When Fact is Better Than Fiction
The Chamberlain story and how it paints my characters' lives
Full moon or was it a new moon? I researched the date in October 1909, found the new moon and promptly wrote full moon. It was several reads through before I re-checked my research and noticed I’d said one thing and meant another — but it really did matter. That’s the degree of detail that slows down my writing but brings a weird bit of pleasure.
Chapter 20 of A Legacy at War is on the PC and what I was expecting to be a rather thin book is already splitting its spine with fabulous historical events and characterisations. Whilst I’m writing a lot of fiction around real events it would be easy to try and get away with the odd inaccuracy but when the truth is better than fiction, why change it?
Politics never changes (jobs for the boys)
This was the case when I went digging into the Chamberlain brothers, Joseph and Arthur, and the truth turned out to be more satisfying than something I'd make up. Both were involved in politics during the late 19th/early 20th centuries and they had opposing views when it came to Ireland. Joseph (Birmingham's hero) spent decades as the politician blocking Irish Home Rule. Meanwhile, his own brother, Arthur, was Chairman of the Board of Kynoch, a huge Birmingham factory. He secured the contract for supplying cordite to the military before the Boer War: a situation that became politically explosive when the war broke out.
Joseph, as Colonial Secretary, had pushed hard for war with the Boers and his brother Arthur's firm appeared to be benefitting from supplying it. Lloyd George accused the Chamberlain family of war profiteering — I guess they were, and they weren't but the charge never stuck.
However, when the government learned that the cordite was being manufactured in Arklow, just south of Dublin, that was a step too far so they tried to cancel the contract. Arthur Chamberlain wasn't standing for any of that and, most likely for business reasons rather than a love for the Irish, he lobbied John Redmond. Mr Redmond was an Irish Nationalist and leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party. It was John Redmond who took the plight of Kynochs to Westminster and saved the contract.
Arthur Chamberlain wasn't done yet! In 1907, Arthur gave an interview with Arthur Griffith, the founder of Sinn Féin. He admitted to the Sinn Féin leader that England throttled Irish industry deliberately, thus igniting a larger political gap between the two brothers and most likely uncomfortable family Sunday dinners.
Why deep dive the true mechanics for a fictional story?
My family saga hinges around relationships in the family. Everyone has their own perspective and so this example of inter-familial differences amongst the Chamberlains feeds my novels nicely. While Joseph Chamberlain is heralded in ‘Angelina’ for his immense welfare improvements in Birmingham, there is still another perspective. ‘Oh goodie!’ I say, because it’s these kinds of true stories that feed my writing.
Differing perspectives are my jam
I write about two families. The Sellers are my ancestors and main characters in the whole trilogy. The Cahills are the Irish interest and key to how the story pans out. Their fictionalised behaviour is nevertheless based on real events. The politics and their view will influence how they live their lives. This is so important to me — it’s how I create characters who become real to my readers. As a simple example, understanding the mechanisms behind the Chamberlain brothers’ activities gives me two separate perspectives — the English view and the Irish view.
When Joseph Chamberlain was wheeled out, crippled by a stroke and yet still the local MP, the Sellers celebrated the positive impact he made on Birmingham. Meanwhile, in the same city, the Cahills derided Chamberlain for slamming the door shut on Irish Home Rule. They pointed to the Chamberlain family’s profiteering to validate their view that the Chamberlains were out for themselves and no one else. These opposing views turned the Cahills further away from the warm relationship they had with English families like the Sellers. I skim over a lot of this in the books, but it gives you a deeper understanding of character motivations.
Deep research = author fatigue
Wrap all of these political shenanigans into the igniting of the Birmingham motor car industry, toss in the Suffragette movement, and you have a magnificent explosion of people living in exciting times. At this end of the keyboard, it makes for complex research, a taxed author’s brain and a very big spreadsheet. I’ll write on the Birmingham Suffragettes in another blog, by the way. So magnificent were they, that there will undoubtedly be a whole novel which will give my fabulous Suffragette activist ‘Jazz’ Barker, in A Legacy at War, her own story.
One important point. I enjoy this kind of research but not all my readers will be fussed about it. Be assured that you will discover these nuggets through conversations between characters and live through events on the page. My aim is for you to not even notice that you’re finding stuff out.
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