‘MAYBE OLIVER CROMWELL WASN’T ALL BAD’
AUTHOR, ROD SMITH TELLS JOHN MANNING HOW HE APPROACHED WRITING A CHILDREN’S BOOK ON PERHAPS THE MOST HATED FIGURE IN IRISH - AND DROGHEDA - HISTORY
‘THE English did terrible things in Ireland in 1649 and the 1650s and it is wrong to blame Cromwell for all of them - that lets other Englishmen much more to blame than him, off the hook.’
Those are the words of John Morrill, Emeritus Professor of British and Irish History at the University of Cambridge and they appear in the beginning of a new book on Cromwell aimed at children written by a Fingal author who found that ‘ the most hated man in Irish history’ was a more nuanced figure than his Drogheda childhood had painted him.
Rod Smith lives in Malahide but was born in Drogheda where the name of Cromwell carries considerable weight thanks to the bloody encounter the town had with Cromwell and his New Model Army.
It was that ‘ blacker than black’ image of Cromwell that Rod Smith held in his memory as he began the exhaustive research process that resulted in this historical novel for children.
To his surprise, he found himself softening towards Cromwell as the research went on. Rod explained: ‘ When I was doing the research, I found Lord Longford’s daughter did a biography of Cromwell in the 70s and she said she went to Drogheda and was looking for directions to Laurence’s Gate. She stopped this priest for directions and she told he she was researching Cromwell and he blessed himself and walked away. The curse of Cromwell was a big thing in Drogheda and it came from all the stories about him.’
But the bile reserved for Cromwell was not always a prominent part of the Irish psyche, according to Rod. He said that it was a combination of Victorian England rediscovering Cromwell as a hero and the Irish cultural revolution’s eagerness to find a figure of hate, that began to seal Cromwell’s fate as enemy number one in the Irish mind.
Rod said he was aware of the work of Drogheda local historian and author, Tom Reilly who presents a radically different picture of Cromwell and while the author said he did not go as far as Reilly in re-interpreting Cromwell’s time in Ireland, he could now see where the Louth author was coming from.
Rod said: ‘I do know about Tom Reilly’s work. I read his books and got in touch with a few professors in the UK and Ireland and they gave me a few papers they were working on. I asked them about Tom Reilly, and they said he was choosing to interpret events in a particular way.
‘I can see the point he was making but I didn’t necessarily agree with all the conclusions he came to. I think he was right in saying that Cromwell wasn’t all bad and my opinion of him changed completely.’
Rod has written nine other children’s books and many of them have also centred around the lives of important figures from Irish history like Charles Stewart Parnell and Padraig Pearse but this is the first time, he has taken on the longer form of a novel.
Because the book is pitched around the 10-year-old and above reading level, Rod had a find a palatable way of guiding children through this often very dark story that is Cromwell’s bloody nine months in Ireland. He chose to put two children at the heart of the story and all the events of the novel are witnessed through their young eyes.
While all the historical facts presented in the novel have been painstakingly researched by the author, he’s used a little creative licence in inventing a number of characters to plug into the story and witness the very real events that are happening around them.
Rod explained: ‘All the facts in it, I’ve researched as much as I can and then I’ve added a story about two kids who meet Cromwell and they are running around towns telling people he’s coming and telling them they need to either surrender or getting yourselves ready.
‘It’s set in the present day first of all and a boy goes on a school trip to Drogheda to look at a re-enactment of the invasion and he gets a knock on the head and wakes up in 1649 when Cromwell is invading. So from then it’s all about keeping one step ahead of Cromwell and figuring out how he’s going to get back to the present time.’
When his publishers, Poolbeg presented Rod with the idea of writing an historical novel, they began to discuss what events or figure from history the book would centre on. One of the names up for discussion was Cromwell and it was a name that jumped out at Rod, because Cromwell’s exploits in Drogheda had featured so heavily in his upbringing and his early education.
In the acknowledgements section of the book, Rod gives a nod to two of his former teachers who gave him a love of English and history that fuels his creative work today.
In the book’s acknowledgements, the author writes: ‘A special word of thanks to Cyril Gillen, an inspirational English teacher, who encouraged a love of literature in me, and Brother Claude Hamill (RIP), who introduced me to the wonders of history.’
The novel has been 10 months in the making and is in all good book shops now and is getting a great response from readers, which is testament to Rod’s now well practiced skill of making history accessible to young readers.
In his research for the book, Rod talked to a number of academics in Ireland and the UK about Cromwell and found most of them were amazed that someone wanted to write a children’s book about this very complex and often very dark historical figure.
Rod said: ‘I think they were amazed someone wanted to write a children’s book about Cromwell. It is a dark project and there’s a lot of death in it. Boys will love it because there’s lots of killing in it but I wanted to have a girl in it too and for her to be a strong character as well.
‘I got in trouble before when I was doing the very first book because there’s no women in it. I went to a girl’s school with it and asked them what they thought of the book and they said there’s no girls in it. There was a mum in it at the very start but not for very long and it hadn’t occurred to me at all. So, when I wrote the second one, it was a mixed team and the captain was a girl. So for the Cromwell book I wanted to have a strong female character.’
Without giving too much of the story away, the book centres around young Liam O’Malley who we have already learned has found himself transported to 1649 to the middle of the Siege of Drogheda.
With the help of a mysterious girl called Aoife and a horse called Ferdia, he manages to escape the slaughter. After enlisting the help of Seamus, a pirate , and Phelim, a grumpy dockworker, Liam and Aoife set out to travel around Ireland, to warn other towns about the dangers of Cromwell and the Ne Model Army but can they reach the towns on Cromwell’s hit list in time to warn them?
It is an indication of how seriously the author took the research for the book that even the names use in the book were researched to see if they were common names in the Ireland of the late 1640s.
Writing for children brings Rod around the country visiting schools and libraries, and holding workshops and question and answer sessions with his readers. It is one of the great pleasures of the job, according to the local author who enjoys the double life his writing brings, from the solitary pursuit of researching and writing the novel to then, going out into the world and sharing his work with hundreds and thousands of children, around the country. He said: ‘I love the writing. It is a very lonely profession. I do most of my writing late at night because if I’m in it and then someone walks in, it’s gone. So I’ll wait until everyone is gone to bed and write between about 10pm and 3am. Once a book is done it’s gone but then I love getting out and going to the schools. I never go in with the idea to sell books, I just want to encourage kids to read and write and be creative.’
What are his hopes for this book? He said: ‘I think because Cromwell is one of the major figures in Irish history, I hope it would encourage them to find out a little more about him after they read this and discover that maybe he wasn’t all bad.’