04-02-2006, 11:37 PM
I read 'Imperial Governor' quite recently and enjoyed it a great deal - interesting to see that so many others have done the same. There are certain inaccuracies, certainly, but bearing in mind when it was written these seem permissable. One of the best things about the book, actually, was its relative restraint in terms of plot - Shipway sticks close to the known facts and resists the temptation to make his protagonist unduly heroic or superhuman. The battle scenes are nicely done - the seaborne assault on Anglesea being particularly fine, I thought. In contrast to some other Roman military fictions, these are very much 'commander's battles', the action seen a remove, which gives them a certain veracity. Most commendable is the detailed imagining of the logistics of Roman warfare: the difficulties of moving great masses of men and equipment over difficult terrain and long distances, and marshalling them to face an elusive enemy.
I confess I prefer the use of the original Roman place names to their modern equivilents - London for Londinium is fine, but the idea of the Roman army marching through Godmanchester or besieging Norwich strikes an off note. These places may occupy the same physical position as their ancient counterparts, but have little else in common and seem slightly anachronistic - I think this was possibly, again, common practice at the time the book was written. The only really clanging episode in the novel, for me, was the erotic interlude with Cartimandua, which seemed frankly bizarre! The portrayal of the queen herself - a sort of multicoloured love-goddess - appeared to owe more to the date of the book (1968!) than any historical inspiration... bearing in mind Shipway's later work (the outlandish-sounding 'Chilian club', for instance!) we may assume that the author was not exactly keen on the cultural mores of the late sixties - interesting to speculate, perhaps, what strange impulses may have led Shipway to depict the queen of the Brigantes in such a way...
Why, incidentally, did he decide to set the final battle near Silchester, when virtually all modern guesses place it much further north? I could only assume that, for personal reasons, Shipway wanted to write a lot about Silchester... who knows?
About his own background, and Jim's previous comment on his military service - I doubt whether Mr Shipway would have seen many 'horrors' in India during WWII, unless he was posted to the Burmese border; peninsula India itself saw no fighting that I know of. Bearing in mind the date of his departure (1947), however, it's possible that he witnessed, and certainly would have heard about, the violent riots and massacres that accompanied independence and partition. Perhaps something of this leaked into 'Imperial Governor', in its descriptions of Boudicca's horde sacking London, for instance, or the conflicting and divided loyalties of those Britons who found themselves caught between opposing sides.
- Nathan
I confess I prefer the use of the original Roman place names to their modern equivilents - London for Londinium is fine, but the idea of the Roman army marching through Godmanchester or besieging Norwich strikes an off note. These places may occupy the same physical position as their ancient counterparts, but have little else in common and seem slightly anachronistic - I think this was possibly, again, common practice at the time the book was written. The only really clanging episode in the novel, for me, was the erotic interlude with Cartimandua, which seemed frankly bizarre! The portrayal of the queen herself - a sort of multicoloured love-goddess - appeared to owe more to the date of the book (1968!) than any historical inspiration... bearing in mind Shipway's later work (the outlandish-sounding 'Chilian club', for instance!) we may assume that the author was not exactly keen on the cultural mores of the late sixties - interesting to speculate, perhaps, what strange impulses may have led Shipway to depict the queen of the Brigantes in such a way...
Why, incidentally, did he decide to set the final battle near Silchester, when virtually all modern guesses place it much further north? I could only assume that, for personal reasons, Shipway wanted to write a lot about Silchester... who knows?
About his own background, and Jim's previous comment on his military service - I doubt whether Mr Shipway would have seen many 'horrors' in India during WWII, unless he was posted to the Burmese border; peninsula India itself saw no fighting that I know of. Bearing in mind the date of his departure (1947), however, it's possible that he witnessed, and certainly would have heard about, the violent riots and massacres that accompanied independence and partition. Perhaps something of this leaked into 'Imperial Governor', in its descriptions of Boudicca's horde sacking London, for instance, or the conflicting and divided loyalties of those Britons who found themselves caught between opposing sides.
- Nathan
Nathan Ross
