talk (and as could be guessed by her very presence at the event) – there is a hunger for new historicals at the moment. Clare urged us to try to re-invent the genre: to push the boundaries, to challenge ourselves and our readers – and above all to write story not history. At the end of her talk, with a certain inevitability, many of us tried to convince her that our manuscript might just be that one she was looking for.

    After lunch the conference divided. Some went to master-classes with authors – Wendy Robertson, Simon Scarrow and Marina Oliver.

    Some joined in with a panel debate in the main room, where two of Transworld’s new stars, Jane Jakeman and Manda Scott joined perennial stars Elizabeth Chadwick and Derek Wilson to discuss with me the difficulties research presents with history and fiction. Discussion was particularly hot around such issues as: what constitutes anachronism? (Jane claimed that any sex in a ‘Victorian’ novel was anachronistic, because the Victorians would not discuss such things – the point was hotly contested, particularly in the light of two of this year’s outstanding novels Fingersmith and The Crimson Petal and the White).

What kind of new interpretation of history is appropriate for our decade (and which old novels can be reread as if  new – the only one we could even partially agree on was Renault’s Fire From Heaven)? What kind of things really made people’s lives different in the past (sex, water, the ‘place’ of women)? And would we have liked to live there? (Derek said it would be fine as long as he could be healthy, wealthy, white and male, and with a happy succession of new seventeen-year-old brides to replace the ones who would inevitably die in childbirth).

     Bernard Cornwell concluded for us in inimitable style. For those who have not heard him speak, no account or transcript will quite convey it. He is not politically correct. When talking about anachronisms in historical fiction, for example, he pointed out that publishers and modern readers just wouldn’t accept accuracy. Sharpe, for example, uses the ‘efficacious word’ as much as the modern-day soldier – but not in the books. And for the medieval books, where the average age of marriage was 13 – the average – it is simply impossible to write an accurate romance. Child sex may be permissible in a ‘literary’ novel about the period, but not in a mass-market story. He has strong opinions, and expresses them forcefully – but always with humour. The audience laughs, and he gets us on his side ­– even while addressing the women in the audience as ‘love’, and laughing to scorn ideas such as historical ‘accuracy’! On the more serious side, he told us about ‘Kev’, the archer in residence at Warwick Castle, with whom he had recently spent two days and as a consequence re-thought the action scenes in his Grail Quest books. Archers who shoot several thousand arrows a day do not aim, they feel the target – and the arrow goes there. It’s the kind of research you can’t do with books. He also gave a rallying cry to writers and would be writers – we’re all volunteers. No one is ever shot for not writing a book. If we don’t enjoy what we do, why bother?

It was a great conference for me: great for a thousand things that there is no time to write here. I offer heartfelt thanks to all who participated, speakers and delegates, and especially to Barbara Simpson-Lee (marvellously calm and professional) and Towse (our faultless MC who nevertheless contrived to stumble over her words with Bernard and won a kiss!).

     Next year the conference will be truly BIG – part of the Cambridge History Festival, to be held at Peterhouse College 4-7 September 2003. Expect a plethora of ‘names’!