Tippex, Typewriters, Trials and Tribulations

They say that everyone has a book in them, a story to tell, something that needs to be let out to see the light of day. I guess this is true to a point, but there's a world of difference between having that story and actually sitting down and writing it. Since I began writing many years ago many people have asked me how I do it, how I started, and they go on to say how they could never do it themselves, the words 'comprehension' or 'essay' triggering some sort of terrifyingly negative response in their brain. And yet they would go on forever about this and that, and about subjects which they'd never think of writing about but could certainly talk about. It's the same with speaking. Ask certain people to give a speech or a lecture and they'll turn into gibbering wrecks. Take the best man at a wedding, for example. How many times have you seen the best man get to his feet and freeze, fluff his lines or drop his cue cards in terror, and yet in the bar afterwards he'd be talking until the bar closes about the groom and their adventures together.

               My point is, that there's no secret to writing, and certainly no method. Take, for example, the prolific romance novelist, Barbara Cartland. She famously used to dictate all of her novels to her secretary whilst sitting with her dog on her lap. She simply told the story much as someone would tell a rather long joke or their own story and polish it up afterwards. It was as simple as that. Of course, there's much more to it that simply writing down your thoughts but the basic principle is there. All you then need is your imagination, some inspiration, much discipline and lots of hard work. And of course, with non-fiction you need to get things right. I don't intend labouring the point too long about writing; you've either got it or you haven't.

               When I first started writing, many moons ago, a friend advised me to write about something that hadn’t been written about before. Well, that was easier said than done, but I knew what he meant. We were both very interested in military history, and as I was working at the British Library at the time, it wasn’t as though I was short of reference material. But what should I write about? That was the question. In fact, it wasn’t that difficult to come up with a subject. Ever since I can remember I’d been interested in history, probably as a result of my parents having bought numerous toy soldiers, figures from the American Civil War. My dad was always buying magazines and model soldiers, paints and all that, and when the film ‘Waterloo’ came out I was hooked forever. But the more I read about Waterloo the more I kept coming across references to ‘the war in Spain.’ So, naturally, I thought I’d better find out more. I bought myself a first edition (less jacket) of Jac Weller’s ‘Wellington in the Peninsula,’ for just £2, and sat down one sunny afternoon in the back garden of our house, opened it up, and began to read it. Two minutes later I was fast asleep. I simply couldn’t get my head around places like Rolica and Vimeiro.

               Not withstanding my first effort, I returned to the book later on, and, as they say, the rest is history. And so, when I set about thinking of writing a book myself, it was Jac Weller’s book that I turned to for inspiration. I still consider it my ‘go to’ book whenever I need a quick reference. As a child, I seem to remember reading about a battle, with images of blood, fire and smoke, and I’m pretty certain it was a piece about the storming of Badajoz, during the Peninsular War, and it seemed natural to me, many years later, that this should be the subject of my first book. The episode has featured in countless books over the years since 1812, but as of 1984 there had yet to be a book which dealt solely with the siege and storming of Badajoz, and so, with a trusty Canon typewriter to work on, and with one of the world’s greatest libraries at my disposal, I started writing.

               How times have changed. Nowadays, and even as I write this, it’s easy to delete a word, to correct something, and even (if you’re a cheat) to use AI when writing. But back then we were at the mercy of Tippex and typewriters. It was a different world. The floor of my living room was covered in sheets of paper, spread about like discarded proclamations. It was hard work, but it all gradually came together, and when it was finished, in 1982, I was ready to begin looking around for a publisher. Again, how times have changed. With today’s world of Amazon, Kindle Direct, On-Demand printing and independent publishing, it’s easy to get a project into print. Basically, anyone can do it. Years ago, we would have called this ‘vanity publishing’, because that’s exactly what it was; people who were unable to find a publisher would shell out often vast sums of money just to see their name in print, and as a consequence they were often left with hundreds of unsold copies of their book sitting there in their living room, blotting out the sunlight, in the vain hope that they’d be able to sell a few copies to people other than their friends and family. With the rise of digital publishing, this is no longer a problem, for there is no longer the need to pay a printer hundreds of pounds for physical copies of your book. You just run them off as and when they’re sold.

But back in 1982, the world of publishing was still very much a kind of ‘gentleman’s business’, the sort of world that you often see portrayed in old black and white films, with publishing parties, and with publishers in their London offices, barking at secretaries and all that. I guess it’s still like that today to some extent. Perhaps I simply don’t have the right publisher! But it is safe to say that it is indeed much easier to find a publisher these days. Pen & Sword, for example, who published my last few books (as of 2025) publish a vast number of military books each year, whilst smaller independent publishers are out there too, and are more than happy to take on any decent project. But in 1982 it was a different business altogether. I guess my first break came when a friend, who knew the late Martin Windrow, himself an author and editor, told me to go and see him. His office was only round the corner from the British Museum building where I worked, and so off I went one lunchtime, with a copy of the manuscript under my arm. Looking back, I can’t believe that I actually walked into his office and slapped the manuscript on his desk. I remember Martin sitting back in some alarm before I introduced myself and told him what it was all about. When he had recovered himself, he flicked through it before telling me, quite correctly, that it simply wasn’t done to wander uninvited into a publisher’s office. Manuscripts should instead be sent in the post. He did, however, promise to look through it and, after taking down my details, he sent me on my way. A few weeks later a letter arrived from him. He’d been kind enough to go through it and make a few comments, and said that it was good, but he recommended I change the title. I thought myself that the word ‘Badajoz’ was sufficient to stir publishers into life, but Martin quite rightly thought otherwise. He told me to call it something snappy, something like, ‘Up to My Arse in Muck and Bullets.’ Well, of course I couldn’t call it that, but I knew what he meant. I went away to consider potential titles and read John Kincaid’s ‘Adventures in the Rifle Brigade.’ Commenting on the hours before the assault on Badajoz, Kincaid wrote that ‘such was the rage for passports into eternity, that I was obliged to leave my baggage in the care of the sick and wounded.’ Passport Into Eternity? What a good title. But then I read the account written by another rifleman, bugler William Green, who said that although he’d been in action fourteen time before he had never received so much as a scratch, but as he entered the ditch at Badajoz he said to himself, ‘you’ll be in hell before daylight.’ And so it was that William Green, of Lutterworth in Leicestershire, gave me to the title of my first book. It’s nice to report also that, eighteen years later, after I’d firmly established myself, Martin approached me at the Napoleonic Fair to ask if I’d be prepared to write a book for his Crowood series, (Bloody Albuera) which I duly did. We’d gone full circle.

But to return to 1982. I followed Martin’s advice and duly sent off copies of my manuscript to numerous publishers, none of which were the slightest bit interested. I wish I’d kept all of my rejection letters. They came back in their droves, with comments like, ‘this subject that can really only be handled by a historian such as…’, or ‘we feel that only such and such could handle this subject,’ and so on. It was all very disappointing. And all very snobbish too. But, as they say, patience is a virtue, and I well remember one day in the spring of 1983, when a letter arrived from The Midas Press in Speldhurst, Kent. It looked like it had come off a duplicating machine and still reeked of that very distinct smell which the purple-blue print of duplicating machine gave off. The letter was signed by Ian Morley-Clarke. I read the letter. I read it a second time. It said that if I was prepared to wait until 1984, he was happy to publish the book and added that he had already approached the long-since defunct Military Book Club, who had pre-ordered a thousand copies. Well, I can tell you it felt as though I had won the lottery, not that there was one back then, but you get what I mean.

‘In Hell Before Daylight’ was duly published in 1984, but not before the first of many subsequent trials and tribulations, for, just prior to publication, Ian Morley-Clarke sold The Midas Press to another company, in effect the printers, who fancied themselves as book publishers. They called themselves The Baton Press. Unfortunately, they overdid things and ploughed a great deal of money into a book, published at the same time as mine, called ‘Genesis’, about the stars and rock formations on earth and all that. It was full of colour and, predictably, it sank the company which disappeared as quickly as it had come. And so, after finally finding a publisher, I was faced with having to start all over again.

Ian Morley-Clarke has long since left us, but, as they say, he is gone but not forgotten. Ian was in many ways the last of the golden amateurs, who ran his publishing company with only his wife to assist in editorial work. As a young man he had served in the latter stages of WW2 with the Queen’s Regiment and then the Parachute Regiment. He had sold The Midas Press but, after seven years or so, he wanted to get back into the game and he started up once more, this time with a company called The Parapress, clearly a nod to his old regiment. He ran the business from his home in Speldhurst, and going to see him was a real trial. What I mean is, I’d drive over to see him from my home in Rochester, armed with one or two ideas for a book, show them to him, and then listen while he went on and on about other ideas he’d received or books he’d published. It was always incredibly frustrating. He did, however, publish my book, ‘Letters From the Front,’ a collection of WW1 letters written by Brian Lawrence, an officer in the Grenadier Guards. It was only a small effort but it was lurid enough for Military Illustrated magazine to call it, ‘a very disturbing read,’ in their review, while The Folio Society included extracts from it in their centenary book on the Battle of the Somme. I don’t remember what happened to The Parapress, but Ian decided to set up another company, Spellmount, which was the closest name he could get to his hometown. Ian published my next four books, ‘The Waters of Oblivion’, ‘Gentlemen’s Sons’, ‘Craufurd’s Light Division’, and ‘A Guards Officer in the Peninsula’, all of which had been written in the period between 1985 and 1992, when I was effectively without a publisher, and which is why it might seem I was rather prolific. I wasn’t. It was just that they were piling up.

The real turning point came in 1994 when Jamie Wilson appeared on the scene. Ian invited my partner, Deborah, and me to dinner. Ian told me that Jamie was thinking about buying Spellmount. By this time, Spellmount had a rather unfortunate reputation, owing to Ian’s tardiness in paying authors and meeting deadlines, etc., Jamie, on the other hand, had many years’ experience in the publishing game, and had worked for several years for Hodder and Stoughton. He was simply too professional, and I well remember sitting in my car afterwards, turning to Deborah and saying simply, ‘well, there’s no way that that bloke is going to buy the company.’ How wrong was I? Jamie duly bought the company, launched it at the National Army Museum with my ‘Fields of Fire’ book, and one other, and completely turned the company around. Jamie and I developed a close relationship which continues to this day, and although he has long since given up publishing himself, he continues to work as a commissioning editor for Pen & Sword. Living not half an hour from me also allows to indulge in some pretty good lunches in good country pubs.

‘The Crimean War: A Clash of Empires’, written with Natalia Ischchenko, was the last book I wrote for Spellmount. The company was eventually sold and became The History Press, which continues today. It was under their label that Natalia and I produced ‘War in the Crimea: An Illustrated History.’ Since then my books have been published by Pen & Sword, although my 3-volume work, ‘The Campaigns of Wellington’, was published by The Folio Society. As for the future, well, only time will tell. Watch this space, as they say…