A Magic Castle

I recently visited the delightful Victorian castle at Chiddingstone in Kent and was introduced to the extraordinary world of Denys Eyre Bower, eccentric and obsessive collector of antique artefacts.

 

 

 

Born in Derbyshire in 1905, Denys started his career in a bank but by the age of 38, he had had enough of this sober environment. He left and made his hobby into his life's work, amassing a remarkable collection that ranged from Jacobite memorabilia to world-class collections of Japanese and Egyptian art. (Denys had a habit of claiming he was the reincarnation of Bonnie Prince Charlie.) In 1955, he bought Chiddingstone Castle to house the collection and show it to visitors.

 

Japanese Samurai helmet
 

 

When peace left Japanese armourers without work, they used their skills to make articulated insects for collectors and the emerging tourist trade.
 

A rare Japanese casket

 

 

Denys' private life was even more colourful.

Twice married, neither of the marriages lasted long possibly because his wives couldn't compete with his passion for collecting. His next relationship was with a young lady who claimed to be a member of the Grimaldi family of Monaco; she was in fact the daughter of a delivery man from Peckham in south London! The relationship was stormy and when Denys thought his beloved's affection was waning, he went to visit her taking an antique gun with him. The gun went off and she was wounded. Fearing she was dead, he turned it on himself. The next years were spent in Wormwood Scrubs prison for attempted murder and suicide, until the efforts of his solicitor, Ruth Eldridge, who thought there had been a miscarriage of justice, got him freed.

 

He spent his remaining years at the castle where he lived frugally, often going to market late in the day to buy food cheaply, however he still found the money to buy himself a yellow Rolls Royce.

 

He died in 1977 but his collection lives on.

 

 

 

 

Ten Golden Rules

I've just put the finishing touches to the second instalment of my Inspector de Silva Mysteries, Dark Clouds Over Nuala, so, with the hard work done, I'm taking a moment to reflect on what I've learnt over my years of writing.

 

1 Don't worry about finding gaps in the market, write what you like to read. That way you'll write with interest and passion and it will communicate to your readers.

 

2 Have a great opening. You have about 15 seconds to sell your book to the potential reader browsing in a bookshop or on Amazon. Give them a great cover, a captivating blurb, a killer first sentence that compels them to read on.

 

3 Be clear about point of view. Writing in the first person is tempting but remember, your protagonist must be interesting, quirky or both, for the story will be filtered through the prism of their thoughts and words. Also , they will have to be in every scene. Third person is not, of course, a problem in this way, but remember not to "head hop" within a scene or a chapter. If you want to use  multiple POVs, take care not to overdo them.

 

4 Write in the way that suits you. Some people like to plan in great detail; you may not. The thriller writer, Mark Billingham, advocates the "headlight" approach, just plan as far ahead as you can see in the headlights. Personally, I like a plan but I'm always ready to depart from it if I get a better idea. 

 

5  Keep going! I don't advocate a set word limit every day, it can be so stressful that you no longer enjoy your writing, but try and do something, even if it's only a few paragraphs. Writing, like most things, improves with practice.

 

6 When you've finished your first draft, edit ruthlessly. Your manuscript will probably be too long and much improved by cutting out long descriptions, too many adverbs and adjectives, unnecessary or banal dialogue etc. Don't agonise over detail too much though. I don't advise becoming like Oscar Wilde who claimed to spend a morning deciding to put in in a comma and then the afternoon deciding to take it out! When you're ready ask a trusted friend (or three) to read and comment. If you can afford it, a professional copy edit is a very good idea. 

 

 

7 Work on dialogue. Good dialogue is so important; your characters will come alive if you know how they speak. Use speech tags as sparingly as possible, really only where the reader would otherwise be confused about who's speaking.

 

8  Less is more. Don't hammer points home, let your readers use their intelligence and imagination and work some things out for themselves.

 

 

 

9  Don't get hung up on research. Leave it until you know what you'll need to know. Take care though: readers who like historical novels usually have a good grasp of history and crime fans tend to be savvy about their facts, whether it's police procedure or poisons.

 

10 Above all, show, don't tell. Take the reader with you into the world you're writing about. Make them feel they're involved and waiting breathless to see how things will turn out.

 

Dark Clouds Over Nuala - An Inspector de Silva Mystery is out on Monday 22nd May 2017 in Kindle (available now to pre-order at getBook.at/darkclouds.)

 

  

Silver and Us

This week I spent a fascinating day in the company of an expert from the BBC's popular Antiques Roadshow. I was learning about antique silver and the part it has played in social custom. I'm sure that much of what I learnt is going to add greatly to my enjoyment of works of art.

It would take too long to mention everything here so I'll just touch on a few aspects of the study day.

We began with a painting of a medieval banquet. How pretty, I thought. I'm sure I received an Xmas card that looked very like it last year. But our expert made us look deeper into the picture. He pointed out that the windows would have been unglazed in medieval times. Birds and insects would have been able to come into the banqueting hall very easily. I wasn't sure that his suggestion that the reason why the lords and ladies would sit under a canopy was to protect them from bird droppings, but the idea that covered cups were used to keep the drink clean and fresh was far more plausible. You can see one on the left in the painting below.

Contrary to popular belief, hygiene was not neglected in medieval days. When you were the guest of  a wealthy household, you were expected to bring your own knife and would be offered water to wash it and your hands. Plates (trenchers) were usually provided as well as spoons (no forks were in general use until much later on). Incidentally trenchers were mainly square, giving rise to the expression "a square meal". 

It was in Tudor times that hygiene became less scrupulous, perhaps because of the growth in population. The Tudors also loved their bling. Something akin to this extraordinary silver ship, known as a nef, would have graced the tables of the rich.

 Several hundreds of years later, in the Edwardian era, a beautiful silver teapot like this one would have been an essential ornament to the tea table if you wanted to be fashionable. However it wasn't considered necessary that all the pieces of the tea service should match. It was acceptable for them to have been purchased at different times, or handed down as family heirlooms.  

Service at table also changed from "service a la francaise" where many dishes were placed in the centre of the table and people helped themselves, to "service a la russe" shown below where there would be many courses, all served individually by staff. This left more room in the centre of a table for elaborate centrepieces - silver being highly prized. Interesting that the popularity of sharing plates in modern restaurants is, in effect, a return to the idea of "service a la francaise".

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