MEDIEVAL BLING, AND A FEW OTHER THINGS
Notes from another plague-ridden holiday season, and a (currently) full list of what I've got coming up this year - books, TV, podcasts and more
One Christmas - it wasn’t the most recent one - my wife bought me a metal detector. It felt like a turning point in our relationship, and not in a good way. At no point did I ever say I wanted a metal detector; at no point had I thought it. But apparently there I was, walking around the house, giving off detectorist vibes like dork pheremones.
Another Christmas she bought me a drum-kit and it was basically the same situation. On balance I was okay to be inadvertently signalling ‘Dave Grohl’. I was less okay to be vibing ‘waterproof trousers and a flask of instant coffee’.
Still, we’ve known each other a long time and these things happen in a relationship. I got over it, and the metal detector lives untouched in the shed. Once or twice I’ve considered getting it out of the box. But I’ve resisted the urge. You don’t know what’ll happen when you go down that road. Or that’s what I’ve told myself.
This year came perhaps the biggest test of my self-control yet. On December 28th I read a web article entitled Metal Detectorist in the UK Finds a Medieval Diamond Wedding Ring.
In a sense the entire story - as so often in our SEO-dulled age of shitty internet headlines - is right there in the title. But in another sense it’s not. Because the idea of a medieval diamond wedding ring, attractive as it may be, cannot begin to compare to the beauty of the piece itself. Check this out:
The ring, polished up, sold via the auction house Noonan’s for $46,000. Its truncated, Old French inscription translates to mean: ‘As I hold your faith, hold mine.’ It dates from about the 1380s and it was bought for the wealthy wife of a Dorset gentleman. If I had the guts of fifty grand to fritter on medieval jewellery, I would have made this my own.
As it stands, I think my best chance is to get the detector out of the shed, make a flask of Nescafe and start plodding.
REVENGE OF THE ‘VID
Exceptionally interested readers may recall that this time last year I was put solidly and squarely on my back by Covid and subsequent disastrous secondary infections. It ruined Christmas, knocked about 14lbs off my weight and made me very grumpy for quite a long time.
Once the worst of it was over, however, I consoled myself by thinking that at least that wouldn’t happen again. But of course, whenever one thinks like that, it’s obvious what will follow. This Christmas I was put solidly and squarely on my back by something that walked, talked and quacked like Covid. I am not entirely sure (because it doesn’t really matter) whether it was the real thing or a tribute act - how much do you really care whether it’s Pink Floyd or The Australian Pink Floyd playing you Another Brick In The Wall?
But the result was another festive period more-or-less written off, and a malaise that seems still to be lingering, along with a cough like the mating call of a walrus. The only mercy is that I have not yet been mated with my a walrus. But there is still plenty of time.
My historical reflection on all this is to recall that in the fourteenth century, the Black Death consisted of far more than one big wave in 1348-9. It came back and back and back, and was arguably still coming back in the 1660s. Pandemics never really end - people just get bored of dealing with them.
My personal takeaway, meanwhile, is that to have had two consecutive Christmases wiped out with this bullshit is more than just bad luck. I’m increasingly convinced that Santa DOES keep a naughty list.
CALL FOR PAPERS
My point in telling you the above is not to elicit sympathy, which I neither deserve nor am psychologically equipped to graciously accept. It’s more to explain why I haven’t posted anything here on Substack since before Christmas.
My intention is to get this back up and running in a way that most serves you, the subscribers, in 2023.
My experience over the last year or so of writing more than just a monthly newsletter (which is how I started out back in 2021) is that people seem to prefer a frequency of about one post a week, and that the most popular format is reader-driven content.
With that in mind, is there anything you would particularly like me to write about in the weeks and months ahead?
Subscribers - please post in the comments below and I’ll make a master-list of requests, which over the course of the year I’ll try and satisfy. Over to you.
WHAT I’M UP TO, SINCE YOU ASKED
This is shaping up to be quite a busy year in terms of my writing and other work. In case you were wondering what I will be doing all day, other than sitting around thinking about medieval jewellery, here are some of the highlights.
This is just the stuff that a) I know about and b) I can tell you about.
My experience over the years is that as the year goes by, many things crop up that I could not have imagined or conceived of until they came a-calling. That’s one of the things I like best about what I do, but it does make predicting everything I’ll be up to quite tricky.
So this is a partial list, and I fully expect it to develop. Needless to say, I’ll tell you first about the new stuff.
BOOKS
On February 7th my novel Essex Dogs is published in the USA. It seems like Barnes & Noble and other retailers are going to be very supportive of the release, which is jolly nice of them. Do please pre-order it if you’re able to.
We have signed quite a few translation deals for the book recently, so you can expect it to appear in foreign language editions - Spanish, Dutch, and a few others - over the next 12-18 months.
Besides launching these new editions Essex Dogs, I am also writing its first sequel. This is a book I used to call Wolf Moon. But I have recently changed the title to Wolves of Winter, which is, frankly, better. It follows continuous from the events of Essex Dogs, being set at the siege of Calais 1346/7. And its subject is what you might call the medieval deep state.
So far Wolves of Winter is going well. I am delivering it to my publishers in March, which is maybe going to bring me to the brink of madness, so if I behave at all oddly in the next few months, cut me some slack.
Once I’ve done with Wolves of Winter, I think I’m going to concentrate on my next nonfiction project, which is a major new biography of Henry V.
Then it’ll be the third volume of the trilogy. That’s provisionally called The Last Knight, but I don’t expect it to remain that way. It’ll probably be called Knights of Summer or something like that. (Joke, at my own expense.)
I’ve also got a few short stories I want to write, based on real events. One is called Molecatcher and another is set in the sixteenth century. A third is a murder case and love story based in pre-Peasants’ Revolt London. And yesterday I had a wonderful vision of a huge sprawling novel about the Spanish Armada.
I want to write a historical ghost story collection too.
There are probably a few things I am forgetting but you get the idea. There’s about 10 years worth of work here and I aim to do it in 6 or 7.
TELEVISION
Since the autumn I’ve been working on a bigggg new TV series, due to air in the UK some time in 2023. Could be the spring. Could be the autumn. Could be that if I tell you ANYTHING about it they will cut my clackers off and feed them to the wolves of winter.
It’s going to be announced I *think* in the next couple of weeks. And if you follow my output on Instagram you can get a sort of vague flavour of what it might involve - although I’ve taken care to be very cryptic so you definitely won’t guess. For example:
Isn’t that a tease? I think it probably is.
ALSO TELEVISION
God willing I shall have some Essex Dogs new for you soon. No more may I say.
AND THIS IS ALSO TELEVISION
Someone asked the other day if I’d like to make another show about anything I fancy. Suggestions welcome from subscribers in the comments below.
PODCAST
I spent this afternoon writing the first two episodes of the second season of This Is History: A Dynasty To Die For. If you enjoyed the first season - which followed the antics of Henry II, Eleanor of Aquitaine and their kids from the 1150s til 1189 - then you will definitely enjoy season 2.
We pick the story up with Richard the Lionheart getting ready for the Third Crusade, and take it from there. We’ll probably split this season into two drops of 12 episodes each, rather than releasing 24 in one go, mainly because it takes me a LOT of time to write the scripts, and the original sound engineering, music etc is also very producer-intensive.
I imagine season 2 will start in early March. But in the meantime, if you’re a subscriber to the podcast, you will get weekly content in the form of our bonus episodes. These will alternate between an AMA/mailbag format and structured interviews between me and other medieval historians, riffing off themes from the main seasons.
There are some storming interviews coming up. To subscribe, you need to go to This Is History PLUS and do what the internet tells you.
JOURNALISM
Mostly but not exclusively to be found in the London editions of The Times and The Sunday Times. Recent or forthcoming book reviews include one on David Graeber’s posthumous long essay/book Pirate Enlightenment, which asks whether the Enlightenment really started on Madagascar (ummm, no). One is of a biography of my favourite American hardboiled/lowlife/crime author, James Ellroy. And one is about the East India Company.
I usually link to these via my Twitter account, eg:
So you could follow me there, or not, as you please.
LIVE EVENTS
Nothing much confirmed at present. I have a couple of online events for Essex Dogs coming up in February, will post links when I have them.
I’ll also be coming through LA in the last week of April. I may have a day free - if you are based out there and feel like you would be able and willing to rustle up a crowd for a signing and short talk on the book, email me and we can discuss it.
I’ll likely do a full UK tour for Wolves of Winter in the autumn.
HAVE I FORGOTTEN ANYTHING?
Probably. I think this year we’ll also announce another fan travel tour somewhere cool. Like this one, which rocked.
I think there’s a chance I’ll be making a movie with someone, but I’d rate that around 20-30% based on how much I’ve heard about it lately.
More from me to you when I know. In the meantime, thank you so much for your continued support on here. I really appreciate it! Look after yourselves, now.
I would love more on the York brothers and their fascinating relationship. Feel better soon.
I look forward to your new books. They all sound great. I still sit waiting patiently for somebody to write about the draining of the fens.