Monday, September 15, 2014

Writing matters


I am surely not the only writer occasionally astonished by the interplay of fiction and reality. The coverage of the issue of Scottish self-rule occupies the BBC Radio 4 Today program understandably these days... and in all its myriad implications. This morning the question of whether Queen Elizabeth would be the monarch of an independent Scotland was raised. It was pointed out that a claim to the throne could conceivably come from the heir of the Stuarts, who happens to be the Wittelsbach Duke of Bavaria.

That certainly brings the matter close to me in Munich! And to my current writing efforts.


In 1936 there were also extraordinary Anglo-German monarchist complications. A scion of the house of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (known since 1918 as the Windsors) had fought on the German side in the Great War and had scandalized the English when he turned up for the 1936 funeral of George V in full uniform of the thuggish Nazi SA. (Carl Eduard who was Duke of Albany until his peerage was rescinded.)

And then there was the sympathy of the uncrowned Edward VIII for many aspects of the new Germany. I can complain of no lack of material for Chance of Reign which threatens to grow to become a real 'door-stopper' of a book.

Nor is this the first time that I have found actuality impinging on a narrative which has sprung... I like to think... from my own fertile imagination. Intransitive State was completed almost a year ago. (That the Kindle edition languishes undiscovered in the Amazon cornucopia of storytelling is another matter!) The tale is set in 2016 on the eve of a rashly assumed Scottish independence and a key element deals with the issue of currency. I suggest that there could be a parallel and entirely virtual Scottish currency as well as a reluctantly and acrimoniously shared pound sterling.

Should I offer my services to Hoyrood?

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