After publishing my first novel, The Sulphur Priest, in 2021, a story that was very much bound up in my academic work as an archaeologist and historian of the Crusader period, I was looking for an idea for a new novel that would be a challenge, a story set in what would be, for me, less familiar territory. Playing with various ideas, I came quite suddenly on the theme when, by chance, I glanced at two framed photographs that I keep on my desk – one of my father, taken moments after he had enlisted in the Australian infantry Forces in 1940, and the other of two great uncles taken in a studio in London in 1916, halfway through the First World War, after having fought at Gallipoli and prior to serving in Flanders (see my earlier post - On the Horror of War, 5 August 2018). The difference between the two photographs immediately caught my attention, notably, the facial expressions – my father’s registering pride and excitement, emotions that were captured even in his stride, whereas my great uncles appeared subdued and pensive. It occurred to me that their expressions signified the difference between the expectations of a soldier setting out on what he views as an adventure, and the reality a war as experienced by those who had already been in battle.
I wanted to write a book in which I could convey my own feelings about war, about its futility, about how cynical people promote it without regard to the suffering it brings, about how war changes people. But also, I wanted to write about the gentler side of war, the brotherhood it ignites, the bond of a soldier and his brothers in arms, and the suffering he undergoes when they are harmed or killed.
My interest in the First World War perhaps dates back to when, as a child, growing up in Melbourne in the 1950s and 60s, I watched the Anzac Day ceremonies on television, the parade of thousands of marching veterans of both world wars at the Shrine of Remembrance. Many years later, on the other side of the world, an unexpected experience drew me once again to this period of history. This occurred when I lived in an old house in the Bukharin quarter in Jerusalem in the 1970s. A leak in the roof sent me up to replace some broken rooftiles, and in the dark and dusty space beneath the gabled roof among old furniture, crates and objects, I noticed a bundle of crumpled-up newspapers. Out of curiosity I took them, and after dusting them off and removing pigeon droppings, I used a cold iron to flatten them out. What I found was a little treasurer - two copies of the trilingual Illustrierter Kriegs-Kurier, an illustrated war newspaper, one copy dating to 1914, the other to 1916. That discovery set me on a course of reading everything I could lay my hands on about the war – histories, novels, and above all, the wonderfully moving war poetry.
Out of this has now emerged my new novel - A Gentle Empire. Being a novice to this period I researched as widely as I could for this book, reading numerous firsthand accounts in war diaries and letters, the detailed descriptions in Charles Bean’s Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–1918, and contemporary newspapers. I examined maps and thousands of photographs, I watched original films taken on the battlefields, and I listened to sound recordings. In an effort to lend authenticity to my text I studies the topography, flora and fauna of the different locations, researched into shellshock, weapons and uniforms, and many minor objects used at the time, such commonplace things as what types of cigarette brands were smoked, what songs were sung by the soldiers, and what foods available to in the trenches. And, for the sake of accuracy in dialogue, I researched the slang words that were current at the time.
For the title, I wanted something that was not too obvious, but that would relate to one of the main themes of the novel – brotherhood, and I found it in the opening lines to a sonnet by John Keats:
Small, busy flames play through the fresh laid coals,
And their faint cracklings o'er our silence creep
Like whispers of the household gods that keep
A gentle empire o'er fraternal souls.
The name of this poem – To my brothers, of course caught my eye, but when I read these opening lines, I knew that I had my title. We all feel like this – certainly soldiers going into battle do – that there is some power looking out for them, some “household god” of their own, and that if their comrades should fall around them, somehow, they would make it through. So must have felt my hero, so too must have felt the millions of young men who went off to fight in that terrible war. Sadly, not even household gods are always able to protect the souls in their charge.
The launch of A Gentle Empire on Amazon is planned for 15 May 2025. I will discuss the writing of this book and do a cover reveal on this and other platforms.
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