To get annoyed by a badly written novel with serious factual mistakes

[PhaedraIsMyName]

Author thinks the witness to a crime can decide who the Crown calls as expert witness.

Expert witness is a therapist who was treating the witness to the crime. Expert witness is married to a lawyer. Expert witness has been discussing the background with lawyer husband. The person accused of the crime is the crime scene witness'father. Author thinks the lawyer husband can represent the accused and this is not a conflict.

Lawyer husband is actually employed in a government legal department and author thinks lawyer husband can, whilst still employed, act as a defence lawyer.

It's tosh. Did nobody bother to edit or proof read it?

Is it just me who bothers about stuff like this?

sashh would it be really horrible of me to get on my high horse and point out that N Ireland wouldn't have existed in a time when burning witches or heretics or anyone really, was likely to be happening?

It seems in keeping with the outrage that we are all feeling on the thread

sashh I would never have thought about that, about being unable to accurately time things, that would have gone right over my head.

Grr, one more thing to be annoyed about, next time I read a historical novel.

I remember watching the BBC version of the White Queen last year and starting a thread to ask if it was really possible that they had scissors at the time in which it was set, as I genuinely hadn't a clue. I think the conclusion was that they would have done, just not the pivoting sort that were shown.

Drudge I second FatalCabbage putting a maiden name on a grave is very common in Scotland. You'll find "Phaedra Black , spouse of John Brown"

The other thing that has been worrying me is when my characters go long periods of time without an opportunity to wee

Me too.

There was a Quentin Jardine book that really annoyed me as his doctor wife started weaning their baby at around 2 weeks..

American writers often get British titles wrong. Again, a bit of research would have you know that the Duke of Whatsitshire is very unlikely to have a full brother who is the Earl of Otherwhatsitshire.

PhaedraIsMyName Mon 28-Jul-14 13:40:54
The other thing that has been worrying me is when my characters go long periods of time without an opportunity to wee

"Me too."

Glad it's not just me! I'm editing a passage at the moment where the main character has either managed to cross his legs for about 36 hours, or is currently sitting in a rather smelly room. I could factor a toilet visit in, but it would rather spoil the tone to insert 'And then I knocked on the door and asked if I could possibly make use of the nearest facilities, before returning and recommencing angst-ridden pacing."

sassh - yeah, I guess it'd be a Pasternoster apart. Still, though ... not way out.

The White Queen was full of howlers. Didn't they have concrete steps visible at some point?

scone - I read a terrible bit of US-written fanfic once, which imagined all British people had titles like 'Baron'.

I can't remember the name of the potato peeling medieval mother - it was truly dreadful in all ways.

Loving medieval zips

I'm sure I can remember watching rainbow in the 70's though??

at Baron. The West Wing even gets it wrong with Lord John Marbury, who is supposed to be an Earl. But Marbury was not even his earl title as I recall. He definitely would not be Lord John if he is an earl.

Oh, yes. I love the West Wing but the British politics bits get on my nerves. It's just so fucking arrogant writing Prime Minister Grady as a Thatcher-type hawk being reined in by US doves, when it came out during the Bush administration.

Ooh yes, Dickens has precise timing as a plot point in Bleak House - "No 20-pasts for folk like them, it's as much if they know the half hour. No, they have her watch among them; she's been here." [I paraphrase]

But more generally, using quantitative data in medicine wasn't just not done before the late C18th, it was considered outrageous. In western culture, anyway.

A suggestion in France of using these new-fangled instrument things to measure temperature raised howls of outrage, with one doctor saying to attempt to understand his patients by measuring them was like attempting to understand the Mona Lisa's smile by analysing the paint.

Perhaps a very holistic attitude towards health - but also one that enshrined professional protectionism. You have to be a Proper Physician, inducted into the mysteries of a closed profession, to heal the sick; none of this objective, scientific knowledge.

American writers often get British titles wrong. Again, a bit of research would have you know that the Duke of Whatsitshire is very unlikely to have a full brother who is the Earl of Otherwhatsitshire

Titles and names are absolutely hilarious in all those 19th century English historical romances written by the likes of Lisa Kleypas. Both heroes and heroines have names more suited to Americans born in the 1980s: Zachary, Holly, Kevin, Derek, Amanda, etc.

If anyone likes Charlaine Harris (which I do) the editing on her Harper Connolly series is bloody awful. The heroine's younger half-sisters switch names and ages between book1 and book 3, for instance.

And I'm also one who finds the later Wexford books a bit jarring, but I suppose that's just one of the things a writer can get stuck with over a long career - she probably created him as a middle-aged plod without any idea that books about him would still be in demand 50 years later. If he'd aged in real time he would be about 108 now. Mind you, the same goes for Ed McBain's 87th Precinct detectives, most of whom have also been crimefighting since the mid 60s, and even though the babies their lovely wives were hatching as background colour in the earlier books are often described as teenagers or young adults in the later ones, the detectives themselves would all be well into their 90s.

THough I am absolutely honking with laughter over the conjoined incestuous twins of different sexes...

treaclesoda Of course it existed, known by a different name but still in existence.

And - although not checked - wasn't it about the same time as the 'Ulster' Scots were settling.

Bloody hell this historical accuracy is not as easy as it looks is it?

I just bring my "willing suspension of disbelief" to the Wexford series. PD James has a similar issue with Dalgleish.

By letting Rebus age in real time, Ian Rankin may one day have an 80 year old former detective sticking his nose in crime solving all over Edinburgh. I'm looking forward to it.

It really irritates me in The Good Wife that people call Peter "Mr. Governor." That is not the correct form of address. It is just plain "Governor."

parsing - mmm, not sure. If you mean quantative data in relation to childbirth, yes, people did. I don't know much about later on, but in medieval/Renaissance times, no worries about it. I'm reading a Middle English romance at the moment that is extremely precise about term being 'forty weeks' and I've read manuals setting out the number of contractions in which a baby 'should' be born, that sort of thing.

these are all the reasons i refuse to read any book that wasn't written in the era it is about, as one of the joys i get from reading historical fiction is learning about social history.

TV and books is why I was so thoroughly disappointed with the court system. As the victim or complainant or whatever I was, I thought I'd have been able to see prosecution beforehand, have loads of info etc.balls!

LRD, those concrete steps in The White Queen had a handy metal railing for the ruling classes to hold onto, just like they really would have done centuries ago And some of the long boots had ye olde zips on them too.

RobinHumphries, I was agreeing with you over The Trip :)

I was incensed a few years ago when the Guardian 'Let's Move To...' Weekend mag page was supposedly about Matlock, but the pictures and details were of Matlock Bath, which is an entirely different town, even if they are nearby. I doubt anyone involved in the writing of it had ever been anywhere near the bloody place.

I quite fancy reading that book with the incestuous male-female conjoined twins. It sounds delightfully AWFUL!

The finest fifteenth-century metal railings, no doubt.