Tag Archives: research

The Royal Resident of Regent Terrace

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Happy new year! I hope you had an enjoyable festive season. Like probably quite a lot of people, I spent some of the holidays binge-watching TV shows, including the new BBC series, Marie Antoinette.

Whenever I watch historical dramas, I find myself googling characters or plot lines; sometimes to find out more, sometimes to establish what is based on fact and what is a pure fiction. I did this frequently while watching Marie Antoinette, and it was during one of these many searches that I came across a really interesting piece of information which again connects the French royal family to Edinburgh.

Portrait of Marie Antoinette by Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, 1783
Portrait of Marie Antoinette by Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, 1783, from Wikimedia Commons.

As I discussed in last September’s blog post, Holyroodhouse provided sanctuary to Louis XVI’s brother, the Comte D’Artois (and future Charles X) from 1796 and into the early years of the nineteenth century. Thirty years later, 21 Regent Terrace in Edinburgh’s New Town hosted Marie-Thérèse Charlotte, Duchess of Angoulême, the eldest and by that time only surviving child of King Louis XVI and his queen, Marie Antoinette.

Queen Marie Antoinette of France and her husband King Louis XVI of France with their first child Princess Marie Therese Charlotte of France, 1778.
Queen Marie Antoinette of France and her husband King Louis XVI of France with their first child Princess Marie Therese Charlotte of France, 1778. Artist unknown, from Wikimedia Commons.

When Marie-Thérèse arrived in Edinburgh in 1830, she had gone into exile for a second and final time in a life which was undoubtedly marked by danger and personal tragedy. Born in 1778, Marie-Thérèse was still a child when the French Revolution began. In the 1790s she endured a lengthy and distressing captivity in the Temple Tower in Paris, during which she suffered the loss of her parents and younger brother. In 1796 she was allowed to leave France for Austria, where she was reunited with other exiled members of the French royal family. It was during this time that she married her cousin, Louis-Antoine, the Duke of Angoulême, before moving to England.

Portrait of Marie-Thérèse Charlotte, Duchess of Angoulême, 1816, by Antoine-Jean Gros.
Portrait of Marie-Thérèse Charlotte, Duchess of Angoulême, 1816, by Antoine-Jean Gros. From Wikimedia Commons.

In 1814, the abdication of Napoleon and the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy meant that Marie-Thérèse was able to return to France, and in 1824 she became the French Dauphine following the death of Louis XVIII and the accession of her father-in-law, the Comte D’Artois, now Charles X. However, Marie-Thérèse would never be Queen of France. In 1830 revolution arrived again, sending Marie-Thérèse, her husband and other members of the Bourbon royal family once more into exile. This time, their destination was Edinburgh.

While the deposed King Charles X made his home in Holyroodhouse for a second time, Marie-Thérèse settled at 21 Regent Terrace near to Calton Hill. At this time, the houses on this street were brand new, having been designed by architect William Playfair in the 1820s. Interestingly, when 21 (now 22) Regent Terrace went up for sale twenty years ago, it was described in an article by The Scotsman newspaper as being largely unchanged since the nineteenth century.

21 (now 22) Regent Terrace, Edinburgh, in 2014.
21 (now 22) Regent Terrace, Edinburgh, in 2014. By Stephen C Dickson. From Wikimedia Commons

Marie-Thérèse lived at 21 Regent Terrace until 1833 before leaving Scotland for Prague and spending the rest of her life in the Austrian Empire. She died in 1851, having lived long enough to see France become a republic for a second time in 1848.

Sources/Further Reading:

  1. Marie-Thérèse, Duchess of Angoulême – Wikipedia
  2. Marie-Thérèse of France, Duchess of Angoulême | Unofficial Royalty
  3. Madame Royale | Palace of Versailles (chateauversailles.fr)
  4. Regent Terrace – Wikipedia
  5. The New Town’s later extensions | Edinburgh World Heritage (ewh.org.uk)
  6. For sale: tragic royal’s bolthole | The Scotsman

A Preoccupation with Solitude

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Over the past couple of years, I’ve found myself quite interested in histories relating to solitude, in terms of what being alone has meant down the centuries, and how people have responded to ideas of solitude over time. My interest in this was first sparked by a couple of radio or podcast series, the first being Thomas Dixon’s A Short History of Solitude for the BBC, and the second being the Spaces of Solitude podcast by researchers at Queen Mary University London. I mentioned both previously on a blog post about my favourite podcasts – more here. Thinking back, I don’t think it’s too much of a surprise that this subject resonated me – in the pandemic times, I found myself both isolated from the outside world, but rarely ever alone at home, with all my family ‘locked down’ beside me. Solitude, I came to realise, is something I need in order to create. As the saying goes, you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone.

One of the topics within this theme of solitude which really intrigued me was that of religious hermits, anchorites and anchoresses; those who devoted themselves to lives of piety and solitude in the medieval period (although perhaps were not always as alone as we might think, as Thomas Dixon’s series explores). In recent times I’ve become quite an enthusiast for medieval history – something which has come as a surprise, since I was always a devoted early-modernist in my student days. I suppose the two interests, therefore, go hand in hand. With all this in mind, yesterday I stumbled upon a really interesting story…

First, a bit of context. My current work-in-progress has reclusive people at its heart. I’m not sure that was a deliberate choice I made when I began to write; rather, I think it was a subconscious one which developed quickly and which, given my recent preoccupation with solitude, isn’t all that surprising. My two main characters find themselves alone for diverse reasons, some circumstantial, some matters of choice, but both are grappling with their solitude in their different ways. The novel is set in Cumberland (now Cumbria), along the Whitehaven coastline. Yesterday, as I was redrafting, I found myself wandering down a bit of a Google rabbit hole (it happens often). One of the characters mentions the village of St Bees; I went on Google to check a detail and, just like that, I found Saint Bega.

View of the South Head from the golf course at St Bees, Cumbria, by Doug Sim. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:St_Bees_south_head_from_path.jpg

Not far from St Bees is St Bees Head, a headland which reaches out west and is home nowadays to a RSPB reserve and a variety of sea birds. It is also said to be where, in the ninth century, an Irish princess called Saint Bega was shipwrecked after fleeing her homeland and the prospect of a forced marriage to a Viking prince. Bega settled for some time in the area, becoming an anchoress, before eventually fleeing further east into Northumbria as the threat from raiding pirates loomed large. The name of the village is a corruption of its Norse name, Kyrkeby Becok, which translates as ‘church of Bega’. St Bees Priory, which has its own long and interesting history, was also dedicated to her.

Stained glass window at St Bees Priory depicting the arrival of St Bega at St Bees, sometime after 850 AD, by Doug Sim. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:St_Bega_stained_glass.JPG

There is more detailed information about St Bega’s life, the relic and cult of St Bega, and indeed whether or not she ever existed at all over on the St Bees website. However, having unexpectedly discovered this story yesterday, I just had to share it. And now you know, as I do, why St Bees is called St Bees!

In Remembrance

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As a novelist, I love stories. I love reading them, creating them, writing them, and discovering them. As a historical novelist, I am drawn to the tales of the past, to imagining (and re-imagining) past peoples, places, and events. Perhaps most of all, I enjoy blending research and creativity to bring the past to life through storytelling. I love digging around in the records, discovering those delightful snippets of information bequeathed to us by time and wondering, what then? Why? How? I suppose that same curiosity is what drew me to another interest of mine: genealogy. Over a number of years, I have been researching my own family tree and unearthing the stories of my ancestors. Today, on Remembrance Sunday, I thought I would share with you one of those stories.

The photo above was taken by Darge Photographic Company at Seymour Army Camp in Victoria, Australia, around 21st November 1915. The young man pictured is my ancestor, Thomas Brocklebank, who in July 1915 enlisted with the Australian Imperial Force to fight in the First World War. Five days after this photograph was taken, Private Brocklebank embarked with the 24th Battalion from Melbourne, aboard the HMAT Commonwealth. The records indicate that he first travelled to the AIF Training Camps in North Africa, including Zeitoun Camp, near Cairo. From there he travelled onwards to France and the western front. On 3rd July 1916 he went missing in action. He was never found and following a Court of Enquiry in 1917, was declared to have been killed in action. He was nineteen years old. As he has no known grave, he is commemorated on the Australian National War Memorial at Villers-Bretonneux near Amiens, northern France.

As is so often the case with history, the answer to one question provokes many others. While researching Thomas’s tragic story, I found myself repeatedly wondering how a young man from my family ended up enlisting with the Australian Imperial Force. As far as I knew, I had no connection to Australia, nor did the Brocklebank branch of my family tree, a branch firmly rooted in Cumbria, northern England. It was quite the mystery – a mystery I felt compelled to solve. So I dug further into the records, tracing Thomas’s life through both the military records and census data, taking the clues it offered and building it into the story of his life.

This, I believe, is his story.

Thomas Brocklebank was born in the village of Baycliff, near Dalton-in-Furness in 1897, the youngest son of Thomas Brocklebank snr and his wife, Mary. Mary Brocklebank appears to have died during Thomas’s early infancy, and sometime afterwards his father seems to have left for South Africa, where he fought in the Boer War and subsequently remained for the rest of his life, working as a miner. By 1901, Thomas was living in the Dalton area with his aunt and uncle, Margaret and William Raven, and their family.

Thomas then disappears from the British census records, and I believe therefore that sometime before 1911 he emigrated to Australia with another of his aunts, a lady called Clara Smith and her husband, Richard. They lived in Swan Hill, Victoria, where Thomas worked as a farm labourer until his enlistment in 1915. Thomas’s military record contains some deeply sad correspondence between his aunt Clara and the authorities concerning his whereabouts during the time he was missing, asking for information about what had happened to him. His story is sadly an all too common one, with so many of his generation losing their lives on the battlefields of Europe. Seeing those records, and knowing the profound sense of loss which sits between the lines of Clara’s letters, was very moving.

Unlike many British war records which fell victim to the Blitz, the Australian records remain intact and have been digitised. Whilst census data, by its very nature, can only provide a snapshot of a person at a moment in time, the Australian war records present a timeline of a young man’s army life from enlistment, through training, in combat and ultimately, to his death. The records make for heart-wrenching reading, demonstrating the impact of the war on one young man and his family. They also give some very specific details. I know, for example, that Thomas was five feet two inches tall, with brown hair and green eyes. But a lot of other information has, of course, been lost to time – most importantly, Thomas’s voice. He left no record of himself, no words of his own to stand as testament to what he saw, thought and felt during those short but tumultuous years. And that, for a curious historian and a descendant, is one of the saddest details of all.

Today is Remembrance Sunday, when we commemorate the sacrifice made by millions of men like Thomas. They were the lost generation of the early twentieth century. Lest we forget.

Writing in the Time of Covid

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As we reach the final quarter of the year, I think most of us will be looking back on what a difficult time 2020 has been. Each of us will have had our own challenges and hardships over these preceding months. I saw a meme on social media earlier this week which captured this sentiment perfectly – in essence, it said that though we are all going through the same storm, we aren’t all the same boat. It’s perhaps a statement of the obvious to say that this situation we’re living through touches every part of daily life. For me, it has undoubtedly affected my writing, both in terms of my ability to find the time and space to write, but also how I go about developing a story. One area which has definitely been affected is the way in which I do my research.

From pexels.com.

As some of you will know, my latest project is set in late Georgian Edinburgh. The seeds of this story were sown around nine months ago, during my second Open University assignment. I wrote a short story about a psychic sleuth who, having seen a genteel young woman’s dreadful fate during a leaf reading, tries to intervene with unexpected and rather creepy results. I loved the sleuth so much that I knew I had to write a novel about her – indeed, a series of novels about her. At the time I looked forward enthusiastically to the research I’d be able to do – as anyone who has visited Edinburgh will know, it is a deeply historical and atmospheric place, with a wealth of landmarks and museums to visit.

Candlemaker Row, Edinburgh. From pexels.com.

And then Covid came along.

At the time of writing, things are beginning to open back up but are by no means ‘normal’, meaning that some of the visits I’d planned, particularly to museums, can’t go ahead. Fortunately prior to Covid I had been to some of the places on my list, notably The Georgian House (which is just wonderful, by the way), and as someone living in the nearby Lothians I am broadly familiar with the city. But there were gaps in my knowledge, particularly in understanding how Edinburgh would have looked c.1800 (trust me, even seemingly old cities actually change an awful lot).

Thank goodness for books, and of course, the internet.

I thought today I’d share with you a couple of the absolute gems I’ve come across online during my lockdown research. The first is the Edinburgh World Heritage website, which contains a wealth of information about the old and new towns in the city. This is a really good starting point for anyone interested in the city’s history, and for finding interesting bits of information about individual streets and buildings. The second is the Maps Section of the National Library of Scotland website. I think I’ve lost count of how many hours I’ve spent poring over eighteenth century town plans, cross referencing streets and just generally building a mental image of the Edinburgh my characters inhabited.

North Bridge, Edinburgh, c.1809, from Wikimedia Commons.

In these past months, the internet has been an invaluable resource. If it was hard to imagine life without it before Covid, it seems impossible now. As an historical fiction writer, its importance to my research over these past months can’t be overstated. Quite simply, my latest project wouldn’t be happening without it.

The Immersion Method

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Recently I was reading an interview with Hilary Mantel in BBC History Magazine. Mantel, who is currently one of the most famous and celebrated historical fiction writers, was talking about her approach to her research, and referred to the need to ‘absorb’ the period you’re writing about. I found myself nodding along with this, as it’s so true: when you want to write a story set in the past, it is important to not only understand it, but to visualize it as clearly as you see your own world around you. It’s not enough to know its facts on an academic level, although of course, these are important for accuracy. You have to be able to see it, smell it, taste it, hear it. To do that, I think that you have to breathe it in. You have to let it get right under your skin.

From pexels.com.

Depending on the specific period or context you’re writing about, this can be hard to do. When I wrote about the Pendle witches, I was always conscious that the sort of evidence which aids vivid recreations of settings and characters was scant. I had the awe-inspiring presence of Pendle Hill and Lancaster Castle to work with, but key places like Westby Hall and Malkin Tower are long gone. Furthermore, the women accused left no written record of their own – the sole primary sources available were the court records, steeped as they are in bureaucratic officialdom (and no small amount of propaganda). Interestingly, though, it was this sense of the victims’ lack of voice which made me all the more keen to re-imagine their stories, and to tell them from their point of view.

Illustration from William Harrison Ainsworth’s ‘The Lancashire Witches’. Image from Wikimedia Commons.

This summer, I’m researching for my sixth novel, set in late Georgian Edinburgh. Just as I did when preparing to write about the Pendle witches, I am reading widely and exploring the period. In short, I am immersing myself in it. And wow, what a lot there is to be immersed in! Late eighteenth/early nineteenth century Edinburgh, standing at the crossroads where Enlightenment and Romanticism meet, is a richly recorded and well-preserved place. The source materials, the books to read and the places to visit, are quite simply vast.

The ongoing pandemic means that getting out and about to visit key parts of the city hasn’t been possible yet, although I’m fortunate to know Edinburgh pretty well and have visited many of its museums and historic sites in the past. Until I can refresh my memory, however, there is plenty to be looking at in terms of online resources and books. I have made some truly fabulous discoveries, from the late eighteenth century town plans available through the National Library of Scotland, to the autobiography of a lady called Elizabeth Fletcher, a writer who lived in Edinburgh’s New Town at the turn of the nineteenth century.

Edinburgh. Image from pexels.com.

And to keep my mind firmly on the period, I’m busy re-reading some of my favourite Jane Austen novels and listening to Beethoven!

Some of the information I’m gathering will come in useful directly for the novel. A lot of it, though, is important simply because it enriches my understanding of the period, its people, what their lives were like, and how they felt about the world they inhabited. If I’m going to successfully evoke the setting and create some authentic characters, then this knowledge will be really, really important.