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OUT NOW!
Publication Dates Latest
THE DARDANELLES DISASTER – Churchill’s greatest failure, having been postponed from April to July, is OUT NOW.
www.ducknet.co.uk
EEL PIE ISLAND is OUT NOW, published on the 8th October 2009.
www.franceslincoln.com
Eel Pie Island Launch
Eel Pie Island was launched on Eel Pie Island – where else? – on Wednesday October 7, the eve of official publication. It was a classic island occasion, with an inconveniently high tide that prevented people from crossing the footbridge, and it was raining heavily. The man who was bringing the chilled bubbly had to roll up his trousers and wade through the water to make his delivery. Nonetheless co-author Michele Whitby and I sold 70 signed copies, mainly to islanders who did not have to brave the Thames to get to the bash.
Part II of the launch was on Friday the 9th, when Michele’s Par Ici shop was crammed with the Twickenham public (plus an old jiver who had come up from Brighton for sentimental reasons). We shifted another 90 signed copies. We also ran out of bubbly. Never has a book launch been such fun for me…
Second World War Series
THE GUARDIAN published a seven-part series on the Second World War starting on September 5 and continuing via one issue of The Observer to September 11. I was commissioned to write the Timeline running through the pamphlets, and the thumbnail biographies of the leading figures. Though I say it myself (I didn’t edit it!), the whole thing is a very creditable effort with specially commissioned articles by experts accompanied by quotes from important books and articles. What became a revision course for me as I did my research became part of a handy historical summary for readers. You can buy the set for £16 from www.guardian.co.uk/readeroffers/secondworldwar or telephone 0330 333 6839.
Latest Obituaries
My oldest-ever “client” in the obituary field, written ages ago for “stock” and kept in The Guardian system, finally made it into the paper on 20 July 2009: Henry Allingham, who fought in the Battle of Jutland in 1916, and at Passchendaele in 1917. He was not only Britain’s oldest man but also the oldest man ever known to have lived in the UK – and the world’s oldest man too, according to the Guinness Book of Records. He had just turned 113 (one hundred and thirteen…).
The previous day the paper carried my obituary of Edward Kenna, an Australian who won the VC in New Guinea.
In a departure from the usual military fare, I wrote the obituary of Richard Reader Harris, the former Tory MP and front-man for the entrepreneur John Bloom, who undermined the British white-goods industry by flogging half-price washing machines in the 1960s. Harris appeared on July 31.
Author's Whinge
WITH TWO EXCEPTIONS I am not a bestselling author, but as I have boasted elsewhere, I have completed fourteen, and already published twelve books. They have gone into fourteen languages. Twelve have been published in the USA. Three have won literary accolades. The reviews, as you may have seen on this site (there are plenty of others!), have been positive on the whole. So Dan van der Vat is no Dan Brown, but rather a “mid-list” author who has a solid track record, asks little from a publisher (and gets decidedly less). More...