I’ve Walked Les Ramblas but Not With Real Intent

I visited Barcelona in November 2014 and, as a tourist, I was obliged to take a wander down Las Ramblas. Despite being largely a tourist trap area there is something quite wonderful about the place. As I walked along with everyone else, glancing at the street entertainers and the various stalls that all seem to sell things of a questionable quality that you don’t need, the Manic Street Preacher’s song, If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next came to mind. It is a piece about the Spanish Civil War and the line quoted is a reference to George Orwell’s account of the fighting in Las Ramblas; the activity that actually lacked any intent apparently. It was a scene on more than one occasion, however, of fighting and death.

Many historical novels contain violent confrontation as part of their story, not just between protagonists but often between armies or fleets of warships. Indeed historical novels often seem to embrace conflict on an epic scale. In ‘The War Wolf’ I recount the story of the Battle of Fulford Gate, an engagement in which some 15,000 warriors fought; a considerable number for the time. People seem to find it exciting. Certainly war as a subject has been a part of human culture since the first written language was developed. The Battle of Megiddo is widely considered the first engagement to be reliably recorded and that took place in the 15^th century BCE. Ever since then we have researched, recorded and written about human military encounters.

In that respect I am no different. The period of 1066 is characterised by three very violent encounters by the three opposing sides, Saxons, Vikings, and Normans. One aspect of writing about a period where written records were not habitually kept is that it becomes easy to lose touch with the human element of the actual events. We can only imagine what the Battle of Fulford Gate was like for the participants because no one thought to write down their experience, or if they did it has been lost to time. The very site of the battle itself is also being lost to time as the modern world encroaches upon it. When I researched the battle I had to look elsewhere to get an idea of what it might have been like. Fortunately warfare did not differ that much from the time of Megiddo to the advent of gunpowder. Heavy infantry supported by light infantry, missile throwers and some cavalry, although not in the case of the Saxons and Vikings, was the general order of battle. It was not difficult to transfer a Greek hoplites experience of the Battle of Plataea in the Persian Wars to become that of a Saxon frydman fighting before the walls of York in 11^th century England.

For all the use of creative licence, however, my account of Saxon warfare remains strictly third-hand at best. When George Orwell wrote about the fighting in Las Ramblas during the Spanish Civil War he did it from personal experience because he was there. Walking down Las Ramblas, with or without intent, knowing that people died there during one of Spain’s most bloody periods of civil strife reinforces the human aspect of what happened. Men died on both sides. These men were sons, brothers, husbands, fathers to other people. They went out of the world violently and left a hole in the lives of the others. The men who died at Megiddo and at Fulford Gate were no less the same and the friends and family that they left behind suffered no less either.

Although I acknowledge as a writer the intrinsic excitement of reading a battle within a story I also recognise that in every instance there must be human loss. I try to make my characters sympathetic to the reader in order to try and get that point across. In ‘The War Wolf’ there are no good guys and bad guys, no evildoers and heroes in the clichéd sense. The Saxons are fighting to defend their lands, their people, and their way of life. The Vikings are fighting to take what they can for reasons that legitimise their actions within their own way of thinking. The same applies to the Normans as well. Indeed, both the Norwegians and the Normans are pressed by political concerns that lie beyond the boundaries of England and yet both are tied to the Saxon crown by blood through a shared history.

As I walked Las Ramblas I was reminded of the fact that the human story is a fascinating one that can seemingly be presented in an almost infinite number of ways. The important thing to remember, I think, is that no matter which way a writer decides to tell a part of that story they must always strive to retain the humanity of their tale. Battle is indeed exciting to read about if your life is not at risk during it, but even within the safety of a book the author should also remind the reader that there is always a cost to human life when two warriors meet in a fight to the death, and it often extends beyond the two combatants as well.

My book has gone to Kindle for publishing

After two days of intensive work at the prompting of ‘M’ (you know how you are!) I finally submitted my manuscript to Kindle last night!

At last, I have written a book and sent it for publication.

I’d like to say that it was easy but it wasn’t. Even going down to the last wire I discovered some formatting problems that I had not expected, but I got them sorted in the end...I hope!

‘The War Wolf’ is not sitting on my Kindle bookshelf with ‘Publishing’ written underneath it, even seeing that leaves me with a great feeling of satisfaction! It feels better than I had expected to be honest, but then I began this project with the idea of following the traditional route for publishing a literary work. That did not work out, got a lot of rejections to prove it, but as the book developed the idea of e-publishing became more and more attractive.

Some might see it as an easy option but I do not think that that is necessarily true, at least not for the dedicated writer. The reason why I spent two days working until late each evening was because I wanted my manuscript to be right. I did not want to see any silly spelling mistakes or careless grammatical errors in the finished article. I wanted people to concentrate on what I got right not what I got wrong.

As a result I feel more closely bound to my manuscript than maybe I expected. I am very proud of it. I think that it is a story that is worth telling; in fact I know it is. It no longer matters to me that I could not get a literary agent interested because I know that that really does not signify anything. A literary agent is just another person expressing a subjective opinion bound by the parameters of commercial success. If they did not see The War Wolf as being a commercially successful book then they are not likely to accept it. I understand this point and move on.

The real litmus test is not the literary agents and, perhaps not even the critics, it is the reader. Obviously the critics can have a massive impact upon a book, I don’t discount that, but you have to stop and think who did you write this book for? It was not for the critics, it was people who enjoy a good story, empathise with your characters and want to know what happens to them. Of course critics are such people, so they figure in their anyway!

Now I wait for Amazon to tell me that my book is out in the wide public domain, it’s like waiting for Christmas morning!

When the finish line is in sight!

 Taking a break for a family holiday seemed like a good idea at the time but now that it is over and I am back at my desk I have to admit that I feel somewhat under pressure! Perhaps that is not so surprising when I look at my notes and realise that I started this project in September 2009!

4 years ago!

Wow! That’s a lot of exclamation marks! (There’s another one!)

To be fair a large portion of that time was spent in learning all about my chosen subject, the Anglo-Saxon period of English history. Also, there was time taken to develop the story into a trilogy, several re-writes, and 2 major surgical procedures to recover from as well. Tempus fugit as they say.

I also spent a considerable amount of time trying to get a literary agent interested in my project, to no avail. That is all water under the bridge, another popular saying. Having given up on the traditional route to publication, at least for now, I decided to go through the experience of e-publishing.

I only have myself to blame!

Ha, no, not really. It is not a question of blame. The thing is, I like this story that I have written, I like the characters of Coenred, the Saxon warrior forged in battled and honed by a sense of honour that would put a modern-day ‘right honourable’ politician to shame, and Mildryth, a woman fighting to recover what’s due to her and then hang onto it and then avoid the rapacious thief Thrydwulf and then wonder at the sense of falling in love with a warrior like Coenred and then....well, you’ll have to read the book! I believe in this book. I think that the story has human interest and that it plays out against an interesting backdrop featuring a people who have been much maligned since 1066, probably because the victors get to write the history and sadly the winners were not the proud Anglo-Saxons.

The whole world of 1066 has become a part of my world and enriched it as a result. Will ‘The War Wolf’ become a massive international bestseller? I don’t know (although I can dream) but I have set the bar a little low, all I want is for 1 person I do not know to contact me and tell me that they enjoyed my book, not too much to ask for really is it?

I will, of course, be doing the rounds to sell my book, after 4 years work it would be plain stupid not to, especially considering that ‘The War Wold’ is the first instalment in ‘The Sorrow Song Trilogy’, I mean, it’s not likely that anyone will read volume 2 if no one knows about volume 1.

First, however, I have to get my book ready for publication. Actually, it is 98% ready, I am sure of that, but there is still that niggling 2% to sort out. A friend is currently speed-reading through the manuscript to try and offer yet another insight into how I might make the story better, very many thanks Mike. I have joined Kindle and from today I will start the countdown to launch day, which I hope will be on September 20^th, the anniversary of the Battle of Fulford Gate as this is both the main event around which ‘The War Wolf’ takes place and also the anniversary of the actual battle.

I have crossed my Rubicon!

The Forgotten Battle of 1066

Most British people can name at least one battle from 1066; the Battle of Hastings. In fact this is the one event that seems to encapsulate the very essence of 1066 as a subject; the killing of King Harold and (almost) inevitable Norman Conquest of England.

Some people can also name a second, earlier encounter; the Battle of Stamford Bridge. It is often reported that this is the battle that fatally injured King Harold’s Saxon army, along with the forced route march from London to York and back again to reach Hastings, making the Norman Conquest of England (almost) inevitable.

But why did King Harold have to march north to save his kingdom and let the Normans land in the south unopposed? The answer is because there was a third battle, one that preceded Stamford Bridge; the forgotten battle of 1066.

For some reason most accounts of the Battle of Fulford Gate held on Wednesday 20^th September 1066 are reduced to a sentence in the preamble to the Battle of Hastings. I find this curious as major engagements are usually considered important in telling the history of campaigns, especially those events that lead to such drastic consequences as seen in 1066; an entire civilisation was destroyed!

For Harald Hardrada, the King of Norway, the invasion of Northumbria represented a tactical masterpiece in his attempt to claim the English throne. He landed his army at Riccall, close to York, which was too far for King Harold to interfere with. He expected some resistance from the local eoldermen of course, they were duty bound to protect the kingdom but he probably anticipated a siege of the walled city of York. What he actually got was a pitched battle at site not of his choosing.

King Hardrada was a very experienced military commander who had only ever been on the losing side once and even then he had been but a boy. He had fought all over the known world from Norway to Russia and onto the Holy Land. Against him at Fulford Gate stood two young brothers, the eorls Edwin and Morcar, and they had chosen a defensively strong position.

The Saxons fielded a mixed force of approximately 4500 men, about 2,000 of which might have been well armed and armoured, the remaining 2500 would have been less well equipped and trained peasants and villagers. Against them the Vikings brought an army of some 7000 Norse warriors with another 3000 guarding the fleet at Riccall. For the early medieval period these figures are impressive and are similar to those engaged later at Stamdord Bridge and Hastings, in other words this was a very serious encounter.

In fact there is much about the Battle of Fulford Gate to occupy the imagination of anyone with an interest in this kind of history. The defence of York by the Saxons has about it a quality similar to the more famous Battle of Thermopylae (480 BC) in that a smaller indigenous army attempted to hold back a much larger invader at a strong defensive position. It is almost a hopeless cause but undertaken with admirable bravery on the part of the Anglo-Saxons.

There is also the chance to see how the military mind of Harald Hardrada might have worked in formulating a plan to nullify the advantages of his enemy. Although the battles of this period most often involved the pitting of two shield-wall formations against each other this does not mean that there was not some tactical manoeuvring going on as well. King Hardrda displayed his experience in the way he was able to coax his younger adversaries into making a critical mistake.

The strategic impact of the Battle of Fulford Gate is also important. At the conclusion of the battle the Norwegians found themselves in a seemingly strong position. They had captured the capital of Northumbria and knew that it would take King Harold, who was in London watching the movements of the Normans, some time to arrange a response to the threat that they now posed. At this point it was King Hardrada of Norway who posed the greatest threat to England, that is why King Harold moved north to meet him.

If Eorl Edwin and Eorl Morcar had chosen to act differently, however, then the course of 1066 might have been very different. Although their army was smaller than the Vikings’ it was sufficient to man the walls of York and repel any attacks; a siege would have been necessary. Had the eorls employed that tactic then Harald Hardrada might well have found himself trapped between two Saxon forces when King Harold did move north and the subsequent battle might have left the Saxons in a much better condition to meet the threat of the Normans; but that’s history for you!