Joseph Cornelius O’Rourke

Since I was a teenager three periods of history have obsessed me: French history from Louis XIV to the rise of Napoleon, World War 1 and the collapse of empires and the Russian revolution.  I have read endless biographies, memoirs and novels. When I started writing I was inevitably drawn to historical fiction.

In 1989, when Brian de Breffny, self styled Baron de Breffny and Count O’Rourke died in Dublin, some of the obituaries were less that kind. Officially he was the descendant of an Irish aristocratic family who in the seventeenth century had fled persecution to make their fortunes in Russia. In reality he was the son of an East End of London taxi driver who had adopted a more glamorous persona for himself.

Years later when I started writing I remembered this romantic tale of a family of exiled Irish soldiers who had found success in imperial Russia and then ended up seeking refuge back in Ireland post 1917. When I started digging I found that the story was largely true. Count Joseph Cornelius O’Rourke did serve in the Russian imperial army and had been awarded titles, land and serfs. He fought in the war against Napoleon and there is even a portrait of him in the Hall of Heroes in the Hermitage. A perfect back story! I just needed a victim for my murder mystery and so was born Countess Irina Bratinsky née O’Rourke de Breffny, glamorous exile and dealer in the works of Fabergé. When I started researching Irish links to Russia I discovered that there was even a Russian Village in County Wicklow built by another Russian refugee who had fled the revolution and then the blitz.

The problem with this first iteration of Irina was that she had almost no redeeming features, so why would readers care whether she lived or died? On holidays in the South of France we went to an exhibition of 40+ portraits of Suzy Solidor, star of the ‘Vie Parisienne’ nightclub in the 1930’s. Her back story was so outrageous and flamboyant that she was the perfect foil to the very controlled Irina. By introducing her into the story she brought Irina to life

I now had the who? and the where? but the when? was a bit of a problem. I finally decided on 1976: for two reasons. As Maggie Smith said about Lady Grantham in Downton Abbey I had to kill her off then as otherwise she simply wouldn’t have been credible as a survivor of imperial Russia! She would have been a hundred and twenty. The other reason was that I was living in Paris in 1976 and so could describe it all from memory.

At this point Irina’s story was a bit like a runaway train and I had to apply the brakes. After all, investigative reporter Tom O’Brien was to be my real hero so he had to be strong enough to counter balance Irina. This led to the decision to have alternating chapters and prompted a major re-write to give Tom an interesting back story. Initially the plan was for Tom and Olga to have a relationship but that didn’t work. In the end he had to be gay. In part this is because parts of Tom’s story reflected my own experience as a young gay man coming to terms with my sexuality in Paris in 1976.

I was grappling with the motive for murder when once again history came to the rescue. It appeared that Count O’Rourke had fought in the battle of Wagram and had been awarded a diamond studded sword by the King of Prussia. This ‘long lost family heirloom’ now morphed into Napoleon’s sword which was worth millions: problem solved. What this also did was allow me to bring the story back to Russia for the dénouement.

While The Bratinsky Affair reads like an adventure story there is also a more serious subtext. As human beings we are all motivated by the desire for love, the need to belong, the instinct to protect the people we love and the fear of death. Everything depends on the choices we make. As a refugee, Irina loses the world she grew up in and loses herself in her search for money and status. Tom has to decide whether to be true to himself or to live up to the expectations of others. In either case there is a price to pay.

Jim Loughran is a writer and the author of The Bratinsky Affair.