All posts by Bob Fowke

Events

Self-Publishing Workshop Stafford

Bob Fowke, YouCaxton’s Managing Editor, will be hosting a workshop on self-publishing in Stafford Public Library on 13th May, 7.00-9.00 pm. With him will be Shirley McLellan of Perfect Proof, our associate editor.

 

This will be an opportunity to learn about all aspects of self-publishing from completing your manuscript to decisions about design and layout, through to publication and the final print-ready files. There will be a series of short presentations with plenty of opportunity for questions. If you have written a book or you are in the process of writing one, do come along.

 

Topics to be covered:

1. Editing and why it matters. 2. Preparing the manuscript and thinking about the niche, 3. Design, layout and print-ready files, 4. Printing, publication and ISBNs, 6. Distribution through Amazon, online sales, and bookshops, 7. eBooks, 8. Pricing your book.

 

Free. To reserve a place please contact:
email: Stafford.library@staffordshire.gov.uk or telephone 01785 278351.

 

Events

Opium & Pagodas – Talk

Bob Fowke, YouCaxton’s Managing Editor, will be giving a  talk entitled Opium & Pagodas Aspects of life in 18th Century India at the Church Barn, Bishop’s Castle, Sunday 23rd February at 2.00 pm,  admission free.

 

In July 1775, Maharaja Nuncomar and Joseph Fowke were tried in Calcutta for conspiracy against Governor Warren Hastings. Nuncomar was hanged for a parallel offence; Joseph got off with a fine of fifty rupees. Two years later, Philip Francis, Hastings’s chief opponent on the Council and a friend of Joseph, was caught in flagrante with a ladder beneath the bedroom of beautiful Mrs Grand, who went on to marry Prince Tallyrand while he was foreign minister to Napoleon. Two years after that, Francis challenged Hastings to a duel but neither man knew how to shoot a pistol and Francis was wounded but survived. In the meantime, Joseph gambled away his second fortune and sailed for home, having sold his Stradivarius cello and complaining about the new-fangled music of Haydn.

 

Life for British residents in Calcutta in the late eighteenth century was incestuous but colourful. Bob Fowke explores some aspects of this exotic world in his illustrated talk.

 

East India Company

Duel between Warren Hastings and Philip Francis

In 1773, Parliament passed the Regulating Act: in return for a loan of £1.4 million, the East India Company agreed to accept a Governor General appointed by Parliament and Warren Hastings was appointed to the post. In addition, the Regulating Act called for the appointment of three counsellors whose job was to oversee the Governor General. Unfortunately, these cousellors were hostile to Hastings from the start, in particular Philip Francis (lover of Mrs Grand see previous email, re ladders against windows and Prince Talleyrand). Francis sought to undermine Hastings’s authority at  every opportunity.

 

By  May 1780, Hastings had had enough. He decided that it had to be death or victory. He insulted Francis in a memorandum  to the Council; Francis took the bait and challenged Hastings to a duel.

 

At 5.30 am on 16th August the two principle members of the Calcutta Council met in the grey light of morning on the Alipur Road, both middle-aged, neither of them with much interest in exercise or fighting. Francis had never fired a pistol before and Hastings could remember doing so ‘only once or twice’. Their seconds measured fourteen paces. Hastings defered his fire while Francis misfired twice. The third time they both fired simultaneously. Francis narrowly missed but Hastings’s bullet struck Francis on the right side and lodged under his left shoulder blade. Francis called out ‘I’m dead’ and fell to the ground.

 

‘Good God, I hope not!’ Hastings called back and hurried over. Having checked on the damage, he rushed home in his palanquin and sent for the surgeon general and his own doctor. Philip Francis staged a remarkably swift recovery but he left for England that December.

 

 

 

News

Stratford Herald review

It’s Not About Shakespeare, Aspects of Ordinary Life in Stratford-upon-Avon 1775-1915 by Val Horton, published by YouCaxton Publications, has received a long and favourabel review in the Stratford Herald:

 

‘Prepare to be transfixed by chapters on slavery, insurrection, the workhouse, education, housing, suffragettes and more  … We tend to think the past is largely about strong men dominating the scene but strong women are also key in this tale and, of course, some of the financial details are fascinating – seeing how much landmark buildings once cost and realising that  the seemingly trifling sums quoted are considerable in today’s terms.

Indeed, the house that started it all was sold for the first time, a few years old, for £450 in May 1911 and in 1930 reached the giddy heights of £650 when it was sold again. But we’re drifting again into the detail.

Let’s just say this is the kind of book that is certain to add to what most of us will know of Stratford’s past, linking every aspect of life across the years. As others have said, it is brilliantly researched at the treasure trove that is the birthplace trust’s archives, with some of the evidence coming from past editions of the Herald.’

 

Events

Kington, Book Reading at the Border Bean Café

Joanne McShane will be reading from her new novel, Honora and Arthur, the last Plantagenets, at the Border Bean café, in Kington on the mid-Wales border, on Wednesday 20th November at 3.00 pm. The book is a meticulously researched, fictionalised account of the life of Honora Grenville who married Arthur Plantagent during the reign of Henry VIII.

 

East India Company

Catherine Grand

In 1774 Directors of the East India Company who were hostile to the then Governor of Bengal, Warren Hastings, sent three new councillors, General Clavering, Colonel George Monson and Philip Francis, to Calcutta, with instructions to undermine Hastings’s authority. Joseph Fowke (1716-1800) sailed down the Hooghly to greet them before they could reach Calcutta. Joseph had  a plan to ensnare Hastings in a prosecution for corruption. Philip Francis, the youngest and brightest of the triumphirate,  became Joseph’s closest associate in this conspiracy – which failed. The following year, Joseph Fowke and Maharajah Nuncomar, a wealthy Hindu banker, were tried for conspiracy and Nuncomar was hanged.

 

Philip Francis stayed on in Calcutta, as did Joseph Fowke. One evening in 1777 Francis was caught red-handed with a ladder up against the window of the beautiful wife of a young company employee, George François Grand. A duel was narrowly avoided and Catherine Grand ended up as the mistress of Francis, kept in style in a house up the Hooghly River for the next three years. She eventually returned to London, then became a courtesan in pre-revolutionary France, fleeing back to England when the revolution started in 1789. In 1794 she returned yet again to Paris where she married Prince Talleyrand, Napoleon’s famous foreign minister.

 

‘La Belle Indolente’ was not stupid or she would never have snaredTalleyrand, but she was notorious for her naïve repartee.  Once Tallyrand was a giving a dinner for a M, Denon, recently returned from Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt, and Tallyrand had encouraged his wife to read a chapter from Denon’s account  so as to be able to converse about his travels. She picked up Robinson Crusoe by mistake. During the dinner she remarked to Denon what a pleasure it had been to read about his  trip – in particular his encounter with Man Friday.

 

Catherine’s portrait is by Vigée le Brun, 1755-1842, herself a very remarkable woman, painted at a time when Vigée was much patronised by Mairie Antoinette and while Catherine was a courtisan in Paris .