Britannia's Gamble by Antoine Vanner - A Review by Lisl

Britannia’s Gamble
The Dawlish Chronicles: March 1884—February 1885
by Antoine Vanner

A Discovered Diamond Review and Book of the Month

The author has so kindly donated a copy of Britannia's Gamble for one lucky winner of our contest! Simply comment below or here and your name will be part of our drawing! Drawing will be June 8, 2018 with winner announced the same evening. 

 Following my previous read of Britannia’s Spartan, Nicholas Darwish returns in Antoine Vanner’s Britannia’s Gamble, sixth in his series chronicling the life and adventures of the Victorian era Royal Navy officer. This time we see him recruited for a mission placing him within grasp of a savage Islamist revolt across the Sudan, his key objective being to reach and rescue General Charles Gordon, who maintains a weakening defensive position within the lone holdout, the city of Khartoum. Plagued by one catastrophe after another, time runs short as Dawlish contemplates and questions his own motives and role in the operation, and their position becomes ever more desperate.

My “discovery” of Antoine Vanner’s novels came quite by chance in that I’d won a copy of Britannia’s Spartan in a contest, and it set me happily back onto the course of nautical adventures. I found Dawlish to be a likeable character who poses authentic questions of ethics and morality to himself, and while he has high expectations of others, is no less demanding of his own conduct. In the pages of Gamble, too, he is courageous, though not without fear.

The felucca edged across, the oars still, now only the current carrying it forward in absolute silence. Dawlish crouched like Shand and the Sussexes in cramped discomfort. He tugged at the lanyard of his holstered pistol—an action that was by now an unconscious habit—and pushed the safety catch forward on his Winchester. The same fear was on him now as he had first experienced as a mud-plastered boy in a ditch in China and he prayed that, as then, it would not master him. Each man around him would be feeling no less. Courage was conquest of fear, not its absence.

One of the best elements of Vanner’s tales is that they take readers to locales many of us don’t know much about, or only recognize in a broader view or modern context. As we progress through the story, the author utilizes documented historical figures or actions—such as Gordon or the Siege of Khartoum—within his plot, its population increasing with fictional characters whose roles are so smoothly matched with history we sometimes think we might look them up to discern who is real and not. All the while their experiences tell us even more of the place at this time: its geography, conditions, influence, challenges, allies and workable military strategy.

I also thoroughly enjoy the manner in which Vanner truly takes readers on board his vessels, immersing us in the naval and shipboard terminology without drowning our senses—a perfect combination of trusting readers without making unreasonable demands on their previous knowledge. Feeling a part of the crew, readers rejoice in their victories and feel their hearts sink when things go wrong.

In Britannia’s Gamble, there are plenty of things that can go south, and they do. Vanner’s expertise in storytelling is such that we follow his narrative and sometimes recognize an oncoming crisis, pulling in our breath along with his characters in whose journey and mission we have invested. Maps are sprinkled through the novel, so we get a sense and better idea of where the group is as they travel overland or upriver, with even more suspense at such moments as when we know we are close to Khartoum, or dangerous passages, when that internal uh ohhh occurs.

Another great characteristic of the author’s presentation is that he makes plenty of room for readers to bond with characters apart from Dawlish. He most definitely maintains the spotlight, but true to his character, he gladly gives due recognition. A talented and accomplished naval officer, Dawlish also cares about the dignity of humanity, and this stirs childhood and professional memories as well as gnaws at his ideas of the future, particularly following one incident that will undoubtedly alter the course of his life, and even the nature of his concern for others.

Dawlish contemplates his own perspectives by way of his journal, an activity that sets up the possibility that the chronicles are drawn from the diaries as the captain looks back upon his life. We see his immediate musings, which of course reflect upon the kind of person he is. “Night fell, not darkness absolute, but the same vast unfeeling dome of stars that had mocked the pettiness of their aspirations ever since Kurgel.” He often thinks of his wife, Florence, back home, perhaps dreading her response to something he’s done, or feels delight in her presence in his life. The variety and breadth of his meditations even develop the character of the absent Florence, additionally bringing to the novel a female influence other than that of the standard lovable prostitute or sought-after heiress.

These and other angles are what tend to make Dawlish himself more fully developed than many other nautical or historical fiction protagonists, and Vanner placing him in the various locales, following plotlines drawn from history with plenty of his own life events depicted within, are surely what bring us back time and again. Of course, so far I’ve only read two of The Dawlish Chronicles, but the officer hasn’t seen the last of me, nor I of him.

A smooth and addicting read, Britannia’s Gamble is fully capable as a standalone or installment in a series one simply cannot get enough of. Realistic action scenes—in which victory is not always assured—and a well-developed plot combine with the strength of the author’s imagination and impressive research to bring a story of great quality and years of re-visitation, and the seeking of Dawlish in other volumes in which we will follow him time and again around the world.

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Photo courtesy Antoine Vanner

About the Author

Antoine Vanner has been writing on and off for many years but as his business career took off he had to cut back. The impulse to get going again - seriously so - came just before retirement from full-time work when he attended a lecture and book-signing session by the late naval-novelist Douglas Reeman at a local bookshop. In a calm, dignified and erudite way Reeman conveyed not only vast knowledge and enthusiasm for his subject but the importance of a methodical approach to writing. He provided the inspiration for taking the task really seriously and since then Antoine has adopted the Latin motto "Nulla dies sine lines - not a day without a line." So thank you, Douglas Reeman!

Antoine's adventurous career in international business gave him the opportunity to live and work in eight countries as well as shorter assignments in a dozen more. He is bilingual in English and Dutch, adequate in Spanish, abysmal in German and has smatterings in two other languages so rusty as to be not worth mentioning. He currently lives in Britain with his wife, dog and two horses.

Learn more about and follow Antoine Vanner and his work at his fascinating website, The Dawlish Chronicles, including more about Britannia's Amazon, also a Discovered Diamond, with Florence Dawlish as protagonist and narrated from a female point of view. Additionally, subscribers to Vanner's mailing list at intervals receive free short stories that fill in some gaps in Darwish's life not covered in the novels.

The author provided Lisl with a copy of Britannia's Gamble in order to facilitate an honest review. 

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About the reviewer

At age six, Lisl announced she would become a spy; shortly thereafter she added poetry to her list of goals. She wrote poetry through high school and beyond; by this time spying had lost a bit of its appeal, though she utilized stealthy methods to observe people and activity around her.

Nowadays, she is an editor and writer and can be found at her blog, Before the Second Sleep. She writes on a variety of topics and is currently working on a collection of short stories, work of historical fiction and a series of essays, as well as illustrations for a volume of poetry. She adores Indian food, vanilla candles and hot tea (no milk). 

Diana talks to ... Antoine Vanner

 

I was lucky enough to chat with Antoine over far too many olives at the HNS16 conference in September. What a charming man he is!  I took the opportunity to ask him a few questions...
        Antoine's latest book came out on 20th October and has received some wonderful reviews. You may buy the book here .

Alternatively, Antoine is very generously donating a copy of the book as a prize!!! To be in with a chance to win a paper copy of this book, please leave a comment here on the blog, or on our Review page.  The names will all go into the hat and the first one drawn on 27th November will be the winner!!

 
Q.   Antoine, if your latest book, Britannia’s Amazon, was adapted into a TV show or a film, who would you like to play the lead role?

A.    You’re putting me in an embarrassing position here! Florence Dawlish is the wife of Royal Navy captain Nicholas Dawlish, who had played the lead in four previous books. Florence played major roles in two of them – Britannia’s Wolf and Britannia’s Shark – but now, in Britannia’s Amazon, set in 1882, she has a whole book to herself. She’s the type of woman I admire – clever, courageous, loyal, compassionate and resourceful. She is however not a beauty and she knows it. In Britannia’s Amazon, in which she has to adopt another persona, “it was somehow disappointing when she saw her reflection in the wardrobe mirror and recognised that it had been so easy to transform herself into what she had so fortuitously escaped becoming, a frugally respectable working woman. For all Nicholas’s assurances, she knew that she was not beautiful – her face was too bony, her mouth was too large – and it was sobering to realise how it was prosperity alone that helped disguise the fact.”  With a description like that I suspect that I’d earn the undying enmity of any actress I’d name as suitable for the part. So I’m keeping my head down and am dodging this question!

Q.   If, as a one-off, you could write anything you want, is there another genre you would love to work with and do you already have a budding plot line in mind?

A.    The time-demand would be beyond me but I’d enjoy researching and writing a narrative history about a single historical event or campaign of relatively short duration – rather in the style of the excellent James Holland. A few nights ago I watched the new movie “The Siege of Jadotville”, about an Irish Army unit on UN service which was plunged into a nightmarish Rorke’s Drift-type situation in Katanga in 1961. There’s been one book about it already but it represents the type of event I’d choose to write a book about if I could afford the time.

Q.   Do you have any rituals and routines in your writing? Your favourite cup, for example, or your favourite piece of music?

A.    Writing is only half the process – the other half is “living” scenes in my head, and for this afternoon walks with my dog Rufus are essential. I go back over what I’ve written in the morning – I sometimes get insights on how to improve it – and I think through, indeed feel through and live through, what will follow.  My characters are real to me and they get more real still as I visualise what they’ll say and do, and how they’ll feel, in the following scenes and chapters.

Q.   Other than writing full time, what would be your dream job?

A.    An astronaut! Even one orbit would be worth diamonds! I think that the saddest thing about our mortality is that we don’t know exactly where the future will take Humanity. I’m pretty sure however that it’s going to take us beyond Earth – how far, I can’t imagine – and I’d love to be on the front line in this.

Q.   Coffee or tea, red or white?

A.    For anybody with Dutch connections it can only be coffee – and black!

(I love that answer!)

Q.   Imagine you could get hold of any source document. What would it be?

A.    I’m fascinated by the geometric progression in numbers of ancestors as we work backwards through time. Assuming three generations per century, we each had 512 ancestors three centuries ago – though I guess the actual number may have been considerably less as a fair number of them might have been ancestors through different descendants. There must have been a lot of distant cousins marrying distant cousins a few generations further on. But it’s impossible to visualise the probably very disparate lives of so many eight-times grandparents who were alive in the time of Marlborough, Peter the Great, Louis XIV. I’d love to get my hands on even one document that could give me an insight on how those people lived and loved, what joys and sorrows they knew, what perceptions they had of the world, what passions and concerns and ideals motivated them, what expectations they might have had of the future.

Q.   Historical fiction authors have to contend with real characters invading our stories. Are there any real characters you have been tempted to kill off prematurely or ignore just because you don’t like them, or they spoil the plot?

A.    Historical figures are opportunities – and in some cases are catalysts for the plot. When they’re introduced they’ve got to act in character, even if the incidents they’re involved with are fictional. I prefer to keep my plots within the framework of actual events so killing off a real character would destroy this – it would indeed be an instance of “the butterfly effect” changing history. That isn’t to say that there aren’t real-life figures in my books whom I’d like to have seen come to more unpleasant ends than they did – or indeed whom I’d like not to have been born in the first place. The example that comes to mind is the Ottoman Sultan Abdul-Hamid II –– who plays an important role in Britannia’s Wolf. But I’ve had to leave him to live out his long shameful life and be remembered with loathing today as “Abdul the Damned”.

Q.   Are you prepared to go away from the known facts for the sake of the story and if so how do you get around that?

A.    This relates to some extent to the previous question. All “Historical Fiction” is to some “Alternative History” and there’s some point of departure from what really happened. The story develops from that point. In my books the plots fit into real-life timelines, especially in Britannia’s Wolf and Britannia’s Spartan in which much of the action is integrated with what really did happen on a day-by-day basis. Where historical fiction such as my own differs from the best alternative history fiction is that by the end of my books we’re back in the world as it really was and subsequent history has not been changed.

 

Q.   Have you ever totally hated or fallen in love with one of our characters?

A.    I’m definitely in love with Florence Dawlish – what man wouldn’t be? But I’ve also got a sneaking liking for some of my shades-of-grey villains: Silas Culbertson, the ruthless, cunning and brutal ex-Confederate colonel who is also courageous; Fred Kung, the Chinese power-broker who was mutilated during construction of the Central Pacific railroad through the Sierra Nevada and who made a fortune thereafter through shipping corpses back to China; Shimazu Hirosato, a captain of the Japanese Navy who is cruel and pitiless, but is unswerving in his dedication to his Samurai code of honour. And I can’t but love a character who was in fact a real-life one: Adam Worth, a.k.a. Henry Raymond, who was described by Scotland Yard as “The Napoleon of Crime” and who was the inspiration for Sherlock Holmes’ adversary, Professor Moriarty. He was a key player in Britannia’s Shark and Florence encounters him again in the new novel, Britannia’s Amazon.

 

Q.   What do you enjoy reading for pleasure?

A.    I love narrative history and we’re in somewhat of a golden age of it. The late Shelby Foote’s superb The Civil War would be my desert-island book and more recently James D. Hornfischer, Nathaniel Philbrick and Hampton Sides in the United States, and James Holland, Simon Sebag Montefiore and Tom Holland in Britain, have been setting a very high standard. I can’t recommend these authors highly enough.

 

Q.   Last but not least … who is your favourite historical author?

A.    Without hesitation – Zoë Oldenbourg. I know of no other author who has entered into the minds of people whose values and outlook – and world – were so different to our own, and who makes them come alive so movingly and so convincingly. Her masterpiece, Destiny of Fire, is almost unbearably painful to read but it says so much about what is truly valuable in Humanity that I’ve returned to it again and again over the last forty years. It has had a massive effect on my own values and outlook – literally a life-changing book.  Oldenbourg’s histories have the same quality of bringing lost societies poignantly alive.

Antoine and Rufus.

 

A potted biography: Antoine Vanner writes historical naval fiction. He found himself flattered when nautical novelist Joan Druett described him as the "The Tom Clancy of historic naval fiction".
He says: "I find the late Victorian era, roughly 1870 to 1900, fascinating because for my baby-boomer generation it's 'the day before yesterday'. It's history that you can almost touch. Our grandparents grew up in that period and you heard a lot from them about it. So much in that time was so similar to what we still have today that you feel you could live easily in it, and then you hit some aspects - especially those associated with social conventions and attitudes - that make it seem wholly alien. It was a time of change on every front - intellectual, scientific, medical, social, political and technological - and yet people seem to have accommodated to these rapid changes very well." He had had an adventurous life in international business and also travelled extensively on a private basis. He survived military coups, guerrilla warfare, a militia attack, storms at sea and life in mangrove swamps, tropical forest, offshore platforms and the boardroom. Antoine’s knowledge of human nature, passion for nineteenth-century political and military history   and first-hand experience of their locales provide the background to his historical novels centred on the lives of Royal Navy officer Nicholas Dawlish and his wife Florence. The five volumes published so far are all linked to actual historical events and are set in locales as various as the Black Sea and the Balkans in winter, a river-system in the heart of South America, the luxury and squalor of the United States' Gilded Age, Cuba in revolt, Korea as it emerges from centuries of isolation and - not the least deadly - the corrupt and brutal underside of the complacent and outwardly respectable society of Late-Victorian Britain

See more at The Dawlish Chronicles

To see a video of Antoine talking about his latest book and the challenges it presented click here

Britannia’s Amazon: http://amzn.to/2eZurBM

Interview with Antoine Vanner: http://bit.ly/2fEMzm3
Blog Link:  http://bit.ly/15f20oy

Fade out as required!

Diana Milne & Antoine Vanner © November 2016

Richard reviews: Britannia's Spartan, by Antoine Vanner

The author of this book has kindly offered a printed copy of Britannia's Spartan to one lucky reader. To be in with a chance to win, just leave a comment below or on our Facebook page.

The draw will be announced about a week after this post.

Cover - Britannia's Spartan

Britannia's Spartan is the fourth in Antoine Vanner's Dawlish series. The earlier ones are Britannia's Wolf, Britannia's Reach, and Britannia's Shark. I have been following these from the beginning and have very much enjoyed the introduction to the world of the Royal Navy of the late nineteenth century. 

This was a period of vast technological and social change. At the start of Nicholas Dawlish's fictional life, naval battles were still fought between wooden sailing ships armed with muzzle-loading cannon, of a basic design unchanged since Tudor times. By the time of Britannia's Spartan - the 1880s - he is commanding a steel-hulled ship driven by steam power, with breech-loading guns mounted in sponsons, carrying and being vulnerable to torpedoes. Rudimentary submarines were under development. The only major game-changer in naval warfare which did not appear in the nineteenth century was the aircraft, and these would also make their appearance before Dawlish's death in 1918 (still many books away, I am happy to say).

So, somebody in Dawlish's position had to master an ever-changing series of demands, if he was to continue to progress in his career. Men like Dawlish had been inspired by the careers of Nelson, Pellew, and the like, but the practical business of running a ship had changed radically since their day.

HMS Leander, a sister-ship to Leonidas (Wiki)

At this time England was, at least nominally, at peace. Ship captains were expected to have the ability to represent both their nation and their monarch as surrogate diplomats, not simply as warriors. However, the reality of service in foreign waters, accompanied by a degree of isolation from superior officers which is hard for us to contemplate, meant that every encounter could potentially be hostile. Some countries held grudges against England, and some factions within a country might attempt a surprise attack to gain some political advantage. There was, quite simply, no way to be sure whether the ship seen coming over the horizon was friend or foe. Dawlish's career, and the lives of his crew, depend constantly on his making the right assessment.

Approaching one of the city gates in Seoul, Korea, late 19th century (Daily Mail)

Each Dawlish book so far has focused on a different theatre of action. Britannia's Spartan takes our hero to the Far East, where rivalries and alliances between Korea, China, Japan and Russia have to be understood, and then turned to British advantage. For Dawlish, these cultures are opaque and challenging, as well as stirring up difficult memories of the early years of his naval service. Is he able to identify friend and foe quickly enough to meet the challenges, both on the field of battle and in the political arena?

Upper-class Korean lady with servants in attendance, 1904 (Daily Mail)

In earlier books, Dawlish's naval battles, when they are forced on him, have often been in confined spaces such as river valleys, or around coastlines. Here, on the other hand, we are able to witness him working in the open sea. Ship handling, rather than judicious use of the terrain, is the key to success. Dawlish's ship, Leonidas, is technologically ahead of many ships in this part of the world, but not necessarily all of them. The skills of captain and crew must make up for any shortfall.

But sometimes battle has to be declined, and Dawlish must weigh carefully the consequences of both action and inaction. One of the most poignant moments in the book - and perhaps the one best illustrating Dawlish's own development as a ship captain - is when he has to decide not to provide help to a Chinese landing party who have been ambushed. Never reinforce failure is a military maxim used by von Clausewitz, Napoleon and countless others, back into antiquity and forward to the present day - and Dawlish is forced to adhere to the maxim despite the human cost. In the end he is able to redress the balance, but the moment has clearly weighed very heavily on his soul.

British naval scene, late 1880s (Navyweb)

Both militarily and politically, Britannia's Spartan is a very strong book. Challenges must be faced at sea, during marine landings, and in ornate houses and palaces of state. It is a different world than the Victorian England that Dawlish has left behind. My only regret is that we meet so little of Florence, Dawlish's wife, who is a splendid character in her own right. Given the geographical setting, this was inevitable, but I still missed her.

All in all, Britannia's Spartan comes strongly recommended by me, whether or not you have read the earlier books in the series. Each is self-contained, and you can start to know Dawlish and his career at any point.

About the author:

My name is Antoine Vanner and I write naval fiction set in the period 1859 to 1918. As such I'm dealing with a period of very rapid technological and political development, one in which "The Age of Fighting Sail" evolved somewhat painfully into "The Age of Fighting Steam".

The hero of my fiction is an ambitious Royal Navy officer, Nicholas Dawlish (1845-1918). For me he's a real person whose life I am continuing to research in ever greater detail, and you can find a short summary of his life on the following link: A Life of Service and Adventure.

The first book in the Dawlish series - Britannia's Wolf - is now also available via Audible, read by US actor and drama professor David Doersch.

Find out more at his blog, on Facebook, or Twitter.

Richard Abbott lives in London, England. He writes historical fiction set in the ancient Middle East - Egypt, Canaan and Israel - and also science fiction about our solar system in the fairly near future.

When not writing words or computer code, he enjoys spending time with family, walking, and wildlife, ideally combining all three pursuits in the English Lake District. He is the author of In a Milk and Honeyed Land, Scenes From a Life, The Flame Before Us - and most recently Far from the Spaceports. He can be found at his website or blog, on Google+, Goodreads, Facebook and Twitter.