Readers Place

1. What attracted you to the siege of Malta as a plot for The Religion?

I came across the siege because it plays a small role in Christopher Marlowe’s play ‘Jew of Malta’, which I produced for the Kurtz Theatre Company. That provoked me to read Ernle Bradford’s classic account ‘The Great Siege’, and I realized that here was a canvas so huge, so exciting so astoundingly bloody and spectacular, that I had to invent a story against that backcloth. I’m always alert to the possibility of rich dramatic settings for a story, settings in which I can explore the extremes of human emotion and experience.

Deeper research revealed a 16th century world of incredible wonder, intrigue and beauty, which I hope is reflected in the novel. The human imagination just exploded during that era – the list of revolutionary figures in the arts, sciences, exploration, politics and religion is unequalled by any other period. To imagine living in such an era – and taking part in it – was a great inspiration to creating characters who reflected that boldness of spirit and imagination.

The other great aspect of the siege of Malta was that the whole known world gathered there for the battle – people from a vast range of nationalities and cultures, over forty different languages, a violent tower of Babel. The idea that only War could attract such a diverse cast of extraordinary individuals – in order to kill each other in what was essentially the middle of nowhere – fascinated me with its marvelous yet tragic absurdity. No other endeavour or event could have acted as such a magnet. Then, just as I started writing the novel, something very similar took place in Iraq: thousands of remarkable people from diverse cultures flocked to a remote place at great cost in order to kill each other.

2. Is there a real life character on whom Tannhauser is based?

Tannhauser is one-of-a-kind. There was no single specific character. But I drew on the spirit of the many men of that age who embodied something of his courage and violence, his intellectual curiosity, his entrepreneurial spirit and daring, his ruthlessness and morality, his physical toughness. Even by Tannhauser’s standards, there were real individuals who were more than his match. We all know the most famous of them – Magellan, Pizarro, Cortes, Hawkins, Drake, Montluc – but their fame can blind us to the reality of the lives that they actually lived, which were quite astounding in all these respects. No one alive even has the possibility of taking the kind of insane risks they took, or of enduring the same terrors and privations. La Valette, the knights’ Grand Master, lived a life of danger and adventure that no movie would ever dare to film. And behind that handful of historically famous actors, there were, of course, thousands of men of the same bold stripe. In my view that’s one reason why Shakespeare’s characters are so enduring – he lived in and drew from an age when men had few inhibitions to their impulses, either noble or base, so his characters portray the fundamental elements of human nature. This is what most interests me.

So Tannhauser is an original but based on a way of living and an attitude to life which many real-life men embodied to the full. They had huge balls, as does Tannhauser, and as does the book.

3. Was there really a popish plot involving the Inquisition and The Knights Of St John?

The specifics of the plot in the novel are invented, but the Vatican certainly intrigued over the centuries to try to take control of the Order of Saint John, for the reasons explained in the book. As also explained, the Knights devised the most byzantine electoral system ever invented specifically in order to thwart Vatican attempts to meddle. The Knights Templar – another of the three military orders of the Church – were entirely exterminated by Vatican intrigue, in league with the French Crown, for similar motives, so such plots have a sound basis in history.

The politics of our own era, as we all know, are characterized worldwide by every extreme of treachery, deceit, greed, immorality, narcissism and plain old evil. So it was then. But we have to remember that the political actors of the 16th century had far fewer constraints on their behaviour, enjoyed untrammeled power, and had almost nothing to fear from surveillance and trails of evidence. My own theory of life is that any human act that I can imagine – no matter how irrational or depraved – has not only been done, but is being done somewhere in the world even as I imagine it. Not only that, but things are being done that are well beyond my imagination.

I will take the opportunity here to mention that ‘The Religion’ enjoys a very enthusiastic following among the present Knights of Malta, including one of their most eminent archeologists and historians, who, after forty years studying the era, described the historical accuracy of the novel as ‘uncanny’.

4. A book of this length and depth must take a lot of research. How much time did you spend researching the novel before you started writing?

As the above mentioned historian-knight said, the subject is ‘unbelievably complex’, so the research took several years, and took me to Istanbul, Malta, Rome, Sicily, Jerusalem and the archives of various libraries and historical societies. I rarely know what details I will need until I am writing a given scene; sometimes, by contrast, a detail I discover will be so interesting as to demand a scene be written to accommodate it. I expect each author has their own method of research. My own is to absorb the essence of a place. I try to feel the stones beneath my feet, to absorb the diverse qualities of light, to imagine life as it was or might have been, to take in the landscape and the sky, to feel the size and scale of the world as it was then rather than is now. In these travels I would say that I tried to rediscover that sense of awe which the power of the modern world has taken away from us. Perhaps also, a sense of the Divine.

I’ve done a fair amount of formal scientific research in my medical life, but somehow I don’t like to be so formal in my research for stories, though no doubt old habits die hard. I prefer to let my unconscious get to work, to let impressions seep inside me, to let the archetypes speak from the hidden depths. I found that I rarely referred back to those notes and photographs I did make on those visits; but I kept the instinctive impressions alive, almost in an animalistic sense. I attended religious services in some of the old cathedrals, churches and mosques. I tried to open myself to the spirit of the various peoples. In these respects, I trust the power of the unconscious more than the power of the intellect. The latter often gets in the way of emotional or artistic truth. I’m always aware that even in a discipline as rigorous as medicine, the observations that I’m recording and presenting are, to some degree, an illusion or at best a symbolic representation – the map but not the territory, so to speak. Therefore, in the task of creating a dream that others might share – which is my conception of a novel – I fear that too strident a verisimilitude can undermine the dream, or my own pursuit of that dream.

Having said all that, I did go to great pains to check all historical and geographic details, including every word of the vocabulary, which I didn’t want to be anachronistic. I am expecting various mistakes to be pointed out – though none yet after a year in print; or at least none that can’t be refuted by higher sources – but hope that none are so glaring as to undermine the pleasure of the novel.

5. The battle scenes in The Religion were my favourite to read, which parts of the book were your favourite to write?

I wrote the book in large part in order to write the extravagant battle scenes with the kind of detail and realism that I’ve never read anywhere else in a long lifetime of searching for them, so I’m with you on that. However, I did discover much more pleasure than I expected to in the quieter scenes and sequences, especially the love scenes, such as the one where Tannhauser tells the tale of the Nightingale and the Rose. The women characters were a great challenge – the practice of war doesn’t give them the opportunity for big action. Unless it’s science fiction, I’m generally irritated by masculine portrayals of women, which seem to me a cheap form of feminism and which suggest that unless a woman can use a sword or a gun as well as a man there’s not much point having her around. So I was happy to find that the female characters still had plenty to do.

It’s a book about life, and in that respect it’s a tremendously physical book. In my own existence I love the physical dimension, I love strenuous activity, and in the 16th century life was lived much closer to nature on a raw organic level. They didn’t live in pods, cowering in terror with innumerable trivial phobias. Writing about life in a natural world of wind, sea, stars, sweat and sun was a pleasure. So was not having to write about the many modern neuroses with which we make ourselves so needlessly miserable and, instead, write about more fundamental emotions and concerns. Without giving any spoilers, the slaughter of the dogs, Tannhauser in the Guva, Carla in the infirmary, Orlandu and Amparo on the waterfront, Bors playing backgammon, the Ethiope in the pink pavilion, Ludovico washing himself, the arrival of the Turks on the hills, the meeting Gullu Cakie’s family, the young Anatolian recruits by the campfire, the streets of Rome – all these moments spring to mind, but I enjoyed writing every page. Both the stars at night and Tannhauser’s washtub were repeated pleasures.

6. Were you surprised to learn the extent to which the Ottoman Empire was a meritocracy?

Yes. To take two examples, both referred to in the book, the Admiral of the Navy, Piyale, was a Serbian foundling and the greatest architect in Turkish history, Sinan, was a Greek Devshirme slave. Many viziers followed a similar route. It was an astoundingly intelligent system and produced a highly sophisticated empire that lasted longer than any but ‘Rome’ – if we take the broad definition – and did so in better shape and which included more people and cultures than any other. We also have to remember that the Turks didn’t come from ‘Turkey’; they came out of remote central Asia, took over half the known world and made the other half tremble. Fantastic. The Ottoman Empire remains one of the most remarkable political constructs in history. The book hopefully pays tribute to this, and since it is being published in Turkey, perhaps it has succeeded. All the great religions are unimaginably complex human constructions and, unquestionably in my view, a great force for good in human history, despite the sixth-form rhetoric that currently passes for debate on the subject. This isn’t a book against religion. Indeed, it’s about a man who goes to Malta ‘not for wealth or honour but to save his soul.’

7. What are your favourite swash-buckling novels? Which writers inspire you?

Richmond Lattimore’s translation of Homer’s Iliad is unbeatable – accept no other – and in terms of the portrayal of unhinged combat and violence was a benchmark for me. It’s hard for me to remember a novel in which the hero did exactly what I wanted him to do. Such heroes were never violent and swashbuckling enough; they always showed too much mercy and fake moral superiority in situations where it would get them killed. It was always like getting just a couple of tantalizing spoonfuls of some fabulous ice cream when I wanted an enormous tubfull. ‘The Religion’ is the feast I always wanted.

I’ve read widely over the years, but I take the view that the love of reading and writing starts early in life, and that the books I loved as a youngster inspired me far more than battling halfway through the first volume of Proust. Back then I loved George G. Gilman, who wrote the great ‘Edge’ series of Westerns, now very sadly out of print; Leon Uris; Louis L’Amour; Alastair MacClean; Wilbur Smith; and above all Sven Hassel, whose vivid portrait of a soldier’s life in WW II remains entirely unequalled. Other inspirations are H. Rider Haggard, Dumas pere, Dickens, Prescott, Balzac, Bataille, Melville, Kipling, Fuentes; Lampedusa’s ‘The Leopard’; Cormac McCarthy’s ‘Blood Meridian’; Alan Garner’s ‘Weirdstone of Brisingamen’. I also get much inspiration from Classical Opera – Puccini, Verdi, Handel. Minimalism, in all its forms, bores me. I like art to be large, intense and powerful, like life. Hence, of course, to Shakespeare. No writer has been more subverted by the relentless namby-pambyism of modern culture than Shakespeare. The only production of one of his plays that I’ve ever seen that didn’t cut its balls off with a dull knife was Deborah Warner’s ‘Titus Andronicus’ with Brian Cox. Shakespeare understood his world and the nature of violent and powerful men; his plays are crammed with the love of violence that lies in men’s hearts; but you’d never know it from the last ten seasons of the RSC. You have to look the beast in the eye, as he did, and, by the way, have some fun and excitement while doing so. I co-founded a theatre company – Kurtz – and produced thirteen plays, so theatre has been a big influence on my work. The novel stands inside the big tent of Drama, along with opera, epic poetry, balladry, song, dance, film and theatre, even though, like the Catholics in Heaven, it would like to think it’s the only one there. Dramatugy is an art in itself, arguably the most ancient of all, so I think primarily in terms of writing drama.

The British lumpen intelligentsia seem to regard any cinematic quality in a novel as a negative, but I take the opposite view and hope that most readers agree. The classic movies and great operas embody a boldness and intensity of dramatic ambition that inspires me in a way that modern literature rarely does.

In any case, no novelist in this age can feasibly claim that the influence of cinema has not penetrated his or her work. It’s also often forgotten that movies are in fact written. I worked closely with some of the greatest film directors – Pakula, Spielberg, Hansen, Zucker, Mann – and learned a great deal about drama. I love Leone, Peckinpah, Kubrick, Visconti, Eastwood, Kurosawa, Woo, each in his unique way for the scale of his vision, his handling of action, and his juxtaposition of character and landscape. In evoking a sense of visual spectacle, both panoramic and intimate, especially in the scenes of battle, I drew on their influence. Novelists evoked the visual long before the camera was invented – which is why so many old novels are still filmed – but cinema has undoubtedly raised the portrayal – not just the visual but the narrative, or structural, organization – of complex and large-scale action to its highest level. I deliberately used certain cinematic reveals and editing techniques, even certain lighting and sound effects, and music, to make the world more palpable or real. In any given chapter, I stuck to a tight internal point of view from a specific character. On occasion this can evoke something akin to a track or dolly, if they’re in movement, or a pan.

8. What is your favourite of all the books you have written?

The Religion is my favorite, though of course I have particular affection for each of my books, as if they were children, especially my first, Bad City Blues. I wrote Bad City in total freedom, not really knowing what I was doing, and without any expectation or even plan that it might be published. I wrote it for my own pleasure and excitement, as I used to write stories as a boy. Once you are invited into the cultural machine – i.e. in respect of a novel, published – a million phantom voices start bleating, inside one’s head. Suddenly you’re part of the machine whether you like it or not – much worse, it internalizes itself like some evil virus – and it starts laying down its timid little rules and telling you what you should or shouldn’t be doing. The hardest part of writing – or rather, getting down to writing – is silencing those voices. I think I did that successfully with The Religion, as I’d been off the map for so long, but now they’re a lot louder again. In terms of what I like to read, listen to or watch, I’ve never given a damn what the establishment cultural view was. In any case, most of what I loved was roundly despised, at least on first appearance (establishment Culture is usually several decades behind; much of yesterday’s pulp is today’s classic and vice versa; see Dickens, Puccini and Leone). That’s how I wrote The Religion – purely to please myself, which is why it is so extreme, so violent, so free, so mythical, so libidinous, so full of the sheer power of life as I see it. I should say here that my publisher at Jonathan Cape, the great Dan Franklin, is not one of the above voices. Just about the only editorial advice he has ever given me is: ‘I wouldn’t change a word.’ God bless him!

9. Can you tell us anything about what you are working on at the moment?

I’m working on the next installment of The Tannhauser Trilogy, in which our hero finds himself and his loved ones in the direst straits imaginable in the Huguenot Wars of France, specifically, the Saint Bartholomew Massacres, in Paris and elsewhere, in 1572. It’s considered among the most complex periods in European history. The conflict between Catholics and Protestant Huguenots was the fulcrum upon which these wars balanced, but they were also the vehicle for a dynastic political struggle between major aristocratic families – Valois, Bourbon, Châtillon and Guise – for control of the French throne. Regional and local vendettas, the ambitions and discontents of a warlord nobility whose allegiance to the crown was often tenuous, financial opportunity and economic disaster, the presence of unpaid foreign mercenary armies, a simmering international crisis, and fatal weaknesses – moral and otherwise – in the personalities of the ruling royal house of Valois, all contributed to a general collapse of law and order, a culture of intrigue, treachery and assassination, and repeated civil wars of unusual and uninhibited barbarity. This is the landscape across which the drama unfolds, and you will find Tannhauser stepping up to the mark with his usual elan.