Exmoor Lockdown Diary 77 - The Last Broomsquire

One of the things I’ve been doing in the Coronavirus Lockdown is working on my novel The Last Broomsquire - which is now released as an ebook for the first time. You can also buy the revamped and updated paperback for £7.99.

The story was published 10 years ago by Flagon Press, and sold out of its original print run of 3500 books quite a while ago now - so I’ve been wondering what to do with it since that time. 

My good friend James Crowden has throttled back when it comes to his imprint Flagon Press, so I needed to find a way of keeping the book alive and the lockdown has given me the ideal opportunity. 

As I use a Kindle on my many trips abroad (or used to) I have long been a fan of ebooks. I know they’re not the real thing and I much prefer picking up a traditional tome made from the pulp of chopped own trees - I really do - but no one could deny that ebooks are more environmentally friendly and also you can get one hell of a lot of them onto a tiny tablet device. 

When I look back to my early travels I recall a time when half the weight of my luggage would be the books I carted around.  

Anyway, I decided that with zero income arriving in the Hesp bank account during this lockdown period, I’d make The Last Broomsquire into an ebook and put it on Amazon - and maybe I’d earn enough for a pint (when the pubs re-open that is). 

I know a lot of people do not approve of Amazon, but at this time when normal commerce is just about null and void, I thought: why not? I could get this title read right around the world. By at least two men and a dog, or maybe even more.

And so I sat down to take a quick shifty through a novel that I actually wrote 24 years ago. It wasn’t until 2010 that it actually became a real published book thanks to James and his then colleague Catherine Simmonds.  

Back then I refused to submit the entire manuscript as a whole, preferring instead to go thorough it page by page. And I was glad I did. The sex was terrible. I mean, really bad. It would have won the “Bad Sex Awards”. All bodice ripping and Mills and Boon type stuff. I cut out exactly 69 pages of bad sex.

I also changed a good deal of the other material. 

BUT NOT ENOUGH.

That is what I realised a couple of months ago once the lockdown had begin. Even in the published novel, there was a lot of over-writing, bad-writing, long drawn-out writing. The narrative was clumsy in places - and it all needed a good old tidy up. 

And that is what it has been given. The 103,000 word novel is now a good 6000 words shorter than it was. And better. It is tighter. Quicker. And the clumsy bits have been cleaned up big time. 

So that now, I really am proud of this novel. 

The narrative is loosely based on a series of real life stories which occurred in the Quantock area 200 years ago.

Me looking a little bonkers when the first edition was published in 2010 - photo by my pal Richard Austin

It was newspaper editor, Jack Hurley, who first told me the amazing story which led to the hanging of Johnny Walford in the late 1700s – and I can recall being spellbound in his office in Williton as he described the various scenes.  The eloquent way in which Jack told me the story made it every bit as evocative as some fabulous movie, and I knew that one day I’d somehow have to use it in a book.

So year later I weaved the story of Walford murdering his wife, and the subsequent execution, into a plethora of other incidents that all occurred in or around the Quantocks at more or less the same time.

However, I’d better warn sticklers for historic accuracy that they need to suspend belief if they are to enjoy this romantic adventure. What fascinated me was that there was just a tiny period of a couple of decades when a number of quite incredible things went on in just a small area of the hills.

For example, Broomfield squire Andrew Crosse was one of the earliest experimenters in electricity – feeding lightning bolts from collecting rods in trees (they are still there) down to his Fyne Court laboratory where one day he thought the great voltages had created life. He saw tiny mites crawling about where there were none before. Mary Shelley, writer of Frankenstein, knew him and many think she adopted his story for her famous book.

The Last Broomsquire also features the poets Coleridge and Wordsworth who both came to live on the Quantocks and who, at one point, were suspected of being spies in the pay of the French. 

It was another old Free Press hand who alerted me to the obscure and forgotten subject of broomsquires. It was reporter Herbert Kille who researched and wrote about these itinerant Quantock people in the early 1900’s – but it was my late grandmother who actually described one to me. 

She grew up in the Quantock village of Crowcombe and was one day frightened off the moors by a broomsquire when she was picking whortleberries. She told me they were a strange and different people who’d have nothing to do with the normal villagers – itinerant folk who lived up on the top of the hills in handmade huts and harvested the wild broom to make brushes, or besoms, which they’d sell around the region.

All manner of other authentic ingredients have gone into the novel, like the infamous smuggling industry based at Kilve, mud-horse fishermen, bark tanners, and the much admired Nether Stowey philosopher Tom Poole.

And, of course, there’s that terrible murder. I am sure Johnny Walford really did kill his hapless partner Jane Shorney – but according to Jack Hurley there was a huge amount of sympathy for the young man. 

The hanging judge even wept when he passed down the sentence and the people of Nether Stowey threatened to riot en-masse, refusing to let the militia escorting Walford through. They were only persuaded from what would have been a hopeless ill-advised action by the captain who said he’d allow the prisoner a lonely last meal in the village before being taken to the gibbet.

My novel weaves an atmospheric dance through all these tales and comes loaded with something of a sting in the tale. 

The book was met much high acclaim when it was first published - and was even praised in Bookseller Magazine at the time - a bible for those in the publishing industry.

You can purchase a copy of The Last Broomsquire at https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B088WX85PB/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

New cover - painting by my wife, Sue Onley