Beth Webb talks about the historical sources for Star Dancer, a historical antasy set at the end of the Iron Age.

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BETH WEBB interviewed by NIKKI GAMBLE

Beth Webb is a full time writer. Her research takes her to ancient sites all over the country and she is passionate about British folklore. Her books include The Fleabag Trilogy and a picture book called The Junkyard Dragon. Beth has worked extensively with young people on creative writing courses. Star Dancer is dedicated to the Kilvites a group of young writers who met at one of Beth’s courses at Kilve court. Beth lives in Somerset.

Star Dancer the first novel in a sequence. CAn you tell us something about how the story will develop?

 It’s a quartet: one long story, in four episodes, each of which should stand on its own. One of the common threads through the four books is the character Tegen, a girl born in AD43 just before the Claudian invasion of Britain. The sequence follows the events of the Roman invasion, up to and including Boudicca. In the course of my story, I’ve slowed time down a bit, because the Romans swept across Britain in about three and a half years, setting up main garrisons and organising basic roads. I’m fascinated by the idea of an invader taking over a culture, which in Modern World History is a story that is always repeating itself.

The first book, Star Dancer is set in late Iron Age. Tegan is born in an out of the way village, so there isn’t much history in the first book.

In the second book, Tegan goes to Sinodun, which is now, called Wittenham Clumps near Didcot. It’s an Iron Age site directly across the river from Dorchester-on-Thames. Sinodun Hills is a double hill, one hill is slightly higher than the other. It’s thought that one was a sacred hill and the other a hill fort. Time Team did an analysis and found that this wasn’t so at all, but never mind, I’ll pretend I didn’t see that episode. Sinodun was very interesting, because it was a convergence of three main tribal areas, the Catuvellauni, the Atrebates and the Dobunni. This stronghold would have been, very important, whether the second hill was used for ritual stuff or not. There’s also a hill not far away where people used to hold fairs. In my story, the fairs take place in the meadows at the bottom of the hills. In reality, the chief would be very hospitable to his counterpart, but wouldn’t want too many of his followers around in case there was a takeover bid, so the fairs would have been at some distance.

 The reason the British lost when the Romans invaded wasn’t due to lack of courage or fighting skill, but because they fought one-to-one. The winner cut off the head of the loser and tied it to his or her saddle (they had female warriors). Then they would ride home, stick it on a post outside the gate and that warrior’s spirit would defend the stronghold, and would be subservient to the victor. But this individualistic way of fighting couldn’t work against the Romans who fought as a team with the tortoise formation and military tactics.

Fire Dreamer, deals with politics resulting from the invasion. During the AD40s and 50s, there was a British King called Caractacus (his British name was King Cara). He was an excellent war leader and the Romans found him very daunting. He was betrayed and taken to Rome as a prize. Normally he would have been put to death, but Caractacus learnt Latin and stood up in the Senate and made a speech praising Roman culture. The Romans were so impressed with his eloquence and the fact that he’d learnt Latin, they let him live. He was a guest of the Emporer but he wasn’t allowed to leave. The Roman records at the time record that he had daughters and a wife - no sons or brothers. However, he did have an older brother who was a war leader and killed in Kent, during the campaigns. And he had another older brother, possibly a half-brother called Adminius. He had a small Kingdom, but when Caligula in the 40s looked as if he was going to invade Britain, Adminius thought, trotted over to France and surrendered his Kingdom to Caligula. In my story Adminius is fed up because Caligula has been killed and his successor, Claudius, did not think highly of Caligula so his followers are therefore out of favour. Adminius is fighting to retain his position. There are all sorts of machinations, a murder, Fire Magic and Dark Magic.

In the third book, Tegen wants to go to Mona, to Anglesey, to train to be a Druid. The Romans managed to defeat the British Warriors, but they didn’t defeat the British spirit because, it is thought, the Druids played an important role in maintaining people’s spirit. It takes eighteen years to train to be a druid and Tegan feels that her knowledge in inadequate that she’s driven by instinct and consequently she feels very insecure. I’m advised by Modern Druids, and they informed me about fire rituals, walking fire spirals that take you from this world to the next. My Druid friends told me that they keep the fires low when they perform this ritual but a CSI who was also advising me said the fires needed to be above head height to get a real sense of danger and fear. So, poor Tegen has to walk through hedges of fire raging over her head, in order to enter the other world.

Some people have said that if you write  or read historical fiction, it’s because you want to escape into the past. How do you respond to that?

I’d say the past is a way of learning about the present. I am a great believer that cartoons, fantasy and comedy take one step away from reality, so you can look at reality more clearly. If you imagine a fly settled on a shoe, you’d say to the fly, “Where are you?”, and it would say “I’m on a mountain, and it smells of cheese.” You allow the fly to fly up to the ceiling, you then say “What were you sitting on?”, it says, “Ooh, I was sitting on a shoe.” The fantasy and history that I’m interested in, is the stepping back so you can reflect on the present. If you look at King Arthur now you can ask was he a hero, or was he a freedom fighter? When is a terrorist a freedom fighter?

Two things intrigue me. Firstly, the Roman invasion - and today all across the world there are people invading other people’s territory. What does it feel like to have invaders entering your land, changing your cultures, telling you you’ve got to change your way of doing things?

Secondly, religion fascinates me. Not because I believe one religion is better than the other but because people try to find a way to live, a path to follow, something that makes sense, something they can believe in that makes them human. In my book, there’s the subject of Druidry. The Druids are slaughtered on Anglesey in the beginning of Book 3, which is a historical fact. The Druids were keeping peoples’ spirits up, so the Romans rounded them up and slaughtered them. Well that pattern of ethnic cleansing, resistance and slaughter repeats itself through history from the Spanish Inquisition to the Marsh Arabs. I believe that by looking at history you learn more about the present.

Tegen’s quite modern in her sensibilities Is this because there’s a need to speak to a modern reader, as well as writing about the past?

… Yes. I think if I wrote Tegen as she would have been readers might not have been able to enjoy her. I was reading about the Boudiccan revolt and some of the material I read was horrific; it was a particularly violent time. I’m trying to make Tegen a character that modern readers can relate to, so in a sense she’s a bridge between history, reality, and fantasy.

Thank you Beth Webb for talking to Write Away