The Stuarts

Skimming through history like this was a way of settling my thoughts. The idea was to lead up to the uprising of 1820 and the novel I’m busy with but I’ve stalled on the Stuarts. I’d known about them from Nigel Tranter and his Lords of Misrule and dismissed them and even Bonnie Prince Charlie but there’s a lot more to that era than my history teacher even hinted at. I’d thought of maybe three books, Darien, Nova Scotia and New Scotland, the proposed opening of the Pongola River to give the Boer republics a sea port but when I looked at Nova Scotia, I realised how much had been going on during the Stuart kingdoms. It made me wonder if a book on the expansion of trade and exploration at that time might be an exciting proposition. The research would be fascinating in itself and I’m sure there would be spin-offs. 1820 is a time of uprising, the time when labour was beginning to flex its muscles and the establishment was determined to kill it at birth. The trouble is that it is a time of poverty and suppression, dark and gloomy, with the heroes hung or despatched to Botany Bay or the plantations in the Caribbean to die of fever. I’ve no doubt there are stories of great heroism but I’m not the person to do it justice, Scotland, yes, but in general … I depress myself writing about it. But the Stuarts and the race to lay claim to foreign lands in the America’s, India, the East. Beset by storms, fighting the French, the Dutch and the Spanish – that’s for me. I want something where I feel the wind in my hair, the uncertainty of a long voyage, the joy of success and the excitement of escape from defeat.
I’ve enjoyed those feelings writing King or Kaiser and Shadows in the Veldt and they might have a sequel.
Darien