T.D. Owen: History Is All Around Us: How Local History Can Be Brought To Life
According to George Bernard Shaw, ‘Youth is wasted on the young,’ and in my case, he was probably right. By good fortune and some hard work, I found myself at an Oxbridge College in the late 1970s, studying Geography, dubbed ‘colouring in’ by the astrophysicists and Newtonian mathematicians. Then I stumbled across a new and growing niche called Historical Geography. The study of past landscapes was right up my Watling Street – origins of places names, Domesday, ridge and furrow – and I lapped it all up. But the academics declared I couldn’t possibly understand the subject unless I had a grasp of the underlying philosophy, and they smothered my enthusiasm with Marxism, structuralism, logical positivism and a word I couldn’t spell let alone comprehend – phenomenology. My youthful undergraduate years petered out in a poor two: two, sadly fulfilling Bernard Shaw’s observation on youth.
The Cage Full of Birds
Nearly fifty years later, I published my first novel, The Cage Full of Birds, the first of five, if I’m granted the time. It was in the writing of this that I discovered my university lecturers were not as obtuse as I thought: philosophy matters when writing fiction in a local history setting, none more so than phenomenology, perhaps best defined in this context as casting off the conceptions of the 21st century and endeavouring to see and experience the setting of your novel through the eyes of those who were there at the time.
My work is set in the civil war of the 12th century. My hope was not only to convey a narrative about the extraordinary events of that time but, through the eyes of the protagonists, some real, some fictional, to get under the skin of their ambitions, worries, beliefs, hates and loves; all that drove them to survive and even thrive in a most angry period of history. Where does one start when sources are sparse for your setting? The answer lies in two words: research and phenomenology.
Local Setting, Grand Scale
Let’s deal with research first and take The Cage Full of Birds as an example. It explores the experience of Gilles, a young monk, sent by the Normandy Abbey of Bec to tend its estate and church of Stivetun in Berkshire, and how he is dragged into the politics and upheaval of the time. Despite this local setting, set your framework for research on a grand a scale as possible: the national and even international level. Read everything you can lay your hands on: both popular history and high-brow of academia; get a reader’s card for the Bodleian; understand every nook and corner of the historical context of your period.
It’s not just the chronology and nature of events that you must grasp, but also the politics, theology, social structures and economics. Put yourself on the line: give talks, let people question you, bore your friends to death. Become a master of your period. Without this, your writing cannot be authentic. How else could I have understood the outlook on life young Gilles would have brought from his monastic background to the open fields of a feudal Norman estate?
Local Research
Next, bring your research down to the local area. For the 12th century, the written records are few and far between. Domesday is marvellous of course, and often there will be land charters, both Saxon and Norman, but there might not be much more. However, in the dusty corners of libraries there are all sorts of useful insights. For me, the journal Anglo Norman Studies, was invaluable and it even topped my Christmas list at one point. Archaeology provides bountiful local evidence, not only in the detailed reports that follow each dig, but also through volunteering to get your hands muddy in a trench.
Not only is it a thrill in itself – says one whose idea of a romantic evening with the wife is to watch past episodes of Time Team – but an opportunity to talk dirty with archaeologists who live up to their waists in the past. Your aim is to reconstruct the geography of your local landscape: where the lanes and roads ran; the extent and lie of the fields; the shape of the village; the construction of the homes; the likely hierarchy of the village society; how law and order operated; the role of the church and faith in people’s lives.
Phenomenology
And then we come to phenomenology, a moment which sets the pulse racing and your friends reaching for the defibrillator. The approach is not easy, but my goodness it’s fun. With your meticulously researched understanding of the landscape appearing as an image in your mind, walk the locality, stop to observe, to listen, to smell – not what is there now but what would have been there then. Semi-close your eyes; squint at the land around; meditate, hum, talk in tongues, levitate; do whatever you need to transport yourself back in time. Stand on the key spots where your protagonist gave those compelling speeches; say the words yourself, out loud with full gesture.
Run along the very track he did, fall into the ditch where he fell, look up at your pursuer, shout your profanities at him. As far as you can, live the life he or she did. For me this meant living with the monks at Bec Abbey for a while; it meant crawling on my belly around the remains of Sarum cathedral; giving the very sermons Gilles gave to his flock in Stivetun church; and it meant standing for hours in the sun and rain on the hill above my village.
Does it work? I think so. One reviewer of many writes ‘…… You made the landscape and period integral to the reading experience, not just the characters and plot …’ That’s exactly what I was hoping for.
(c) T.D. Owen
About The Cage Full of Birds:
In 1138, Gilles, a monk barely into manhood, is sent by the great Benedictine abbey of Bec in Normandy to its estate of Stivetun in Berchescire. His charge seems routine: to oversee the farming of the abbey’s lands and to cure the souls of its peasant tenants.
But England is in a state of political and religious upheaval, a morass that draws the naïve Gilles into a series of dilemmas which will test his ingenuity and his faith. He must contend with the self-serving Bishops of Wyncestre and Sarum; Alvric, the obdurate reeve of the village; and the seductive Maud of Walingeford. And then there is the guileful Peter of Waneting, his old mentor from Bec, who is forever shifting shape.
Gilles’ sense of justice and truth thrusts him to the forefront of calamitous events and compels him to make choices that will seal the fate of some and the salvation of many.
The Cage Full of Birds is story of real people who lived and struggled in The Anarchy of twelfth century England; a stirring tale of self-discovery,the triumph of hope over doubt and, ultimately, of good over evil.
Order The Cage Full of Birds: £11.99 through Amazon, Troubador and www.tdowen.co.uk
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