Historical fiction raises the question, what really is history?  The knowledge of events and things that come down to us through the mists of time have inevitably changed perspective over and over again in their telling.  Often those who have handed down the past to us in their writing, have deliberately distorted the information, so that they will be seen to advantage.  Just as gossip grows and changes with each ear it is whispered into, so too do historical legacies.  According to the sixteenth century Italian philosopher Vico, truth is verified through creation or invention and not through observation.  In other words, truth can be created out of a falsehood.  A creative error can be the basis upon which to make a guess about some aspect of the world, to test that guess and then create a truth from it.  It is accepted by historians themselves that historical accounts of anything have to feature narrative.  Perhaps to some degree history can be said to be a dazzling mirror of illusions in which men see only what they wish to.

It was these thoughts that drew me to write, A Far Horizon.  The novel is set in seventeenth century Calcutta, at the very beginnings of Empire, just before the British secured their hold on India.  The book centres upon the incident of the Black Hole of Calcutta, a story that until recently all British schoolchildren grew up with, myself included.  In this tale of native evil and British victimisation, set during the fall of the British fortress of Fort William in Calcutta, a wicked nawab is said to have imprisoned 144 Englishmen in a tiny room for one night.  In the morning only 23 people emerged alive.  Their ordeal has fed the legends of colonialism for well over 200 years.  In modern times however Indian historians challenge the truth of this account.

The story, for so long such an essential ingredient of British school textbooks, appears to have rested entirely upon the word of one man, a survivor of that night in the Black Hole.  John Zephaniah Holwell, Chief Magistrate of Calcutta’s White Town, was a disappointed man who had been passed over by the East India Company for the post of Governor of Fort William.  He was a man used to wheeling and dealing with the local nawab and his court in the city of Murshidabad, lending British military expertise to whoever was installed on that throne.  Holwell had lived 40 years in India and his longevity in a climate that quickly killed so many others, was a minor miracle.  Holwell was also a Zamindar, a collector of taxes from the surrounding Indian villages.  Growing British intrigue and ambition had upset the nawab then in power in Murshidabad, Siraj Uddalah.  Soon, with a great army, he set forth to attack Fort William, holding it in a state of siege before his triumphant occupation of the fort ended in the notorious Black Hole incident.

It is highly likely that an incident of imprisonment in the small room used at Fort William for that purpose did happen, and upon which Holwell based his later account.  However, contemporary reports state that only nine men were held in the room, and the two who died during the night had already been badly wounded in the preceding battle for the fort.  After the siege the victorious nawab, Siraj Uddalah, took a humiliated Holwell back to his capital, Murshidabad, holding him for several weeks before finally releasing him.  Researchers have traced the step-by-step fabrication of Holwell’s Black Hole story to his journey up river from Calcutta to Murshidabad as the nawab’s prisoner.  Manacled and feverish, Holwell was allowed communication with the French community during a stop in Chandenagore, where he was allowed to write to his friends.  Angry letters describe the siege of Fort William and the nawab’s treatment of Holwell and others.  The story grew wildly with each angry letter Holwell wrote at further ports of call on the way to Murshidabad, each furious repetition full of inconsistencies.  The list of victims grew and grew; sometimes they were all men and sometimes mostly women.  Finally, freed by the nawab after some weeks of imprisonment, Holwell returned to England.

Aboard ship on his journey home, he polished up his story for a wider audience, changing it once again with a mind to publication and the aim of capturing the attention and sympathy of the Board of Directors of the East India Company, who had repeatedly passed him over for the post of Governor of Fort William.  On his arrival in England, as Holwell had hoped, his story of martyrdom caused a storm when it was published.  He became the centre of attention and made a great amount of money.  Also as he had hoped, the East India Company looked at him anew and returned him to Calcutta as Governor to Fort William, retaken now by the British.   There, Holwell raised a monument to an event that probably never happened in the notorious manner that has come down to us through the mists of time.

I began my research, that included not only the sweeping historical outline of my story, but also important details such as the exact ingredients needed for the making of chunam, the plaster used on the walls of Fort William (plenty of egg white and talc); the strategy of battles in that long ago time when fighting started promptly at seven each morning, and stopped between one and three in the afternoon, to allow both sides food and a siesta before recommencing battle; that candles of whale fat were more desirable than local wax candles as they burned slowly and did not splutter; that Indian ayahs spread opium on the lips of the babies they cared for to keep them in a state of permanent calm; that palanquin bearers must be exactly matched in height to ensure a comfortable ride.  There was an abundance of wonderful research material in the East India Office Library in London, but in spite of this I have to admit, much of the imaginative curve of A Far Horizon sprang from no more than footnotes in volumes of dry and lengthy public records of the time.  I must also admit that, while searching such arid records, all writers of historical fiction live for a good footnote.  We thirst for the things no one ever sees fit to include in the official documents, or academic history books.  Historical novelists, it must be said, are voyeuristic people, always looking for ‘the juicy bits’, those superfluous colourful details that no self-respecting historian will stoop to give us.  We are highly principled in the meticulousness of our historical research, no detail of the period must be wrong or distorted.  Detailed academic history books supply us the backdrop of our stories, they give us the bones of history, but they rarely present us with the flesh.

The real story of Holwell lay for me buried piecemeal in a collection of footnotes in public records of that time.  Several major characters in the book came from some scant mention in a footnote about a case Holwell had disdainfully tried as a magistrate.  Further scattered footnotes provided me with some details about Holwell’s private life and his wheeler-dealing business activities.  A single surprising reference, again in a footnote, to a dusky lady he sometimes visited gave me an illicit relationship for him.  And in this manner the historical novelist goes forward, foraging for illicit detail, assembling and hoarding those things below the radar of the academic historian.  The historical novel tells the story or stories of the ‘little people’ whose lives are impacted on by history, while historical accounts of the past report the arc of larger events and their effect upon society.