On the writing front the new novel is on schedule for delivery to Headline Review mid-February 2011, with publication either later that year or early next.
At present it amount to 92,000 words but at least the end is in view.
Archive for the 'Book Research' Category
The old banked circuit at Brooklands must be one of the most evocative and downright spooky venues that still exist from the very early days of motor-racing and aviation. Not too much remains of the famous track but the Brooklands Society has done a wonderful job of making the most of what’s left. Visitors get a real whiff of the atmosphere there from 1907 to 1939 when war brought an end to the fun and, let’s admit it, often tragedy as well. And occasionally there’s even a whiff of the real thing; Castrol R racing oil as enthusiasts run historic vehicles around the perimeter roads.
I was there with my flying helmet on, as it were, researching the Flying Village that occupied a site on the far side of the main Brooklands Automobile Racing Club buildings (now metamorphosed into the British Automobile Racing Club of which I have long been a member). Some of my characters, between 1910 and 1914, are about to rent a shed at the Flying Village and attempt to break various flying records in England and France. The purpose of the trip was to make sure I get the topography right and uncover that clinching detail that helps to make fiction ring of truth.
Pictures show the banking from the Members Bridge (the one including the small figure is looking towards the spot where Clive Dunfee’s Bentley went ‘over the top’ at 130mph with fatal results). 
The red brick building and white-painted interior is the old BARC Members Restaurant, now being restored with the guidance of English Heritage to an amazingly original state.
Although the full grandeur of the circuit is just a memory Brooklands is required viewing for anyone interested in cars and aeroplanes and you can even join the band of dedicated volunteers who have succeeded in preserving the place against huge odds.
On 27 May I found myself on board a Norfolkline ferry bound for Dunkirk. Not so unusual you might think until you checked out some very special passengers, old men now with service caps and berets, medals catching the morning sun, crossing to France to remember their part in the desperate days of May 1940 when somehow 340,000 members of the British Expeditionary Force were evacuated from under the noses of the advancing German army.
Norfolkline had ‘donated’ the boat for the day and organised various commemorative events on both sides of the Channel; ceremonies involving the veterans themselves and their families, civic dignitaries and politicians, representatives of the Church, choirs of English and French schoolchildren, members of the Royal Choral Society, the Parachute Regimental Band and a band of re-enactors dressed as servicemen of the time, so accurately uniformed as to look like ghosts.
The English children’s choir learning about Dunkirk with the help of two re-enactors dressed as infantrymen
During the crossing the old soldiers, sailors and airmen were the focus of intensive media attention and told their harrowing or inspiring stories (usually both) to a succession of attentive young journalists. Mid-Channel a Hurricane and Spitfire performed a fly-over, the Spit concluding with a victory roll; inspiring stuff that raised a cheer.
Two of the veterans who boarded at Dover
Docked in Dunkirk we gathered at the rail to watch The Little Ships sail past on their way to the inner harbour, the pleasure craft that with the Royal Navy warships were key to the survival of the British army. The Last Post played by a Para bugler was followed by a minute’s silence broken only by the beep of fork-lift trucks unloading nearby container ships and the rumble of distant marine engines.
the ceremony taking place at Dunkirk
Coincidentally I am mid-way through a chapter of my latest novel that involves a character in the events of May 1940 so the chance to talk face-to-face with some of the men who were there was invaluable. But I was invited as a journalist incidentally, not a novelist, as OLDIE magazine had asked me to submit an article on the trip…
Bit of a change for me last night. I’ve given numbers of talks over the years but there’s always been a link to writing and writers. On this occasion, a gathering of ploughmen, the only connection was a chum who farmed the land around our house and turned out to be president of the Sussex Ploughing Championship Society. He was stepping down from his official duties to give himself more time to compete in the various national competitions and thought, for a change, that at their annual general meeting and dinner the members of the Society might like to hear from someone not involved in agriculture; last year, for example, the address was given by a land agent.
It went off all right though I think some of the audience were somewhat bemused. Afterwards, shaking hands, I was struck by their leather-like grasps that told of hard manual work, unlike mine, more akin to leather of the chamois variety. However, to my surprise a few had actually read my books and a couple even shared motor-racing as a pastime so I wasn’t entirely at sea. My disclosure that I had once bought a Fordson tractor for £100 aroused most interest however.
It was good to hear that the Sussex accent still flourishes. I’ve been researching the county dialect for the new novel and, while I didn’t detect any of the old phrases, the distinctive pronunciation that filled the meeting room gave a special colour to the event; close your eyes and you could be back in 1890…
I also recommend the venue, The Roebuck pub at Laughton on the B2124 not far from Lewes; family-owned and excellent wholesome cooking using local produce.
If you haven’t caught a ploughing match I recommend it as an interesting insight and at very close quarters into how it’s done these days and, more fascinatingly, was carried out in centuries past by teams of horses and oxen.
I’ve been asked when my next novel is coming out, in hardcover and paperback. Some while yet, I’m afraid. My fourth should have been completed by May 2009 and due for publication later this year. Unfortunately, during my annual medical for my racing licence just over a year ago, my doctor noticed my PSA (Prostate Specific Antigen) reading was high. Soon it was confirmed that I had prostate cancer, although I had shown no symptoms and have never been seriously ill in seventy years. After a number of examinations and reviews I was faced with the choice: radio therapy or the opportunity (!) to become the twelfth person in Britain to undergo keyhole surgery for the removal of the prostate gland. I chose the last, was operated on successfully in May 2008, was knocked back more than somewhat for a number of months but by October I was, no, not getting down to writing but racing again at Mallory Park. Actually I planned to resume my fiction work over the winter but then my 99-year-old father, living independently, took a tumble and had to be moved into a care home and his house cleared and sold. Not a good time for the Barnards.
However, I have managed to complete research for the new novel and plan to start writing this October, with a view to submitting the completed MS to Headline Review in May 2010. It is possible the hardcover will appear by the end of the year, though more likely that both it and the mass-market paperback will be published in 2011. My apologies to those readers who have asked when they should start checking the shelves of bookshops, but occasionally real life intrudes, particularly when you are 71…
A closing comment about prostate cancer. Based on the number of people who have suffered from it, or know those who have, this is astonishingly common. It needs to be caught early, and this involves not only checking yourself for symptoms and monitoring your PSA level but if something is detected undergoing what, in normal circumstances, might be considered embarrassing examinations. I found it went beyond embarrassment because you were, after all, facing a life-threatening condition. So, to men of a certain age, let’s say beyond fifty, don’t assume that you are impervious to diseases that you always assume strike someone else but never you; somewhat like the attitude of those fighter pilots I write about who believe it will always happen to the other chap.
My consultant, at one stage, said: ‘ People don’t die of prostate cancer, they die with it.’ In other words, the cancer spreads if it’s allowed to flourish undetected. So please, if you’re like me, suppress your natural masculine dislike of admitting to frailty or weakness, and visit your GP if in any doubt. I was lucky because my racing medical took me there for another reason. Otherwise, the situation might have been very different.
And my regime now? I’m about to have the last of my three-monthly blood tests to check my PSA level, these spread over a year. They’ve been effectively zero so far and if this one is the same, then I move to a six-monthly check. So life, that splendid word, is very close to normal again and my outline synopsis for Book Four is complete and, I believe, an exciting and broad-ranging story covering combat flying in both World Wars. I just hope that, after all this time, it proves to be worth waiting for…
22-23 April 2009
As part of my research into World War 1 flying for my next novel I’ve just spent time in France visiting Royal Flying Corps airfields; St Omer, Le Hameau (also known as Filescamp) west of Arras, nearby Avesnes-le-Comte and Vert-Galant north of Amiens.
St.Omer was the largest British airfield on the Western Front, occupied continuously from 1914 to 1918. Over fifty separate squadrons operated from there and, as well as an operational base, it was the major RFC (eventually to be the RAF) aircraft repair and storage depot. A memorial to the 50,000-plus personnel who served there was erected by Cross & Cockade, the WW1 aviation historical society as recently as 2004, better late than never you might say, given the achievements of the St Omer airmen and ground-crew. Like Le Hameau and Avesnes, Vert-Galant proved elusive to locate, despite lying on crossroads on the busy N25, but was spookily identifiable with many farm buildings, once used as billets and workshops, just as they are in contemporary photographs showing a variety of aeroplanes and crews on the grass airfield nearly a century ago.
Was this Biggles?
I also called at the war cemeteries at Izel-le-Hameau and Avesnes-le-Comte containing the graves of numbers of young pilots, some of whose stories are documented, others not. At Avesnes for example the headstone of 2nd Lieutenant G.Wiglesworth struck a chord; an unusual name that prompted the inevitable speculation that Lt Wiglesworth might have been the inspiration for that fictional ace Bigglesworth, immortalised as Biggles by Captain W.E.Johns, who himself had a distinguished flying career in the RFC. But so far, checking various W.E.Johns and Biggles websites, I can find no confirmation. Was Wiglesworth known to Captain Johns? Certainly Johns didn’t fly in the same sector, being further south near Nancy, but perhaps they trained together? An interesting possibility that might be worth investigating but, given my time schedule, not by me unfortunately because here comes the tough bit: confronting that blank screen and starting the real work.
