The Chrysalids is a brilliant book

I’ve just re-read one of my all-time favourite books: The Chrysalids, by John Wyndham. I return to it every five years or so, and have done ever since it first came out in the 1950s. Each time I pick it up again, I wonder, “Will I think it is so exceptional this time?” Answer: yes, it’s brilliant.

John Wyndham is acknowledged to be one of the best British science fiction authors. His books are what I call pure science fiction, as distinct from sword-and-planet fantasies, which aren’t my sort of thing at all.

Wyndham called his work “logical fantasy,” which is an excellent name. He wrote of  fantastic creatures and happenings, like the deadly walking plants in THE DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS, and the strange children of THE MIDWICH CUCKOOS. But what his stories focus on is not these creations themselves; rather he explores how they will affect human society, and how ordinary people will behave.

THE CHRYSALIDS (aka THE REBIRTH,) is set in a bleak future following a global nuclear disaster – a war, presumably, because the Cold War was at its most scary in the 1950s. You can call it an anti-Bomb book, but it’s so much more than that. The Bomb has wiped out modern civilisation, reducing survivors to the kind of lives people led before the industrial revolution, and causing a strict society dominated by a stern religion.

In northern Canada, a  few scattered small communities of farmers are surviving with no modern communications or transport, no electricity, virtually no books, and no detailed historical knowledge. They have a vague tribal memory that the world was once wonderfully different, “before God sent Tribulation.” The Old People, they believe, were destroyed as a divine punishment, and retribution isn’t over yet. Though they know nothing of nuclear radiation, they know and fear one of its consequences: genetic mutation.

Their religion tries to cope with the fact that there’s only a fifty per cent chance of any living thing breeding true. They believe it’s vital to preserve genetic purity, so any plant or animal that does not look right – that is, exactly like its parents – is called an Offence, and must be destroyed. A human Offence, called a Blasphemy, must be exposed at birth, or if the deviation only appears later, will be sterilised and banished to live outside the law.

David, the story’s narrator, accepts this brutal regime as normal, until he makes friends with a girl with six toes on each foot, and starts to question the whole concept of Offences. Then he finds he has a telepathic understanding with a small group of other young people, who realise that if their unusual talent is discovered, they will become outcasts too. And however careful they are to keep their secret, in a small community, discovery is only a matter of time…

THE CHRYSALIDS is an anti-Bomb book; more important, it’s anti-religion, and indeed any repressive society which won’t allow difference or change among its citizens. Wyndham handles his themes cleverly, with compassion and humour. The result is a cracking good story that keeps you turning the pages, and leaves you pondering afterwards. Its message is as important today as it was in the 1950s.

Learning to fly

“What do we do now?” I bet that’s what these two little sparrows were saying as they chirped away to each other on the grass near our house. They’d just left their nest, and my husband spotted them a couple of evenings ago. They were quite unafraid; even when he took their photos they were as calm as celebrities ignoring the paparazzi. We left them alone (and made sure our dogs did too) and by next morning they’d gone, flown away we assume. What a rite of passage!

Young birds are amazing, especially the ones whose nests are high above ground level. They take that Great Leap Outward, and then have to rely on their inbuilt instinct to tell them what to do next. Either they learn to fly PDQ, or bye-bye birdie.

I’ve been trying to think of any experiences in my own relatively sheltered life that remotely compare with a bird leaving its next. And I can’t. Yes, I know we talk about children “leaving the nest” when they set up on their own. I did this, but there was no life-changing break; we were a close family, and I was always welcome to go back to my parents’ to stay, or just for some of Mum’s cooking now and then.

I think the nearest experience I can come up with is the first time I presented a live radio programme on the BBC. I’d done countless pre-recorded programmes as presenter, interviewer, reporter – I’ve never kept count, but hundreds if not thousands.  Many of them had been produced “as live,” that’s to say recorded exactly to time so they could be broadcast without any editing. But you always knew they could be edited if you stumbled over your words or got a fit of coughing.

Going live is different. Everything happens in real time, no chance to do re-takes or have second thoughts. I always had a producer in the control room, of course, and I was lucky in my producers – they were all experienced, with a light touch when all was well, and quite unflappable when it wasn’t. But however good your support, when you’re presenting, it’s your voice that the listeners will follow if the show succeeds, and switch off it you mess up.

Many of my programmes’ ingredients were live too: studio guests, interviews on the phone, reports coming in from other places, sometimes halfway across the world. Besides doing my own interviews, I’d be expected to help out if someone got into difficulties, such as losing their thread or drying up. And if a live item scheduled for a certain time didn’t materialise, and the running order had to be changed on the fly, I’d  be the one who must ad-lib to make everything sound smooth and under control. And whatever happened, I must finish up the show dead on time.

I’ll never forget the first live half-hour programme I did, and the sinking feeling of fear just beforehand as the announcer handed over to me: “And now it’s time for In Touch, presented by Jane Finnis….” As I said “Hello. In tonight’s programme…” a miracle happened; I felt a rush of adrenaline that extinguished the fear completely. I flew through it, everything went well, including finishing exactly on time. Everyone was happy, especially me.

I’d learnt to fly.

Don’t forget the background

We writers are not the only ones who like to create a world of our own from a mixture of imagination and research.

This is my cousin Neil’s wonderful model railway layout – part of it anyhow; it’s large and detailed and still growing, as he told us when we visited last week.

Don’t make the mistake of equating model railways with “toy trains”. Enthusiasts like Neil go to enormous lengths to get everything just-so. It’s all got to fit together – I don’t just mean the physical scale, that’s obvious; I mean historically. Rolling-stock and stations must be correct for your chosen era,  the 1950s in this case. And the surrounding landscape must be populated with period buildings, street furniture and cars, plus whatever else is needed to make it look truly lived-in. If you get those surrounding details wrong, however meticulous you are about the trains, you’ll spoil the effect.

This rings loud bells with me, and anyone else who writes historical fiction. Attention to the detail of time and place is a vital part of bringing an era to life. And come to think of it, that’s so in contemporary stories too, although less noticeable if the setting is familiar to us.

It’s only too easy to focus so completely on the main action and characters that you skimp on their context; like setting up a model train and track, with no houses or fields or backdrop of sky to complete the picture.

I don’t often like  books where authors leave out a lot of background detail. I can’t say I never like such books, because I’m a Jane Austen fan. But she – writing what to her were contemporary novels of course – gave disappointingly little period detail, assuming no doubt that her readers didn’t need it because they knew it all.

I’d like to read descriptions of what her young ladies wore to a ball. I’m dying to know what they had for dinner at Northanger Abbey, and breakfast at Mansfield Park. Above all, I’d love more information about how the Napoleonic Wars affected her characters, especially the gentlemen in the army and navy. A long and gruelling war period must have had massive effects, even though the fighting was abroad. Do you get a sense of that in Austen? No.

Well, as I say, I’m still an Austen admirer. But I try hard to give my own novels a real sense of place and time, to fill in the background of first-century Roman Britain.

I remember when I was hawking my first novel around – that’s to say, sending it to literary agents hoping they’d take it to publishers for me. None of them did, but I received some encouraging comments, and one particularly excellent piece of advice.

An agent actually rang me, and she said, “You haven’t developed a real sense of place. When your characters are talking and moving about, can you see in your mind’s eye where they are, what the room is like, what’s outside their window?”

“Yes, of course,” I said.

“Then why can’t I? Write it so I can see it too.”

I still remember, and I do my best.

If I were Prime Minister

I’ve made an astounding discovery. I could be Prime Minister. Really, it’s not impossible, because I’ve got one of the important qualifications for the post. I’ve realised something interesting about British Prime Ministers, including the newest one.

It’s a lot easier to become PM if your surname begins with a letter from the first half of the alphabet.

Consider the incumbents of No. 10 since World War 2: Attlee, Churchill, Eden, Macmillan, Douglas-Home, Wilson (OK, an exception,) Callaghan, Thatcher (another exception,) Major, Blair, Brown, and Cameron. Overwhelmingly from the first half of the alphabet, mostly from very near the beginning of it. Significant or what?

Not convinced yet? OK, cast your mind back in history to Disraeli and Gladstone, Asquith and Balfour, two Chamberlains…Of course I realise we’ve also had two Pitts, and Palmerston, not to mention Walpole. But no, we won’t go there. Why let facts spoil a perfectly good theory?

And it is a good theory. My writing (unmarried name) is Finnis, and my married name is Copsey. So I repeat, I could be Prime Minister. If I wanted to be. If I could be bothered. I’m not sure I can, actually…but I could.

And if I were Prime Minister, what would I do? Ah now, there’s a daydream worth pursuing! Given that I’d have to sort out the economy and the war and unemployment and a hundred and one other important matters, what would be my own special projects? These are the first three things on which I’d bring my (considerable) power to bear.

1  Reduced taxes for bookshops. The big chains and the Internet are fine, but I want it to be possible for smaller independent bookshops to make a profit, so every town could have one, like in the old days. We subsidise opera houses and art galleries. Why not booksellers?

2  More money for libraries, and make sure it is ring-fenced, so councils can’t divert it to their other public services. Too many local authorities regard libraries as soft targets which can have their funds cut back whenever times are hard. And their interpretation of hard times is sometimes eccentric. I suppose councillors do need their fact-finding trips to the Bahamas, but let them finance  them some other way, not by closing libraries.

3  Help for authors, especially when starting out: generous tax allowances or even pensions for their first couple of years, and continued afterwards as long as they regularly produce work, until their earnings reach the average wage for the working population, then they can sink or swim like everyone else. Most writers don’t seriously yearn to be over-paid, (well only sometimes!) but we’d like to be fairly paid. If I ever get to No. 10, I’ll see to it.

Anybody out there care to add to my wish list of projects? Don’t worry if your name starts in the later section of the alphabet, remember Wilson and Thatcher. But I can’t help feeling that in the race for No. 10 we Finnis’s would have a head start…

There are Romans at the bottom of my garden

OK, I lied about the Romans. There aren’t any fairies either, in case anyone recognises that old song. But I did as I promised in my previous post, and looked round our garden to see which of our plants the Ancient Romans, should they happen by, would recognise.

Take the characters in my mysteries, Aurelia the innkeeper (whose garden grows mostly vegetables for the guests, with just a few flowers,) and her sister Albia, who grows vegetables and an extensive collection of herbs. They’ve lived in Roman Britain for twenty years. Would they feel at home at Villa Copsey? Yes, I think they would.

Earlier this year their gardens would, like ours, have had crocus, narcissus, and hyacinth brightening up the spring, also primrose, though I think they only had yellow ones closer to the wild variety than our modern many-coloured specimens.

By May it would probably be some of my herbs that struck Aurelia and family as familiar: that celebrated quartet of  parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme, and also lavender, marjoram and mint. I grow these for the pot, and in some cases for looks; but Albia would have used them for medicines too.

Later on, in summer, Roman gardeners would have been pleased by our marigolds, which Richard and I love and grow in profusion, and our roses, of which we’ve only two, one red and one yellow. I suspect this would have been thought not nearly enough; Romans not only loved the flowers but used their petals extensively to scent their houses, and (if Hollywood is to be believed, which in this case it probably is,) to scatter liberally everywhere during banquets. If we ever get around to holding a Nero-style feast here, I’ll have to import the rose petals, along with the larks’ tongues and the dormice.

Some of our vegetables would have mystified Aurelia – potatoes and tomatoes for instance; Columbus wasn’t even a twinkle in anyone’s eye back then. But they grew onions, leeks, and lettuce. And they used, but didn’t grow, another veg that we wouldn’t be without: rhubarb. They didn’t cultivate it themselves, neither did they eat it; they used the dried root as a medicine, (laxative, purgative…all right, enough!) Rhubarb comes originally from China, and historians think the roots were still being imported from there in Roman times. Or maybe from somewhere a shade nearer to Italy: there’s a theory that rhubarb’s name comes from “Rha”, the ancient name for the River Volga. Importing it from such a distance can’t have been cheap, so they must have prized it highly. Global trade isn’t such a modern invention as we like to believe.

And I mustn’t forget to mention our trees. Aurelia and Albia would have recognised apple and cherry, holly and ivy, and would have been delighted to find an oak tree. (If you don’t know why, you haven’t read the books yet!) It’s still just at the sapling stage, but Romans knew all about mighty oaks growing from tiny acorns. How else did their own vast Empire evolve from a small town by the Tiber?

The Flowers that Bloom in the Spring, tra-la

There’s nothing like a jolly G & S ditty to welcome the Merry Month of May, is there? And a picture of our garden in spring to go along with it? Look out, I’ll be bursting into song in a minute…

“The flowers that bloom in the spring, tra-la,

Breathe promise of merry sunshine.

As we merrily dance and we sing, tra-la,

We welcome the hope that they bring, tra-la,

Of a summer of roses and wine…”

I think, if I’d been Gilbert’s editor, I’d have suggested he avoid the use of “merry” and “merrily” so close together…on second thoughts, no I wouldn’t. It would have taken an extremely brave editor to criticise Gilbert about anything. And anyhow I’ll leave the song there, because Verse 2 changes direction (as Mikado fans know) and finishes “Oh bother the flowers that bloom in the spring!” and I don’t agree. I love this time of year.

One of the pleasures of being a writer of historical fiction is the research that goes with it. I love finding out about the past, and I believe it’s important, because I want to get the history right in my books, or as right as is humanly possible given the patchy information we have about life two thousand years ago. I like reading about how my characters would have lived, worked and played – always have done, long before I started to write about it, and in fact that’s largely why I started to write about it.

So how would the Romans of the first century, the period when my books are set, have celebrated May Day? Romans had lots of festivals dedicated to this or that deity – many of them were taken over when the Empire turned Christian. There were a couple of possibles for the beginning of May, but the most attractive to me is the Floralia. May Day would have fallen right in the middle of this, because it went on for almost a week. It  involved games and theatrical productions and presumably plenty of flowers, because its patron deity was Flora, goddess of  flowers and fertility.

The Romans grew many of the flowers we cultivate today. I think I’ll go and see how many of their favourites are growing in our garden now. Narcissus…hyacinths…what else?

Yes, a little garden research is definitely called for at this point. I trust you’re impressed by my dedication, which has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that it’s a nice fine morning, but the weather forecast is for rain later, so if I want to go out and enjoy the spring, I’d better do it sooner rather than later.