Lydia Syson's Blog
November 5, 2024
About
Lydia Syson brings history to life in fiction and non-fiction which works on many levels: her books are rewarding for readers new to a theme yet also much appreciated by those with deeper knowledge. She’s worked with words and stories all her life, spending her early career as a BBC World Service radio producer before completing a about Timbuktu (2003). Her much cited biography of Britain’s first fertility guru, , was followed by three critically acclaimed historical novels for young adults published by Hot Key Books: , , . Set in the Spanish Civil War, World War Two and the Paris Commune of 1871, all were loosely inspired in different ways by her own family’s radical history. Her adult fiction debut, , unfolds on a remote volcanic island in Oceania in the 1870s and was based on a true story in her partner’s family history. She’s currently writing in a genre new to her, a work of biofiction set in pre-war France. Lydia is also a and a best-selling and award-winning ghost writer. She grew up in Botswana and London, where she still lives, and has four adult children.
Contact details:
Email Lydia at [email protected]
Lydia is represented by Ivan Mulcahy at .
May 18, 2023
WELCOME
� you’ve reached thewebsite of , writer, educator and
Photograph byGianluca De Girolamo, Adshot, London.
May 17, 2023
Breaking into the middle of the story. . .
Paloma Fresno-Calleja has written a very perceptive analysis of Mr Peacock’s Possessions in the journal Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction. Here’s her abstract:
This analyses Lydia Syson’sMr Peacock’s Possessionsas a neo-Victorian Robinsonade. In order to assess the contemporary pertinence of the format, I organize my discussion around the notion of un/settlement, a concept which applies to both the frustrated process of colonial domestication of the island depicted in the novel and to the author’s project of writing back to the narrative and ideological codes of the Victorian Robinsonade. The term “un/settlement� is also useful to explore the novel’s engagement with the violent colonial history of the region, which resurfaces in the present forcing the characters (and the author) to recover and narrate those stories and thus settle their debt with that past. The article starts by contextualizing Syson’s novel in relation to a long tradition of castaway narratives, and then moves on to discuss the novel in the light of neo-Victorian and postcolonial preoccupations with the possibilities and limitations of historical revision and reparation.
Paloma Fresno-Calleja(2023)Breaking into the Middle of the Story: Reading Lydia Syson’sMr Peacock’s Possessionsas a Neo-Victorian Robinsonade,Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction,DOI:
Article: Breaking into the middle of the story. . .
Paloma Fresno-Calleja(2023)Breaking into the Middle of the Story: Reading Lydia Syson’sMr Peacock’s Possessionsas a Neo-Victorian Robinsonade,Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction,DOI:
Abstract: This analyses Lydia Syson’sMr Peacock’s Possessionsas a neo-Victorian Robinsonade. In order to assess the contemporary pertinence of the format, I organize my discussion around the notion of un/settlement, a concept which applies to both the frustrated process of colonial domestication of the island depicted in the novel and to the author’s project of writing back to the narrative and ideological codes of the Victorian Robinsonade. The term “un/settlement� is also useful to explore the novel’s engagement with the violent colonial history of the region, which resurfaces in the present forcing the characters (and the author) to recover and narrate those stories and thus settle their debt with that past. The article starts by contextualizing Syson’s novel in relation to a long tradition of castaway narratives, and then moves on to discuss the novel in the light of neo-Victorian and postcolonial preoccupations with the possibilities and limitations of historical revision and reparation.
July 16, 2018
Writers� Rights and Human Rights
Here’s a link to a piece I’ve written for the Historical Writers� Association excellent online magazine,about tackling slavery in fiction, and thinking through the risks of cultural appropriation.Comments are most welcome.
You can join HWA and subscribe to receive the latest Historiaarticles and reviews in your inbox .
And if you’ve not yet got a copy ofMr Peacock’s Possessions, and/or are setting off somewhere for the summer with minimal luggage and don’t want to be weighed down by a hardback, however beautiful, until the end of July only you can buy it the ebook to read on your phone, tablet or Kindle for a mere £1.49. It’s one of .
June 14, 2018
Reports from Raoul � 30.2622° S 178.5948° E
I’ve been spending the week going through my notes and listening to sound recordings made on the HMNZS Canterbury in the Kermadecs earlier this year, reliving some magnificent moments as I write a number of features for various newspapers and magazines both on the expedition and the human history of Raoul Island. My fellow travellers have already been busy, as you’ll see from these beautiful evocative videos, now available on Youtube, made by Brendon O’Hagan for the Sir Peter Blake Trust, Lorna Doogan of Experiencing Marine Reserve, NZ (who took me snorkelling with Galapagos Sharks), and the New Zealand Defence Force.
Meet the Young Blake student voyagers and scientists. . . (full crew bios ):
Underwater in the Kermadecs with:
� NZDF supporting theDepartment of Conservation (DOC), GNS Science, MetService and Sir Peter Blake Trust during a resupply mission to Raoul Island from 26 February to 9 March 2018:
Meanwhile, Chris Gaskin and Edin Whitehead have produced on birdlife at the Kermadecs for The Seabird Trust.More news on a book about the expedition and its findings coming soon. And just this week Charitable Trusts, , and the World Wildlife Fund of New Zealand have been gathering support from MPs for a Kermadec Rangitāhua Ocean Sanctuary in this striking campaign � .
As forMr Peacock’s Possessions, it’s been now out in NZ for a few weeks and word is spreading � thanks everyone! Here’s Stephen Jewell’s in Your Weekend. And just last night I was on the Book Show of talking about the history behind the book, getting to Raoul, the Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary plans and the pleasures of writing historical fiction. You can hear me about 39 minutes in on their .
Do check out the events sidebar on this website for details of my appearances at literary festivals around the UK later in the year.
May 24, 2018
Bookings & Events
Please contact [email protected]to request more information or to make a booking for any kind of event. You’ll find more about and can also download full details:
Upcoming events will be found on the sidebar.
Privacy Policy
MY EUGDPR STATEMENT OF COMPLIANCE
I have read theInformation Commissioner’s Office guidelines for compliance with the new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) rules.This document that follows explains how I comply. If you have given me your email address (by emailing me, or subscribing to my website or newsletter via my website or during events, for example), please read this to be reassured that we’re looking after your data extremely responsibly.
I value the security of your information extremely highly and will never intentionally breach the rules. However, the rules are designed for large corporations and I can only do myvery best to comply.
The information I hold:
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If people have emailed me or contacted me via the website, they have given me their email address. If anyone has subscribed to my mailing list or followed me on Twitter they have actively opted in, in the knowledge that I will contact them occasionally, and I take that as consent to continue to do so.
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I’m not normally contacted by children and do not correspond with them through my various social media presence. However I do not know the ages of my subscribers on Twitter or Mailing lists and can only act on known information.
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I protect the datahold by strong passwords across the digital platforms I use. If any of those platforms were compromised, I would take steps to follow appropriate advice immediately.
Data Protection by Design and Data Protection Impact Assessments
I have familiarised myself with theICO’s code of practice on Privacy Impact Assessmentsas well as the latest guidance from theArticle 29 Working Party, and believe that I am using best practice.
Data Protection Officers
My lead data protection supervisory authority is the UK’s ICO as of 25thMay 2018.
May 4, 2018
Mr Peacock’s Possessions: sources and background reading
NB THIS PAGE IS UNDER CONSTRUCTION!
As noted in the book, the most important sources forMr Peacock’sPossessionswere:
Elsie K MortonCrusoes of Sunday Island, 1957.
Steven Gentry,Raoul & the Kermadecs: New Zealand’s Northernmost Islands,Steele Roberts, 2013.
Margaret Pointer,Niue 1774-1974: 200 years of contact and change,Otago University Press, 2015.
What follows now is not exactly a bibliography, and is for myself as much as anyone else � a way to get my reading over the last three years in some order, and add new material as I come across it, as I have for my other novels. I don’t feel any great need to ‘�! But others may also be interested, so here, more or less, is what’s influenced me in my thinking and writing about this book, and where I’ve found out most of what I needed to know.
Online sources:
- Kermadecs section
� Te Pūhikotuhi o Aotearoa, part of
� including the WRB Oliver of the 1908 Scientific expedition to the Kermadecs.
Goats on steep terrain, Raoul Island. Oliver, Walter Reginald Brook, 1883-1957 
hotograph album of Kermadec Islands Expedition 1908. Ref: PA1-q-135-29-2. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. /records/22742380
Raoul and the Kermadecs
Kermadec: Art Across the Pacific, Pew Charitable Trusts, 2013
Niue, Polynesia, Oceania
Niue: A History of the Island,written by the leading citizens of the country itself, published jointly by the Institute of Pacific Studies of the University of the South Pacific &the Government of Niue (dual language), 1982
Basil C Thomson, Savage Island: An Account of a Sojourn in Niue and Tonga, London, John Murray, 1902
1982
‘Our Sea of Islands� by Epeli Hau’ofa, inA New Oceania: Rediscovering our Sea of Islands, co-edited by Hauʻofa, Vijay Naidu and Eric Waddell, 1993
Marshall Sahlins,What ‘Natives� Think: About Captain Cook, For Example,Chicago, 316pp, £19.95, July 1995
We, the navigators: The Ancient Art of Landfinding in the Pacific,David Lewis,University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu, 1972, 1994
Nainoa Thompson, (Hawaiian voyaging traditions)
Nicholas Thomas,Islanders: The Pacific in the Age of Empire,Yale University Press, 2010
H. Stonehewer Cooper, Coral Lands, 2 vols London, 1880
Missionaries
Slavery and Migration
European pioneers and settlers
Charles Hursthouse, New Zealand, or Zealandia, The Britain of the South in 2 vols
Susanne Williams Milcairns,Native Strangers: Beachcombers, Renegades and Castaways in the South Seas,NZ, Penguin, 2006.
Sidney J Baker,New Zealand Slang:A Dictionary of Colloquialisms (‘The first comprehensive survey yet made of indigenous English speech in this country � from the argot of whaling days to children’s slang in the twentieth century�),Whitcombe and Tombs Ltd, 1940
(‘Our ways are less crowded, our gardens apacious, our horizons vast. We are people of wide spaces, of keen winds, of turbulent seas. We are of the Pacific, with its blue skies and towering white cumulus clouds, and the earth is not yet tamed beneath our feet� Our bush is greener, vaster, more silent than any English wood; our countryside less intimate; nearly always moutain ranges stand on the edge of our horizons…We are not enclosed by the dun-coloured bricks of English cities, but are breathing fresh air and carrying freedom on our shoulders, away from the smoke-dust and hopeless streets of English slums…From the earliest days, from about 1794, when the first whaling fleets arrived, the conditions of New Zealand have necessitated the finding of new words so that new concepts can be understood between man and man.�)
G.B.Earp Hand-book for intending emigrants to the Southern Settlements of New Zealand, 3rd edition, London: Routledge & Co, 1852 ‘The intention of this little work is to awaken the middle and labouring classes of this country to a sense of their own position with repsect to the future, as regards this country, and, at the same time, to point out to them the way to escape from that future, whilst they have either small capital or strength to labour left. There is no apparent way whereby to escape from impending evil, but by emigrating.�
Coral Lands, 1880
Islands and Island Fiction
, an open accessscholarly journal dedicated to the interdisciplinary study of our ‘world of islands�
Godfrey Baldacchino, ‘Studying Islands: On Whose Terms?Some Epistemological and Methodological Challenges to the Pursuit of Island Studies�, , 2008, pp. 37-56
May 3, 2018
Heading towards publication day. . .
As I write this in London, the Kermadecs � the chain of volcanic islands in the Pacific whereMr Peacock’s Possessions is set � feel further away than ever. Here’s a photograph of me back in March saying a sad farewell to Raoul, reimagined in my book as Monday Island. I’d come within feet of its landing rock in a NZ Navy speedboat, flownover the island in ahelicopter, andspent day after day on deck gazing at the place, but I never actually set foot on land or smelled the soil as I’d hoped. And here’s from on board HMNZS Canterbury about the experience of waiting and wondering during an extraordinary expedition to one of the most remote and untouched places on the planet. (Every time Commander Matt Wray goes, he fills in more of the dotted lines on the map � we were literally travelling in uncharted waters.) I went with the Sir Peter Blake Trust, joining a of scientists, young environmentalists, and educators, including artist and former Raoul volunteer, Giselle Clark.
If you’d like to find out more about what took me to the Kermadecs and how the journey enriched my understanding of the place, its complex history and also its future, do listen to for Radio New Zealand with leading broadcaster Kim Hill.I’m delighted to say that she loved Mr Peacock’s Possessionsand her questions were wide-ranging: among other things we talked about historical fiction for adults and younger readers, the extraordinary history of the Bell family, conservation and the environment and why the proposed Kermadecs Ocean Sanctuary promises to be so important to our understanding of the world’s oceans. Oh, and also possession, migration, faith�.and the volcanic island theory of literature.
There’ll be more interviews coming up in the next few weeks, in print, radio and on television, including tonight on the with Anneka Rice [1.12-1.26, available till 25.05 and then as podcast] and blog this Monday. The first reviews are already beginning to appear: Mr Peacock’s Possessions isan inTheHistorical Novels Review.
Thanks to Alexandra Allden and Naomi McCavitt’s striking design and exquisite illustration, the bookhas the kind of cover no photograph can actually do justice to, but here’s a general impression:
You can stroke it, see it and buy it in bookshops from May 17th � and pre-order it any time before that. If you’d like a signed and dedicated copy from one of , please let them (and me) know and I’ll do what I can. (It’s no cheaper or faster on Amazon, I’m glad to say � only £12.99 everywhere.) Or reserve it at your library, if you are lucky enough still to have one.
