http://www.writers-online.co.uk APRIL 2017WRITER’S BOOKSHELF
http://www.writers-online.co.ukwww.writers-online.co.uk APRIL 2020^3737INVENTING THE
VICTORIANS
by Matthew Sweet, 2001‘This is the book that
inspired me to write
non-fiction. Sweet sets
out his stall in his first
line – Suppose that
everything we think
we know about the
Victorians is wrong –
and then proceeds
to demonstrate it
through a series of
the sort of eyebrow-
raisers you find
yourself filing away
to surprise people with in the pub later. The
gruesome origins of the phrase “Sweet Fanny
Adams”; the nonsense peddled about whether
Prince Albert had a Prince Albert and the fact
the entire idea of prudish patriachs covering up
piano legs for fear they would inspire lustful
thoughts was only ever a joke are all explored
via liberal quotations from a popular press
that sounds surprisingly contemporary and
Sweet’s own generous modern-day anecdotage:
it made me realise that I was allowed to use
Alan Titchmarsh and Tara-Palmer Tomkinson
to demonstrate points in my biography of
Victorian ultra-eccentric William Lever (The
King of Sunlight) and to hell with the reviewers
who would be sniffy about it. There is no point
writing books for people who know everything
about a topic already: you want to grab people
who never realised the subject could be exciting
and deliver it in a fresh and unexpected way.’‘I
’m lucky to have a job in journalism that pays most of the
bills. Because Private Eye is fortnightly I do one week in
the office cranking out stories about politics and the media
with my blood pressure rising, and then a week at home
working on books until I start muttering to myself and need to get
back out into the real world again.
‘I’ve always thought of my non-fiction books as an extension of
my journalism: it’s about finding interesting stories people don’t
necessarily know and telling them in an entertaining and unexpected
way. Beneath The Streets, my first novel (not counting the two
that didn’t find publishers) is an extension of that: it explores two
historical mysteries that have never been properly cleared up to
anyone’s satisfaction – the attempted murder of Jeremy Thorpe’s
former lover and the sudden resignation of Harold Wilson as Prime
Minister – and explores a world that existed in the shadows at the
time and has largely stayed there ever since: that of young gay men in
the 1970s at a time when their very existence made them illegal.
‘Like most writers, I’ve got habits that have taken on the form
of rules: I don’t work weekends at all if I can help it; am fortunateenough to have my own study nowadays but have discovered I can
actually bash away at the laptop pretty much anywhere; start every
day revising and editing the day before’s words; can’t work without
a deadline even if it’s one I’ve set for myself, and try to get to a daily
word count, but I’m not saying what it is because there’s nothing
positive to be gained by anyone else measuring themselves against it.
‘One thing I will pass on: once I’ve finished the first draft of any
book I put it away and do something else, for months if possible,
so I can get some distance from it and then do the fun bit, which
is completely ripping the thing apart. Beneath The Streets lost three
chapters once I was in a position to see the wood for the trees and
the ending then got a comprehensive rewrite (including resurrecting
a major character) thanks to the astute suggestions of my editor
Simon Edge. I’ve yet to meet a piece of writing that hasn’t ended up
better as a result of another pair of eyes on it. But I think the best
advice I could pass on is to ignore all the above: the only thing you
need to do to be a writer is to write. Just get some bloody words
on the page. Usually you find more will follow, and some of them
might even be quite good.’WATCHMEN
by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, 1986
‘I’ve concentrated so far on the books that have inspired aspects
of my own writing: this is the one I could never hope to emulate
either in form or scope. Moore takes the tropes of superhero
comics and, rather than twisting them or spoofing them,
somehow evolves them, giving us a group of jaded and long-past-
their-best caped crusaders who are actively anti-heroic; explores
the implications that superpowers and the granting of moral
authority would have on all-too-human figures, and ties it all into
an apocalyptic fable that is at once fantastical and utterly rooted
in 1980s realpolitik. At the same time he and Gibbons manage to weave in vignettes of
the ordinary lives that are always going on in the background and an entirely separate
narrative (about cursed pirates!) which ultimately come together in one of the most
devastating moments in literature, delivered in seven entirely-wordless panels. My
university dissertation was on William Blake, and my big discovery (I’m not saying it
was a good dissertation) was the way his illustrations subverted and questioned the text
they wove in and out of: Dave Gibbons’ illustrations do something similar here, with the
added onion-skin layers that you can never fully trust any of the characters delivering the
dialogue within them either.’non-fiction. Sweet sets
out his stall in his first‘And here’s another prime example of my thesis: the most
fantastically-contrived serial killer plot (no spoilers) which, when
revealed, detracts in no way from a story which not only further
explores some well-loved (and on occasion loathed) characters
built up over some twenty or so novels that are nominally police
procedurals, but also develops two new ones to the point that
when they end up in inevitable peril you find yourself rooting
for both of them, even though some expertly-employed dramatic
irony means you really shouldn’t. And throughout it all – in this
book perhaps more than any other in the Dalziel and Pascoe series – Reginald Hill is
celebrating his love of the English language, making his own paronomasia (yes, you’re
supposed to have to look it up, as you will with at least one word in every chapter of
his books) explicit and as key to the plot as the increasingly baroque murders which
punctuate the story. I read this whole series over and over again and find it genuinely
painful that Hill’s death in 2012 means we will never see Andy Dalziel in retirement or
know what Rosie Pascoe grows up to be.’
DIALOGUES OF THE DEAD
by Reginald Hill, 2001in 1980s realpolitik. At the same time he and Gibbons manage to weave in vignettes of