Byron Rogers
John James wrote three historical novels at the end of the 1960s. I read two of them this year: Votan and Not for all the Gold in Ireland, and have advertised without suc- cess for the third. For these are the best historical novels written in my time. Not only does James take you back to the mud and violence of the Dark Ages, but to their beliefs. This is very daring. The temptation is just to have modern men in fancy dress. But having the pagan supernatural just round the corner allows him to get over the greatest difficulty in historical fiction, the dialogue (not knowing how Pharaoh talked, said Howard Hawks, ruined his film epic). The books are remarkable for their scholarship (just imagine the nerve required to describe a Dark Age pub), but also for the author's hugely enjoyable attempt to see if anything was there before the myth took over. Thus Asgard becomes a trading post (Odin, hon. prop), with the Roman Empire a vast Debenham's beyond the forests. In Votan it is German heroic myth, in the Irish book the myths of Cuchulain.
All three were published by Cassell, and are long out of print: it leaves you with a jaundiced view of publishers and literary editors, and the book-buying public. But out there is someone who owns Men went to Catraeth.
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