So, while I’m waiting for the OUP copyeditor to contact me about deadlines for edits to The Day Parliament Burned Down, I’m working on mini-pitches to my agent Bill for the next book. Though we’ve discussed some ideas face to face, I’m a bit diffident doing this off the top of my head and feel much more comfortable writing ideas down and making them punchy (probably goes back to a mispent year working in a PR agency straight after university). So far I’ve got five paragraph-long pitches for books, some Parliamentary, some going back to my roots as a medieval historian. I have another five or so in my head that I’m working on. Once we’ve got a list, it’ll be a question of discussing, rejecting, refining, or expanding. Book No 2 will need to be something I know a bit about already, plus something which hasn’t been written about before (or which needs a modern interpretation), plus something the market wants, plus something which I am prepared to spend two or more years of my life working on. That’s quite a tall order. If anyone has any ideas, please feel free to write them on a postcard below…
About Caroline Shenton
Dr Caroline Shenton is an archivist and historian. She was formerly Director of the Parliamentary Archives in London, and before that was a senior archivist at the National Archives. Her book The Day Parliament Burned Down won the Political Book of the Year Award in 2013 and Mary Beard called it 'microhistory at its absolute best' while Dan Jones considered it 'glorious'. Its acclaimed sequel, Mr Barryís War, about the rebuilding of the Palace of Westminster, was a Book of the Year in 2016 for The Daily Telegraph and BBC History Magazine and was described by Lucy Worsley as 'a real jewel, finely wrought and beautiful'. During 2017 Caroline was Political Writer in Residence at Gladstone's Library.
