‘A Name Writ in Water’ by Richard Boden is a beautifully written, touching novel, which provides the reader with an un-romanticised picture of the Romantic poet, John Keats’, who is embarked on a final voyage to Italy in search of a cure for his consumption. Based on extensive research, it never falls into the trap of becoming a mere biographical account of listed events and places. Rather, it conducts the reader on an imaginative journey, through the personal experiences of its characters, and into another believable historical time. This is a debut of impressive quality that combines a mastery of style and vocabulary with an impressive insight into human nature. The plot evolves around four main characters all of whom carry with them an emotional baggage from the life they have left behind: Keats, his unconsummated love for Fanny Braun; Joseph Severn, Keats’ companion, the disapproval of his father; the seventeen year old, consumptive, Miss Cotterell, a yearning for a life she will never have; and Mrs Pidgeon, Miss Cotterell’s chaperon, embittered by the loss of a war of her war-damaged husband and reliance on her brother’s demanding charity. Each regards Italy, with varying degrees of optimism, as a possible…
It’s nine weeks now since the coronavirus lockdown began and I feel cut off both geographically and culturally from anywhere. The occasional glimpses of the mud brown Bristol Channel through the trees and the accents of the few people I meet on my daily walk assures me I’m still in Wales. And even though I should have left already for France, I don’t feel as if I’m in any place but marooned in a neither here nor there sort of Neverland. Cardiff is just down the road from the seaside village where I have an apartment, though it might as well be in a post apocalyptic other country. When I was a boy, Cardiff felt more like a large town than a city. It was small minded, conservative and swathed in drab colours, only on International Rugby days did it come alive with noise and excitement, the red and white of scarves and the green of leeks. Now the transformation is total and, as the city climbs skywards, brims with character and energy, and has a friendliness I’ve encountered in no other city in the world. Jill and I only moved back to Wales little over a year ago but…
I wrote this book about ten years ago, partly as a response to the sudden death of my mother-in-law, who’d just turned sixty. Time, then, to get something down. But what? I’d studied Keats closely at university, including the letters and Robert Gittings’ biography and had even written a poem about Keats’ arrival in Naples: to have gone through all that, only to be quarantined for another month. So, after a bit more research, I had my plot and also the ending, which I knew would steer clear of Rome, because Anthony Burgess had written a novel about Keats dying there already. Over a period of two years, in cafes and classrooms [empty ones], I gradually put together a series of scenes describing the journey to Italy. I chose third-person focalised narrative because that offered me both descriptive luxuries and the ability to explore voice/point of view. The hardest part was settling on dialogue that didn’t sound like botched Beau Brummell, so I tried to keep it as simple as possible, in contrast to some lusciousness over river-bank and ocean-wave. In particular, I found I enjoyed writing about the Thames [five years’ hard labour in Grays, Essex helped] and about…