The Last Campaign
of
Marianne Tambour
by David Ebsworth
1815 - On the
bloody fields of Waterloo, a battle-weary canteen mistress of Bonaparte’s
Imperial Guard battalions must fight to free her daughter from all the perils
that war will hurl against them – before this last campaign can kill them both.
“Superb!
David Ebsworth has really brought these dramatic events to life. His
description of the fighting is particularly vivid and compelling.” (Andrew W. Field, author of Waterloo: The French Perspective and
its companion volume, Prelude to
Waterloo: Quatre Bras)
A novel of
action and intrigue based on the real-life exploits of two women who fought, in
their own right, within Napoleon’s army.
Includes a
Battlefield Tour Guide for those wanting to follow the route taken by the
story’s main characters or to visit the sites of the 1815 Waterloo Campaign.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
David
Ebsworth is the pen name of writer, Dave McCall, a former
negotiator and Regional Secretary for Britain's Transport & General
Workers’ Union. He was born in Liverpool (UK) but has lived for the past thirty
years in Wrexham, North Wales, with his wife, Ann. Following his retirement, Dave
began to write seriously in 2009.
INTERVIEW
Where
are you from?
Hello Victoria, and thanks for hosting the
interview. I was born in Liverpool, and was brought up there through the ‘50s
and ‘60s. Then I moved to Wrexham, in North Wales, in 1980 and have lived there
ever since. But, with my wife, Ann, I also spend a big chunk of each year in
Alicante, southern Spain. So I’m now equally “at home” in Liverpool, Wrexham and Alicante.
Tell
us your latest news.
My latest big news came when a London-based
post-production film company contacted me to say that they’re seriously
considering an adaptation of my second novel, The Assassin’s Mark, as a 6-part TV drama. The story’s set towards
the end of the Spanish Civil War in 1938. It will be astonishing if this really
happens and, at the moment, I’m just trying not to get too carried away with
the idea!
When
did you first consider yourself a writer?
I don’t think this will be a particularly
original answer but, genuinely, it was the point when I held a published copy
of my first novel, The Jacobites’
Apprentice, in my hand. I never thought I’d even be able to finish it, let
alone see it published. And then, of course, I’d never really intended to write
another. But by the time Jacobites
hit the streets, I was well into writing the second book, and had a string of
outlines for a batch more. It suddenly occurred to me that I now had a new
career – as a writer.
What
inspired you to write your first book?
I’d worked in Manchester (England, of
course) for a long time and come across the story of Bonnie Prince Charlie’s
link with the city. His Stuart Dynasty had been exiled many years earlier but,
in 1745, he landed in Scotland and raised a rebellion aimed at reclaiming the
throne. He was persuaded to invade England and march on London, and was assured
that many English towns would give him support. In truth, the only place that
gave him any real support was
Manchester. But the background story of the way in which this ripped the town
apart was little-known – and had certainly not been used as the basis for a
historical novel. It intrigued me so much that, when I was coming up towards
retirement, and wanted a whole new challenge, I decided to try writing the
tale.
Do
you have a specific writing style?
In general, I try to keep my writing
uncluttered… to avoid the use of adverbs like the plague, and to concentrate on
dialogue rather than description. But all my books are historical fiction. So I try to make sure that my style also reflects
the period about which I’m writing. As a
result, The Jacobites’ Apprentice is
written almost in the style of jane Austen. Not quite, but the language is
authentic for the period. The second (The Assassin’s Mark) is set in 1938, so
the style is a bit more “Agatha Christie” or “Marjorie Allingham”. The third
tells the story of the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879 (The Kraals of Ulundi) so it has the feel of a late-Victorian novel,
naturally. And my latest. The Last
Campaign of Marianne Tambour, is set during the few days culminating in the
Battle of Waterloo. Style-wise, this provided something of a challenge because
it tells the story from the perspective of two French women fighting in the
front lines of Napoleon’s army. And my solution? Every time I sat down to write
it, I imagined myself as one of the great French novelists of the 19th
Century, like Balzac maybe, and let the style develop from there. A bit of a
conceit but, hopefully, it works!
How
did you come up with this latest title?
That’s a very good question. The main
protagonist is Marianne Tambour. It’s not her real name, because she was
abandoned at birth, given the surname Tambour
because she was found on the head of a drum. Marianne because, by that time, the name had come to symbolise the
spirit of the French Revolution’s women. And a main plank of the story is
Marianne’s attempt to escape the army life, along with her young daughter,
Florisette. So she’s determined that, after this one last campaign, she’ll start
a new life for herself and her family. But will she succeed? Hence, The Last Campaign of Marianne Tambour.
Is
there a message in your novel that you want readers to grasp?
Well, in each of my books I’ve tried to
take a reasonably well-know period of history and then find the “untold story”
of that period, or to look at the period from a whole new angle. So, there have
been literally hundreds of novels written that feature the Battle of Waterloo.
And this year is, of course, the 200th anniversary. But most of us
who are English-speakers only really know the story from a traditional
anglo-centric viewpoint, the one which sees Britain pitted against the tyranny
of Napoleon Bonaparte and the thin red line of British troops holding out
against the French hordes. Yet the battle – in fact, the whole of the
Napoleonic War - looks very different from the French side. It’s a familiar
message in my books. That there’s really no such thing as “history” – simply
the perspective from which one side or the other sees events or personalities.
How
much of the book is realistic?
Oh, all of it. The story is based very much
on the real-life experiences of actual women who fought in Napoleon’s army –
even though they might not have been at Waterloo itself. But the factual background
has been praised by many eminent historians. It’s not a book for the squeamish,
however. There’s no gratuitous violence but I thought it necessary to make the
reader feel what it would have been like for these women, living and marching
through the most appalling conditions and then trying to survive in the thick
of one of history’s most brutal battles.
Are
experiences based on someone you know or events in your own life?
I don’t really believe in that old saying:
“Write about what you know.” Really, I prefer to turn that around, and make it:
“Know about what you write.” So, lots of in-depth research. But I suppose the
big challenge for me with Marianne
was that this is a story told by a man from the viewpoint of two women. Now,
I’ve written from a woman’s perspective in the past, but this was a bit
different. These were especially feisty women in combat situations.
Fortunately, I’ve worked closely in the past, and over many years, with women
who were tough union organisers, or who’d fought (sometimes literally) against
repression in places like South Africa, Nicaragua and Colombia. So I had a
whole pool of characters and conversations upon which to draw.
What
books have most influenced your life?
My father was self-taught, but he had a
passion for Charles Dickens. So I was brought up with David Copperfield and Great
Expectations as moral influences. And then I discovered the books of
Rosemary Sutcliff, so that I fell in love with beautifully written historical
fiction through Sword at Sunset and The Eagle of the Ninth. Later, I learned
the art of imagination through Science Fiction writers like Michael Moorcock
and Frank Herbert, and the Dune
series remains one of my favourite all-time reads. And then Kurt Vonnegut
taught me that trick of taking a subject and examining it from a different
viewpoint, to always challenge my own perspectives, and I suppose the best
example of that might be his book, Hocus
Pocus. For writing style, I also love the French classis, so Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables. And then, for influence
over my technique, it would definitely by Stephen King’s On Writing.
If
you had to choose, which writer would you consider a mentor?
Rosemary Sutcliff, without doubt.
What
book are you reading now?
I’ve just started re-reading the Georges
Simenon Maigret novels. It must be
forty years since I last read them but they’re still wonderfully fresh. I can
smell Paris on every page, the coffee and the smoke from the detective’s pipe.
Wonderful!
Are
there any new authors that have grabbed your interest?
I recently finished reading Patricia
Bracewell’s excellent Shadow on the Crown.
If there’s a period of English history to rival the Tudors for skulduggery,
it’s the years at the beginning of the 11th Century, just before the
Norman Conquest – and the astonishing tale of Emma of Normandy. Again, it’s not
terribly well-known but Pat has done a brilliant job of bringing this to life,
both in Shadow on the Crown and its
sequel, The Price of Blood.
What
are your current projects?
My work-in-progress is a novel set in 6th
Century Britain – in the period that we usually call the Dark Ages. But recent
archaeological and other research has shown that it probably wasn’t as grim as
we previously imagined. So, once again, I’m trying to give some familiar
territory a fresh twist. It will be called The
Song-Sayer’s Lament, and should be published early in 2016.
What
would you like my readers to know?
About my books? That they’ll be enjoyed by
fans of serious historical fiction. About me? That I love to get feedback from
readers and enjoy keeping folks up-to-date through my monthly e-mail
newsletter. If anybody wants to be on the list, they just need to contact me.
And thanks again, Victoria, for hosting this stop on the book tour.
BUY LINKS
GIVEAWAY
2
COPIES OF THE BOOK
(UK
WINNER PAPERBACK / INTERNATIONAL WINNER EBOOK)
Hey Victoria. Thanks for posting this. I've been bogged down with a local book festival these past few days so didn't get a chance to follow up earlier but if there are any comments or other questions, I'm happy to deal with them. And I really DID enjoy this interview :)
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