I’m sorry about this, but a week of withdrawal, and of trying unsuccessfully to write the novel that was one of the replacement strategies listed in my last post, has made me think that I might have been rather too hasty in announcing my ‘Farväl’ to blogging for good. I’ve also been encouraged by the kind words of readers of my blog, a couple of them attached to my ‘Farväl’ post (thanks, distant friends), to think that my contributions to the conversation in this form were not all the pointless crap I was thinking they were. And I still feel the need to express my feelings about current events in some form or another, to reach beyond Sweden, where my ordinary conversation is mainly confined presently. (The Swedes are understandably bemused by British politics in any case. It was impossible to explain Boris Johnson to them.) So here we go again.

My difficulty with ‘the novel’, which I’ve written four pages of over the last few days, was that the only themes or ‘plots’ I felt comfortable with were those set in real historical situations that I was familiar with. I saw the book as one of those ‘alternative history’ ones: like the one where the counter-reformation succeeded in the 16^th century, for example, and Harold Wilson becomes a cardinal (Kingsley Amis); or Neanderthals overcame homo sapiens (is that the name for us?) thousands of years before; or the Victorians invented the first atomic bomb. (All these have been used by Sci-Fi authors. I’ve forgotten their names.) Mine would have Karl Marx living – or being resurrected – beyond 1883, and either leading the British communist revolution in the 1890s; or turning into Jack the Ripper; or playing cricket for Gloucestershire – I’ve not yet decided which. (I’ve got friends here in Stockholm coming to me with ideas.)

Which might still work; except for two factors. (1) When I write about the historical background of the novel, I find myself writing like a historian – facts, details, analysis; which I feel is not what the ordinary reader of ’tec novels wants. It even bores me. (2) I’m going to need characters to propel the story along; and I’m not awfully good at getting to know and understand people. (Ask any of my women friends.) My characters would therefore probably all turn out to be somewhat wooden. As they are, I’m sure, in my history books.

An autobiography – another of my suggestions – has the same objections to it that I expressed before; together with the risk of self-embarrassment if I wrote truthfully about my adolescent years, and my reluctance to cover the time I was married, for fear of being unfair to those who were close to me then. Best to leave all that unsaid. Alternatives under this heading are an intellectual autobiography, like John Stuart Mill’s, or my early subject JA Hobson’s: but then I’m nowhere near as interesting intellectually as either of them. A lingering possibility is a ‘me and my times’ kind of narrative, looking at and commenting on the last eighty years through my eyes. I may possibly come back to that. – But not (lastly) to the ‘Children’s True History of the British Empire’ idea. If I don’t understand people, I understand children even less. As is common to most ‘grown-ups’, I like to think; even those who, like me, have had children and grandchildren of their own. Sorry, kids!

So, back to the occasional blogging. After all there are plenty of things currently happening in the world for a political blogger, and especially a historian, to blog about. I’ll restart the engine shortly. If, that is, my old brain – the battery? – holds out.