FILMING DIARY DAY #1

Making a show about the real history behind my new book Essex Dogs

Up at dawn, woken by seagulls screaming. There’s salt on the air. A breeze is whipping sloppily formed clouds across the sky. The horizon is an angry pink.

We arrived in Saint Vaast-la-Hougue last night, after a fast train from London and a long drive from Paris. Ate oysters and mussels and enjoyed mad dreams. I’m buzzing to be here. Three and a half years ago, a little further along the coast of Normandy, I first had the idea that became a novel called Essex Dogs. Or rather, I saw the scene.

It was a storming of the Normandy beaches by a huge invading army, seen through the eyes of a small platoon of ordinary men from Britain. It would feel like D-Day. But instead of machine guns and Messerschmitts there would be trebuchets and crossbows. It would be the start of Edward III’s Crécy campaign of 1346. And it would kick some f-ing ass.

And now here we are. I haven’t made a film since before the Covid lockdowns. But it feels great to be back at work. With a great team, who’ve bought into the vision with as much verve and energy as I could have hoped for.

We spent the morning in Saint Vaast, tracing the footsteps of Edward III’s (real) army of 15000 men, reimagining their actions as the stormed the beaches in July 1346. It’s madly thrilling. Here’s a tiny excerpt from the first chapter of Essex Dogs. Standing on the beach, I can almost see it happening for real.

Christ’s bones, wake up!’ 

‘Loveday’ FitzTalbot jerked his head up. Father had dug him in the ribs with a sharp elbow. Despite the cold saltwater spray that whipped his face, the rocking of the landing craft had lulled him into a moment of sleep. 

He had dreamed he was at home. 

But now his eyes were open again, he saw that he was not. They were still here. Out at sea. As far from home as they had ever been. Getting further from it every second. 

There were ten of them crammed into the little pinnace: himself at the steerboard, Millstone, Scotsman and Pismire further forward, the priest they called Father beside him at the stern and the archers Tebbe, Romford and Thorp in between them. 

Two more archers, Welsh brothers who had been added to the company on the eve of their departure from Portsmouth aboard the cog Saintmarie, were pulling the oars.

Loveday scanned the horizon. Normandy. France. As far as he could recall, only he and the Scot had ever been out of English waters. And neither of them knew the coast that loomed half a mile distant, darkest grey in the pre-dawn.

What was more, their orders aboard the Saintmarie, handed down from Sir Robert le Straunge, were troublingly vague. They had only, Sir Robert had said, to storm up the beach and cut the hairy bollocks off any Frenchman who stood in their way. 

In the afternoon, we drive down to Saint-Lô - a city absolutely battered in 1944, and treated pretty terribly in 1346 too.

Saint-Lô has a short stretch of its medieval walls left. They’re the setting for one of my favourite scenes in the novel, a fictionalised rendering of a real-life side caper on the Crécy campaign, where the rotting heads of three Norman knights were retrieved by the English army for decent burial. There are no heads on the walls today. Just Norman flags fluttering and our drone whining as it whizzes back and forth along them.

We finish the day outside the ruins of Saint-Lô’s gothic cathedral - its facade blown to bits in the Second World War. Much of Essex Dogs is informed by the spirit of a WW2 adventure, but told in medieval costume and following the shape of the real fourteenth-century story. The battle-scarred medieval cathedral, eliding the history of wars half a millennium apart, feels like a fitting visual analogy for what I’ve tried to do.

I’m writing this in a hotel bar in Caen. We’re here tomorrow, and I’ll write you another update then. If you’d like to pre-order Essex Dogs, please consider doing so. International orders can be placed here. UK orders (with 50% off RRP) can be placed here.

See you soon…