Christopher Bland on trying to write the great Anglo-Irish novel

For most of my life I have been a cocktail party novelist – “I’ve got this great idea for a book” or, even worse, “a brilliant plot for a film”. The closet I came to writing anything was a title, “The SS Girl”, not bad, but 100,000 words short of your actual novel.

The way to change conversation to reality was to enrol in a creative writing course. Novel Writing 1 was followed by Novel Writing 2, both Birkbeck evening classes, followed by a more expensive and more demanding Faber course that lasted eight months. You had to submit work before Faber would accept you – I was rejected twice, which made me even keener to get in.

All three courses were invaluable; we had to produce work at regular intervals, which was critiqued by our fellow aspiring writers and by a beady-eyed teacher, herself a published novelist. Getting the words down on paper was a new experience, and the most valuable part of the process. I also learned a lot – to eschew adverbs, to write from a point of view, and in my case that writing in the historic present gave my writing an energy that it had hitherto lacked.

The inspiration for Ashes in the Wind came from a sepia photograph – I am looking at it now – of my great-grandfather, with my grandfather at his knee, in front of Derriquin Castle in Co Kerry, on the Kenmare River, towards the end of the 19th century. These two were living in an Anglo-Irish world that was on the verge of disintegration. And I also wanted to write about the Catholic Irish, whose world was also about to change dramatically.

That was the trigger. Although Ashes in the Wind is fiction, it draws on my own knowledge of the different worlds it describes, and on a lot of reading over many years. Derriquin Castle and Staigue Fort are real places, and Drimnamore is a thinly disguised Sneem. My family did have oyster beds in the Kenmare River for 100 years, my great-great-uncle was killed at Inkerman, and I used some family letters and stories in the text.

Real characters and events appear. Michael Collins, Emmet Dalton, Michael O’Hanrahan and Lord Midleton play important roles in my story. Emmet Dalton was a fascinating discovery for me, [there’s no biography published as yet]. He won an MC with the Dublin Fusiliers in 1915, and then played an important part in the Easter Rising, the War of Independence and the Civil War. He was at Béal na mBláth, later a general in the Free State Army, and left to establish the nascent Irish film industry.

All the historical events happened, in some form or other, apart from the battle at Staigue Fort. The kidnapping and execution of Eileen Burke was loosely based on the kidnapping of Mrs Lindsay in Co Cork. The shooting of Colonel Smyth in the County Club in Cork and the events of Bloody Sunday, including the killing of Captain Newbury, are all well-known – but fiction can, curiously, add to our understanding of these terrible events. So I make no apologies for giving Michael Collins an ADC at Béal na mBláth, or for inventing, and then killing, Frank O’Gowan.

I learned a great deal during the course of researching and writing Ashes in the Wind. I discovered the wonderful story of the Kerry Blue dog show in Dublin at the height of the War of Independence. First prize was won by Michael Collins with his dog Convict 224, his Frongoch prison number, beating entries from Sir James McMahon and Captain Wyndham Quin from the Viceregal Lodge. I learned about the tragi-comic adventures of the Bandera Irlandesa, who fought briefly and unsuccessfully for Franco during the Spanish Civil War. I improved my knowledge of road bowling and Gaelic football. And I learned how to farm oysters.

I thought about identity during the writing, and what it means, if anything, when I call myself Anglo-Irish. There is a passage in the book that tries to explain this strange state.

“When he was fifteen James asked his father, ‘Dad, what are we? English, Irish, or what?’

‘We’re the Formerlies,’ John replied. ‘Look at us in the Irish Landed Gentry.’

He pulled down a heavy red volume from the bookshelf and leafed through its pages.

‘”Burke formerly of Derriquin, Eyre formerly of Eyre Court, Kirkwood formerly of Woodbrook, Persse formerly of Roxborough, now Box 462, Aptos, California.” Formerlies all.’

He poured himself a generous whiskey and a little water.

‘We don’t belong in England or in Ireland. We’re upper class in Ireland, middle class in England if we’re lucky. We stand up for “God Save the Queen”, we know the words of “The Soldier’s Song”, but not in Gaelic, we want the Irish rugby team to beat the English and the English to beat everyone else. We send our sons to Trinity College Dublin, not Trinity College Cambridge. We talk about World War Two, but it was The Emergency in Ireland. We’re happy when the Irish economy booms, we’re even happier when it busts. We dislike comic stories about the Irish unless we tell them ourselves. And on the back of Swift and Burke and Sheridan and Yeats we give ourselves intellectual airs.’

John got up to refill his glass.

‘Brendan Behan was close to the mark: “An Anglo-Irishman only works at riding horses, drinking whiskey and reading double-meaning books in Irish at Trinity College.” I’ve known a few like that, your cousin Rut Uprichard, for instance. Won the Conyngham Cup at Punchestown when it was still over banks and stone walls, finished fourth in the Grand National, and drank himself to death at the age of forty-two. Though he never read a book – too busy with the women.’

‘So we’re Anglo-Irish then?’

‘Both and neither. That’ll have to do. That’s what we are.’

When my son read this section, he said, “Dad, now I get it.”

How did the book turn out? Not as planned. I wanted to write, for the Irish and the Anglo-Irish, The Leopard, or Woodbrook, or Miklos Banffy's Transylvanian Trilogy. A high bar, and one I didn't clear. Plot and character took over.

So I would place my novel halfway between the Booker Prize and the beach, and I’m content with that. It is a good read.

Ashes in the Wind was published last week by Head of Zeus, priced £14.99. Chrisopher Bland is a former chairman of the BBC board of governors, London Weekend Television, the Royal Shakespeare Company and BT.