Anthony Hill’s Newsletter
Winter 2024
Dear friends
Welcome to my Winter 2024 Newsletter. In this edition:
* Soldier Boy The Play to be published
* Next Steps
* Matthew Flinders Reinterment
* Booktopia collapse
* Literary Awards
* Books in print
Soldier Boy The Play with Publisher
Apologies for the delay in the Newsletter, but the last few weeks have been super busy proof-reading and getting Soldier Boy The Play ready for publication.
I’m happy to advise that the last pages have now been sent off, and within the next month to six weeks copies of the printed book or eBook will be available to general readers, theatre companies and schools.
The work is a full-length play of around 90 minutes that follows the structure of the original novel quite closely.
Act One is the 14-year-old Jim Martin telling the great lie about his age and emotionally blackmailing his parents to let him enlist in 1915. Act Two is Jim at Gallipoli, the horrors of battle, filth, disease and death. The youngest Australian soldier to die in war.
Its theme is the cost of war: the courage, endurance and sacrifice of the first Anzac diggers – and those same qualities demanded of their families at home. Then as now. And why Anzac Day remains our most important day of remembrance.
In a note to me, the historian Dr Michael McKernan said he thought the play has “the authentic Gallipoli and capture(s), with minimum fuss, the real feel of the place.” Michael was formerly deputy director at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra.
I have in fact dedicated the play to the memory of Dallas and Bill Hayden, who first took me to Gallipoli in 1995 when I worked for him as speechwriter during his term as Governor-General.
It was this visit which inspired me to seek a subject that dealt with young people and war, and led in time to the story of James Martin and Soldier Boy.
In his Introduction to Soldier Boy The Play, the writer Christopher Bantick says the novel “transfers seamlessly to performance.”
Christopher adds: “This adaptation does not compromise the detail of the novel or the tone. There is integrity to the original story of Jim Martin…”
Encouraging words from two people I respect highly. Let us hope an audience will think so too.
Next Steps
There have already been a few expressions of interest in producing the play – although it is very early, and I won’t have anything to report until at least the Summer Newsletter.
Still, it’s a positive start, one that we hope to pursue with a marketing campaign directed specifically at schools, where Soldier Boy the novel is still widely read, community theatres and of course libraries.
In this, I am being greatly assisted by Kristin Gill, formerly with Penguin Books when the novel came out in 2001.
It’s been something of Penguin old home week with this project, for the cover and text of Soldier Boy The Play have been designed by Cathy Larsen, who also worked on the original book.
Let me acknowledge, too, the support and encouragement I’ve had from Penguin Random House, who willingly gave permission to self-publish the play and with whom I continue to share the theatrical rights.
Cover: I hope that readers will be as pleased with the cover as I am.
We initially had a pictorial image in mind, but the cost of obtaining the rights was pretty high. So I looked instead at something more generic and distinctive that I could use with colour and photo variations on any other books I might self-publish.
I think Cathy has interpreted my idea splendidly. Her design is simple, strong and arresting.
As I mentioned in my last, I’m also dramatising the companion book Young Digger, and if reasonably successful I can see it in similar format with sky blue over the parchment body, the young war orphan in his miniature uniform.
Not that I want to run too far ahead of myself. This is my first fully professional attempt at self-publishing.
I tried many years ago and did almost everything wrong. Now, I’m attempting to get most of it right, and am producing the book and eBook with the assistance of Publicious Book Publishing, Coolangatta.
The founder, Andy McDermott, has been a tremendous source of advice and reassurance in the brave new world of electronic publishing.
The hard copy book will be available in the growing print-on-demand format, which saves enormously on holding stocks and cost. And I understand the eBook will also be available on most readers.
I will of course have signed copies of Soldier Boy The Play available to sell directly through my website, as will the eBook. Prices have not yet been finalised, but the book will be about $24.99 and the eBook $11.99.
If you would like to place a preliminary order, please contact me directly through anthony@anthonyhillbooks.com. I will let you know when stocks are available.
Matthew Flinders laid to rest
I dare say many of you have caught up with the news that Matthew Flinders, the great navigator and cartographer, has finally been laid to his rest in the church at his home village of Donington in Lincolnshire.
Royal Navy seamen with Flinders’ coffin at the graveside
I spent much of Saturday night 13 July, watching the very moving and beautiful service on a live stream broadcast arranged by the local group Matthew Flinders Bring Him Home, who were strong and active supporters of the reinterment. The broadcast cut out part way through, but it was all there on Facebook next morning.
The occasion was of particular significance to me and fellow voyagers, for Flinders, his friend Dr George Bass, and patron, Sir Joseph Banks, were key figures in my last historical novel The Investigators about the first modern circumnavigation of the Australian continent (1801-03).
All three Lincolnshire men of great importance in the history of Australia’s maritime exploration, are remembered in the stained glass window at the Church of St Mary and the Holy Rood, which now also illuminates Flinders’ grave.
A fourth, Flinders’ cousin Sir John Franklin, has his own memorial at nearby Spilsby (see the Summer 2024 Newsletter).
News of the discovery of Flinders’ first grave, near Euston station in London, came during the writing of The Investigators.
I was able to incorporate it in the book, and this month’s memorable service has brought his heroic if tragic story to an honoured closure.
Conducted by the Bishop of Lincoln in the presence of the Governor of South Australia, Flinders family members and other dignitaries, the service was redolent with the Royal Navy.
Flinders was carried into the church by a party of seamen, the coffin covered with a pall incorporating both the Australian and British flags, and a wreath in the form of a white anchor with red roses.
He was lowered into his grave by sailors to the sound of bosun’s whistles, as a Captain should. And a volley was fired in salute outside.
.
Afterwards earth from his native Donington, Australia, Mauritius (where Flinders spent some seven years a POW) and London, where Matthew died in 1814 aged only 40, were sprinkled over the coffin.
Memorably, an indigenous man Laurie Bimson, a descendent of the Aboriginal leader Bungaree, who sailed with Flinders on the circumnavigation, dropped into the grave a boomerang smeared with ochre from Bungaree’s country north of Sydney and carved with his stingray totem.
Laurie is seen standing to the rear in the photo above, head bowed and wearing a hat.It was of Bungaree that Flinders spoke about his “modesty and forbearance” and wrote glowingly of his “humble friend.”
These sentiments shone brightly through the years of prejudice, and I’m glad to say I was in contact with Laurie about his ancestor during the writing of The Investigators.
It was more than fitting to see him at the service, standing with his boomerang beneath a bronze bust of Flinders the navigator.
Interestingly, the lead plaque on Matthew’s original coffin that identified his human remains, will be exhibited on loan at the South Australian Museum.
I express sincere appreciation to the Matthew Flinders Bring Him Home team for their dedication to the project. They were very helpful to me and gave permission to use some screenshots from the service.
Also to Rev. Mark John Williams, vicar of St Mary’s, for his kind advice and for sending me a copy of the Order of Service. I will keep it as a treasured memento.
Comment:
Iconoclasts
I must say that, watching the great honour being paid to their native son by the people of Donington and the wider Commonwealth, I couldn’t help but reflect on the dishonour sometimes heaped these days on the early British navigators and founders in this and other former colonial countries.
In recent years we’ve seen statues of Captain Cook defaced, cut off at the knees and scrawled with slogans such as “The colony will fail.” Flinders’ statues have not escaped the vandals, and even that of Sir John Franklin in Hobart is said to be under some question.
It’s a crude, iconoclastic age, where the colonial legacy is being discredited by some academics and activists in what seems an attempt to delegitimise the modern nation state in favour of some mythic native idyll. A time when historical novelists like myself can feel a somewhat threatened species.
It is, I believe, a passing phase – one that is rejected by the great majority of citizens – and is in any case a hopeless cause.
To be sure, it’s one thing to re-evaluate and reinterpret the past – to acknowledge the sometimes violent displacement of indigenous people by colonial settlers. Invaders if you must.
But to try to erase history by destroying monuments, or blaming people like Cook for the faults of those who came after them, or indeed for having been men of their time, is an exercise in futility and evasion.
It was Flinders who did so much to popularise the very name of the continent Australia, and who first called the indigenous inhabitants “Australians”.
The past cannot be undone. The colony did not fail. We in the present are certainly responsible for healing as best we can the wounds we’ve inherited, and together for making a better future as one prospering nation and one self-governing people. Responsible for ourselves and our actions alone.
The 17th, 18th and 19th centuries were a time of European expansion, and the colonisation of Australia and the Pacific was inevitable. In my view better the British, with their ideas of political liberty and the rule of law, than some other Powers one could name.
And for that it is the great British navigators such as Cook and Flinders, with their vision and scientific skill adding to the sum of human knowledge about the world as it really is, that we have to thank.
As they did with much reverence and ceremony for Matthew at Donington on 13 July 2024.
Matthew Flinders, Mauritius 1807
Here he lies where he longed to be:
Home is the sailor, home from the sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.
Robert Louis Stevenson
Booktopia
The collapse of the major retail firm Booktopia is both worrying and symptomatic of the difficulties facing the publishing industry at the present time.
Since Covid, sales generally have been sluggish, apart from the “celebrity” blockbusters, publishers more cautious, and young writers finding it ever more difficult to break into the business. Not surprising that many more are turning to self-publishing, using the latest technology such as print-on-demand (POD) available to almost everyone.
Booktopia was one important Australian retailer open to POD, and the appointment of administrators with an estimated debt of around $60 million will leave a not insignificant gap in the market.
While the firm’s collapse was perhaps not surprising to insiders, it is certainly a shock and concern to staff who have been retrenched, customers who face losses on books purchased in advance, and those authors, like myself, ready to launch a new publication such as Soldier Boy The Play.
Current media reports suggest the administrators are exploring options to either recapitalise the business or sell it. Several buyers are said to interested. It is to be hoped they succeed. In tough times we can ill afford to lose a bookseller of this importance to the trade.
Literary Awards
Congratulations to the authors and illustrators of the books considered for various literary awards so far this year. The winners already announced include:
International Booker Prize: Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck, translated by Michael Hofmann (joint winners).
Ernest Scott History Prize: Unmaking Angas Downs: Myth and history on a Central Australian pastoral station by Shannyn Palmer.
Other awards including the Miles Franklin, Prime Minister’s, National Biography and Children’s Book Council of Australia will be announced later this year and included in my Summer 2025 Newsletter.
Books in print:
Personally-signed books still in print can be ordered through the website here.
• Animal Heroes ($33 plus $10.60 postage) print on demand.
• The Burnt Stick ($17.00 plus $3.60 postage).
• Captain Cook’s Apprentice ($33 plus $10.60 postage) now print on demand.
• The Investigators ($33 plus $10.60 postage).
• The Last Convict ($33 plus $14.50 postage).
• The Story of Billy Young ($23 plus $10.60 postage) print on demand.
•Soldier Boy ($20 plus postage $3.60).
• Young Digger ($30 plus postage $10.60).
I will refund any excess postage if multiple books are purchased.
Books out of print:
I have a very few copies left of some of my older titles that are now out of print. They include Antique Furniture in Australia; The Grandfather Clock; Growing Up & Other Stories; River Boy; and a couple of Harriet and Spindrift. If readers are interested in any of them, please contact me directly at anthony@anthonyhillbooks.com and I’ll let you know prices, postage and payment.
The next Newsletter will be the Summer 2025 edition.
With every good wish
Anthony
Photo credits:
Soldier Boy The Play cover by Cathy Larsen; screen shots of the Matthew Flinders reinterment by kind permission of Matthew Flinders Bring Him Home; covers of Soldier Boy and The Investigators courtesy Penguin Random House; Matthew Flinders 1807 Wikimedia.
www.anthonyhillbooks.com