Welcome to my first chat with a New Zealand author of 2019. Today, I have something a little different on the blog.
Andrew Macdonald is a non-fiction author, with a love of travel and military history. He has a background in journalism and was a correspondent at Reuters in London. He has published or contributed to six books about World War One. Digging up the real story behind the archives is what drives his research. And it all started with an old tin hat.
K: What inspired your research?
AM: I have wanted to write books about the First World War and more generally military history since I was a young chap in Christchurch. There were probably several contributory factors behind this, but chief among them was finding a great-uncle’s old military steel helmet in my grandmother’s basement. Much later on, I met and interviewed veterans of the WW1 trenches and all the while devouring any books that I could find about Twentieth Century conflict. This period of my life was in the 1980s and 1990s, and in terms of resources there was really very little specifically about New Zealand available at that time. I recall nipping down to the local war veterans’ home and interviewing the oldest of elderly men who had served during WW1, and the RSA took a strong interest in my work and was very helpful. It introduced me to veterans who were willing to be interviewed. I was so busy that I was cycling (I didn’t yet have my full driver’s licence) around Christchurch all day on Saturdays and Sundays to do these interviews, and, when weekends became too busy, I would just wag school. I remember drinking beer out of big brown bottles with one or two veterans when I should have been in class. I don’t regret it; how can any writer regret experience and freedom of association? My history teachers were quite cool, but my English teachers were essentially useless.
Looking back, this was an important phase in my writing because I was in this wonderland of discovering new things and learning and contemplating and meeting people. I was also accruing knowledge and building up my own library of military history books, and found that I naturally inclined towards operational military history, which is really about understanding how and why battles unfold as they do. It is seated in heavy archival work and supplemented with veteran accounts. That is the constant theme in my writing. I think it always will be.
Much of my writing and researching has been based around full-time work, which has proved very challenging at times. It might amuse you to know that after school I was working in timber yards, gas stations, on pub doors and in factories, and still found time to pursue a career in writing military history. I was fortunate that while in London I was able to write fulltime due to the particular success of one book. I am entirely self-funded, you see. I have visited the battlefields of Europe, and when I went to London to live and work this was a massive draw, and of course I spent a lot of time walking over them and piecing together old battles for various writing projects. Because of Brexit, I am now back in New Zealand and living in Wellington.
K: Can you describe a poignant moment for you (while researching)?
AM: There are a few moments that have struck a chord with me personally while researching and writing military history. One I recall is finally getting to visit a relative’s headstone in a Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemetery at Beaulencourt in northern France. It was important for me to pay my respects, and so, too, at the headstones that belonged to friends and family of the veterans I had met and interviewed. On old battlefields you occasionally find things that you don’t necessarily want to, but that is just the reality of literally walking in the footsteps of conflict. Here and there you will find human bones or fragments of human bone, or artefacts that soldiers carried into battle. Some of these were very personal items – toothbrushes and dentures, for example – and I have found myself wondering what happened to their owners and what they were like? Did they make it home? Was this field where they spent their last living moments? What would it have been like to share a beer with them? Simple questions; important questions. I bury these items and move on.
There are plenty of little anecdotes that remain in one’s mind, too. For instance, one early Spring day I was walking over a former battlefield and met this elderly French gentleman who was collecting fragments of brass and lead from artillery shells for their scrap value. At the time there was a bit of a spike in metals prices and he was prepared to do the hard graft to collect this WW1 debris and make a few euros in the process. He must have collected a heck of a lot for his old rusty Peugeot 106 fairly groaned under the deadweight of metal it was carrying as it lumbered away. I often wonder what happened to the old boy; I should like to have known a little more of his story. Neither of us spoke the other’s language and there is only so far that gestures can take you! But the point is, WW1 was a long time ago but it still keeps intruding on us today. It, like all Twentieth Century conflict, is still relevant to who we are and the world we live in.
What is an early book or author that inspired you?
What are you reading now?
AM: In my formative years there was really only one book that inspired me. That was Christopher Pugsley’s Gallipoli: the New Zealand story. It was a great read that was a fine blend of military history and war history. I read it in 1984, aged about 11. Or was I aged 12? Any ways, at the time and since I have appreciated Chris’ ability to convey complex subject matter in a simple, engaging manner and at the same time tell a very perceptive top-to-bottom story. I still have that book on my shelf at home. It is worn out, dog-eared and has marginalia all through it. It is a treasure to me. Chris was really helpful to me as a young guy and so too as my writing has matured over the years. Beyond that there are very few NZ military history books that I would say inspired me. Separately, there are a few war histories that are good reads, but by and large they lack depth, detail and analysis. Some of the veterans’ accounts of active service are inspiring, among them Alexander Aitken, Cecil Malthus, Neil Ingram and Len Coley. There are others, too, among them Sandy Thomas’ WW2 autobiography Dare To Be Free. One or two of the soldier accounts appearing about more recent military matters are excellent reads, too. Elusive Peace: a kiwi peacekeeper in Angola by John McLeod would fall into that category. His is a book quite unique for its skilful writing, insightfulness and raw honesty. Other than these, some other books that I have read and respected are Les Carlyon’s Gallipoli and Peter Burness’ The Nek. I have a soft spot for Antony Beevor’s Stalingrad and Berlin, although I don’t have much time for his volume on Crete.
In terms of WW1 publishing for the centenary, I quite liked Glyn Harper’s Johnny Enzed: the New Zealand Soldier in the First World War 1914–1918, even if I think the main title is not quite correct. Overall, I believe that NZ’s centenary schedule of WW1 publishing failed to answer some of the big questions. At the moment I am reading Soldier, by John A Lee, the firebrand NZ politician and author. WW1-veteran Lee enjoyed a long life and a skilled, silky pen. I would very much like to have met and talked with him.
K: If you could tell your younger writing self anything, what would it be?
AM: I am glad that I trod my own writing path. I have benefitted from life-experience and freedom of association and travel. I know that. I can feel it when I write. I’d probably feel like a fake if I did one of those writing-by-numbers courses, like I’d sold out or something. Isn’t it true that ‘creative-writing courses’ are oxymoronic and potentially a bit of a racket? The clue is in the title. All power to those who derive value from them, though. I’ve never really felt any great desire to sit around with the literary set and swap anecdotes about Oxford commas. It disappoints me that the NZ literary scene appears to have been taken over by the fiction mob. Boring and not great for literature as a whole. To that end, I’d definitely go back and tell my younger self that treading my own course was a great decision, and remind myself to continue the practise. Probably, if there was one piece of self-advice that I would offer, it would be to write the genre that really blows your hair back, but also one that challenges you as a person and pushes you outside your writing comfort zone. I am taking some time to compose a three-person biography at the moment and really enjoying it. A three-person biography is one that follows the entwined lives of three people. Think of it as a kind of ensemble cast, if you like. I am experimenting with a bit of gonzo, too, so we’ll see where it all ends up. Maybe on the proverbial spike? It’s still very much early, exciting days on those projects.
It all feels like such a long way from the places where my writing career began. Do I regret the pathway I have taken? No. Perhaps I could have done without some of the stress and uncertainty. I can’t say I enjoyed being poor and hungry when I was a student and in my early working days, or being bullied, or that I enjoyed the nagging stress punctuated with moments of patron violence while working a pub door, or seeing my life flash before my eyes in a car wreck. Perhaps, on the other hand, those were formative moments? We are what we are; we mostly all play the cards we get dealt to the best of our abilities. I am no different to anyone else in that sense!
K: What is your opinion on non-fiction writing in New Zealand?
AM: This is a big question and one that I will answer with reference to NZ military history only. The discipline is in a very difficult period at the moment. The country has enjoyed an era in which there have been several very skilled professional military historians at work: Chris Pugsley, Glyn Harper, Ian McGibbon and John Crawford. But, looking ahead, the career opportunities that broad generation enjoyed are no longer there at all for my generation. The pathways are gone. The riches of knowledge that NZ enjoyed for the WW1 centenary will, unless something materially changes soon, not be present at the WW2 centenary and others that follow in its wake. I should note here that I have a vested interest in pointing this out, but that does not mean the problem is any less real for the country. For instance, the Ministry of Culture and Heritage no longer has the skills at hand to produce quality, 360-degree NZ military history. Unless something changes, NZ won’t even have the talent at hand to write the official histories of more recent military operations. Any young or young-ish person wanting to write military history will face precisely the same issue, and may well have to consider travelling abroad to find work as a military historian. It is all really quite disappointing when one considers the importance that other countries place on telling their histories. So far as I am aware, I am the only military historian of my generation that focuses on operational matters, although there are a few who sling ink at snatch-and-grab war history.
K: What do you hope others get out of your books?
AM: Tough question. As an author I am always very grateful that people even spend time reading my books! In a crowded market place laden with pump-and-dump publishers and digital platforms it is difficult to even get noticed by the public. I don’t think I would the only creative who feels at times as if they are being exploited. That said, I have been fortunate to have established something of a following thanks to my publisher and its commitment to NZ, and I don’t take that for granted at all. It is a luxury. I hope that people will continue to read my books from cover to cover, find them engaging and learn from them. I have been privileged that some readers have written to me about my books and their family’s involvement in WW1. I hope that my books and writing provide something for the nation, too, and, of course, that they withstand the test of time. I was privileged and honoured to see a couple of my books be used quite extensively during the WW1 centenary for NZ, and particularly for the Battles of the Somme (1916) and Passchendaele (1917). Most importantly, I hope people like my work and keep buying my books in sufficient numbers that I can continue to self-fund my research and writing.
K: Andy, thank you for your time and honest answers. I’ve really enjoyed getting to know a bit more about you and your work.
You can find Andrew Macdonald at:
- Twitter: twitter.com/anzacme
- Website: www.anzac.me
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