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The Street Philosopher was conceived among the leather-topped tables, tall, dark-wood doors and terracotta crocodiles of the National Art Library, nestled deep within the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. I was researching my PhD on mid-Victorian cultural history and had decided that there would be a chapter devoted to the Manchester Art Treasures Exhibition of 1857. In an attempt to gauge the atmosphere of this spectacular event – a temporary display mounted in a vast ‘iron-and-glass’ building, akin to the Great Exhibition of 1851 – I spent a summer sifting through reams of contemporary journalism, reading reviews, comment pieces and the low-grade, slightly arch society reporting which I would come to identify as ‘street philosophy’. I soon discovered that this exhibition, intended as a display of civic cohesion, had been marred by pronounced tensions between the different social classes, and a marked bitterness towards the aristocracy in particular. Attempting to find an explanation for this, I noticed frequent and often loaded references in these Victorian newspaper articles to the Crimean War, which had shuddered to a decidedly inglorious conclusion only the year before. My knowledge of this conflict was then limited to a sketchy awareness of Florence Nightingale and the famous demise of the Light Brigade, so I started to read up on it.

Immediately I was fascinated. The Crimean War seemed to occupy a mid-point between the Napoleonic campaigns and the First World War, with a strange mix of elements from both: red-coated soldiers fighting in trenches, for example, or cavalry charges being employed alongside heavy artillery bombardments. Besides the well-known advances in medicine and nursing, it also saw the first appearance of several features now integral to the wider experience of war in the modern age. The British generals, to their irritation, were obliged to maintain frequent contact with the government in London, thanks to the electric telegraph. Photographers became a familiar presence in the combat zone – the many spectral images taken by Roger Fenton were a vital visual aid to me as I wrote the novel. The aspect of the war that really caught my attention, however, was the way in which it was covered by the press. For the first time, professional civilian correspondents were ‘embedded’ on the front lines, sending back reports that detailed the incompetence of the aristocratic generals and the resultant suffering of the ordinary fighting men, which naturally had a profound effect on public opinion back in Britain. It was reading these accounts, often unflinching in their confrontation of the Crimea’s horrors, that inspired me to write The Street Philosopher and focus the story upon a group of war correspondents.

As I started work on my first draft, the 21st-century descendents of these pioneering Victorian journalists were very visible, reporting from Afghanistan and Iraq. I became increasingly interested in the inherent difficulties and contradictions of this role, not least of which being the tensions that can exist between those performing it and the army they are following. It is a position with real power as well, and I began to think of the effect that being so prominent and influential could have upon the war correspondent – how it could lead, in certain cases, to pride, recklessness and self-aggrandisement. Also, the broader parallels between the Crimea and the ongoing occupation of Iraq were difficult to avoid. Both were poorly planned invasions with ill-defined goals that exacted a heavy price on all involved, and provoked a good deal of angry protest back in Britain – although it’s worth noting that the uproar that met the mismanagement of the Crimean War did actually bring down the government of the day. It seemed very relevant to be writing about a costly conflict which the general public are to some degree ashamed of, and I found myself considering how this might affect those who were involved in it as they returned home. The basic structure was quickly settled upon: two interweaving chronological strands, one concerning the war and the other its aftermath.

Manchester in the summer of 1857, where I had originally detected the shadow of the Crimea, was the obvious choice of setting for the aftermath sections of the novel. It is in this seething industrial city that the war correspondent Thomas Kitson seeks refuge, deeply damaged by a mysterious ordeal at the front, eking out a meager living as one of these ‘street philosophers’. This unlikely sanctuary is compromised, however, by the advent of the Art Treasures Exhibition. After becoming embroiled in an apparently random act of violence, Kitson comes to realise that among the many thousands of visitors converging on Manchester are some dark figures from his past, intending to bring unfinished Crimean business to a dramatic close.

Further reading...

The Street Philosopher
By Matthew Plampin
HarperCollins
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Meet the rest of Waterstone’s New Voices 2009: Matthew Plampin, Jenn Ashworth, Patrick deWitt. Francesca Kay, Amanda Smyth, Catherine Hall, Dave Boling, Richard Millward, Mari Strachan. Janice Lee, Anthony Quinn and Yiyun Li

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