Chris Nickson's Blog, page 25

The Real Annabelle Harpers

The Tin God has finally appeared in print, and damn, the reviews have made my heart soar.  As a number of the writers have mentioned, the central figure of book is Annabelle Harper, a working-class woman running to be elected as a Poor Law Guardian in 1897.

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“I absolutely adored this book, right from the very first chapter. I loved the setting, I loved the characters, and I loved the gritty feel of Victorian police work. But more than anything, I was in love with the plucky and persistent Annabelle Harper, and with all the women like her who moved mountains with regards to women’s rights today… the show was definitely stolen by one, little, pub-owning woman who had the nerve to run in an election.”

“Nickson drops us straight onto the streets of his beloved Leeds. We smell the stench of the factories, hear the clatter of iron-shod hooves on the cobbles, curse when the soot from the chimneys blackens the garments on our washing lines and – most tellingly – we feel the pangs of hunger gnawing at the bellies of the impoverished.”

A change in local government law three years before made it possible for someone like her to run for office. But were there really working-class women in Leeds fighting for equality and representation?

Of course there were.

Three years before Annabelle’s campaign, a woman named Mrs. Eliza Dickenson of 4, School Street in Stourton, a miner’s wife “much involved in the recent colliery strike,” received the second-highest number of votes in her ward and was elected as a Poor Law Guardian for the Rothwell Ward. A perfect example. That same year, Mrs. Woodock of Beeston Road, very close to the Hunslet workhouse, was also elected, for the East Ward.

Mrs. Ann Ellis was a power-loom weaver from Batley (not Leeds, but close). Along with two icons of the 19th century Leeds Suffrage movement, she arranged protests against the Factory Acts that were intended to limit the ability of women, especially married women, to work. Mrs. Ellis was instrumental in setting up branches of the Women’s Trade Union League across West Yorkshire, and in 1875 led a six-week strike of women weavers in Dewsbury.

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Mrs. Ann Ellis, standing

The most famous example, perhaps, is Mary Gawthorpe. She grew up in Meanwood, the daughter of a factory foreman (and Tory election agent) and a textile worker. A bright child, Mary won a scholarship to secondary school. But as that only covered the school fees – secondary education wasn’t free at that time – her father refused to let her take, and she became a pupil-teacher at her primary school, teaching younger children in the day and receiving her own lessons in the evening and on Saturday. When she qualified, a little before her 21st birthday, she moved her mother and siblings over to Hunslet to take them away from her abusive father.

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By that time she was already becoming active in the Labour Party, the National Union of Teachers, and was a member of the Leeds Suffrage Society, quickly developing a reputation as a public speaker. Labour’s inaction over women receiving the vote took her to the WSPU, and more militant action. In 1909 she was severely beaten after heckling Churchill at a meeting. Six months later she was assaulted again, and a judge threw out the case when she tried to press charges against her attackers. The accumulated injuries made it impossible for her to continue with her work.

These are just a very few examples. There were dozens, maybe hundreds, more. Not just in Leeds, but everywhere. Your town, your city almost certainly had one or two. Ordinary women, without wealth or status or privilege, who felt compelled to act, to do something. They’re the real heroines.

I love Annabelle dearly. To me, she’s completely alive. But a part of me knows that to some degree that I’m the one who controls her destiny. She’s emblematic of the real women who truly did risk everything for equality. I hope you’ll support her in her campaign to be elected.

When I sat down to start The Tin God, I was there to tell a crime story. That’s what I hope I’ve done. But, in my head, it’s become something bigger, a book that opens a window on a time when women were pushing and struggling to become accepted as full citizens, even if there was little prospect of success. I feel as if I’ve tapped into something bigger – but I may be entirely delusional on that. Of course, I’d love for you to buy a copy of the book. But if you can’t, please order it from the library, and if they don’t have it, ask them to buy a copy. Not just because it’s my book, but because it might give a little understanding of what all those real Annabelle Harpers had to endure. And please, honour those who really did put it all on the line. They were the pioneers. They deserve it.

Friends and Traitors – A Review

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I’ve long been a fan of John Lawton’s Inspector (Superintendent, Chief Super, Commander) Troy series. I re-read the entire canon regularly. They’re historical crime novels set between the 1930s and 1963, with depth resonance, and a convincing blurring of the line between mystery and spy novel. Critics love his work, and the surprise is that the books have never become best sellers. So news of a new Tory novel was definitely exciting, as the last few years have seen him working on a different series with a spy and chancer named Joe Holderness.

Friends and Traitors, though, is every bit as much about the defector Guy Burgess as it is about Troy. They have a small shared history, and it’s Troy who’s in Vienna on a family trip when Burgess appears in a very orchestrated move to declare that he wants to return to Britain. But is it all real, or some ploy by the KGB? Is Burgess being used?

More than anything, this is a book that feels as if it’s bringing together every strand of Troy’s past and present. A few are missing – police mentor George Bonham and doctor/occasional lover Anna Pakenham – but most at least poke their heads around the door. Even Holderness puts in an appearance.

The heart of the book, though, is the conflict of the insider and outsider in society. Burgess, even as a traitor, remains an insider, a man who went to the best schools (Eton and Cambridge), who was part of the elite, something that can never be discarded. Yet Troy, who comes from dubious money – a father who fled Russia with a fortune and became a newspaper proprietor and aristocrat – is also a public school alumnus, with a similar web of connections. The obverse side of the same coin, and still an insider, no matter how much he fights against the idea.

And ideas are central to the novel. Of places in society, breaking out but never away; even Shirley Foxx finds that instead of never being able to go home again, you can never entirely leave the past behind. Of art, and myth, and self-creation, or re-creation. The characters, real and invented, live and breathe the way they do in all Lawton’s work, but there’s curiously little passion at play here, unlike, say, Black Out, which existed on a wave of it. That really only comes closer to the end – at the same time that Troy, chafing under the suspicion of the spooks (again) and the duties of rank, finally gets a murder to investigate – two of them, in fact.

No spoilers, but an end that’s bleakly satisfying. And Tory, as almost always, keeps his emotional distance from everything and everyone.

Friends and Traitors is satisfying in the way that every Lawton book satisfies. The prose goes down like cream, and the characters feel so real you could have a conversation with them. It’s good…and yet, it doesn’t feel like Troy at his best, unless Lawton is deliberately closing the circle. The past weighs too heavily on the present (the ghosts of Troy’s father and Troy’s wife loom in the background), and there’s little sense of any future.

That’s not to say I won’t read it as regularly as the others in the series. He’s that good a writer. I just might not enjoy it quite as much.

Frank Kidson And The Music Of The Tin God

This week. This week. Finally, The Tin God will be out. It feels like forever since I sent the manuscript to my publisher, then went through it with the editor. And now it’s happening. Doesn’t matter that I’ve been through it all before, I’m excited. This book means so much to me.

Not just because it’s about women’s rights, although that’s the central focus. But there’s also music in there; the lyrics from folk songs are the clues, one of the threads in the book. I’ve used folk music before in my novels, but only passing references. Things were more overt in my Dan Markham books, with Studio 50 and 1950s jazz, and in the two Seattle books, where grunge – a hated name – and alt-country were central ingredients.

But the traditional folk of The Tin God gives me chance to bring in someone I’ve wanted to involve in my books for a long time – Frank Kidson. He was a real man who had an unusual companion, his niece, Ethel (whose real name was Emma). Kidson was a man fascinated by several things – art, Leeds pottery, and folk songs. He was one of the first real song collectors and became known throughout the country, a pioneer well before those who received far more credit. He wrote several books, including the wonderful Traditional Tunes, which figures largely in my book, and wrote a column on songs for the Leeds Mercury.

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There were song collectors in different parts of the country in Victorian times, and they regularly wrote to each other and compared variations on songs. In the north, though, and certainly in Yorkshire, Kidson was a towering figure, one who developed theories about songs and how old they might be – actually, not as ancient as most people might imagine.

In the book, Frank and Ethel Kidson live at 128, Burley Road, their address at the time. A little later, they moved over to Chapeltown, to 5, Hamilton Avenue, where Frank died in the 1920s. A blue plaque sits on the house, quite deservedly commemorating one of Leeds’ great men.

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In 1923, to recognise his contribution to music, Leeds University awarded him an honorary M.A.

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I put together a Spotify playlist of some of the songs from The Tin God. All traditional, and you can listen right here. Or – since Spotify barely pay artists for their work – I’ve also put together a playlist on YouTube.

Songs of all types interested him, including the popular broadside ballads, which were written, printed up, and sold on the streets, sort-of op ed/confessional/humorous take on life and current events. He bought them and saved some in a scrapbook, which is in the Family History Library at Leeds Central Library, and well worth a look.

One that isn’t in that collection, though, is How Five-And-Twenty Shillings Are Expended In A Week, which is a broadside:

It’s of a tradesman and his wife, I heard the other day,

Who did kick up a glorious row; they live across the way;

The husband proved himself a fool, when his money all was spent,

He asked his wife, upon her life, to say which way it went.

Chorus.

So she reckon’d up, and told him, and showed him quite complete,

How five and twenty shillings were expended in a week.

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Kidson published a little of the song in Traditional Tunes. At the proper launch for The Tin God, which will be on Saturday May 5, 1pm, as part of The Vote Before The Vote exhibition, it will be performed by Sarah Statham, who was part of the glorious Leeds band, Esper Scout. Details right here.

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Early Reviews…And Listen To Annabelle Speak

It’s’ just over a week until The Tin God is published. I’m hugely proud of this book, it feels as if it’s taken on greater resonance that the crime story I set out to tell – but readers will judge that more objectively than I ever can, of course.

I’m pushing this book hard. Among other things, there’s going to be a blog tour to coincide with publication, and that includes giving away a copy of the novel. So please, keep your eyes on the blogs listed below or follow on Twitter.

Meanwhile…here are a few reactions from early reviewers:

“Chris Nickson is an amazingly skilful author with a love of Leeds, its varied and deep history, and demonstrates it with each book he writes.”

“The whole story has such resonance with today’s current affairs that it makes you realise how much there is still to do regarding social attitudes, as well as how far we have come.”

“I like the strong sense of characterisation in the novels. Annabelle is a suffragette, looking to make things easier for her daughter, Mary, in her path through life. She is, however, no airy fairy dilettante being strong, capable and practical with her feet planted squarely on the ground. I cheer at her every move. She is supported in her efforts by her husband, Tom…He is another strong character. He’s not as enthusiastic about being Superintendent as he might be as the paperwork and meetings take him away from investigative work but this threat to his wife and family gives him the opportunity to roll his sleeves up and get stuck in.”

“There’s a particular talent here with this author’s fine-tuned ability to thread actual historical events into his fiction. This one is quite thought-provoking in reflecting upon those who initially paved the way for women’s rights and those, yet today, who stand tall in the face of current roadblocks. This still grows curiouser and curiouser…”

“The author Chris Nickson is Leeds born (as am I ) and it’s clear that he loves his home city and its place in history, as one of the leading lights of industry. He brings the Leeds of 1897 very much to life both in terms of actual historical events of the time and in the sights, sounds, and smells of this great city. I really enjoyed this particular storyline as it demonstrated the struggle that women had, ( and some would say, still have) to be recognised and valued as legitimate candidates for office, and to be considered equal to men.

I make no bones about it – I love Chris Nickson’s books – love Tom and Annabelle – love the sense of old Leeds with its cobbled streets, the houses huddled together against the chill whipping off the River Aire, the friendly community, and the good old fashioned policing.”

“I always enjoy the sense of period that Mr Nickson evokes and The Tin God is no different. Annabelle’s campaign speeches resound with the possibility of change but don’t ignore the terrible blight of poverty prevalent in the fictional Sheepscar ward.”

And with that mention of Annabelle’s campaign speeches, through the miracle of technology (and the superb voicing of Carolyn Eden), I’ve been able to find one. Take a listen and see if it convinces you….

After that, wouldn’t you vote for Mrs. Annabelle Harper?

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Perhaps you need to discover The Tin God for yourself. I know an author who’d be very grateful…it’s out March 30 in the UK.

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Listen to The Tin God

I’ve yammered on about it enough lately, so you’ll all be aware that The Tin God is published in the UK at the end of March, and I’ve been doing everything I can to persuade you to buy and read it.

The campaign continues this week. Last time I took you on a guided tour of Tom and Annabelle’s Sheepscar. This week it’s a couple of short audio extracts from the book to try and whet your appetite. The downside: I’m the one reading them.

But I hope you’ll enjoy anyway, and think ‘He’s right, I need that book in my life.’

 

You know how to order it…

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Tom And Annabelle’s Sheepscar

If you’ve read any of the Tom Harper books, you’ll know that Tom and Annabelle live above the Victorian public house, near the bottom of Roundhay Road in Sheepscar in Leeds, where she’s the landlady. But what was Sheepscar like in the 1890s?

The answer is: like a sea of sooty brick. Everything was brick – houses, wall, factories. What wasn’t made of brick was made of stone. The streets were cobbles and flagstones. What you really wouldn’t find was grass or trees.

The Victoria’s address was 8, Roundhay Road, just up from the junction of Roundhay Road, Sheepscar Street, Chapeltown Road and North Street, with the bottom of Meanwood Road very close by. In those days there were a couple more buildings below the pub, by they’d gone by the time this photograph was taken.

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You’ll agree, there was nothing elegant about the Victoria, even if it had made Annabelle quite comfortably-off financially. Even the later picture can’t make it look charming (I was in there once, in the 1990s, before it closed; it still had a spare, Victorian quality).

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This picture shows the street earlier, with the Evening Post satellite office on the corner.

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The 1898 directory for the bottom of Roundhay Road. Always shocks me that Annabelle wasn’t wasn’t really the landlady of the Victoria.

Still, it was better than Noble Street in the Leylands, where Tom grew up. In his youth, it was a very working-class neighbourhood. By the time this picture was taken, the Leylands had become the home for the influx of Jewish refugees escaping the pogroms in Russia, and Yiddish was the main language you’d hear.

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Manor Street runs by the Victoria, a mix of back-to-back housing and small yards for businesses. Some were demolished early in the 20th century, as in the first photo; others remained longer.

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The final photo show the junction of Manor Street and North Street, covered in hoardings. The Pointer Inn lies just past them. Roundhay Road would be off to the left. Even the main streets were cobbled back then.

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In The Tin God, Annabelle address an election meeting on Cross Stamford Street. Like almost everywhere in Sheepscar, it was a mix of working-class housing and small businesses. A gathering of women and children gives an idea of how crowded the area could be, while, beyond a wall – of brick, naturally, lay Sheepscar Beck, in a trick on it’s down towards Mabgate and eventually the River Aire.

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The first meeting Annabelle is due to address in the book is in the church hall at St. Clement’s church. This image from the early 1900s shows the church steeple in the distance up Chapeltown Road.

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Tom often takes the tram to work (electric by this time), and at that time it would have looked like this, open-topped, grinding along the rails on North Street.

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If he was walking, he might have stopped off at the Golden Cross Dining and Tea Rooms along north Street for his breakfast.

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Every day he would pass this house on the way. It had been the home of a man named Hodgson, a famous resurrectionist (a body snatcher, a man who did a trade in bodies dug up from graveyards) in the 1830s. Sadly, the house no longer exists. It was replaced by the strange, triangular Northwood House, which stands smack in the middle of the Sheepscar interchange, across from the hand car wash place.

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By the time this new book opens in 1897, Tom and Annabelle’s daughter Mary has start at Roundhay County Primary School, about 200 yards up Roundhay Road, where Enfield Street crosses. It was a board school, quite grand compared to most of the buildings around it. Like much of Sheepscar, it’s long since demolished.

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One area that remains, at least in part, is Roseville Road, parts of which were almost middle class. Note the larger dwellings in this picture and the front gardens these houses possess. One close to here was occupied by a bank manager, a man of real status.

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There was, though one small area of green, a tiny triangular park that ran between Roundhay Road and Roseville Road. Its ghost lives on.

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And there was one other area, Sheepscar’s little secret – the rhubarb fields that occupied the empty land between the dye works and the mill pond. Those remained well into the 20th century; my father remembered going through them as a boy in the 1920s, on his way to the Victoria, which his grandfather ran, and where he could play piano for hours upstairs.

One thing no pictures can convey, though, is the smell. Sheepscar must have been horrific. The dye works just down the street, chemical plants and tanneries along Meanwood Road, the gasometers close by. The air was heavy and foul, and on top of that, all the rank stench of industry drifting over from the west. A constant haze that blocked out any real sunlight. The amazement is that anything would grow at all.

Sheepscar wasn’t a large area, as this map shows. It was where so many other neighbourhoods came together (the Victoria is marked with a black dot). Working class, and quite bleak; wall hoardings were the real sparks of colour. But for Tom and Annabelle, it’s home, and they have no intention of leaving.

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All the wonderful old images are from Leodis.

The Tin God is published on March 30. You’ll discover much more of Tom and Annabelle’s Sheepscar – and Leeds – in there.

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An Interview with Annabelle Harper

When I was researching The Tin God, I came across a yellow, crumbling old newspaper. Turning the pages very carefully, suddenly I stopped, almost fizzing with excitement. Right there, in front of me, was an interview with Annabelle Harper from 1897, just as she was preparing her campaign to be elected as Poor Law Guardian for the Sheepscar Ward. I had no idea this even existed. Definitely a thrilling find, and I thought it was worth sharing. The original was impossible to scan. Instead, I’ve transcribed it all, word for word.

Reprinted from the Yorkshire Factory Times, October 1, 1897

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As our regular readers will doubtless be aware, local elections will be happening in Leeds next month. For the first time, seven working-class women will be running to become Poor Law Guardians, under the sponsorship of the Leeds Women’s Suffrage Society and the Leeds Women’s Co-op Guild. It’s a bold challenge to the establishment, where the Board of Guardians is dominated by Tories and Liberals, but do they have a chance of success. I was able to speak with Mrs. Annabelle Harper, one of the candidates, in her lovingly-appointed, cosy home above the Victoria public house in Sheepscar, where she is the landlady.

 

How did you decide to run for this office?

Mrs Harper: I’ve been a speaker with the Suffrage Society for three years now, and I’ve lived in Sheepscar for a long time. It’s a poor area. Where I grew up, on the Bank, is ever poorer. I know the lives these people live, I see it every day. The change in the law three years ago has made this possible. Not only can all ratepayers vote in some elections for the first time, which marks a huge advance for women and also for the ordinary working people round here, but women can also run to be Poor Law Guarians and Parish Councillors, as well as the School Board. When Miss Ford [Miss Isabella Ford, one of the leaders of  the Suffrage Society] announced that they intended to sponsor candidates, I wanted to become involved in this ward. I was lucky enough to be selected around Leeds, along with six other women who are probably even more worthy.

 

What do you feel you and the other women offer as candidates?

Mrs. Harper: Speaking for myself, I know round here like the back on my hand. I know the people well, and they know me. I’ve been a campaigner for the vote, and for women. I think people know that. Since the law changed in 1894 and so many more people can vote, especially among those who don’t posses anywhere near as much wealth, I think I can fight for them. We can look up the hill and see Leeds Workhouse. It’s a shadow that looms over us every day. I know people who’ve had to go in there, and it’s a tragedy when that happens. If we offered more outdoor relief that kept people in their homes, it would save money in the long term. As long as I’ve been alive, I’ve heard about the deserving poor and the undeserving poor. That seems wrong. No one wants to be poor. No one wants to go into the workhouse. They’re all people, they should be treated that way, whether they have work or not. I believe the other women have similar ideas.

 

Some might feel that’s quite radical.

Mrs. Harper: What’s so radical about wanting to help people when they need it? It just seems like human kindness and common sense to me. Who knows when we might need help ourselves? It’s a community round here, folk help each other this. That’s all I’m doing.

 

Yes, but what can a woman offer that a man can’t as a candidate?

Mrs. Harper: We raise families. I have a daughter of my own. I run a business. I know the value of every farthing, the same as any woman around here. A woman candidate can offer that sympathy. We’re the ones who nurse the poorly, feed the family. In Sheepscar, it’s not just the men who work. Women are in the factories and mills, too, they need the wage. Same with the children. I’ve done it myself, I started out as a doffer girl in Black Dog Mill when I was nine. If times are rough here and there’s not much work, about half the people here don’t have any savings. They’re always on the edge of the workhouse. I know that. I don’t believe the men who serve on the Board, however good their intentions, have any direct experience of that. Not one of the male candidates for this ward has ever lived in Sheepscar.

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You mentioned yourself that you’re a Suffragist? Does this connect to that campaign, do you believe?

Mrs. Harper: If I’m elected, I think many of my votes will come from women. They’ll have the chance to exercise their rights. I feel that makes the two connected. Obviously, we don’t have the Parliamentary franchise yet. But everything helps. It all builds.

 

You mentioned that you’re a mother. If elected, so you feel your obligations would interfere with your duty as a parent?

Mrs. Harper: Of course not. Don’t be so daft. I’m a woman, we can do two things at once. Three, if we put our minds to it. All of them round here do it. Yes, we have a few foremen in Sheepscar, and a number in steady work. Most of them, though, it’s the whole family that grafts, children too, as soon as they’re old enough. And the women who don’t work, half of them go to the pawnbroker every Monday morning so they have enough to last the week. It’s like a procession, I’m surprised there aren’t grooves in the paving slabs. Does that seem like a fair way to have to live to you? It doesn’t to me. Women want a roof over their heads, they want to be able to feed their families. There are feckless men, we all know that, but it’s women who hold the home together. I’m lucky, I have a good husband. But I know what it’s like for those others. If they can manage it all, so can I.

 

You’re married to a policeman, I understand.

Mrs. Harper: I am, and very proud to be. He’s a Detective Superintendent, started out on the beat. He grew in the Leylands, not half a mile from here, and it’s every bit as poor as Sheepscar. We weren’t born with any silver spoons in our families.

 

Doubtless a number of people will feel that a woman’s place is in the home, not in politics. How would you answer that assertion?

Mrs. Harper: I’d say that a woman’s place is everywhere. I’ve heard it all over the years, that’s we’re not strong enough, that we can’t understand the political process. We’re strong enough to bring up plenty of children, to do the cooking and the cleaning and the washing, and probably a factory job, too. Politics will be a comfort after all that. It’ll be hard, yes, but no harder than the rest. I believe woman can do anything men are capable o doing. We’ve waited a long time for any chance, and we’re going to take it. We had a woman on the School Board here more than 20 years ago, Mrs. Buckton. It’s about time we had more women talking sense to the men.

 

How do you plan to conduct your campaign?

Mrs. Harper: I’m having posters printer to go up all over Sheepscar. I’ll go door-to-door and speak to people, to try and spark their interest, and I’ll be giving out leaflets. I intend to undertake as many speaking engagements in the ward as I can. I want people to know I’m doing this, to make them want to vote for me. There will be the hustings, of course, two of them. I’ll go up against the male candidates. But I do have to point out that I’m only one of seven female candidates. Each of the others can do just as good a job as me if elected, maybe even better.

 

Our interview was almost over, but I wanted to conclude with a final question, so I asked Mrs. Harper, who has turned out to be a most gracious lady, with no ‘side’ on here, as people say here,  why the people of Sheepscar should vote for her to become a Poor Law Guardian.

“If they’re not convinced after they read that, I’m not sure what else to say. But I’ll fight for them and I’ll try to make sure that the poor here, everyone here, is treated with respect and dignity. I’ll be in their corner. I live right here, I’ll always be available to them. I hope that will make up their minds.”

[image error]      The Tin God is published in the UK on March 30.

 

 

Markets And History

I posted a little piece on social media about markets – thinking, specifically, about Leeds Market. Kirkgate Market has been in the same place, with the same beautiful Vicar Lane frontage, since 1904. It’s survived additions and fires. Before that, there was the Central Market, and the open market has been a fixture since the middle of the 19th century, a place where the cheaper goods are traded, and still are.

Go back further, and there was a market on Briggate on Tuesdays and Saturdays, the same days as the cloth market. Markets are at the heart of our town and cities. They’re truly the continuity of the past.

When I was young, people of all social classes shopped at the market. My mother did it, just as her mother, grandmother and more, going back, all had. Items were cheaper, there were bargains to be had. I remember the smell of the used book stall, the wonder of the toy stall near the top of the market – one of only two places to buy toys in Leeds back then; the Doll’s Hospital in Country Arcade was the other. We’d go there every week, and she buy something, maybe fish or something else. It was tradition, it was the way things were done before supermarkets became the places to shop, to get everything under one roof (the irony, of course, was that in the market you could get everything under one roof, and probably for less money).

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Markets change, of course. We don’t have live chickens in cages for sale these days, as they did in the 18th and 19th centuries. We don’t have the entertainers like Cheap Jack Kelly, ‘Doctor’ Green and his nostrums or The King of Ashanti who were a part of the market experience for Victorian shoppers. Yes, M&S got their start with the penny bazaar in the open market. But that’s only one story among so many. What’s there now, the people who sell, the items they stock, reflect the way Leeds has altered. It’s a better barometer than any official figures.

Markets are the most democratic shopping places we possess. They always have been. Not just in Leeds, but all through the word. They’re part of being human, a vital ingredient in any community. Buying and selling has been part of our nature even since people gathered together and we moved beyond growing everything ourselves.

In recent years we’ve gradually come to realise that not all progress is a good thing. We’re getting rid of disposable carrier bags in favour of the kind of shopping bags our mothers and grandmothers carried everywhere. We’ve learned that drying clothes on the line is much better than in a tumble dryer. We’re trying to get rid of plastic – maybe in favour of the brown paper parcels and bags that were everywhere in the past. Those ideas weren’t all wrong. Everything new isn’t better, and not everything old was good (certainly not the return of rickets and Victorian/Edwardian levels of malnutrition). In the market they’ll pop your loaf of bread or pound of plums in a paper bag. Ahead of the curve by being old-fashioned.

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I write historical crime novels, most of them set in Leeds. I tend to look at my city through the lens of time. And I’m old enough to remember a time when the hangover of the early 20th century remained, when the market was a place where all classes went. Somewhere in the last 50 years that’s changed. We became seduced by the new, the idea of convenience, and then of the brand in clothing and shoes. By advertising above all. We became convinced each ‘advance’ was a good thing, and that beast has fed on itself.

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Perhaps the wheel will turn a little more and we’ll realise that markets are a good thing, and we’ll understand it before it’s too late. Markets have been around too long. A market is one of the centres, one of the hearts of our towns and cities. They’re about the only living connection with the past that we have right in front of us, something that’s not an historic monument, but working and breathing every single day. They’re important.

One last thing, if you don’t mind. My new book, The Tin God, is out in just over a month. You can read more about it here. And you can pre-order it, either from the behemoth beginning with A, or other places, bookshops and independents. I’d be very grateful if you did. Thank you.

The Rock Machine Turns You On

A Sunday supper of hot crumpets with butter and jam, then thick slices of malt loaf, all washed down with tea. The same every week. Once the pots were washed, the immersion heater would do on, heating the water for a bath.

Not much hot water mind, and stripping off in the freezing bathroom, relishing the heat as I lowered myself. Almost too much at first, as if it might scald my skin. Lowering myself down gradually, calves and thighs, then sticking them back up as I slid down.

Wash the hair first, always greasy by the end of the weak. The baby shampoo mam bought, coming up fresh and clean, then the green Palmolive soap on the body. Get rid of that tide mark around the neck, clean behind the ears and between the toes to avoid rot. Every Sunday, the routine.

No hanging around in the water, out as it began to cool, and rubbing meself with the rough towel while the little transistor played in the corner, bring some sound into the room. Switching over from Radio One where it was all jazz that made no sense, to Radio 3 and some chamber music that didn’t touch me at all. People talking in posh voices on Radio 4. I turned the dial, tuning in the only thing left. Sing Something Bloody Simple. Christ. A waste of air. Silence was better than that.

Dress quickly, before the November air could touch me, then time combing my hair until it was just so. 1968. Fourteen and spending my hours gawping at my reflection, picking at a spot as if it meant ruin.

My bedroom was freezing. But the record player was there. Not that I had many records to put on it. Four LPs and a dozen singles. Every one carefully selected, poring over the sleeves, going back and forth, before I’d part with my money. Each one precious. I took The Rock Machine Turns You On out of its sleeve, holding it at the edges and lowering it on to the turntable before wiping it clean. 14/11d. All those tracks, each different. A couple of names that were familiar, most a step into the unknown. But a budget price. A bargain, and I wanted that. New discoveries. Check the needle for dust. Watch the hypnotic magic as the vinyl began to spin. Stylus down gently, then Dylan was signing I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight. And suddenly I was somewhere else.

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That was the power of music in those days. It was like a wall, keeping the world at bay, a place where I could disappear. Somewhere secret, where songs possessed power. Some more than others. The track at the end of the side, Leonard Cohen, had a dark elegance to its words. Poetry. The images built pictures in my head, the nuns who were lovers, who softly wove their spells. I didn’t even know there was a Catholic order called that.  But what I knew about the world would have fitted on the back of a stamp with room to spare.

Maybe it still can, if I’m cruelly honest.

Flip it over, and the grind of Taj Mahal’s Statesboro Blues, then the electric energy of electric Flag and Killing Floor, as if they were trying to break out beyond the notes, to bring that desperation right into my bedroom and lay it out before me. See here, sonny, this is what life is like. It’s chaos and mayhem, and every man looking out for himself.

I wanted to believe. But when your life is the school shit in the morning five days a week, on with the blazer and the stiped tie, how could you know? Everything in my life was ordered, even if I didn’t quite realise it yet.

Routine. Except for the music. That was the door to somewhere else. To the wild world outside. To being grown up.

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The Tin God Is Coming – Trailer

To start: Free From All Danger is now out in the US, and available everywhere as an ebook. And The Year of the Gun is available in the US now, too.

And to the heart of the matter…

Sometimes, a novel seems to write itself. The right suggestion at the perfect time and everything falls into place in an instant. I’ve only had that once before, with The Crooked Spire. In the last 12 months it’s happened to me twice, with The Hanging Psalm, out later this year, and The Tin God, which is published at the end of next month (at least in the UK).

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After an event, a friend said, ‘Why doesn’t Annabelle run for office – become a Poor Law Guardian?’ And with the, the tumblers clicked and fell into place. It was after the horrible murder of the MP Jo Cox, and the humiliation of Elizabeth Warren in the US Senate. A time, still continuing, when female politicians were subject to massive online abuse.

Annabelle was already a Suffragist speaker in Leeds. After the changes to the law in Leeds that allowed the working class – both sexes – to vote and stand in some local elections, it was a natural extension, one with resonances reaching through time.  And this being 2018, the centenary of the Representation of the People Act, when some women received the Parliamentary franchise, the timing couldn’t be more apt.

I’m biased, I know, but to me this is a powerful book. I dearly love Annabelle, and there’s more of her in this than any of the previous five books in the series. But she’s not shoehorned in. It’s natural, and there are many facets of her on display. The political, the personal, and the police all come together.

She’s a real person, very human. Perhaps not real in the sense of having been flesh and blood, running the Victoria public house. But as real to me as anyone I see or speak to. She’s there, in my head. I can sense her. And as the emotional linchpin of the series, it was time she had a book that featured here -but did it in a way that seemed natural. Which, maybe, made her all the more real.

There’s folk music in the book, too (fragments of song lyrics form the clues), with Frank Kidson, a real-life, pioneering Victorian song collector from Leeds, who helps Tom Harper.

To me, it’s all real, it resonates in a way nothing else I’ve written quite does. At the risk of sound pretentious, I feel I’ve written something much bigger than myself. I’ll probably harp on about this a bit over the next couple of months. I hope you’ll forgive me, but…I’m ridiculously proud of this book.

I know that somehow, everything in this book is right. I can taste every moment of it. I’m as proud of it as a parent with a favourite child. Thanks to generous, helpful friends, I’ve been able to pull out all the stops to try and help it find a bigger audience (I love you all, but for this one I’d like more of you, please!).

And so, there’s a favour I’d like to ask, and I’d be very grateful if you could help. When the book is published at the end of March – and believe me, I’ll make sure people know – if you could read it, review it, recommend it, mention it. If you can buy a copy, even better. If not, then take it out of the library.

I believe in all my books, I put heart and soul into every one of them. But this…I’m not sure I can explain it beyond a feeling. I won’t detail all the plans to try and reach a wider audience, but I only hope they work. Ultimately, though, word-of mouth is always the most powerful recommendation. A rave from a friend. I only hope I’ve given you a book worth raving about.

And, to finish, I should give you a taste of The Tin God. Hope you like it (a lot of work went into putting this together, believe me, and my thanks to Thom Ashworth, who let me use part of his version of Work Life Out To Keep Life In).