Bio: Jessica Fellowes is an author and freelance journalist. She is currently writing ‘The World of Downton Abbey’, based on the hit ITV series, to be published by HarperCollins in September 2011. Jessica’s next book is ‘The Devil You Know: Looking Out For The Psycho In Your Life’, co-written with the forensic psychologist Kerry Daynes, it is published by Hodder and out May 12 2011. Formerly the Deputy Editor of Country Life, she has also been a columnist for the London Paper – her columns formed the basis of her book ‘Mud & the City: Dos and Don’ts for Townies in the Country’, published by Book Guild. She also writes for the Daily Telegraph, Telegraph Weekend, Psychologies and The Lady.

Before writing the companion book to Downton Abbey, were you familiar with the Edwardian era?
My favourite authors are from around late Edwardian time up to the second world war – from Edith Wharton and EM Forster to Graham Greene, PG Wodehouse, F Scott-Fitzgerald, Evelyn Waugh, Dorothy Parker… – so I had a general sense of that time already. Plus I was familiar to the degree that my grandfather was born in 1912 and Julian (Fellowes, who wrote the television series and is my uncle) has always had an interest in that period, so they both sparked a curiosity in me for that era. There is something in the nature of that time’s reaction to the Victorian sensibility, the partying heyday of King Edward VII and general naughtiness of the first decade that was then rushed headlong into a world war and all the ensuing tragedy, that is very compelling. But much of what I learned of the Downton Abbey time (1912-1919, for the purposes of this book, covering series 1 and 2) was new – and fascinating!

What did you most enjoy about writing the book? Did you come across anything surprising over the course of actually researching and writing the book?
I really felt very privileged to write this book because it gave me such a wonderful excuse to indulge in reading about and around that time. What I really loved was reading memoirs of people at that time that are now beginning to be republished, which I’m thrilled about – there are some extraordinary voices out there that have been silent for such a long time. The lady’s maid, Rosina Harrison, who worked for Lady Astor at Cliveden, as well as all the male staff she interviewed for a book. The sad but illuminating tales of Lady Diana Manners, Consuelo Vanderbilt and the Countess of Warwick. I think the thing I found that was not so much surprising as revealing was that there is a general assumption now that people 100 years ago sat within the class system as we see it now. That is, that to be a servant must have been a demeaning and awful life and that everyone else was a heartless aristocrat. Of course, they were just as human as we are in the 21st century – some enjoyed the life, some didn’t; some were nice, some were horrid; some fought for change, others preferred to leave things as they were. I think we often patronise the people of the past and we are deeply wrong to do so. The thing I also found really interesting were the parallels between then and now. While the look of everything circa 1912 feels positively ancient – corsets and top hats – it wasn’t that long ago, just two or three generations. And they were living in times of huge scientific and technological change which impacted on the way they organised and lived their lives, just as we are now.

Did you expected Downton Abbey to be so popular? Why do you think it struck a chord with so many people across the globe?
Well, as Julian said when welcoming the cast back to the first script reading for series two (when the first one wrapped, of course, no one knew what the reception would be like – they departed unknowns and came back together as huge stars), one doesn’t like to say that one didn’t expect it to be a success because that makes it sound as if one didn’t have faith in it. But the reception it received did feel extraordinary – like some fairy tale where all the wishes come true at once. I think that there is a combination of factors that all just came together at the right time: a great script, beautiful location, gorgeous actors and costumes – these are all a part of it. But where Julian and Gareth Neame (the executive producer) were so clever was in giving all of the characters, above and below stairs, equal weight. There is a fascination with class still and in our rather pressured and constantly changing times we do hark back to the old days and wonder if they did everything so much better. On top of all that, there was something wonderfully cosy about everyone sitting down and watching the same programme on Sunday nights.

What are some things readers can expect in the official companion book?
I really hope readers feel they get a lot from the book. We (that is me, and the amazing team at Harper Collins that put it all together) wanted to do more than just a ‘making of’ book. That element is certainly there but we put something together that has three major layers – the series itself, in which we discuss the characters and the storylines of both series, looking at backgrounds and motivations; the cast and crew, where we see how it was put together and explore the locations and costumes; and, finally, the context of how life actually was at that time, with stories from real-life counterparts. These layers are sandwiched together with sumptuous photography and period illustrations. It was very hard work putting something like that together in record time but I’m thrilled with the results.

Who is your favorite character and why? On that note, who is your least favorite character?
Well, you’re not quite asking me to name my favourite child, but….! It’s hard for me to say because I have such a different relationship with the characters now – it’s so much more than having simply watched them in the programme. And I hope readers at the end of the book will feel the same way as I do. I researched so much into what Julian’s ideas of their backgrounds were, what the actors thought in playing them and then in looking at how life would have been for them then, that you feel something for all of them. Even the bitter and twisted Miss O’Brien has her sympathetic side (admittedly, you have to look hard for it) – and I admire her, because she’s at the top of her career tree and she would have worked hard and sacrificed a lot for that (not least a husband and family). No, I’m sorry – I just can’t select two in that way! They’ve all got something one enjoys watching and hearing about.

When watching the first series, what are elements you hoped series two will explore?
We knew, of course, that we would be going in to the First World War for series two, and I was fascinated to see how Julian and the production would handle that. I think they’ve done it brilliantly. The horror of war is in both the statistics and the individual stories and they’ve conveyed both aspects very movingly. I was intrigued to see how the characters would handle the demands of war – from Violet who detests change of any sort to Daisy and her superstitious fears. No one is left untouched in that regard, and I think viewers will find that gripping. At the same time, it is not overtaken by the war – we still get to enjoy the beautiful world of Downton Abbey, the girls still have wondrous clothes and the romantic tangles are just as entangling….What more could one want?!

Sum up why we should rush to buy “The World of Downton Abbey” in less than ten words!
Because it’ll make watching it even better.

Visit Jessica on her website or follow her on Twitter.

Purchase The World of Downton at Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, or The Book Depository US. The audiobook (read by Elizabeth McGovern!) is also available through Amazon.co.uk or The Book Depository.

Daisy Goodwin, a Harkness scholar who attended Columbia Film School after gaining a degree in History at Cambridge University, began her TV career at the BBC as an arts producer. At Television Centre, she made films about literary figures, and devised Bookworm and The Nations Favourite Poems Initiative. Whilst at the BBC she also devised the hugely successful shows Looking Good and Home Front. The mother of two children, Daisy also finds time to dream up and edit poetry anthologies, including the bestseller 101 Poems That Could Save Your Life.

What sparked your interest in telling the story of Cora Cash and her status as an American heiress?
I have always wanted to write a novel but didn’t know where to start. Then one day I visited Blenheim Palace and saw the brilliant Sargent portrait of the Duke of Marlborough and his American Duchess Consuelo nee Vanderbilt. The picture shows the pomp and circumstance that came with the title but it is also a depiction of a spectacularly unhappy marriage. I couldn’t get the idea of this smart modern American girl languishing in a palace with no running water or central heating,

There are many similarities between Cora and Consuelo Vanderbilt (9th Duchess of Marlborough, 1895-1920); what do you think is so compelling about Consuelo’s story that authors such as yourself, Edith Wharton, and Henry James find much to inspire their fiction?
There is something irresistible about the idea of a poor little rich girl. I think we would all like to believe that money doesn’t make us happy. As a narrative device, you can’t beat someone coming into a closed society for the first time and discovering that it has its own impenetrable code. One of the greatest compliments I have received on the book is “ It’s like `Henry James without the boring bits.” I am not in Henry James’ league, of course, but I was flattered that the reader understood where I was coming from.

Do you feel you’ve gained a deeper understanding of the fad for transatlantic matches, and the toll it had on American brides and their English husbands?
I have become quite the expert on Dollar Princesses and their impact on English Society. A few of the marriages were happy, [such as the marriages of] Jennie Jerome and Randolph Churchill, [and] May Goelet and the Duke of Roxburghe, but most of them were a straightforward exchange of cash for titles with predictable results. Consuelo’s dowry was worth a hundred million dollars in today’s money. The American heiress found British society as cold as the country piles they were now expected to live in. One American countess, Lady Fermoy, wrote to her mother that she had slept in her furs every night through the winter and she couldn’t go out to dinner as she couldn’t face the chill in decolletage.

In The American Heiress, the ties between mothers and their children is a prevalent theme throughout the book. When you compare the relationship between Cora and her mother with that of Ivo and his mother, did you see any similarities when writing the book? Do you feel these relationships defined how Ivo and Cora viewed the world and interacted with one another?
Definitely. The Double Duchess and Mrs Cash have a great deal in common – they both expect to get their won way in everything. Mrs Cash has money as her weapon, The Double Duchess exploits her feminine charms. I think that one of the reasons that Cora and Ivo are attracted to each other is that they see marriage as a chance for each of them to escape their mothers. But having such dominating mothers means that neither of them are completely formed, they both do a lot of growing up in the book.

When conducting research for the book, did you have a firm footing in the period, or was the setting completely new and exciting?
I studied history at University, and I loved the late nineteenth century. The 1890’s were such an exciting time artistically: Oscar Wilde’s plays, the Yellow Book, Aubrey Beardsley’s astonishing drawings. I had read a lots of novels written in the period: [George] Gissing, Henry James, [Thomas] Hardy, Frances Hodgson Burnett, [Anthony] Trollope (the Duke’s Children), and while I was writing the book I tried to keep my reading in period so that I would get the language right. Nothing worse than finding someone saying ‘Okay’ in 1895.

The cult of celebrity was strong during this period. Do you feel the pressures of our present age of 24/7 tabloid coverage are similar or different than those of the past?
I wrote my dissertation at Cambridge on the relationship between the Victorian monarchy and the press. We think that the cult of celebrity is a new thing but actually the press were just as intrusive and as scurrilous a hundred years ago,. True they didn’t have camera phones or electronic surveillance but newspapers had a network of paid informers who were working as servants. A magazine like the New York scandal rag Town Topics was just as full of malicious gossip as National Enquirer is today.

While writing the book, did you ever have any doubts about Cora’s happiness as a Duchess?
Absolutely. I didn’t know right until the the end whether Cora would stay or go. I think she married for love and to get away from her mother. She may enjoyed being called ‘Your Grace’ for a moment but Cora is an American girl, she’s not a snob like her mother.

Who were your most challenging characters to write?
Ivo was quite tricky to write. There is a touch of Mr. Rochester in there but I imagine Ivo to be a lot more amusing to be with. I enjoyed writing about Bertha, Cora’s African American maid. I thought it was fascinating that although Britain was/is a society obsessed by class, it didn’t have the race laws that America did. Bertha can marry Jim in England, but in America at the time it would be illegal for a black woman to marry a white man. She finds freedom in England, while Cora finds nothing but restriction.

What expectations do you have of American audiences when reading The American Heiress?
I hope they enjoy it and I am encouraged by the US reaction to Downton Abbey. I hope that people will read it for the characters, the story and for a sideways look at the Special Relationship.

Lastly, what’s next on the horizon?
I am writing a novel set in the mid nineteenth century about the Empress Elizabeth of Austria who was called the ‘most beautiful woman in Europe’. She was a fascinating character whose life has some parallels with Princess Diana. It is what you might call an epic story set in England, Austria and Hungary. I am enjoying the research trips!

Visit Daisy Goodwin on the web at DaisyGoodwin.co.uk where you can enter the world of The American Heiress (aka My Last Duchess). Or, obtain the latest updates on her projects on Facebook and follow her on Twitter!

Gertrude Bell

(1868 – 1926)

She was called the “female Lawrence of Arabia,’ but that title scarcely begins to describe the life of Gertrude Bell or her accomplishments. At one time, Gertrude was the most powerful woman in the British Empire. Along with T.E. Lawrence, she not only had a role in the Arab revolt against the Turks during World War I but also helped to create the Hashemite dynasty in Jordan and the creation of the modern state of Iraq. Today she is best remembered as one of the foremost chroniclers of British imperialism in the Middle East.

Gertrude was born into a world of privilege. Her grandfather Isaac Lowthian Bell was an industrialist, making his money from the manufacture of steel. Although the family was wealthy, they lived modestly. From childhood Gertrude was fearless, constantly leading her younger brother Maurice into scrapes, climbing trees and walking along the walls near the beach. Gertrude excelled at almost all sports, she could swim, fence, row, play tennis and hockey. At the age of seventeen, having convinced her parents of the wisdom of further education, she enrolled at Lady Margaret Hall, one of only two women’s colleges at Oxford.

Gertrude thrived at Oxford although she chafed at the restrictions that required the women to be chaperoned when they left campus. She was supremely self-confident from the start and wasn’t afraid to debate her professors. With her boundless energy, Gertrude graduated with a first class degree in Modern History in two years, the first woman to do so. Her achievement landed her in The Times of London. It would not be the last time that Gertrude’s accomplishments made her newsworthy.

An attractive woman with abundant red hair she wore casually piled on top of her head, and direct green eyes, Gertrude was extremely popular with a vivacious personality. She was brilliant, opinionated, and good at small talk. However, she had an unfortunate tendency to compare most of the young men that she met to her father and grandfather and found them lacking. She could also be a little confrontational which could be off-putting to some men. When Gertrude was twenty-four, she fell in love with Persia and the Middle-East a love that would last longer than any love affair. She published her first two books, one a travelogue Persian Pictures, the other a translation of the poetry of the Sufi poet Hafiz. By her mid-thirties, Gertrude was fluent in Arabic, French, German, and Persian and had a working knowledge of Turkish and Italian.

In 1900, Gertrude made her first visit to Jerusalem to stay with friends. Before long, she was traveling alone with a guide, a cook and two muleteers. Gertrude was not afraid to venture into areas that few women, let alone men, had penetrated including the Druze, a closed Muslim sect, where she befriended their leader Yahya Bey. For the next fourteen years until World War I broke out, Gertrude criss-crossed the desert, covering most of present day Syria, Turkey, and Mesopotamia, covering more than ten thousand miles on the map, traveling either by horseback or camel. She published her findings in several books including Syria: The Desert and the Sown. Her books opened up the Arab deserts to the Western World. In 1913, she became only the second foreign woman to visit the city of Hayyil. The trip was dangerous, and she was detained in the city for eleven days.

Gertrude met the love of her life, Major Charles ‘Dick’ Montagu Doughty-Wylie in 1906, when they were both thirty-eight. Doughty-Wylie was a distinguished soldier with a chest full of medals, he was everything that she was looking for in a man, but thought she would never find. The only problem was that he was married. They corresponded over the years but it wasn’t until the summer of 1912 that the friendship turned into something more. Despite her passionate love for Dick, Gertrude couldn’t bring herself to become his mistress, and he wasn’t prepared to leave his wife. They had a few brief days together after the war started before they parted. Once again, Gertrude was to be disappointed in love. In April of 1915, Doughty-Wylie was killed at Gallipoli.

Gertrude’s life changed when the Admiralty Intelligence Service in Cairo needed help dealing with the Arabs. Her ability to speak the language, her knowledge of the desert tribes, made her unique. She became the first woman officer in the history of British Intelligence, although the title of Major was only a courtesy title. After the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, Gertrude was asked to conduct an analysis of the situation in Mesopotamia and the options for future leadership of Iraq. Gertrude worked tirelessly to promote the idea of creating the nation that we now know as Iraq to be headed by Faisal, the son of the Hassan bin Ali, Sharif of Mecca, one of the instigators in the Arab revolt against the Turks.

Until her death, Gertrude served on the Iraq British High Commission Advisory Group. She became a confidante of Faisal, helping him to achieve his election as King, by introducing him to the tribes in the region. Gertrude earned another nickname “The Uncrowned Queen of Iraq.” Gertrude soon found that working with the new King was not always easy. He could be secretive, manipulative, and too easily influenced. “You may rely on one thing, I’ll never engage in creating kings again; it’s too great a strain.”

On July 12, 1926, two days before her fifty-eighth birthday, she was found dead by her maid, a bottle of sleeping pills on her night-table. It is unclear if it was a suicide attempt or an accidental overdose. There is speculation that on her last trip to England, she may have been diagnosed with a terminal illness, perhaps lung cancer. It would be within Gertrude’s character to end her life rather to spare her parents any suffering. She is buried in the British cemetery in Baghdad in the country that she loved and gave so much of her life for.

LAURA LEE GUHRKE spent seven years in advertising, had a successful catering business, and managed a construction company before she decided writing novels was more fun. When she’s not tapping away at her keyboard, Guhrke spends time relearning how to ski, mastering the wakeboard grab, and trying to actually hit a golf ball.

What sparked your desire to set your upcoming trilogy in the Edwardian era? Did you or your editor experience any trepidation over moving into this long “tabooed” time period?

I wanted to write a heroine with a motorcar. I always like to write about women who are strong and independent, and the whole motorcar motif worked really well with my type of heroine. Each heroine in the series has a car. As to the Edwardian era, I’d been wanting to write in this time period for ages, but I just hadn’t gotten the right idea to work from. As to Avon, from the moment I first presented the idea to them, they’ve been incredibly supportive.

Since the publication of your first book, Prelude to Heaven (which I have a copy of, and loved it), you’ve jumped around the 19th century. What differences did you find between your 19th century characters and your early 20th century characters?

I don’t see much difference. Eras may change, but people don’t. Strong women in 1817 are the same as strong women in 1902. The main reason I jumped around so much was that I wrote whatever came to mind, without any regard at all for the marketing aspects. But nowadays, no author can afford to do that, and it’s all worked out. Late Victorian-Edwardian is my niche, I think. I love it.

Wedding of the Season and Scandal of the Year share the same premise—jilted lovers. What inspired you to explore this premise in two different books (and from a woman’s point of view, and then a man’s)?

I never know what inspires me. I just get a glimmer and if I feel a spark, I start chapter one. Being dumped is a universal thing everyone can relate to. Because it’s such a universal thing, and an emotional roller coaster, I wanted to explore the whole rejection dynamic. There are three stories in the Abandoned At The Altar series, and in all three, someone is dumped on the eve of their wedding and has to figure out how to go on with life afterward.

Was it difficult to write two books to be published back-to-back, and with connecting characters?

Incredibly difficult, especially since I hate plotting anything in advance and all three books overlap and merge in time. For example, in SCANDAL OF THE YEAR, there are flashback scenes that overlap events in WEDDING OF THE SEASON. There’s also a scene in SCANDAL that shows the hero of the third book (as yet untitled) in the middle of his story.

Describe your trilogy in the first three words that come to mind.

Getting dumped sucks.

Some writers describe themselves as hero-centric or heroine-centric. Would you consider yourself to fall in either category? What themes do you find you explore time and time again in your novels?

I’m the same way every time. I write the story, wherever it leads. To me, it has nothing to do with gender and everything to do with the story. I focus on what the characters I’m dealing with are all about. Sometimes, the idea is more hero-centric, or heroine-centric, but either way, I always try to stay true to what the characters demand. As to themes, I do have a soft spot for certain plot lines. I love boss-secretary romances! I could write that theme over and over and over. I love the under-appreciated, taken-for-granted heroine who rebels against her arrogant employer, and when she leaves, his whole life falls apart and he has to get her back. What’s not to love about that? I also love childhood sweethearts. There’s something so sexy about a hero who has always been a sucker for the same girl.

Which resources have you found must-reads for learning about the Edwardian era?

You, Evangeline! I also like newspapers from the time I’m writing in. And novels contemporary to the period. You get a true, authentic feel for the era that way.

Did you discover anything unusual or fun about the early 1900s?

The most surprising thing was finding out how many things were being used that one might think came later. The electric doorbell, for instance. The Edwardian era is challenging because new inventions and advances were coming so fast, one right on top of another, and you have to really research not only what was invented, but what was available to the characters, and what was in common usage. Sometimes, of course, you do have to take fictional license because the information you need is just not available or easily obtainable.

Do you plan on remaining in the Edwardian period after you complete your trilogy?

I think I’d like to stick with this time period for a while. I’m really liking it. And I want to do a character with an airplane!

What do see next on the horizon for your writing career? Anything else you’d like to add?

I have no idea what’s next. It depends on the idea, and right now, I don’t know what will spark me creatively. We’ll just have to wait and see.

Thank you Laura for your candid and humorous interview! Visit Laura’s website, where you can read excerpts from the Abandoned at the Altar series, “about devilish dukes and the women they love.”

Who are The Blades of the Rose, and what is the series about?

Unbeknownst to almost everyone, magic truly does exist, and it is concentrated in physical objects known as Sources. These Sources are found all over the world, usually hidden for the protection both of the magic itself and humanity. Groups of men seek out Sources in order to enslave their magic and use their power in a quest for global domination. Enter the Blades of the Rose, a ragtag band of men and women who find and protect the Sources from those that would exploit their magic.

The Blades face a number of different foes, but their biggest, most dangerous enemy are the Heirs of Albion. The Heirs seek to make the entire world part of the British Empire, and they’ll stop at nothing to satisfy their greed for power. The series follows different Blades as they fight the Heirs across different continents, and a looming danger that threatens not only magic, but every man, woman, and child around the globe.

One thing I loved about Warrior was the technology used by Thalia (as created by Catullus). What inspired these steampunky gadgets? Are they rooted in any historical technologies?

Readers are going to see a lot more of Catullus and his diabolical inventions throughout the series! He even gets his own story (and heroine) in STRANGER. I saw Catullus, and his family, as “Q” in the James Bond films: creating gadgets and devices for the Blades operatives to take out into the field. Part of the Blades’ credo is that they are not permitted to use magic that isn’t theirs by right or gift (unlike the Heirs, who steal and use everybody’s magic), so they need a little help against their better-armed, more ruthless enemy. When it came time to conceptualize these devices, I would turn to my resident mad scientist, aka my husband. He’s not a scientist, but a fellow writer, albeit one with a considerable amount of scientific knowledge. He and I would think about what kind of technology would be available in the 1870s, and how it could be implemented in cool, unusual ways. Sometimes, an idea for a gadget would come first, and we’d think about what kind of scenario could make use of it, and other times, I’d present a dilemma or set piece, and we’d figure out what needed to be done and how to do it. It was a challenge, but a lot of fun!

The Blades are a multi-cultural group. Did you uncover any exciting facts about people of color during the Victorian era?

It was so wonderful to explore this surprisingly overlooked aspect of the Victorian age. For a long, long time, I had wanted to open up the possibilities of romance, and include diversity in an era that really was diverse, but often not represented as such. My research into the Canadian policy toward indigenous peoples revealed that, unlike the contentious relationship between the U.S. Cavalry and American Indians down in the States, Canadian Indians actually welcomed and appreciated the presence of the Northwest Mounted Police. The NMP helped control the dangerous traffic of illegal alcohol and firearms, making the region much safer.

When it came time to research the history of black people in Britain (Catullus is a black Briton), I learned tons, not just about the slave trade and England’s profit from it, but also the surprising lack of institutionalized racism in Britain. Unlike the United States, interracial marriages were not entirely uncommon, nor were they ever illegal. England has a much more established tradition of marriages between whites and blacks, and, while it wasn’t exactly celebrated, it was not the social taboo that it was (and, in some ways, continues to be) in the United States. I’m not saying that Britain was a paradise of equal opportunity, but the contrast between that country and the U.S. was pretty surprising. In one of the Blades books, Catullus comes to post-Civil War America, and he’s shocked by the treatment he receives.

But this is just one facet of the story. Above all, the Blades series is about fun, adventure and some pretty hot love scenes. *wink*

What was the most difficult thing about writing these four books back-to-back? Did you find one or more books crucial to your research?

Fortunately, I only had to write three books back-to-back, since WARRIOR was finished by the time Kensington decided to buy the series. However, that did mean I had to write three books, all of them over 100,000 words, in a year! It was a lot of work, but I really did enjoy not just the writing, but the pace. I actually came in early on almost all my deadlines. As to finding one book in particular that was helpful in my research, I couldn’t name just one. Between my own substantial research book collection, the nearby UCLA library, and the internet, I was able to find what I needed from many different sources. But the truth is that, at heart, I love doing research and I love integrating that research in a way that isn’t didactic or an info dump. I think I did a pretty good job with the Blades books. No one is ever bored when they read these stories!

What do you feel is the role of steampunk regarding the realities of the Victorian era? Is it strictly to re-imagine the setting, or is it a critique of the period?

Steampunk is a fluid term as well as a fluid ideology that varies from author to author and reader to reader. I think it can serve both as a re-imagination of a setting as well as a critique. It is a way of examining our own era’s reliance and implementation of technology, and what it signifies for humanity, yet through the lens of either the past or an alternate reality. This kind of distance allows and facilitates critique. We can experience, too, the wonderment of discovery and possibility, but also think about what it is we demand of technology and the costs it has upon our happiness. As far as Catullus and his family are concerned, they make sure that their inventions are used positively, to help in the fight to keep magic, and humanity, free. Too, I set up the tension between technology and magic–since, in the world of the Blades, magic arises from the power of human imagination and dreams. Sometimes technology is the antithesis of imagination, even if it originates as an idea in someone’s head.

My hope is that readers’ imaginations will be sparked by the Blades of the Rose series, since it combines adventure, magic, exotic locations, action and delicious romance all in one exciting package.

EXCERPT:

Thalia and her father managed to remember their manners enough to offer Captain Huntley a seat and some English tea. She handed the captain a cup of the steaming beverage, which he took with large, work-rough hands. Their fingers brushed against each other. The sensation of his touch ran through her like wild horses. He breathed in quickly as her skin went sensitive and alive, feeling everything at once, but mostly him.

They stared at each other, manners forgotten. A blaze there, in his golden eyes, and an answering flare within her. Hot and sudden, like wildfire on the steppe after a dry season. He broke the contact first, pretending to study his cup as he took a sip of tea. Thalia tried, but failed, not to watch the shape of his mouth on the painted rim of the cup. How might those lips feel against her skin? She knew better than this, she chided herself, and as soon as Captain Huntley had finished his tea, she would show him the door and never see the man again. Though he seemed to have other ideas.

“I can’t pretend to know what any of those messages mean,” he said to her father. He glanced down at her father’s braced and bandaged leg. “But it’s clear that you need some help. Let me give it.”

“I thank you, Captain,” Franklin answered, “but no. We can manage on our own.”

Batu had found a small folding camp chair, and now the captain sat in it, but the chair did a poor job of containing him. He kept stretching out his legs and trying to fit himself into the seat that had, in the past, comfortably held Thalia, and nearly every other man who had come into their ger, but it was like trying to put a waistcoat on a tiger.

He looked at her father, then at Thalia, sitting nearby. She struggled to ignore the leap her stomach gave to be under his golden scrutiny.

“I doubt that,” the captain said bluntly. “You need me.”

Thalia ground her teeth together at his presumption. How like a military man to step in where he knew nothing and didn’t belong, and start issuing orders.

“Rest assured,” her father replied, “that we do not. You did your duty to Anthony Morris with honor, but now you have discharged that duty and can return home to England.”

That prospect did not seem to elate Captain Huntley. He worked the clean square line of his jaw as he contemplated the fragile china in his hand. “Sir—” he began.

“Thank you, Captain,” Thalia said, cutting him off, and he didn’t care for that one bit. A flare of anger gleamed in his eyes as he looked at her. “We do appreciate your offer of help, but this is personal business.”

“Personal enough to get a man killed?”

Thalia stood. She didn’t care if she was being rude, violating every principle of Mongol and English hospitality, but she had to get rid of the tenacious, irritating captain immediately. It had nothing to do with her reaction towards this man. It was purely a matter of protection. She walked to the door and held it open.

“Thank you,” she said again in a clipped, frosty voice. “Everything you have done has been extraordinary, but you can go no further in your task. My father and I are perfectly capable of managing the situation on our own.”

Her father kept his expression carefully neutral, providing neither assistance nor resistance.

After a moment, a wry smile curved in the corner of Captain Huntley’s mouth and he set his teacup down on the table with a sharp clack. He unfolded himself from the chair with surprising grace, then picked up his pack and shouldered it. With a slight clicking of his heels, he bowed to her father with a murmured, “Sir.” Her father, not much inclined to ceremony, took the captain’s hand and shook it.

“You stood up for Tony, which I wish I could have done,” Franklin said. “And your honor does you credit. Godspeed to you, Captain, and good luck.”

The captain offered no similar reply, but shook Franklin’s hand gravely. He then strode to the door, stopping in front of Thalia. She kept her gaze trained on the space just over his shoulder, trying to avoid that sharp jolt of sensation that came from looking into his eyes. “I’ve sailed half way ‘round the world,” he said quietly, his voice like whiskey, rough and warm, “including chugging through the Bay of Bengal on the leakiest, rustiest and least seaworthy freighter that ever insulted the ocean, which, after the luxuries of the first steamship, did little for my constitution. I’ve taken the most damnable journey through China, and most of my coin is now lining the pockets of every single government agent between here and Peking.”

“I am sorry about that,” Thalia said, and meant it. “We haven’t much money, ourselves, but surely we can spare some for your return.”

He looked coldly at her. “I don’t want sympathy and I don’t want your cash.”

“What do you want, then?”

“Tell me what Morris’ message means.”

She shook her head. “That is one thing I cannot give you, Captain. It would imperil not only you, but many others, as well.”

Though it clearly didn’t satisfy him, he pressed for no more. He gave Thalia a small bow, but there was an intangible something that was deeply ironic about the gesture. He stared at the ground for a moment, and Thalia followed his gaze to the tops of her muddy, heavy boots, which stuck out from the hem of the dress. Yes, she was a genuine elegant English rose. Thalia drew herself up to her full height and resisted the urge to twitch the gown’s fabric over the boots. Their gazes met and held. Dangerous, she thought. He might not be a Blade, but he was a man, and not any man, but one who could inflict serious damage on her, if she let him. She could see that plainly. h, God, she was glad he was leaving. She would have had to be on her guard constantly, had he stayed.

“Miss Burgess,” he rumbled.

“Captain,” she said coolly.

With a nod, he placed his hat upon his head and walked out into the dusk. He never hesitated, instead moving straight and steady through the still-crowded lanes. Without any urging on his part, the throngs parted to let him pass. Rather than watch him disappear into the mass, which she felt possessed to do, Thalia shut the door, then turned and looked at her father. The confines of the tent, or, more accurately, the confines of her own body, still vibrated with Captain Huntley’s presence. He lingered there, the sun’s afterimage burned into her.

Curious to read more? Warrior, book one in the Blades of the Rose, lands in bookstores September 7th. Scoundrel follows in October, with Rebel in November, and Stranger rounding out the series in December. Read excerpts, watch a book trailer, and more at Zoe’s website.

Leave a comment to be entered to win a copy of Warrior!

Or at least, recorded history.

I write historical romances set during La Belle Époque. Here is the thing about historical romances: They really are, in essence, historical fantasies. Except instead of hobbits and wizards fighting over My Precioussss, we have seemingly British–Britain being a rather inescapable setting for historical romances these days—lords and ladies off on a reluctant quest for love.
But as with all fantasies, world-building is an important element. A rich, textured world contribute to the vibrancy and believability of the story. In my case, my job requires me to bring alive a slice of the fin-de-siècle.

Sometimes history is fairly clear-cut. In my third book, Not Quite a Husband, the hero and the heroine travel through Northwest Frontier of British India (today’s Northwest Frontier Province of Pakistan) and are caught in the Swat Valley Uprising of 1897. There is only one commonly used route to get from Chitral to Malakand. Once I find that route, that is the route on which they travel. There are several accounts of the fierce battle of Malakand, during which two British garrisons, one in the tiny fort at Chakdarra, and a much larger encampment beneath the Fort of Malakand, were besieged for a week by tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of rebels, intending on removing the British presence from their mountain fastness. But the accounts more or less agree with each other and provide a well-documented—at least from the British side—narrative of that eventful week.

In such a case, my job is simple.

There are other times, however, when the history is less clear-cut—and even less well-documented. The history of the secret service, for example. You will never guess from the title, but my latest book, His at Night, features a ♫ secret agent man…♫ (The investigation is his at night, definitely.)

The book is set in 1897 and the hero has been an agent of the crown since 1884. It is pretty obvious he is not a member of the intelligence service attached to either the War Office or the Navy. The Special Branch of the Metropolitan Police had been in existence since 1883, but its original purpose was to fight Irish bombings. My hero, on the other hand, is initiated into the service by his great-aunt, who is many things, but probably not one to infiltrate anarchist groups.

What to do?

I decided to go by the most famous example of the secret agent of the day–the most famous literary example, that is: Mr. Mycroft Holmes.

Mycroft Holmes has never been given any official title, and yet “occasionally he is the British government [...] the most indispensable man in the country.” Also, “the conclusions of every department are passed to him, and he is the central exchange, the clearinghouse, which makes out the balance. All other men are specialists, but his specialism is omniscience.” Doesn’t that sound to you like a description of the head of the secret service, one with a large network of agents at his disposal? It sounds that way to me. So if Arthur Conan Doyle, who was then a writer of contemporary commercial fiction, could have his public accept the perception of such an anonymous governmental organization headed by such an essentially anonymous person, then I have a good deal of freedom in my writing.

What about the social status and class of the men and women who did work as secret agents? History tells us that it is mostly those of the lower middle class who participated in the secret service, the gentlemen and the ladies of the era too haughty and delicate to dirty their hands so. I had a look at some of the most famous recent examples of fan fiction, the Sherlock Holmes and Mary Russell mysteries by Laurie R. King. In her books, King firmly establishes Sherlock Holmes as, yes, a gentleman. And if Sherlock Holmes, who hired out his service for pay, is gentleman, then his brother and secret super-agent Mycroft Holmes is by definition a gentleman also.

The fact is, our modern understanding of what constitutes the social elite is nothing like what it was a hundred and twenty years ago. And in today’s workaholic culture, we are deeply suspicious of a man of leisure—the erstwhile definition of a gentleman. It is not enough for us that a man has the right parentage and education and attends the right parties and sits beautifully on a horse, he has to have some sort of more useful endeavor–and spying is, for the modern reader, one of the accepted fields of expertise. And so that’s why sometimes you ignore your research and plow right on ahead with a hero who is both a lord of the realm and a secret agent. (And a Greek god to boot, but that’s a topic for another day. )

His at Night is RITA award® finalist Sherry Thomas’s fourth book and goes on sale today.

Love is hottest in the darkness before dawn.

Elissande Edgerton is a desperate woman, a virtual prisoner in the home of her tyrannical uncle. Only through marriage can she claim the freedom she craves. But how to catch the perfect man?

Lord Vere is used to baiting irresistible traps. As a secret agent for the government, he’s tracked down some of the most devious criminals in London, all the while maintaining his cover as one of Society’s most harmless—and idiotic—bachelors. But nothing can prepare him for the scandal of being ensnared by Elissande.

Forced into a marriage of convenience, Elissande and Vere are each about to discover that they’re not the only one with a hidden agenda. With seduction their only weapon—and a dark secret from the past endangering both their lives—can they learn to trust each other even as they surrender to a passion that won’t be denied?

Visit Sherry at her website, read her blog, or follow her on Twitter.

In my experience, being published wreaks its own transformation on the writing process. Suddenly I had deadlines, and professionals waiting (and wanting! what a headtrip!) to see my work, and – most amazing of all – readers inquiring about it. What had felt, for so long, like a very intimate endeavor had now acquired a public dimension.

There are obviously potential downsides to this.  But once I’d acknowledged and set aside the pressure attendant on producing on a schedule, what replaced the anxiety was a sense of gratitude bordering on awe.  For most of us, writing for publication is a dream we’ve nursed for a very, very long time.  To have it sanctioned by a whole bunch of people who have never met you but think you were right to pursue it – that feels nothing short of miraculous.

As a doctoral student in anthropology (the best major btw), how has your academic life influenced your work? Do your peers and professors know you write romance novels, and have you ever felt pressured to write “real literature”?

You know, if there’s a relationship between them, then I think the balance of influence flows from my writing toward my academic work, rather than vice-versa.

To elaborate, I’ve always been fascinated by what our society calls popular culture.  I’ve been reading and writing genre fiction since I was thirteen, and as part and parcel of my love of historical romance, I also developed an early fascination with the everyday lives and fashions of times gone by. The reason that anthropology appealed to me in the first place, then, was because the discipline recognizes the significance of popular culture — fashion, fiction, film, etc. — to our understanding of how people imagine and live their lives. (I actually entered the doctoral program with the intention of studying Indian popular cinema, and if there is any cinematic form closer to romance novels, I don’t know of it!)

In terms of its written form, anthropology is also very sympathetic to fiction.  As ethnographers, our goal is to create a text that allows readers to enter a world that may appear, at first glance, utterly foreign and strange—but which, on further examination, is not so strange or opaque after all.  At an elemental level, that project – of immersing the reader in an ostensibly “foreign” world and making this world seem intelligible and engaging – sounds a lot like the goal of historical romance novels.

My friends in the program know about my writing, and cheer me on.  I haven’t discussed it with my professors, but I can’t imagine them pushing me to write a different type of literature.  They’re the last people whom I’d need to convince of the importance of popular fiction – they are, after all, anthropologists!

The Duke of Shadows is set in 1850s India, and Written on Your Skin is set in 1880s Hong Kong. How do you maintain the balance between writing with a post-colonial view of Imperial British society yet remaining as accurate as possible to the times?

Now, here is where I think my academic work does influence my writing, albeit indirectly.

Let it be said plainly: I have no desire to write historical fiction.  I write romance, and I strongly believe that the history of the period should accentuate, rather than detract, from the development of a hot, steamy love affair that ultimately results in a lasting happy-ever-after.

But what drew me into historical romance, versus contemporary romance or romantic suspense or what have you, was the chance historicals offered to immerse myself in the “feel” of a different time period.

Now, during the 1990s, when I first discovered the genre, there were several authors who set their stories against the backdrop of the British empire.  Mary Jo Putney, for instance, had a fantastic series of books (the Silk trilogy) that dealt with the Great Game in Central Asia.  These books made a huge impression on me; recall that I was thirteen or fourteen when I was discovering them, and at that time, knew very little about British history.

As I grew older and my academic interests came to center on India, I was exposed to a far wider range of writing on colonialism, and I realized that Britain’s colonial project didn’t just impact Britons abroad; it was also crucial to the way British people understood themselves and their nation’s place in the world. Especially in the latter half of the century, these people were living in the most powerful empire on earth. And this shaped their lives, every day, in countless ways, even if they never set foot out of England.  From the front pages of daily newspapers, to casual discussions or political debates at country weekends, to gossip about acquaintances’ private fortunes or business plans or travel itineraries—right down to the fancy items in shop windows that made little girls squeal when strolling past with their mamas, the fact of the colonies, of Britain’s dominion over distant parts of the world, was inescapable.

So.  I do think we’re missing something about the “feel” of nineteenth century England when we ignore the influence of the colonies on everyday life back then.  And if I want to see this in romances, it’s because I want to be immersed in the “feel” of the time I’m reading about.

Unlike The Duke of Shadows, Bound by Your Touch and Written on Your Skin both take place in England (Written on Your Skin does begin in Hong Kong, but moves to London about a quarter of the way in), and neither directly addresses colonialism.

However, I did deliberately choose to make the framing device for the external drama in each book touch upon imperial politics.  In Bound by Your Touch, events are set in motion by the international trade in Egyptian artifacts, and ultimately a swindle motivated by British intervention into Egyptian politics.  In Written on Your Skin, the drama originates in the motives of Irish-American expatriates who have chosen a violent approach to securing Irish independence from Great Britain. By making these issues the ever-present background for the events that drive forward the romance, what I tried to do was show how subtly and pervasively Britain’s colonial affairs infiltrated everyday life in England.

I think, on its own, this move implies a post-colonial view of empire, because part of the imperial project *in* the nineteenth century depended on the belief that Britain had achieved a perfect state of civilization, and was therefore helping out its colonies by coaxing them up the ladder toward civilizational maturity.  And this belief, in turn, obviously depended on a complete denial of the notion that the colonies themselves might have an impact on everyday life in Britain.  Post-colonial theorists have worked hard to show this wasn’t true — that the colonies did influence what they call the metropole, or Britain.

In my writing, however, when I show how colonial politics and life laid a shadow across life in Britain, I don’t intend it to be a political statement so much as an attempt to be true to the feel of the period — while, of course, focusing on the story of how two people fall in love despite themselves.

Based on reading The Duke of Shadows, but also the blurbs and excerpts for your upcoming releases, your heroes tend to be outsiders to society. What draws you to the outsider status in a historical romance?

Hmm. I’ve never thought about this, but you’re right, they are all outsiders, although not by virtue of their official roles. For example, James (Bound by Your Touch) could be considered the proverbial insider: he’s the golden child of high society, incredibly popular, wealthy, in line for a title. But he’s an outsider inasmuch as he loathes his “insider” status and makes a game out of seeing how far he can push it.

I suppose I’m drawn to writing outsiders because they look on their world with fresh and wondering eyes.  They see things that “insiders” might never notice.  And of course, I find something incredibly romantic about the idea of someone who feels so alone (whether or not he’s surrounded by an adoring crowd) but who ultimately finds that elusive sense of belonging in another person.  To me, that sense of belonging is one of the great miracles that love provides us.

What elements within the late nineteenth century attract you? What has surprised you during the course of your research? Any interesting, little-known facts?

Awesome questions.  I’m drawn to the late nineteenth century for a number of reasons.  First, the widening options for women make it possible to write, in a realistic way, about heroines who stretch boundaries.

Second, people living in the 1870s and 1880s felt their world was shrinking much in the same way we do. Here’s something that surprised me: this is the period that birthed Cook travel guides. I hadn’t realized that the English middle class was regularly venturing to Egypt for vacations!  That seems so…contemporary to me.

For that matter, I’m always surprised by how much racier upper-class Victorians were than we imagine them to have been.  In reading primary sources about the period, I’ve come across descriptions of parlor games played during country weekends that, let’s just say, you wouldn’t want your teenage daughter playing with her friends.

But maybe that’s the key to my fascination with this period.  Risque debates about sex, Bohemian artist enclaves, nightlife (clubs, bar culture, casinos, etc.), international travel — these all seem very modern.  But they were on the rise in the 1880s, part of what convinced people living at the end of the nineteenth century that this period was special and exciting and also frightening and perhaps apocalyptic in terms of the best civilizational ideals.  That these trends and practices coexisted with things that seem so quaint and archaic now — carriages, calling cards, balls, gas lights, aristocratic entitlement, rigid ideas of morality, a sense of the world as a map  full of blank spaces, unknown wonders and dangers — that confluence is fascinating to me.  This time period is right on the cusp of everything we consider familiar, but it’s still, definitively, foreign and strange.  I think it’s a really exciting period to be writing about.

What books and/or authors have inspired you to be the writer you are today?

As always, I hold up Judith Ivory and Laura Kinsale as my personal heroines.  Their attention to characterization and their crafting of language never fails to inspire me.  Above all, I admire them for creating books that wholly immerse me in another time and place, but which each have an individual “feel” about them.  I could never confuse Bliss with Dance, or The Shadow and the Star with Flowers from the Storm.  Each of them offers a different and utterly absorbing experience.

While researching both Bound By Your Touch and Written on Your Skin, did you find any resources you couldn’t have lived without?

Well, first off, I’m a big fan of your site, Edwardian Promenade [Ed. TY].  I think I first stumbled across it when looking for detailed maps and descriptions of Hyde Park.  You had posted a walking tour of Mayfair, and as quick as that, you went into my blogroll.    When I was writing Bound by Your Touch, I had decided that James’s closest female friend would be a so-called “professional beauty,” and once again, your blog provided invaluable information (and images!) about this phenomenon.

I’ve also found some gems among your bibliographic information.  It seems we share a love of primary source material! I really do prefer primary sources to books written retrospectively about the period.  This isn’t based on some conviction that primary sources are more accurate; I simply think they’re more fun to read than something full of footnotes, and they also give me a feel for the language of the period.

Now that I’m living away from campus, I can’t depend on my university’s fabulous library, but I have discovered the mother lode of primary source material in Google books.  Suddenly, with a click of the mouse, I’ve got etiquette manuals from the period, guidebooks to London published in 1884, travelogues that describe Hong Kong in 1880, a female journalist’s account from 1892 of going undercover as a housemaid in various London homes, geographical dictionaries of Great Britain, issues of The Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland…  It is, to use a fitting cliché, an embarrassment of riches.

Random Q from the Proust Questionnaire: The natural talent you’d like to be gifted with?

Hard to pick just one! I have a difficult time visualizing things; I believe the only reason I can describe anything is because I remember the words that certain sights and objects evoke rather than the actual images I glimpsed. So, I’d love to have a more visual memory, if only so I could better remember faces.  (If we’ve met before, and I walk past you without a word, it’s not because I’ve forgotten your name or our conversation – I simply haven’t matched them to your face!)

Any predictions for your future as a writer?

More historical romances, for one.  I’m currently working on a book that’s coming out in May 2010, tentatively titled Wicked Becomes You. Although the emotional arc is, as always, intense, it’s also the lightest, most amusing novel I’ve ever written.  I actually blame the heroine of Written on Your Skin for this turn; her story is certainly dramatic and occasionally dark, but her attitude is so playful and her sense of humor so keen that I had to scrap the proposal I’d had planned for the next book—I wasn’t in the mood to return to a heroine who took things so very seriously.  (That one will have her day eventually, though!)

What’s next for you?

I’m off to India in August for a year of anthropological fieldwork.  I’m curious to see how living in India might influence my writing.  After three books predominantly set in England, perhaps it’s time to return to the Raj!

Although, frankly, while I managed to avoid cricket in The Duke of Shadows, I’m not sure I could pull that off a second time — which may be incentive enough to stay away from British India for a bit longer. 

MEREDITH DURAN grew up enamored of British history. At thirteen years old, she made a list of life goals that included writing romance novels, trying sushi, and going to London to see Holbein’s portrait of Anne Boleyn. Now a doctoral student in anthropology, she is happy to report that all three goals have become her favorite things to do. When not studying, doing fieldwork in India, or working on her next novel, Meredith can be found in the library, browsing through travelogues written by intrepid Englishwomen of the nineteenth century. Bound By Your Touch [US]/[UK] is a July 2009 release, with Written In Your Skin [US]/[UK] following in August. Visit Meredith at http://meredithduran.com

Doug Weald named Alice’s 1906 marriage to Rep. Nicholas Longworth as the “grandest White House wedding of all” and “the greatest most spectacular social event probably in all of American History.” The decorations at the wedding were along a value sufficient for a king’s ransom. The ceremony took place in the East Room, in front of one of the windows which was draped with cloth of gold rimmed with curtains, the whole being ornamented with ropes of smilax and Easter lilies. Presents included curios and fine perfumes from the Empress of China; a 25,000 dollar Gobelin tapestry from the President of France; a Florentine mosaic from the King of Italy; two Sevres vases from former President Loubet of France; antique jewelry from the King of Spain; and a pearl necklace, worth 25,000 dollars from the people of Cuba, in “appreciation for services rendered to their country by Americans, and by Mr. Roosevelt, who himself fought for Cuban liberty.” The most startling party of the wedding ceremony was when Alice, irritated with the knife used to cut the cake, borrowed an officer’s saber and “brandished it aloft and began slashing the cake with it…the slices fell right and left, and great was the scramble among her friends for it.”

You can imagine my fascination with Alice when I first stumbled upon her a few years ago, and luckily, I’ve been able to conduct an interview with Dr. Stacy Cordery, author of Alice: Alice Roosevelt Longworth, from White House Princess to Washington Power Broker (2007), and professor of History at Monmouth College, in Monmouth, Illinois.

Alice has been the subject of two other well-received biographies and a conversational autobiography. What inspired you to take up the subject once more? Why do you think the story of Alice Roosevelt Longworth is so timeless (a children’s book was even released last year!)?

The book grew out of a graduate class I took at the University of Texas where I earned my Ph.D. in History. The course was about Theodore Roosevelt and his era and was taught by the Dr. Lewis L. Gould. He wisely suggested Alice as a topic. The book really got going when I was given full access to thousands and thousands of documents belonging to Alice Longworth’s granddaughter. No historian knew these documents existed, and they included a wealth of correspondence from politicians, artists, writers, foreign dignitaries, Supreme Court justices–not to mention family and other friends. There were drafts of her newspaper column and speeches, doodlings, social calendars, the book listing her wedding presents, and lots more–it was a treasure trove.

Alice Roosevelt Longworth’s story is timeless in some archetypal ways: she overcame the tragedy of her mother dying as she was born. She felt like the outsider in her family, but didn’t let that interfere with her developing her own style and interests. And of course, Alice Longworth was glamorous and famous. When she was First Daughter crowds of hundreds and thousands used to appear to see her. People named babies after her, named a color for her, wrote music for her, asked for her autograph. She could hardly shop for a trousseau because of the spectators. Her fame never abated throughout her 96 years. She held sway in an earlier Washington where politics and socializing were intimately connected–and her drawing room was ground zero for that era’s networking. She was a model of the independent woman, doing, for the most part, exactly what she wanted, when she wanted, with whom she wanted. When I give talk about her, someone always comes up afterward to tell me how Alice Roosevelt Longworth had been an important “bad-girl” model! There’s that certainly, but in the book, I wanted to explain why Alice led a life so gloriously unconcerned with other people’s judgments about her.

Alice’s relationship with her father was conflicting. On one hand, he ignored the topic of her mother and closed the door to a true emotional relationship, yet on the other, he turned to her for advice and she was his biggest advocate. Did your research help you understand Alice–and in the process, T.R.–or was she even more of an enigma?

Well, every biographer treds with trepidation on that question of “understanding” one’s subject because the historical record is incomplete. I would like to think that between her voluminous writings (her diaries and letters), the letters from family and friends about her, her own memoir, the interviews I conducted, and the contemporary sources, I had a pretty good understanding of her. I hope the book provides a nuanced sense of the relationship between TR and Alice. Sometimes, though, the sources aren’t there. When he died, she did not comment–in public or in private. I did not have the evidence to assess the depth of her grief. I could read only the silence–and it was a silence remarkably like TR’s silence at the death of his first wife, Alice’s mother. Yet I remain convinced that TR is the key to understanding Alice. Their relationship was conflicted, and for many complicated reasons, not the least of which is that she was so very much like him, especially when she was young.

Considering the era in which she was born and reared, do you find Alice’s unconventionality natural and ahead of her time, or did she behave outwardly outrageous for attention, but remained inwardly conventional?

I find Alice’s unconventionality natural for her and ahead of her time. In some ways she did behave outrageously for attention’s sake. She almost never had the undivided attention of her father or her step-mother, and she acted out in ways that forced them to notice her. Luckily for her, Alice Roosevelt came of age both in the public crucible of the White House and at a time when the country was fascinated with the glowing potential for change in the new century. TR assumed the presidency in 1901 and Alice personified all the breathtaking possibilities for young women at the dawn of the twentieth century–or more precisely, she created possibilities for women, like driving a car, smoking in public, betting on the horses, playing poker. These were trespasses on socially defined men’s territory. Once she was no longer First Daughter, Alice Roosevelt Longworth continued to shatter conventions: she wore slacks in public, she stopped the convention of calling, she eschewed traditional women’s war work, she had an extramarital affair and gave birth to a baby at age 41–the result of that affair.

Though Alice’s memory and prestige has faded considerably in the general public, when she is mentioned, people either love her or detest her. What were your initial impressions of Alice? What do you think of Alice after having written her biography?

Initially I was fascinated with Alice Roosevelt as a celebrity First Daughter. Then I wrestled for years with the body of evidence left by people who, as you suggest, detested her. At that point, someone who knew her well, Kristie Miller, asked me to think about how it could be simultaneously true that so many people hated her, yet everyone from tourists to presidents wanted to have tea with her. I learned from others who knew her, like Robert Hellman and Stephen Benn and James K. Galbraith that she never made fun of the vulnerable or those whom she thought could not handle it. She would never, as she put it “hit a blind lamb on the nose.” And everyone attested to her charm. Mrs. Longworth was brilliant, witty, and politically engaged to a degree that we have forgotten. She could be malicious, but I think her malice was directed chiefly at Democrats (particularly her cousins, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt) during the New Deal years when she felt that everything was on the line: the economy had tanked, fascism was on the rise. The world was a scary place and at that stage of her life she was bitterly partisan.

Why do you think Alice remained content to take swipes behind the scenes, but to never take a stand politically? If Nick ran for President, would she have been a good First Lady?

Alice remained beind the scenes only in that she did not run for elected office, and her political stands were well-known. She worked hard–and successfully–to defeat the League of Nations. She was a board member of America First. She wrote a nationally syndicated newspaper column for a short while, and she did campaign occasionally. She was told to sit out the 1912 election for fear of helping her husband and hurting her father, or vice versa, as they were in two different political parties that year. She was asked to take Nick’s House seat after he died, but she had a horror, as she said, of women “using their husband’s coffins as springboards” to office. Despite the fact that she was acknowledged the smartest of TR’s children, and the important fact that she knew just about everybody in Washington, Alice Longworth never ran for political office because she was shy. She was also not extremely wealthy. She did not control her money, but the trust fund from her mother was doled out to her.

As she got older, her politics became less partisan. She referred to herself in later years not as a Republican, but as a Bull Moose. She crossed party lines to vote for Lydon Johnson and she was great friends with the Kennedys, whom she admired.

Would she have been a good First Lady? She would have been an extremely unconventional First Lady for her time. She–and this is what-if history, now–would have cared passionately about the legislation and the politics, like Eleanor Roosevelt, Rosalynn Carter, and Hillary Clinton. She would have been much less interested in the formal entertainments. That would not have gone down particularly well in the 1920s, when a woman’s role was much more circumscribed.

Nicknamed “Princess Alice” during her stint as a First Daughter, was the political/diplomatic climate easier or more difficult than today for a president’s child to be treated rather in the manner of royalty?

Theodore Roosevelt was a Progressive Republican who loathed the idea of his family turning into some sort of antithesis of democracy. He kept putting the brakes on Alice as First Daughter being treated as a princess. She was the first First Daughter to serve as a goodwill ambassador for her father when she toured Asia in 1905. There, it was very difficult to keep the royal treatment at bay, especially because TR was half a world away in Washington. You would have to ask Chelsea Clinton or the Bush daughters, but my sense is that everything is more difficult now because we have 24/7 news coverage, cell phones that take photographs and can be flashed around the world in seconds, and citizens with an easier time communicating their concerns to the White House. While Americans knew much of what happened in Alice Roosevelt’s life while she was First Daughter, they did not know everything–and so she could get away with some royal treatment. Also, at the turn of the century, the United States was in a much different place in relationship to the rest of the world. Americans then took great pride in the fact that their First Daughter was being treated as an equal by Japanese princesses and the Empress Dowager of China. For the most part, Americans reveled in the antics of the irrepressible First Daughter and found in her a mirror of their own aspirations. Young women copied her dress, her actions. Young men wrote for her photograph.

Alice’s relationships with her family were filled with conflict; however, based on the letters between she and William Borah, Alice seemed somewhat free of emotional turmoil. Do you subscribe to the idea that they were a perfect match? Would Alice have been happier and fulfilled had she been free to wed Bill Borah?

Bill Borah was the Senate’s best orator, the powerful chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the handsome “Lion of Idaho,” a self-made man full of the romance of the West. He could quote reams of poetry and political philosophy just like Alice could. While I wrote in the book–and I think it’s true that–that Senator Borah was the love of Alice’s life, I don’t actually think that they were a perfect match. I think she was a frustrated Lady MacBeth to Borah. It was notoriously difficult to get Borah to see a bill through to its passage, for example, and the same seemed to be true of the attempts he made at securing a presidential nomination from the Republican Party. He didn’t commit to much, long-term. I think they had many important things in common, and they probably were really in love, but I suspect, in my biographer’s heart, that the relationship would not have lasted because he was not as ambitious for himself as she was for him, nor was he as politically astute as she was.

Finally, did you ever find it ironic that Alice outlived her entire immediate family?

Ironic, no. A bit sad, perhaps. But it is extremely important to realize that at the end of her life, Alice had good and loyal friends and more importantly, she had her granddaughter, Joanna Sturm. The relationship between grandmother and granddaughter sustained them both, from everything I’ve been told, and provided great happiness to them both.

Further Reading:
Alice: Alice Roosevelt Longworth, from White House Princess to Washington Power Broker by Stacy A. Cordery
Princess Alice: The Life and Times of Alice Roosevelt Longworth by Carol Felsenthal
Crowded Hours by Alice Roosevelt Longworth
Mrs. L: Talks with Alice Roosevelt Longworth by Michael Teague
Alice: The Life and Times of Alice Roosevelt Longworth by Howard Teichmann

For more information and photographs: AliceRoosevelt.com

Europe, 1900–1914: a world adrift, a pulsating era of creativity and contradictions. The major topics of the day: terrorism, globalization, immigration, consumerism, the collapse of moral values, and the rivalry of superpowers. The twentieth century was not born in the trenches of the Somme or Passchendaele—but rather in the fifteen vertiginous years preceding World War I.

In this short span of time, a new world order was emerging in ultimately tragic contradiction to the old. These were the years in which the political and personal repercussions of the Industrial Revolution were felt worldwide: Cities grew like never before as people fled the countryside and their traditional identities; science created new possibilities as well as nightmares; education changed the outlook of millions of people; mass-produced items transformed daily life; industrial laborers demanded a share of political power; and women sought to change their place in society—as well as the very fabric of sexual relations.

From the tremendous hope for a new century embodied in the 1900 World’s Fair in Paris to the shattering assassination of a Habsburg archduke in Sarajevo in 1914, historian Philipp Blom chronicles this extraordinary epoch year by year. Prime Ministers and peasants, anarchists and actresses, scientists and psychopaths intermingle on the stage of a new century in this portrait of an opulent, unstable age on the brink of disaster.

Beautifully written and replete with deftly told anecdotes, The Vertigo Years brings the wonders, horrors, and fears of the early twentieth century vividly to life.

First, could you explain your background for those unfamiliar with you? How did you come to be a writer?

I was born in Germany and drawn to history, I suppose, through my love of stories, the layers of the past. I also lived in several European countries, and so the connections and differences between the countries began to interest me. I finally wound up doing a PhD in Oxford, where I also published my first novel. From there on I went into journalism to finance my first books – and the rest is history, at least as far as my work is concerned.

What is your objective with The Vertigo Years? Do you feel the fifteen years before WWI are vital to historians and to people? Does the study of that brief period have relevance to today?

The period I call the Vertigo Years, 1900-1914, is often seen as a sort of idyllic Indian summer before the great catastrophe of the War. Many people who were alive back then would be very surprised by this view, which we have imposed on history because we know what came afterwards – the terrible slaughter in the trenches. If you look at the evidence, I think, you can see a great deal of movement and upheaval even before the War, and reading peoples’ letters and diaries or newspapers of the period, the time seems to have been anything but idyllic and restful. There was change everywhere, in every area of life, and that is precisely what I want to convey by looking at the period, as far as that is possible, without seeing it through the prism of the War. Why is this period still so vital? Because it was the foundational moment of our world. Everything that makes up our world today, from globalization to quantum physics, from consumer society to feminism, from democratization to terrorism, was already formulated during this time. Does that have relevance to our time? Of course it does. It is perhaps asking too much for people to “learn from history”, but we can clearly recognize ourselves in the generation of our grandparents and great-grandparents, and in the things that dominated their lives.

How did you approach writing The Vertigo Years? What prompted you to write it in a chronological fashion?

I think it is important to gain the reader’s trust, to seduce him or her into following me to what I’m getting at, to the point I want to make, which may well be a theoretical one. The vehicle for this is storytelling. The chronological structure simply turned out to be a convenient way of telling stories. Life does not happen in an orderly fashion, it is a chaotic mass of experiences and events, and every structure we impose on it is artificial. Chronological, thematic, subject-based, by country, take your pick, they are just different ways of unraveling a dense and inextricably intertwined ball of facts and perceptions.

What sources did you draw from when writing your book? Were there any new discoveries that corrected or elaborated on past histories of the Edwardian era?

I tried to use the greatest possible variety of relevant sources. The period is very extensively researched and written about, so there was little point of trawling through statistics and government documents in archives, especially since I wanted to write a history of mentality, not a political history. I did spend some time in archives, and a lot with personal correspondences and newspapers from the time, though. Novels and other works of art are useful sources, too, as they can show you how someone particularly sensitive gave form to a particular experience. Once one has identified such an experience, however, it is important to create a wider picture, to see how many people were affected. Much of what we regard as seminal, avant-garde art today only affected a handful of people, and even Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams sold no more than 300 copies when it was published in 1899, but when we look at popular culture, at best-selling novels and stories in newspapers with large circulation, we get a much better sense of what most people where thinking and feeling. That’s what I’ve tried to do.

Did you find much similar today with this period in history? Anything very dissimilar?

I can recognize us quite clearly in that time, especially the sense of living with an open, uncertain history in which the only certainty appears to be change.

Based on reviews I’ve read, The Vertigo Years strips away the fond memories of the “golden summers” of myth. Did you find anything positive of the pre-WWI era? Was this era a study of deep contrasts, or was it full of gray areas?

But why would it not be positive? It was a tremendously creative time, intellectually and artistically the most seminal moment in Europe’s history, all compressed into less than a generation. Industrial development surged ahead, scientists and engineers made huge strides – it just helps to take away the idea of sepia-tinted quaintness and see the time as one as vital and as pulsating as our own.

Many histories on the Edwardian era tend to focus on royalties and personalities, such as King Edward VII, as representing the age. Do you find this true?

Of course that is true, to some extent. Personalities like Edward VII and Kaiser Wilhelm are representative in many ways, but the fact that so much is written about them may also have something to do with the almost insatiable nostalgia people appear to feel for a time in which, they think, everything was still solid and somehow better, more gentle and more graceful than today. Not so for most people! I am more interested in seeing how whole societies lived. That is never absolutely possible, especially as the most numerous class, the workers and agricultural labourers, are the ones who leave the fewest written documents, certainly of a personal kind. They appear in statistics, but you have to look at the middle classes for a wealth of diaries, letters, novels, etc. The higher you go up the ladder, the more plentiful the documentation. I regard it as a challenge to redress the balance a little, as far as possible.

Were the years 1900-1914 a complete break from the manners and mores, fears and doubts, and attitudes of the 19th century, or do you think there was a natural, gradual change that occurred even before the turn of the century?

There is never any such thing as a complete break with the past. Even today, we carry with us attitudes, feelings and longings from pre-modern and even pre-civilized days. Things don’t just vanish within a generation and of course change is gradual and uneven, between regions, countries, classes, sexes, generations, and even within individuals. We are always many things at once, but one can observe that the preoccupations of a society appear to change, as do the ways of articulating them and reacting to them. To describe that is, I think, the business of a good historian.

Did you think WWI inevitable?

No, much against received opinion it certainly was not. There is an idea that war was simply inevitable because of attitudes, colonial policies and the arms race, but would we today (assuming we would have lived) have regarded a Third World War inevitable if the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 had led to hostilities between the US and the USSR?

There were other international crises before 1914 (think of the two Moroccan crises 1905 and 1911 or the Balkan wars in 1912) which presented much stronger reasons for going to war, but each time, diplomacy prevailed, and it might have prevailed in August 1914, but for the fact that many decision makers were away from the centres of government, on holiday. I am no conspiracy theorist and I do not believe in the Grand Plan that is supposed to have existed all along, and recent research demonstrates that great parts of the population were anything but enthusiastic about the outbreak of war when it finally happens. Lead articles in patriotic newspapers were full of fervour and high rhetoric, but personal letters and diaries are not. If anything, there was a dangerous sense of fatalism, a resigned idea that war would break out at some point, the question was only when. It is true that the empires were competing with each other and that there was a dangerous arms race going on in a very heated-up atmosphere, but the actual decision to go to war was made by no more than a dozen people around Europe. I believe that there might have been a crisis in 1915, another one in 1917 and 1921, and then the nations might simply have moved on. The financial strain on national economies was already colossal, and counter movements such as the Socialists and Social Democrats were gaining force, particularly in Germany and France. So no, nothing is inevitable in history.

Lastly, do you feel you have done the period justice with one volume? Were there things you could have added but chose not to?

Have I done justice to the period in under 500 pages? Could I have done in 5,000 pages? Certainly not. But I can give a sense, a central idea, an interpretation that might shed new light on familiar things. History needs to be rewritten every generation, and I am part of this process. There is no definitive history, and in a while someone will come along and rewrite the early twentieth century in a different mold.

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Both is the honest answer. I didn’t want to write about someone who was not interesting in her own right and I do think that the way she lived life right up to the boundaries (and beyond) for a woman of her time is extraordinarily interesting. I believe even today the lives of ordinary women are often much more compelling than those of celebrities – it’s the inner turmoil and the clashes with what is, or is not, possible rather than the getting your face in the paper that is fascinating.

That having been said, I am well aware that a publisher would not have given me a contract for a book about Jennie Bloggins, however dramatic her inner life, just because I thought she was intriguing. Once I started researching I did get swept up into how much her strong personality and attitudes and relentless action and networking had shaped Winston, how much they shared in their personality traits and how closely they worked together and were mutually infatuated with each other. At many levels.

Another thing: Since I grew up in a family of unashamed Churchillians (one of my earliest memories was being taken as a young child to the lying in state of WSC in London in 1965) it was of critical importance to discover that actually it was an American woman with no aristocratic pretensions who had been the formative influence behind this great man rather than the Marlboroughs of Blenheim.

Did you approach Jennie with any preconceptions and/or misconceptions?

I’m sure I must have but you know that’s a very hard question for a biographer because when you get so familiar with a subject you sometimes forget when you first learnt a certain fact and that actually you haven’t always known it. But no, I don’t think so other than the usual “she had 200 lovers” which I did think ridiculous. Tantalising but a crazy number so obviously planted by a jealous rival….

Jennie was an American who adapted to the British aristocracy. Did you have any issues, as a 21st century Briton, delving into the culture of 19th century America?

Ah “ issues” what a lovely 21st century word! I like to think Jennie had more issues adapting to British aristocrats (eg Blenheim and Randolph’s plain sisters and her sense of superiority, etc) than I have had as a trained historian–but also don’t forget Jennie really was NOT an American.

One of the questions Lady Soames asked me right at the beginning was “Did she speak with an American accent – could I find out?” I don’t believe she did although she used certain American words eg Beau and swell but then I realized–well, why would she have done because she was mostly educated in Paris not NYC. She saw herself as a European. All the culture she imbibed in her crucial adolescent years was French.

How would you define the relationship between Jennie and the men in her life (sons, husbands, father, lovers, friends)?

You have to take each one of these separately I’m afraid, even the two sons. Now that, you might think, lays me open to criticism from those who argue she was a bad mother because she treated her two sons differently – precisely the opposite, I cry. Anyone who has different children will know they need different parts of you in different ways at different times. I think it’s yet another reason why she should be praised if not as a “good “ mother when they were little, then as the right mother for those boys and as good as possible at the time and in the circumstances she faced. As they got older I do think she was a fantastic and exciting and supportive mother. In relationships with men Jennie was generally always exciting; she was fun, vibrant, daring and risqué. Never complaining and passionate about men and about everything she ever did. She was fun and witty and obviously physical. The sort of woman who comes in to a room and everyone senses the fire, the sparkle. Is that charisma? I think so.

Many people view Jennie through the eyes of the modern world (i.e. she neglected Winston, she was promiscuous,etc), but for her time, she was pretty remarkable. Do you agree? Do you feel she could have bucked societal roles for women even further? Was it in her nature to reflect on her individuality?

Her courage, her getting on with things, her nature was not to reflect on what might have been but to make the best of what was on offer and constantly to try new things (eg plays and magazines and decorating houses).

I get really angry on her behalf when people use the word “promiscuous” about Jennie. She was the loyal one in the marriage to Randolph. She loved him always I believe and he was the one who abandoned the marital bed, quite possibly if not probably because he had syphilis (see my book for evidence – it is certainly what the doctors of the time thought and they should know and they told her so ) but also because he had other fish to fry. So abandoned and betrayed, she sought the comfort of other men. And she was pretty discreet about it all too.

You ask about viewing Jennie through modern eyes. Well, that’s what a history degree is meant to teach you. You do have it dinned in to you from the first day never ever ever to apply today’s attitudes. So yes, I think she was pretty remarkable for her time; she was on the cusp of being an independent woman.

Out of all American brides who flooded British shores between 1874 and 1914, why did Jennie thrive where others (most notably Consuelo Vanderbilt) suffer?

Personality, education, determination.

The Primrose League was founded in the early 1880s with Jennie as one of its guiding (female) founders at a time when tangible feminine participation in politics was unknown. Do you feel her involvement in Randolph’s career, and later in Winston’s, had an impact on their political outlook?

No I don’t think she influenced Randolph but I do think her anti suffrage stance probably had some effect in her son’s views. Because she was able to have power and influence behind the scenes without having a vote. It’s her one blind spot. However, women have been influencing men in politics quietly behind the scenes for years. Mrs. Hester Thrale, the 18th century diarist and female friend of Dr Johnson, helped her husband in his political life. The interest in Jennie is because at this time women being active in politics in their own right was already a hot issue. Jennie did lots of boring behind the scenes work such as visiting schools and factories, and canvassing voters–all of which she has not been given credit for previously. I have read many newspaper articles about her traveling the country to do this and help Randolph when he was either too ill or couldn’t be bothered.

For a woman so influential and famous in her time, why hasn’t Jennie left a lasting impression on the public as an individual? I feel she is as much a pioneer as Dr Jex-Blake or the Pankhursts.

So do I, so why hasn’t she? I think there are a number of factors at play here: the idea that she was a mongrel or half caste and that Churchill owed his brash and extravagant side to her, whereas his brilliance and good connections were due to his Marlborough side. I don’t wish to downplay what his father gave him but think that most Churchill historians have been male and have given Jennie a bad press. I think Winston’s 1930 memoir, My Early Life, didn’t help because he called his mother distant and so she has been criticized for being a bad mother when clearly she was the mother Churchill needed. Winston was trying to show that even though he had a difficult childhood he had emerged unscathed. It was him using spin! Also other women were jealous of Jennie and her ability to attract younger men.

BUT

I think she could have bucked the trend as far as supporting votes for women was concerned.

Are there any other women in history who have caught your attention? Why did Jennie capture your imagination?

Oh yes masses of them. I have always written about strong women who know how to make the most of what is available: Enid Bagnold, Mother Teresa, Laura Ashley. Publishers however, won’t always allow you write about people who are extraordinary if they think the public doesn’t know who they are. I was lucky with Jennie because she interested me and as a Churchill she both interested and appealed to publishers. I want to write about several other women with extraordinary lives but they aren’t household names so I may never manage it.

Any last words?

Yes Jennie has been a most engaging companion for the last 6 years and I don’t feel ready to relinquish her. The relationship between biographer and subject is so strong that I sometimes have dreams in which I meet my subjects and beg their forgiveness for anything I may have misinterpreted. But with Jennie it’s different. I think she would be pleased with what I have done. Of all my subjects, I wish I could spend a day with her, chatting!

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