On tour with The Coffee Pot Book Club: The Coronation by Justin Newland @matadorbooks @maryanneyarde

 

Publication Anniversary Tour

It is 1761. Prussia is at war with  Russia and Austria. As the Russian army occupies East Prussia, King Frederick the Great and his men fight hard to win back their homeland. 

 

In Ludwigshain, a Junker estate in East Prussia, Countess Marion von Adler celebrates an exceptional harvest. But it is requisitioned by Russian troops. When Marion tries to stop them, a Russian captain strikes her. His lieutenant, Ian Fermor, defends Marion’s honour and is stabbed for his insubordination. Abandoned by the Russians, Fermor becomes a divisive figure on the estate.

 

Close to death, Fermor dreams of the Adler, a numinous eagle entity, whose territory extends across the lands of Northern Europe and which is mysteriously connected to the Enlightenment. What happens next will change of the course of human history… 

What inspired you to start writing?

I love research, and always have. I enjoy the discovery of it, the feeling of gaining new knowledge, a new piece of evidence that slots into some ongoing pattern, or trend. 

I particularly thrive on the discovery of history and of people whose works shed a light on the human condition. What do I mean by that term? Well, it’s how and why we have inherited the society we live in today. How did we get to where we’ve got to today?  

The genre in which I write is called secret history thriller, that’s history with a supernatural twist. I take historical events and real historical personages, especially those that were seminal in shaping the human condition, and I examine them through a supernatural lens. This yields a different explanation for why those events happened, and why those people did what they did.  

In our civilisation today, we’re dominated by technology. We live in a technological post-industrial society. But why? How did we end up like this? Because back in the 1760’s, when the novel The Coronation is set, there was no industry (outside of cottage industry), no factories and no huge cities. Yet at the time, we, as a people, took the industrial route. But was that how it was meant to be? Was there an alternative route available at the time? If so, what was it, and why didn’t we take it? These were the questions I wanted to explore in my novel, and which inspired me to write The Coronation. 

What was the hardest part about writing this book?

The balances in the ending were difficult to get right. Endings often are complicated.

Here’s how I think about endings…  

Imagine the structure of a novel as an upward-pointing triangle. The base represents the beginning, the triangle gets thinner in the middle, and reaches the apex at the top - that’s the ending. 

Like the base of the triangle, the beginning of the novel is a broad base and light on tension.  The characters and settings are introduced. As the novel proceeds, the tension thickens as the characters interact and their arcs develop, and the threads are grown.

As the story culminates, there are many plot threads to resolve. There are the main character arcs to fulfil. But just as the tension at the beginning is broad, the tension at the end, where the triangle reaches the apex, is thick. The plot threads are pulled taut. Any wrong move dissipates the tension, lowers expectancy. So, at the end of the novel, at the narrow apex, every word, every gesture, every dialogue counts. 

That’s why endings are difficult. The ending of The Coronation was no different.

Does one of the main characters hold a special place in your heart? If so, why?

Definitely. The character of Countess Marion, Countess von Adler holds a special place in my heart. She is the main character of The Coronation. 

Her character is based on a real-life personage, Marion, Countess von Dönhoff who lived at a Junker family estate at Castle Friedrichstein near Löwenhagen, East Prussia (see photograph). 

For discretionary reasons, I changed the name in the novel to Castle Ludwigshain. 

Much of the inner detail in the novel is derived from the real Countess’ autobiography, Before the Storm: Memories of My Youth in Old Prussia (tr. by Jean Steinberg. NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990).  

Although she lived during the 20th Century, I was able to add a rare touch of authenticity to my novel. 

A wonderful read, she paints a vivid picture about her upbringing, from the parlour games, her dogs and horses, the names of the staff, to the layout of the rooms in the castle and the out-buildings, and beyond that, the rolling fields, the local villages, and running through the valley, the River Pregel.  

Countess Marion von Donhoff

She describes the diet, the Christmas meal, the daily chores and the routines of Lutheran prayer and cleaning, right down to the colour of the tunics worn by the housemaids.

It allowed me to enter her pre-Second World War world and imagine what it might have been like to live on the Friedrichstein estate during the 18th Century. That’s her photograph.

If your book was to be made into a movie, who are the celebrities that would star in it?

Countess Marion von Adler – Meryl Streep

Ian Fermor, Scots émigré, Russian soldier – Ralph Fiennes

Konstantin, Russian emigre – Alexander Petrov

Sisi, Marion’s daughter – Jennifer Lawrence

Christoph, estate manager – Michael Fassbender

Til Eulenspiegel – Jan Josef Liefers 

Hans, Marion’s son – Daniel Bruhl 

Dieter, Marion’s brother – Leonardo di Caprio

Alexander, the huntsman – Jurgen Prochnow 

What do you hope your readers take away from this book?

Like in my other novels, I wanted to explore why things are as they in our time, the origins of our modern world and its social constraints. In the 18th Century, Prussian society, like the other societies of German kingdoms, was ordered according to the Medieval Law Book, the Sachsenspiegel (meaning the Saxon Mirror). Its idea, similar to that of the Great Chain of Being, was that society had to be structured according to the way God had ordered the universe in seven levels. The King occupied the first station, Ecclesiastic Princes the second, and so on down to the peasants in the seventh level.   

Many of the seeds of our time were sown during the Great Enlightenment. When the novel was set in 1760’s, giants such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Voltaire, Adam Smith, Professor Carl Linnaeus, Immanuel Kant, King Frederick the Great, Captain James Cook and James Watt bestrode the world. 

Today we live in large urban conurbations with mass movements of people. The 18th Century saw the shift from the agrarian-based society built around peasant workers and landowners (or Junkers as they were called in Prussia) to an industrial factory-based one with huge anonymous cities. In those days, village people still retained a strong binding relationship with the land on which they lived, expressed through folk customs, song, dance, story and the like. There was a love affair between the people and the land on which they lived – this was Arcadia. In Europe, this was the last time when this pastoral vision of harmony with nature was prevalent.

As well as telling the story of this exciting, changing time, I wanted readers to take away an alternative, speculative genesis for the Industrial Revolution, and to consider afresh why today we live in a world so reliant on technology and commerce. 

And finally, I wanted readers to ask themselves questions such as… 

We are Homo Sapiens Sapiens, which is Latin for man-the-doubly-wise. If that’s the case, then how came we are not displaying that supreme wisdom in our society today? 

If the Great Enlightenment was when we were meant to begin that spiritual journey, what happened to it? Where did the promise of that enlightenment go? Where did it end up? 

And why are we so fascinated by and dependent on technology? 

Buy this Book 

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Justin Newland

Justin Newland is an author of historical fantasy and secret history thrillers - that’s history with a supernatural twist. His stories feature known events and real people from history which are re-told and examined through the lens of the supernatural. He gives author talks and is a regular contributor to BBC Radio Bristol’s Thought for the Day. He lives with his partner in plain sight of the Mendip Hills in Somerset, England. 

His Books

The Genes of Isis is a tale of love, destruction and ephemeral power set under the skies of An-cient Egypt. A re-telling of the Biblical story of the flood, it reveals the mystery of the genes of Isis – or genesis – of mankind. ISBN 9781789014860.

“The novel is creative, sophisticated, and downright brilliant! I couldn’t ask more of an Egyp-tian-esque book!” – Lauren, Books Beyond the Story.

The Old Dragon’s Head is a historical fantasy and supernatural thriller set during the Ming Dynasty and played out in the shadows the Great Wall of China. It explores the secret history of the influences that shaped the beginnings of modern times.  ISBN 9781789015829.

‘The author is an excellent storyteller.” – British Fantasy Society. 

Set during the Great Enlightenment, The Coronation reveals the secret history of the Industrial Revolution. ISBN 9781838591885.

“The novel explores the themes of belonging, outsiders… religion and war…  filtered through the lens of the other-worldly.” – A. Deane, Page Farer Book Blog.

His latest, The Abdication (July, 2021), is a suspense thriller, a journey of destiny, wisdom and self-discovery. ISBN 9781800463950.  

“In Topeth, Tula confronts the truth, her faith in herself, faith in a higher purpose, and ulti-mately, what it means to abdicate that faith.” 

V. Triola, Coast to Coast.

Social Media Links:

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