100 Firsts: the LNER East Coast Line and me!
If you’ve been following my blog for a while, you may know that much of my early writing was done on train journeys. Occasionally (when I was very lucky) this was on the Eurostar from London on my way to visit a friend in Brussels, but most often on the journey down from Yorkshire to Surrey to visit family.
That began to change around the time The Order of the White Boar was published in 2017 (as mentioned in a blog post I wrote a few years ago about following King Richard III’s footsteps along the Great North Road: ‘Not Quite Route 66‘ for the Authors Electric Blog spot).
But by that time both The Order of the White Boar and The King’s Man had been written and mostly edited, often on train journeys, together with Time out of Time (although that was only published later in 2021). Smaller portions of books 3 and 4 of my sequence about King Richard, King in Waiting and Sons of York, were penned on trains, but I can certainly pinpoint which parts: it’s often easy to remember exactly where you were when writing particular scenes. For example, a certain storm in the English Channel (Narrow Sea) was, by coincidence, written while beneath said sea travelling back from Brussels through the Channel Tunnel, and also on the subsequent journey back up to Yorkshire. It has to be said I fortunately escaped the sea-sickness that was to plague most of my characters during those scenes.
Recently, a random tweet response mentioning such journeys was picked up by LNER – the railway company which operates the British East Coast route (London to Edinburgh) – which is this year celebrating its centenary (albeit 100 years in different guises). And the company contacted me to ask if it could share my story as part of its celebrations – of 100 Firsts.
As their website says:
“From introducing the first ever cinema carriage in 1924, to breaking speed records with globally renowned locomotives such as Mallard, the East Coast Main Line has regularly made history.
This year is LNER’s 100th anniversary.
To mark the special occasion, we’ve created an exhibition that tells one hundred stories of pioneering innovation and cherished moments on the iconic line. Here you’ll discover remarkable and heart-warming tales from customers, colleagues and our history over the past century.”
I’m delighted to say my story is one of the ‘First Big Life Moments’, under ‘Writing Your First Book on Board’ – how a substantial part of my first published book(s) was written. You can find all the stories here: https://www.lner.co.uk/about-us/lner-100/100-firsts/
Also this year sees the centenary of the Flying Scotsman, which I was lucky enough to see and travel on in the spring on the heritage Keighley & Worth Valley Railway.
I’m no train buff, but I have to say they’ve been quite important in my life at various points. Not only because of writing, but because so many of my memorable moments have occurred on or near them. Maybe one day I’ll tell you about the five weeks spent travelling round Italy on them – or perhaps my rail journey right across Europe from west to east – passing through the Iron Curtain, and almost not being able to pass back … But that’s for another time…
Image of Soviet locomotive copyright: By Volkov Vitaly w:ru:Участник:Kneiphof (Волков Виталий Сергеевич) – uploaded by author, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=103427
Alex Marchant is author of two books telling the story of the real King Richard III for children aged 10+, The Order of the White Boar and The King’s Man, and a third in the sequence, King in Waiting, which continues the adventures of the young members of the Order in the following years. A fourth book, Sons of York, was published in June 2022 and offers a ‘plausible theory’ for the fate of the ‘Princes in the Tower’.
Alex is also editor of Grant Me the Carving of My Name and Right Trusty and Well Beloved…, two anthologies of short fiction inspired by King Richard, sold in support of Scoliosis Association UK (SAUK).
Alex has also published a standalone timeslip novel for readers aged 10+, Time out of Time, relating the adventures of Allie Turner through a doorway into history found under layers of old wallpaper at ancient Priory Farm.
Alex’s books can be found on Amazon at: author.to/AlexMarchant
My Twitter handle and Matthew Wansford’s
Instagram: AlexMarchantAuthor
GoodReads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/17175168.Alex_Marchant
