Tag: historical fiction

#BookReview The Secret Diaries of Charles Ignatius Sancho by Paterson Joseph

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The Secret Diaries of Charles Ignatius Sancho GraphicAbout the Book

‘I had little right to live, born on a slave ship where my parents both died. But I survived, and indeed, you might say I did more…’

It’s 1746 and Georgian London is not a safe place for a young Black man, especially one who has escaped slavery. After the twinkling lights in the Fleet Street coffee shops are blown out and the great houses have closed their doors for the night, Sancho must dodge slave catchers and worse. The man he hoped would help – a kindly duke who taught him to write – is dying. Sancho is desperate and utterly alone.

So how does Charles Ignatius Sancho meet the King, write and play highly acclaimed music, become the first Black person to vote in Britain and lead the fight to end slavery?

It’s time for him to tell his story, one that begins on a tempestuous Atlantic Ocean, and ends at the very centre of London life. And through it all, he must ask: born amongst death, how much can you achieve in one short life?

Format: Hardback (432 pages)         Publisher: Dialogue Books
Publication date: 6th October 2022 Genre: Historical Fiction

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My Review

The Secret Diaries of Charles Ignatius Sancho is very much a labour of love, the fruits of the author’s 20-year obsession with Sancho’s story. First brought to life in a one-man show performed in New York, and now in this novel, Paterson Joseph has taken a real person and, in his own words, ‘performed an action of fiction on him’.

The book takes the form of extracts from Sancho’s diaries interspersed with letters to his son, Billy. The diaries document Sancho’s colourful and eventful life, from his birth aboard a slave ship to becoming a successful business man (ironically trading in sugar, cocoa and tobacco, the products of slavery), being the first Black Briton to have the vote and becoming a leading light in the early abolitionist movement. But the diaries also reveal Sancho’s regrets about things he has done or failed to do. He wonders, ‘Why burden a child with his father’s sins? Perhaps these papers are best hidden – discarded?’

Sancho is a delightfully eccentric character and the author has created a distinctive voice for him so you feel he is speaking directly to you. One newspaper review has described it as an act of ‘literary ventriloquism’. I was fortunate enough to hear Paterson reading – or I should say, performing – two excerpts from the book at Henley Literary Festival in October.  It was wonderful to hear Sancho brought to life, complete with lisp and rather affected manner of speech.  True, Sancho can be a little pompous at times but he is also amusingly self-deprecating about his mistakes.  And in the periods when he’s in the very depths of despair your heart bleeds for him. (I guarantee you will feel the same about Tilly, the young woman who assists Sancho at a particularly perilous moment in his life.) Although Sancho experiences periods of terrible hardship and cruelty, he also rubs shoulders with luminaries of Georgian society such as William Hogarth, Samuel Johnson, David Garrick and Thomas Gainsborough, entertaining at musical soirées and even taking to the stage.

However, Sancho is a man stuck in the middle. He’s Black but his life has been spent apart from others like him. He’s experienced a lavish lifestyle but as the child of slaves has no legal status. He’s African by birth but has lived the life of an Englishman, thanks to a wealthy patron, feeling at times that being smartly turned out and slightly portly he does not correspond to the stereotype of a Black person. As he says, ‘I did not present a figure of destitution, but one of gross indulgence.’ At one point he wonders if he will always be ‘the outside man, looking in’.

This changes, in more ways than one, when Sancho meets John Clarke-Osborne. He issues Sancho an invitation: ‘Come with me one day soon, friend. Let me show you how the African entertains himself in London’. In one of the book’s memorable scenes, Sancho is taken to the Black Tar Tavern where he witnesses, pretty much for the first time, those he calls ‘my people’. It’s a lively affair with music and dancing.

In his Author’s Note, Paterson Joseph writes that ‘the reader who awaits a tale filled with whips and curses and rapes and murders of Black People by White People in every chapter […] will not find much to please you’. However we do get an insight into the evils of the slave trade in the section of the book made up of letters between Sancho and his future wife, Anne. These are full of their affection for each other and their hopes for the future. However, Anne’s letters also describe some of the horrific treatment experienced by slaves working on the plantations of Barbados and Antigua.

Charles Ignatius Sancho would be a remarkable character if he was the product of an author’s imagination. That he was a real person makes him even more remarkable.  In the words of the author, Charles Ignatius Sancho is “A hero. A man. An African. An Artist. Erudite. Wise. Grand. Flawed”.  The Secret Diaries of Charles Ignatius Sancho is a thoroughly entertaining historical novel and an impressive debut.

In three words: Spirited, immersive, engaging

Try something similar: The Alphabet of Heart’s Desire by Brian Keaney

Paterson JosephAbout the Author

Paterson Joseph is a beloved British actor and writer. Recently seen on Vigil and Noughts and Crosses, he has also starred in Peep Show and Law & Order UK and he plays Arthur Slugworth in the forthcoming Wonka movie. The Secret Diaries of Charles Ignatius Sancho is his debut novel. (Photo: Twitter profile)

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#BookReview Rivals of the Republic by Annelise Freisenbruch

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RivalsoftheRepublicAbout the Book

Rome, 70BC. Roman high society hums with gossip about the suspicious suicide of a prominent Roman senator and the body of a Vestal Virgin is discovered in the river Tiber.

As the authorities turn a blind eye, Hortensia is moved to investigate a trail of murders that appear to lead straight to the dark heart of the Eternal City.

Format: Paperback (288 pages)          Publisher: Duckworth
Publication date: 10th August 2017  Genre: Historical Fiction, Crime

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My Review

In Rivals of the Republic the author has taken actual historical events and characters, including well-known figures such as Cicero, Pompey and even a young Julius Caesar, and used her imagination to weave an intriguing and dramatic story around them. And don’t worry about getting confused because the book includes a dramatis personae in case you need a reminder of who everyone is.

The book’s female protagonist, Hortensia, was a real person although little is known about her beyond the fact she was the daughter of renowned lawyer Hortensius Hortalus. But when it comes to historical fiction, a gap is something authors love because they can use their imagination to fill it, as Annelise Freisenbruch has done here. The author’s Hortensia is a young woman of noble birth who is intelligent, has inherited the rhetorical skills of her father and possesses an independence of spirit that makes her challenge the conventions and limitations of patriarchal Roman society. The role of a woman like Hortensia is to make a marriage that is advantageous to her family, increasing their wealth or influence. They are certainly not expected to appear in the law court as Hortensia does in one particularly entertaining scene in which her inspired defence of a wronged woman proves she is more than equal to any male opponent.

The plot is intricate without being confusing and progresses at a good pace with plenty of twists and turns as it builds to an exciting conclusion. Although many of the characters are real life figures, there are a few fictional ones, notably a ‘boo hiss’ villian complete with scarred face and ‘strange amber eyes’. There is intrigue, conspiracy and political machinations conducted by individuals driven by a lust for power and wealth. They are utterly ruthless when it comes to ridding themselves of opponents. Luckily Hortensia finds a useful ally in ex-gladiator, Lurcio, and despite the difference in their social station they make a great partnership: a winning combination of brains and brawn.

The author has clearly used her knowledge of the period to cram the book with the sort of detail – of food, dress, social and religious customs – that makes a historical novel come alive.  There’s a clear sense of the gulf between the lives of noble families such as Hortensia’s and the experiences of ordinary people. For example, in this account of Lurcio’s visit to the Subura, a lower-class area of Rome notorious as a pleasure district.

‘There was no street lighting in the damp alleyways and few of the residents could afford the cost of a lantern-bearer to illuminate their way, but the beat of footsteps, the rattle of vehicles and the screech of voices had barely abated since the sun went down. The waft of hot chickpea soup and thick sausage stew from the cook shops competed with the stench from the underground sewer, tempting the custom of those who did not dare risk a cooking fire in the precipitous, decaying tenements that teetered like crumbling cliff-faces above the narrow streets.’

Although Rivals of the Republic was intended to be the first in the ‘Blood of Rome’ historical crime series, there have been no further instalments to date. (The author now writes children’s books under the name Annelise Gray.) This is a shame because, on the strength of Rivals of the Republic, I think it had the makings of a first-rate series sure to appeal to fans of historical crime fiction. Perhaps the author may come back to it at some point.

I received a review copy courtesy of Duckworth.

In three words: Intriguing, engaging, authentic

Try something similar: The Senator’s Assignment by Joan E. Histon

Annelise GrayAbout the Author

Annelise Freisenbruch received her PhD in Classics from Cambridge University. She has worked as a researcher for the BBC and has appeared in documentaries about ancient Rome for PBS and CNN. Her first book, The First Ladies of Rome: The Women behind the Caesars, was published to much critical acclaim and has been translated into eight languages. Rivals of the Republic is her first novel. (Photo: Author Twitter profile)

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