This week, we finally managed to install our new (not new ) item of furniture - a mid-18th Century grandfather clock. It's not bright and shiny like more modern ones, but a dark oak with a warm patina which the beeswax polish is drawing out. In order to set it up, we had to do a certain amount of research - how to hang the pendulum, where the weight went on the endless chain - and it got me thinking... where and when did certain divisions of time come from? The time periods which I have written either had household clocks or didn't, I have not written novels from the time of their invention. Clocks have been around for a long time, and the obsession with measuring time in an ordered fashion dates back to at least the ancient Sumerians. It was they who established a circular reading of time and, I imagine, the sixty seconds/minutes came about as much because it was an easy way to divide a circle as anything else. But it wasn't until much later that the precision of seconds ...
The events of the past week have brought home to me just how important the personal aspect and view of history are.
One of the key questions I have both asked other authors and been asked myself, is whether there was a specific character they identify with. For my own part, I've always answered that there is a little bit of me in all my characters. And it's true. I have never based a character totally on myself because I have never belonged to a point in time except my own, I can't know how I would react!
Now, I am less than a decade from my own lifespan encompassing the general 50-year gap for an historical fiction setting - a scary thought! Suddenly, my own early adventures are starting to sound like something from a historical novel.
A few weeks ago, Crowvus published Child at the Pantry Door and, at the end of the month, we will be publishing the next issue of our journal Hooded: Memoirs. The personal aspect to both of these books is a crucial resource to historical writers in the future. They will be akin to the use of letters and diaries in building reliable characters and settings.
Child at the Pantry Door is hugely significant to me on many levels. It encapsulates - not only an individual's journey - but the echoes of countless generations of my own family as well as those families we have brushed shoulders with over my four-and-a-bit decades. I do remember taking a course on Food and Feasting through the Ages which was truly fascinating, but I'm not sure I learnt anything more than what is so comfortably detailed in Child at the Pantry Door. Food is such a significant thing. It defines key moments of our lives (think: Christmas Pudding; Birthday Cake etc...) and yet it is something historical writers often either overlook or use as a chance to perform an info-dump. Taste is a largely missed sense in writing, despite being a highly evocative one. The kitchen has always been an integral part of life. We, as historical fiction writers, should never neglect this.
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