‘All Through the Night’: Interview with the author
Q. What is this book about?
A. Written in the style of an old-fashioned Western, it’s about a group of Welsh drovers taking a large herd of cattle from the rolling hills of Wales to the markets of London in the 1790s, their adventures along the way and how their experiences shape them.
Q. What is the inspiration behind the book?
A. Basically, it was the realisation that the early drovers were, in fact, the first cowboys – or maybe I should say, cowboyos, coming from Wales! Reading about the cattle drives, and having visited old drovers’ routes and inns, it was a short leap for me to develop the notion that everything that happens in Westerns (novels and films) could have happened to the drovers.
I started thinking that maybe cowboys were invented as much in Wales as in Wyoming. Then, I knew I wanted to feature strong personalities and exciting incidents in a storyline which also contained the strong cultural, emotional and human elements that make Westerns so appealing, by exploring how people act in the drama of their own lives.
Q. What can you tell us about the main characters?
A. The main character is Rhys and it is really a rites-of-passage novel for him, looking at how he is torn between his dreams and life’s realities. We see him grow into the role he will inherit from his father, as a drover, and learning from the strong characters around him and the experiences he has with them and with the various good and bad people he encounters en route.
Q. The book is set in the 1790s. Why?
A. The fictional events take place in the late eighteenth century because it was the heyday not only for cattle drives from Wales to London but also for the popularity of Welsh music (another theme in the book) and poetry in the capital. In fact, I was further encouraged to set the book in the 1790s by seeing a plaque (placed in 2009) in the ground at the top of Primrose Hill in London to mark the first ever meeting of the Gorsedd of Bards – on 21 June 1792 – and to commemorate its founder, Iolo Morganwg. It was an interesting time, culturally, with Richard Sheridan at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, and that gave me a further hook to hang the London end of the story on.
Q. How did you choose the title?
A. As Rhys, the hero, is a musician, poet and songwriter, I decided to feature some traditional Welsh songs throughout the book, in part as evening entertainment in the inns, but also in performance in London. ‘All Through the Night’ is a well-known Welsh air and its words fit the story well emotionally as well as hinting at a long, hard journey.
Q. What research did you do for the book?
A. It was fascinating to research the droving aspects in original sources. For example, the scene of the herd swimming across the Menai Strait (OK, I know it’s not the Rio Grande!), is based on fact. I wanted the book to be a homage to Welsh culture and that was a key strand in the research into songs and old monologues, as well as looking at what was happening in the coffee shops, theatres and meat markets of London.
Q. Do you have any plans for a sequel?
A. I have notes for a possible sequel, but when writing All Through the Night, I was taken with the idea of doing a prequel, as Honesty Jones who is making his final cattle drive in my novel emerges as a real ‘character’ who I’d like to explore even more, especially as I allude to earlier drives he undertook with a drover called Pagan Evans. So, the answer is: maybe another Welsh Western, one day!