What to Title the Chapters?

With my biography of Henry Coombe-Tennant having a final polish, what do I call the chapters? Harder than it sounds, really, but having given it a bit of thought, I’ve come up with:

Chapter One: A New Messiah (Henry was born to a plan that would see him become the New Messiah.)

Chapter Two: The Wise One (A talented toddler, nicknamed The Wise One by his family.)

Chapter Three: Escaping Eton (He was unhappy at Eton.)

Chapter Four: Conquering Cambridge (Henry gained a double-first degree)

Chapter Five: With the Welsh Guards (He joined the army in the 1930s.)

Chapter Six: Into Battle – May 1940 (Involved in the fighting at the Hook of Holland and Boulogne, where he was captured.)

Chapter Seven: Winifred Goes to War (Winifred Coombe Tennant’s efforts on behalf of her POW son.)

Chapter Eight: Over the Wire (In 1942 Henry escapes from the POW camp in Germany.)

Chapter Nine: Evading the Enemy (He makes his way – with two comrades – out of Germany and, eventually, to Spain.)

Chapter Ten: Operation Jedburgh (In 1944 Henry trains as a Special Operations Executive agent)

Chapter Eleven: Behind Enemy Lines (He is parachuted into the Ardennes where he helps the Resistance fight the Nazis.)

Chapter Twelve: The Road to Germany (In September 1944 he rejoins his regiment and fights his way into Germany.)

Chapter Thirteen: Patrolling Palestine (He serves in Palestine, trying to keep Arab and Jew from fighting each other.)

Chapter Fourteen: Inside Intelligence (Intelligence work in post-war Germany and Austria before joining MI6 and serving in Iraq in 1959.)

Chapter Fifteen: Peace Among Thorns – Downside Abbey (Henry retires and, after his traumatic experiences in Iraq, becomes a Benedictine Monk.)

Nicely chronological!

Finding Henry Coombe-Tennant…

My work on Henry Coombe-Tennant has been a marathon rather than a sprint. I “discovered” his story while actually carrying out research on his brother, Christopher, who was killed in action during the Great War. I am now approaching the finishing line!

The background to my efforts regarding Henry was explained in an article that I wrote for the West Glamorgan Archive Service annual report. It can be read here: Researching Henry…

My biography of Henry Coombe-Tennant will be published in 2021 by Y Lolfa of Talybont.

Head-scratching…

Tying up a few loose ends in my biography of Henry Coombe-Tennant of Neath. I’ve been trying to match the names of various 1942 Dutch and Belgian escape line members with episodes in Henry’s passage through occupied NW Europe after escaping from Warburg POW camp.

It was harder than I thought but I think I’ve cracked it. I’ve even managed to track down the name of an escaped Russian POW (Piotr Pinchouko) who traveled with Henry and his two comrades. Apparently, Piotr, who Henry nicknamed “Stalin”, had suffered the misfortune of being shot down while on a bombing raid over Berlin in 1941. Given the harsh treatment often meted out to Russian prisoners by the Germans, he was a lucky man to make his escape.

Edit, eidt, edit…

Today I completed the FIRST read through of my 100,000-word biography of Henry Coombe-Tennant of Neath. It has taken me a couple of weeks at a leisurely pace and it is surprising how many typos you pick up and just how often you see a word that you immediately want to change for a different one!

I’ve noted all the changes in a printed copy of the text and I next have to make the changes in the Word document. That won’t take me too long…

After that, it’s a matter of checking that my quotes are accurate, plus a bit of fact and date checking. Beyond that, I have to complete the footnotes, sort out the index and decide which illustration goes where!

So, it’s a lot of work but I am well within my target. At the end of it all, my editor at Y Lolfa will give the work a professional edit and we’ll be ready to go to publication. That will be in 2021, Covid-19 virus permitting. The end of a long but very enjoyable road for me. But a true-life story of a remarkable man and his equally remarkable family that really needs to be out there. I can’t wait…

Good News in 2020?

I am at the tail-end of writing my biography of Henry Coombe-Tennant of Cadoxton, Neath. It will be around 100,000 words in total.

Academic, philosopher, talented pianist, Welsh Guard 1930s+, POW 1940, escapee 1942, SOE agent 1944, MI6 operative late 1950s and Benedictine monk. And a man who was born to a plan formulated by his mother (the redoubtable Winifred Coombe Tennant) and others, that would see him become the New Messiah. That didn’t happen, of course, but Henry nevertheless crammed a huge amount into a very eventful life.

As regards publication, I am expecting some news in February 2020. Hopefully it will be good news but its fingers crossed in the meantime!

I hope that all who read this post have a happy Christmas and a wonderful new year!

Fingers Crossed Time…

I have some publisher interest in my hoped-for biography of Henry Coombe-Tennant though it seems that a final decision will not be taken until February 2020. Which gives me time to finish the work, edit it and sort out images and an index. Plenty still to do and, as I said…fingers crossed! Hopefully it will be in print in the autumn of 2020.

I’ve Been Busy!

I’ve not posted here since before Christmas so the site is now due an update – and here it is!

My hoped-for biography of Henry Coombe-Tennant now runs to 80,000 words with two or three more chapters to come. I think it will turn out at around 95,000 words. Henry was variously a scholar, academic (Eton and Cambridge), philosopher, Welsh Guard, prisoner of war (1940), escapee (1942), SOE agent, parachutist (fighting behind enemy lines in France, 1944), MI6 agent and monk. And he had been born in 1913 as part of a plan that would see him become the new Messiah. That never happened, of course, though he did lead a very interesting life and met some remarkable people along the way…

I’ve recently had the OK from the trustee who controls the archive records of the Tennant family to proceed with finding a publisher for my work. This was great news for me! The family liked what I had written.

I am currently ‘polishing’ three chapters for submission to several publishing companies so they can see how the work looks and – hopefully – one of them will accept it for publication. Fingers crossed…

At the end of February 2019, I went to Downside Abbey (south of Bath) to give a talk on Henry’s life. He spent the last 30 years of his life there as a Benedictine Monk. The folk there knew little of his earlier life so it was quite an eye-opener for them. The event was a sell-out and I received some information from folk who remembered him and also had a very pleasant lunch and chat with two of the Monks who knew him at Downside. It was a great day!

If I can interest a publisher, I hope to see my work in print in 2020. Exciting times…

 

 

 

64k…

I did a quick tot-up on the word count so far of my hoped-for biography of Henry Coombe-Tennant of Cadoxton. I’m about to finish chapter 9 (first draft, plenty of fine-tuning to come) and the total word count of chapters 1-9 stands at 64,000. That’s 64K…

I think the work will run to 12 chapters so the final word count might be around the 85,000 mark. But who’s counting, eh? Oh, well, me – obviously!

 

“A Tour de Force…”

I gave a talk to the Blackpill Local History Society (Swansea) yesterday morning on the lives of Christopher Tennant and his younger brother, Henry Coombe-Tennant. I enjoy giving the talks (though I would not claim to be a very good speaker) but, in the vote of thanks, I was told that the story of Henry (in particular) was a “tour de force” that would provide the basis of a film or TV screenplay.

It’s not the first time I have been told this because – quite simply – Henry’s story is rather jaw-dropping. And all backed up by archival records.

I have just started Chapter 7 (44,000 words so far) of what I hope will be Henry’s biography. His mother, the formidable Winifred Coombe Tennant (no hyphen between Coombe and Tennant for her), is about to go to war on behalf of British POW’s…

 

Henry Coombe-Tennant of Cadoxton, Neath.

I’m now into Chapter Six and have 40,000 words written on the life of dear old Henry. I’ve called this chapter “Into Battle: Holland and France, May 1940.” I’m very pleased with the progress made but there is still a lot to write and then edit, correct and polish etc. And I need to find a publisher, of course.

One episode that amused me: with a number of Welsh Guardsmen having barricaded themselves into a house in Bologne they await the arrival of the Germans. Suddenly, there is a loud knocking on the door. They can’t see the door from the windows. Who is it? Only one way to find out…