Mad Blood Stirring
Page 39
As well as Dick, Captain Thomas Shortland, Elizabeth Shortland, Dr Magrath and Tommy Jackson were all real people. The attempted escape through a hole in the retaining wall is true. The Rough Allies were real and the smallpox outbreak was all too real. Dr Magrath’s list of casualties at the end of the book is taken from the official records (quoted in Prisoners of War at Dartmoor by Trevor James). My licence has been to run the production of Romeo and Juliet up to and alongside the massacre, when in reality it was performed a few months earlier.
Astute Shakespeare scholars may have noticed a few echoes of Romeo and Juliet throughout Mad Blood Stirring; some Dartmoor characters shadow their Veronese predecessors and a few of their words may have seemed familiar as well. You’ll have spotted Romeo and Juliet, of course, but Nurse, Benvolio, Mercutio and Tybalt are all here too.
Finally, a word on the racial language used extensively throughout the story. Its power to offend is undimmed, indeed it has been magnified with the passage of time, but it is included here as honest dialogue, using words in common usage among nineteenth-century sailors and soldiers.
Acknowledgements
So that History and Politics degree came in useful after all. I was researching where to conclude my last book Blame and I fancied Dartmoor as the setting. My heroes were heading south-west out of London and it seemed the obvious choice. Then I came across the nine hundred and ninety-five black prisoners-of-war from the War of 1812. Then the segregation. Then King Dick. By the time I found his production of Romeo and Juliet, I knew I was hooked and that my Blame cast would have to go elsewhere. My astute wife Hilary, followed by my astute agent (and now writer, damn him) Sam Copeland at RCW, spotted the possibilities and we were off.
I am thrilled that Mad Blood Stirring became a Transworld book; as a reader, their name has always seemed a hallmark of quality. My editors Bill Scott-Kerr and Darcy Nicholson were everything a writer could ask for – patient, wise and (usually) gentle. Thank you.
I have had help and encouragement from Shakespeare scholars Vicky Perrin and Crispin Letts in the UK, firearms advice from Matt Plass in New York, smallpox knowledge from Dr Christopher Smith, Consultant Virologist and Public Understanding of Science Fellow at Cambridge University, and gospel choir wisdom from Bazil Meade MBE. Ben, Natasha and Joe, as ever, thank you for your enthusiasm and forbearance. Early readers Grace Wroe, Martin Wroe, Steve Taylor, Jonathan Mayo, Anna Beasley and Travis McCready, thank you. Harriet Cross, the UK’s Consul-General in Boston, was a fountain of knowledge and enthusiasm. Malorie Blackman, Sir Ken Branagh and Sir Lenny Henry were early encouragers. Bob Digby and Mick Byrne run the most educational and dynamic taxi service across the moor.
Any mistakes are, of course, entirely mine.
Bibliography
‘Self-Help in Dartmoor: Black and White Prisoners in the War of 1812’, Robin F. A. Fabel, Journal of the Early Republic
The Yarn of a Yankee Privateer, edited by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Black Jacks, W. Jeffrey Bolster
Prisoners of War at Dartmoor, Trevor James
Staying Power, Peter Fryer
The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African, Written by Himself, Olaudah Equiano
‘The Strange Life and Stranger Afterlife of King Dick Including His Adventures In Haiti and Hollywood with Observations on the Construction of Race, Class, Nationality, Gender, Slang Etymology and Religion’ (a thesis), Alan Lipke, University of South Florida
The Diary of Benjamin F. Palmer, Benjamin Franklin Palmer
Daughters of Britannia: The Lives and Times of Diplomatic Wives, Katie Hickman
The War of 1812 and the Rise of the U.S. Navy, Mark Collins Jenkins and David Taylor
1812: A Nation Emerges, Sidney Hart and Rachael L. Penman
Jack Tar’s Story: The Autobiographies and Memoirs of Sailors in Antebellum America, Myra C. Glenn
A Sea of Words, Dean King
The New Penguin Book of English Folk Songs, edited by Julia Bishop and Steve Roud
Black and British: A Forgotten History, David Olusoga
Thirteen Soldiers, John McCain and Mark Salter
The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead
Tin Man, Sarah Winman
Runaway Slaves: Rebels on the Plantation, John Hope Franklin
Army Life in a Black Regiment, Thomas Wentworth Higginson
The Colored Patriots of the American Revolution, William Cooper Nell
And finally …
Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare
About the author
Simon Mayo is one of Britain’s best-loved radio presenters. He has worked on BBC radio since 1982 and is now the presenter of Drivetime on BBC Radio 2. He is also the co-presenter of Kermode and Mayo’s Film Review on BBC Radio 5 Live.
Mad Blood Stirring is his first novel.
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First published in Great Britain in 2018 by Doubleday
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