I came across the story behind Black Wreath by accident. I was looking for information about eighteenth-century Dublin for an article I was writing and one of the books I read was Maurice Craig’s Dublin 1660–1860, which told the real-life story of James Annesley. I found I couldn’t get the story of my head and so I sat down one day and wrote the opening chapters of what became Black Wreath. Something about a boy abandoned in the dangerous Dublin of the 1700s, fighting for his life, struck a chord and I soon found myself immersed in his world, reading everything I could on the subject. James Annesley, who became James Lovett in the novel, was born in 1715 in County Wexford, the son of the fourth Lord Altham, who was every bit as nasty a piece of work as Lord Dunmain in the novel. He concealed his son’s existence so that he could sell his inheritance, just as in the novel, and his uncle Richard, who assumed the title after his father’s death, really did sell James into indentured servitude. He was shipped to Philadelphia and spent thirteen years effectively as a slave on harsh plantations. The real James managed to escape to Jamaica where he enlisted as a sailor on a British ship and made himself known. He finally made his way back to Dublin, where he sued his uncle in what became one of the most famous legal cases of the time. Although he won his case, his uncle put every possible legal obstacle in his way for seventeen years. When the real James died, in 1760, his uncle still held on to both the title and estates. My James is a bit luckier.
Some writers of historical fiction stay very close to the events they’re writing about, but I found as I wrote that other characters and actions jumped into my head and demanded attention: Jack Darcy and his gang, Harry Taaffe the shoeboy, Sylvia Purcell, Doctor Bob, Red Molly. Harry was inspired by a drawing of a shoeboy in eighteenth-century Dublin by an artist of the time, Hugh Douglas Hamilton, which I pinned above my desk. The city of Dublin is one of the most important characters in the book and another great source of inspiration was John Rocque’s 1756 map of Dublin, which I taped to my wall and gazed at, following James’s progress through its twisting streets and alleys with names like Cutpurse Row, Murdering Lane and Gallows Road, wondering what would happen to him next.