BOOK TOUR DIARY PT2

Stuff got weird

I’m travelling the UK for the next couple of weeks, promoting my debut historical novel, Essex Dogs. If you want to order signed copies of the book, The Broken Binding still have a few numbered limited editions and will ship internationally. Or WH Smith have signed copies at half-price and will ship to the UK. Or you could support your local high-street/independent bookseller.

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I’m sitting in a two-bit brasserie in Shropshire, gnawing on a terrible steak, when the news comes through. The Queen is dead; God save the King. For some reason I think of a line I wrote a decade ago, about the funeral of Edward IV in 1483. Something about royal officers solemnly breaking their staffs of office and throwing them into the grave. Then I think of a line I was delivering to camera just a month ago, about the funeral of William the Conqueror. The king’s body had bloated in death, and it burst during its committal to the grave, releasing a noxious stench which sickened all who smelled it. Here is the collision of pomp and mortality, which must be the subtext of any monarch’s death. High pageantry meets dead meat. I realise that if I say any of this out loud I am likely to upset, offend, annoy or disgust someone. Maybe a lot of people. I resolve that for a short while I will do something I need to do more often, which is to keep my f---ing mouth shut.

Book tours are physically and emotionally draining. They’re not marathons, and they’re not sprints. They’re like the Bleep Test. A long series of sprints, punctuated by increasingly inadequate periods of rest. So when a national period of mourning is announced, I feel a pang of guilty hope that a few of my events will be cancelled. That I will catch a break. This isn’t what I want to happen, rationally, but when you’re tired your brain does funny things. Thankfully, nothing is cancelled and the show goes on. And though I’m still exhausted, I’m grateful. Booksellers across the United Kingdom are demonstrating the same tireless and unflappable devotion to duty as the late Queen. God save them, too.

Travelling around the country during a historic moment is fascinating, as it is a chance to take a cross-section of public opinion. I keep a mental note of some of the more interesting things I hear. There’s the middle-aged chap in a hotel breakfast room, reminiscing about his childhood during the early years of Queen Elizabeth’s reign. ‘In those days our great treat was to eat a raw butcher’s sausage, straight from the fridge,’ he says. (Although how common were fridges, then? Discuss.) Then there’s a pleasant lady at a signing who tells me she was about to commence a new fitness regime on the day the Queen died. She’d taken the spin bike out of storage and set it up in the kitchen. But then the news came through, and a ride felt too disrespectful. Finally, a retailer who tells me about a staff meeting organised by the boss the morning after Her Majesty died. The boss warned the staff to expect to be grief-triggered all day long. ‘You’re going to see her face everywhere. It’s on all the money, after all.’

In the spirit of keeping my f---ing mouth shut, I avoid interviews and turn down requests to write newspaper articles. There are more than enough blabbermouths sounding off. I’d rather keep schtum and watch. But inevitably, someone ambushes me, during an interview about Essex Dogs. What is the historic meaning of all this, they ask. Quickfire answer? No one knows for certain, and anyone who tells you they do is a liar. The point of history is making the most of the benefit of hindsight. We won’t know what any of this means until it’s too late.

Strange to say, that answer isn’t what anyone wants to hear. So here’s my guess, with the huge caveat laid out above i.e. your guess is as good as mine. Monarchs’ reins are a convenient way to salami-slice history and divvy it into ages. My guess is that in terms of British history the Second Elizabethan Age will be historically defined around the concept of a settlement. During the First Elizabethan Age (1558-1603), that settlement was religious. In our time, it has been about settling the business of Empire. Britain has let go of the last vestiges of global hegemony, hard power and colonial rule assembled in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, while attempting to retain a share in world leadership through various soft-power devices. The monarchy, as embodied by the Queen - spectacular to behold and deliberately dull – was one of the most important of these soft-power devices. Whether the monarchy can continue to sell itself as important or necessary now that it is in other hands is very difficult to predict.

But back to the Middle Ages. I am writing to you from a café in London, waiting for my slot in the recording studio, to lay down another four episodes of a new podcast, launching on September 20th. It’s called This Is History, and the first series, ‘A Dynasty To Die For’ is about the first two generations of the Plantagenet family: Henry II, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Richard the Lionheart, Bad King John and all the rest of them. This lot knock the Windsors into a cocked hat, and make the Tudors seem like a bunch of ginger pussycats. So once you’ve finished reading Essex Dogs, you can wrap your ears around that. You’ll be able to get it on Spotify, Apple Music, and everywhere else that hosts podcasts. It’s free, although you can also subscribe to get bonus episodes and ditch the adverts. More on that soon. For now, God Save the Kings, and the Queens, wherever and whenever they were.