Photo credit: Pedro Gusmão
I'm sitting in the cafe at the National Portrait Gallery, just across from St. Martin's in London. Coffee, loud conversation, wooden chairs sliding on a polished floor. Calene is somewhere in the second floor galleries as I sip my sparkling water and protect the seat I saved for her. The fight for tables and chairs is intense in this small public space and I am doing my best to ignore the glances of those in the very long line for sweets and coffee who are currently formulating their seating strategy. They have had plenty of time to study my location and realize the down jacket resting on the chair next to mine does not actually constitute a living person, nor does the phone (mine) and can of unopened still water (for Callie, when she arrives) on the table. I suspect there may be a confrontation.
People ask me a lot what it's like to research history books. It's many things, among them making sure your research assistant has a place to sit and something cold to drink after three hours of looking at portraits. That also strengthens a marriage, but that's a metaphor for another day.
It's winter weather here in London, temperatures hovering around freezing and the wind gusting hard enough that planes at Heathrow are having a hard time landing. Looks like it might rain. This is not the main research trip for Taking London. That was finished months ago. But this is just as important, a fact-finding mission to double check niggling details. As I've said in this space, no one at my publisher is going to let me change a word in the book at this point. But if I made a really bonehead error, I have a feeling they might make an exception.
So I made a list over the last three months of things that concerned me. I kept it on my phone and added to it from time to time.
Here it is: St. John's Church, Walk in Geoffrey Wellum's footsteps from the tube station to Adastral House, Gray's Inn, Billy Fiske Memorial at St. Paul's, London Library in St. James Square, Guildhall, House of Commons, Portrait Gallery.
Oh, and the bench by the canal from Slow Horses. If you know the show, you'll know the bench. More of a curiosity than research.
Got it all done. Pleasantly surprised that Billy Fiske's pilot wings are part of his memorial (for more about Olympic gold medalist and Battle of Britain pilot Fiske, an American, he's a pivotal character in Taking London, available for pre-order now). And after taking a two-hour tour of the Parliament buildings, I cleared up a question about the various spectator galleries in the House of Commons.
This wasn't a documents or experiential research trip. Documents research is tracking down pieces of paper unique to a story, like the ticket to the funeral of Dr. David Livingstone I found in a box at the Royal Geographical Society for Into Africa. Experiential research is flying in a Spitfire, getting arrested in Africa, and doing whatever else it might take to know how my characters felt.
No, this was CYA research — Cover Your Ass. Just making sure I got the facts right. We started each day with a late breakfast, then headed out the door of our hotel and kept right on walking well past dark, ticking items off the list. We usually stick together but our rule in museums is viewing exhibits separately. Calene is methodical, reading every placard in the entire museum. I am impulsive, bored the instant I see what I came for.
Ah, here comes Calene now. Seat successfully saved. Our research trip is complete.