Jim Loughran, what first attracted you to the 1930s and beyond?
The 1930’s were a turning point. I think back to my own mother who was born in 1911 when the German, Austrian, Russian and Ottoman empires still stood. The Second World War created a definitive break with that world and we are still grappling with the consequences of what happened then.
You write about women in the Nazi period – would you agree this is an underexplored area of history?
When we read any history of war the focus is on major events and what we see is the view from the palace window. We miss the struggle for survival of ordinary people – especially women. Though women kept the factories working and the home fires burning their stories are often written out of the official histories.
Can you tell us a little about how you research? Has the process changed over the years?
I am usually drawn in by the life of one person and read everything I can find about that person. Then I will move on to memoirs and diaries of people who knew that person and when I need to find out what really happened I go to the National Library in search of primary sources. Now with Google Maps I can stand on the balcony of Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome and see what the Pope sees on the day of his elevation or walk at night through the Forbidden City. But nothing beats walking around a city to get the smell of lime trees in a Munich street or the astringent taste of fresh pomegranate juice from the stand opposite the cathedral in Palermo.
The common phrase is that history is written by the victors. Do you think this is true?
I am Irish but I speak English and was educated in Northern Ireland so the lens through which I see the world is a largely Anglocentric one. In our bookshops it is very difficult to find a book on the defeat of the Spanish Armada written by a Spaniard or a biography of Stalin written by a Russian. We share certain assumptions that go unchallenged: Kaiser Bill was a bounder, the collapse of the Habsburg Empire was inevitable, the Romanovs had it coming and the less said about the House of Savoy the better. Certain history books smash the distorting lens imposed by culture and tradition.
If you could meet any figure from history, who would it be and why? Also, if you could witness any event throughout history, what would it be?
I would love to meet Lucy Dillon AKA, Madame la Comtesse de la Tour du Pin. Of Irish descent she was lady-in-waiting to Marie-Antoinette. She was observant and had the gift of being in the right place at the right time. She was on duty the night the mob stormed Versailles and her husband was the Captain of the bodyguard to whom Louis XV1 said, ‘look after my poor Versailles.’ She narrowly escaped execution in Bordeaux and fled to the United States where she arrived ‘penniless’ with 40 crates of belongings. Talleyrand describes finding her milking cows and making butter on a small farm in up-state New York. When they returned to France she became a fan of Napoleon as her step-mother was a cousin of the Empress Josephine. When the Bourbons retuned she hosted the first dinner for them and commented: ‘if they carry on like this they won’t last long.’
Are there any historians who helped shaped your career? Similarly, can you recommend three history books which budding historians should read?
Growing up in a small village in Northern Ireland the subject of the famine was not talked about that much. There is a certain category of books which I would describe as light bulb books in that they illuminate an unknown event with the force of revelation. The Great Hunger by Cecil Woodham Smith was one of those in that it described the horrors of the Irish famine in an objective way that left you feeling you had lived through it. He showed me the importance of well researched and well written history.
The Memoirs of the Duc de Saint Simon is essential reading for anyone interested in French eighteenth century history. They have everything that any novel has ever been written about: gossip, corruption and intrigue at court, snobbery and the lust for power, love and devotion. He wrote his diary every day for fifty years and the only break was on the day his wife died which is recorded by a tear on the page.
Another ‘light bulb book’ is the twin volumes The Normans in the South and The Kingdom in the Sun by John Julius Norwich. The Norman kingdom of Sicily established by Roger 11 in 1130 was an amalgam of Arab, Jewish and Christian culture based on tolerance. He was a Christian king who spoke Arabic and Greek and brought the finest craftsmen from Constantinople to create the Palatine Chapel. To see the most spectacular Byzantine mosaics go to Palermo.
My third recommendation is ‘Iron Kingdom – Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia by Christopher Clark. Clark analyses how Prussia grew from being a minor state to become the dominant power in Europe. He questions what it means to be German and he challenges the prejudices and the stereotypes of the last hundred years. He asks how it is that the first country in the world to introduce social health insurance and to give civil rights to Jews ended up presiding over the Holocaust.
If you could add any period or subject to the history curriculum, what would it be?
I would focus on the years leading up to the First World War in the hope that we might learn from the mistakes of rulers who led Europe to disaster. This has been brilliantly outlined in The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 by Christopher Clark.
If you could give a piece of advice to your younger self, either as a student or when you first started out as a writer, what would it be?
Follow your instincts. In my last year in university I was drawn to journalism but was steered into the safer waters of teaching. When I moved to work in advertising in Dublin I was told: “It’s all about communication.” It isn’t. When I became Head of Media for two international organisations I thought that writing opinion pieces would satisfy the writing itch. It didn’t, which is how I am now launching my writing career in my retirement.
Do you have a routine as a writer?
I still do some media consultancy work which I try to get that out of the way in the morning. From midday I revise what I wrote the day before and keep on going until about 5.30pm. After dinner I will do research or pick up whatever book I currently have on hand.
Can you tell us about the project you are working on at the moment?
At the end of Covid I was on holidays in Syracuse. After an afternoon climbing around the Greek and Roman amphitheatres and the archaeological museum I wrote a short story called “Syracuse Must Burn” set during the Athenian invasion of Sicily in 413BC. I am now developing it into a full length novel.
Jim Loughran is a writer and the author of The Bratinsky Affair.
