Edward Rutherford's colonial connection

Until recently, best-selling historical novelist
Edward Rutherfurd knew little of his own historical
connection to this country. JACK LEIGH explains.

Edward Rutherford, who writes best-selling, 1000-page, historical novels, is part of a much bigger story than he imagined. He knew he had New Zealand connections. He did not know the colonial family tree was such a lusty specimen - not until The Pioneering Baronet, by Heather Makgill, of Waiuku, written for a 200-strong reunion last year, got peer perusal in Britain. The 13th Viscount of Oxfuird, George Hubbard Makgill, snapped up six copies. And his first cousin, author Rutherfurd's 83-year-old mother, bought three.

"I have about 50 cousins in Auckland and I've no idea how many altogether in New Zealand," says Rutherfurd. His forebear, Captain Sir John Makgill Bt of Waiuku, has "at least 137 great-great-grandchildren."

The British end of the family with its titled connections "knew little about the New Zealand cousins until my book," says Heather Makgill, chronicler of the local clan. "They'd have known everyone if they had a bach at Orua Bay" - where the Makgills and other kinfolk gather for holidays.

So to the question: will the Kiwi cast of hundreds get its own novel? Rutherfurd makes no promises.

"It's no, at least for now. I have to make a living like anyone else and need to satisfy my transatlantic publishers."

He says of his monumental, stamina-testing but very readable histories, that he is one of the few "brave or stupid enough" to be in this particular niche.

"I am also one of the very few outside the super-sellers who get on the best-seller list on both sides of the Atlantic, and the American market is somewhat different from the Commonwealth one.

"I'd be hugely interested to do a book on New Zealand, but I don't know if I could sell it in the US. Maybe in a few years I can do books as I like."

Heather Makgill's book has enough rich ancestral foliage to furnish The Forest, Rutherfurd's latest novel. Her collection of names outnumbers any of the genealogies that preface his other historical sagas.

The Forest is also his shortest book (a mere 882 pages in paperback, costing $26.95), covers 900 years and follows what he calls "the usual formula," which alternates fact and fiction. It took him two years to write. London, which was a best-seller, took five years, meaning the rewards enabled him only "to go on writing. Not many writers can."

He lived off his savings while writing his first book, Sarum (1987) and, with more than two million copies sold world wide, "it gave me a good living. No worries. I can go on. The thing is, if I could produce one of these a year I'd be doing very well.

"If I could ever make money like John Grisham I'd take it with both hands."

His researches to date have been mainly in England, at a remove from a working base in Ireland from where he crosses the Atlantic to visit his American wife Susan and children, Edward, aged 13, and Elizabeth, 11.

While reticent about his personal life on the phone, Rutherfurd speaks frankly about the books.

"They are unashamedly commercial. I am a populariser, and have no embarrassment about that. Academic historians tolerate me because I do my homework."

An Edward Rutherfurd novel typically begins with the world still arranging its prehistoric features, then progresses epoch by epoch to the present day by a literary form of time-lapse photography, with tabs kept on a few families which he admits "may have oversimplified characteristics. But if you don't do that the reader will get lost."

Far from being contrived, this form of continuity still exists in Britain. When the author was going through medieval records of the Verderer's Court, which manages the New Forest, and discovering "lots of wonderful stories," he found that "people from the year 1278 had the same names as people in the New Forest library helping me with my research ... at least half a dozen old families."

He enjoys "educating" himself by historical research, and likes the idea of doing the same for others. Schools have used his books.

"I try hard to be responsible, and not to mislead the reader," he says. "If the research raises a point which is in dispute, I put one interpretation into the mouth of one character, and let another express the other version.

"I believe passionately that historical events are like case studies at business school. You study what happens in a company and try to learn from it. It is the same in history, which is a vast reservoir of case studies."

More's the shame, he says, that many politicians and statesmen do not know history. Rutherfurd's early attempts at historical writing, which alternated with work in political research and book marketing, involved the Roman empress Theodora and South America's Maya Indians - the latter being "an object lesson. I believed the Aztecs were the bad guys and the Maya were the good, peaceful ones. It didn't come off. And meanwhile scholars proved the Maya were just as nasty."

He also wrote 10 plays, one of which was "nearly taken by the BBC ... You should always tell someone not to write. It's a tough, uncertain life. If they are going to do it anyway, they'll keep coming back to it."

His New Zealand great-great-grandfather, Captain Sir John Makgill, Royal Engineers, the 10th Baronet, came out in 1881 with a large family from Scotland after serving in India, farmed at Waiuku and took little interest in his British inheritance.

His eldest son, George, who like others of the clan had literary leanings, went back and took up the title after his father's death.

Edward Rutherfurd, who is now in his 50s, is not in direct line of succession.

* Edward Rutherfurd will be a guest at the Auckland Writers' Festival this month.

* Auckland journalist Jack Leigh is a former books editor of the Herald.