Forthcoming lectures:

Saturday June 26th
3.00 – 5.00 pm

Ipswich Literary Tea,
Ipswich Arts Festival,
Arlington Brasserie,
Ipswich,
Suffolk

Box Office 01473 433100
£8 (£6 concessions)

Law and disorder: Making an impression throughout history.

Discussion over tea and cakes with Giles Kristian, author of Sons of Thunder, and Paul Sussman, author of The Hidden Oasis.

***

Hertfordshire Lit Fest - Click thumbnail!

Tuesday June 29th
7.45 pm

Chichester Festivities

History panel: Law and disorder: How to make an impression throughout history.

With Giles Kristian, author of Sons of Thunder, and Manda Scott, author of Rome: The Emperor’s Spy

Details to follow

***

Wednesday July 14th

Blackburn Library

History panel with Giles Kristian and Manda Scott, as above.

Details to follow

Watch this space!

The Last Concubine just came out in Thai. This is the beautiful cover. Big in Thailand!

Have just finished David Mitchell’s The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, which I reviewed for the Literary Review. Total fabulous (unsurprisingly), a firework of a book that sparks and crackles along. You’re totally gripped from the very first page!

Something that other readers might not know is that it’s also based very firmly in historical fact. It’s set – to begin with, at least – in Dejima, a fan-shaped island the size of a football pitch, just off the city of Nagasaki. Dejima simply cries out to be the subject of a novel. Twenty merchants lived there, theoretically all Dutch, though, given that the Japanese never saw any other white foreigners, other nationalities could easily have slipped in; and the kind of men that lived out their lives abroad tended to be men who had been pressganged as urchins and stayed alive by their wits. The Dutch East Indies Company ship which arrived once a year from Batavia (now Jakarta) was these men’s only link with the outside world. And when something went on out there in the big wide world – such as the Napoleonic Wars, when Holland was taken over by France and ceased to exist for more than ten years – the men marooned on Dejima had no idea what was going on. They only knew that the ship hadn’t turned up and therefore they had nothing to trade, no income and no escape.

Mitchell brings this all magnificently to life! It’s a wonderful book and I highly recommend it.

Friday May 14th
11 am

Lincoln Book Festival, Lincoln Drill Hall, Lincoln

Festival Box Office tel 01522 873 894
£4 (£2 concessions)

History panel: Law and disorder: How to make an impression throughout history.

With Giles Kristian, author of Sons of Thunder, and Manda Scott, author of Rome: The Emperor’s Spy

***

Tuesday May 18th
7.00 pm (tickets on sale at the door from 6.30 pm)

Royal Overseas League, Over-Seas House, Park Place, St James’s Street, London SW1A 1LR
tel 0207 408 0214 ext 324 or email culture@rosl.org.uk

Illustrated talk: The Yoshiwara and the world of Japanese courtesans

Call for details

***

Saturday June 26th
3.00 pm

Ipswich Arts Festival

Details to follow

***

Hertfordshire Lit Fest - Click thumbnail!

Tuesday June 29th
7.45 pm

Chichester Festivities

History panel: Law and disorder: How to make an impression throughout history.

With Giles Kristian, author of Sons of Thunder, and Manda Scott, author of Rome: The Emperor’s Spy

Details to follow

***

Wednesday July 14th

Blackburn Library

History panel with Giles Kristian and Manda Scott, as above.

Details to follow

Watch this space!

Spoke on Fighting for the shogun: the story of a ship, some samurai, nine French officers and the battle for Hokkaido – at the Japan Society, at a very convivial Japanese pub called The Crane and the Tortoise (suitably auspicious name) on Gray’s Inn Road. My talk was followed by sushi and sake and a good time had by all.

Please click on thumbnails below to scroll through the gallery:

Forthcoming lectures in 2010:

Wednesday May 18th
7.00 pm

Royal Overseas League, Over-Seas House, Park Place, St James’s Street, London SW1A 1LR
tel 0207 408 0214

Illustrated talk: The Yoshiwara and the world of Japanese courtesans

Call for details

***

Saturday June 26th
3.00 pm

Ipswich Arts Festival

Details to follow

***

Hertfordshire Lit Fest - Click thumbnail!

Tuesday June 29th
7.45 pm

Chichester Festivities

History panel: Law and disorder: How to make an impression throughout history.

With Giles Kristian, author of Sons of Thunder, and Manda Scott, author of Rome: The Emperor’s Spy

Details to follow

***

Wednesday July 14th

Blackburn Library

History panel with Giles Kristian and Manda Scott, as above.

Details to follow

Launched The Courtesan and the Samurai on March 25th and now hoping for a keen wind to fill her sails! The launch took place at Daunts bookshop on Marylebone High Street, in London, and there was a good-sized gathering of friends, colleagues, my publisher and my agent, as well as Colin the master swordsman, who came down from Durham. I made a speech, Colin gave a demonstration, and we all retired to an Italian restaurant for dinner.

Please click on thumbnails below to scroll through the gallery:

The Courtesan and the Samurai – Tour dates 2010

Wednesday April 21st
6.30 pm

Japan Society
Crane and Tortoise (room to rear of main bar), 39 Gray’s Inn Road, London WC1X 8PR
tel 0207 828 6330

Illustrated talk: Fighting for the shogun: the story of a ship, some samurai, nine French officers and the battle for Hokkaido.

£7.50 including a light Japanese buffet following the lecture

see: The Japan Society website

***

Wednesday May 18th

Royal Overseas League, Over-Seas House, Park Place, St James’s Street, London SW1A 1LR
tel 0207 408 0214

Illustrated talk: The Yoshiwara and the world of Japanese courtesans

Details to follow

Wednesday April 21st
6.30 pm

Japan Society
Crane and Tortoise (room to rear of main bar), 39 Gray’s Inn Road, London WC1X 8PR
tel 0207 828 6330

Illustrated talk: Fighting for the shogun: the story of a ship, some samurai, nine French officers and the battle for Hokkaido.

£7.50 including a light Japanese buffet following the lecture

see: The Japan Society website

***

Wednesday May 18th

Royal Overseas League, Over-Seas House, Park Place, St James’s Street, London SW1A 1LR
tel 0207 408 0214

Illustrated talk: The Yoshiwara and the world of Japanese courtesans

Details to follow

Even before Japan opened to the west in 1853, westerners were beginning to discover Japan’s extraordinary culture. Throughout the second half of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth Japonisme was hugely in vogue. Across Europe and the United States, people filled their houses with fans, screens, blue and white porcelain, netsuke and samurai swords like the one that inspired WS Gilbert to write the Mikado. Fashionable women wore kimonos and were painted in them. As well as poets and artists, musicians too were inspired by Japanese culture.

Right at the height of the vogue for all things Japanese, an exquisitely beautiful ex-geisha named Sadayakko arrived in the US. She toured from the west coast to the east, then crossed the Atlantic and performed in England. At the Paris Expo of 1901, she was acclaimed as the star of the entire show. Debussy went to see her perform and shortly afterwards composed La Mer. She went onto be the inspiration for Puccini’s Madame Butterfly, along the way being painted by Picasso, admired by Isadora Duncan and dining with Tsar Nikolai II.

This July the Proms featured a programme of Japanese and Japanese-inspired music and asked me to talk about Sadayakko, the embodiment of Japonisme. Here is what I said.

Japan, 1868: the last shogun has been defeated, the age of the emperors is about to begin – and in Japan’s frozen north a diehard band of loyalists plans a desperate last stand.

Hana is just seventeen when her husband goes to war, leaving her alone and very vulnerable. When enemy soldiers attack her house she flees for her life across the shattered city of Tokyo and takes refuge in the Yoshiwara, its famous pleasure quarter. There she is sold into a brothel and forced to train as a courtesan.

Yozo, a traveller, adventurer and brilliant swordsman, returns to Japan after six years in the Victorian West to discover that the world he left behind him has been destroyed. Travelling north to join his rebel comrades, he is captured during their final battle. Escaping, he makes his way south to the only place where a man is beyond the reach of the law – the Yoshiwara. There in the Nightless City where three thousand courtesans mingle with geishas and jesters, the battered fugitive meets the beautiful courtesan. But each has a secret so terrible that once revealed it will threaten not only their union – but their very lives…

Pre-order ‘The Courtesan and the Samurai’ on Amazon.co.uk

Wednesday, April 15th -  BERLIN
18.00
Illustrated lecture: The Last Concubine:  Secrets of the Women’s Palace
At the centre of the German-Japanese Society of Berlin,
Deutsch-Japanisches Zentrum Berlin,
Saargemünder Str. 2

Thursday, April 16th - HAMBURG
19.00
Reading: The Last Concubine
Shiawase Japanisches Restaurant
Jungfernstieg 7
Hamburg

Friday, April 17th BIELEFELD
19.00
Illustrated lecture: The Last Concubine:  Secrets of the Women’s Palace
At the museum of Huelsmann, Remise
Ravensberger Park 3
33607 Bielefeld
Tel. 0521-513767 – Fax: 0521-513768

Watch this space!