Dancing Priest

Author and Novelist Glynn Young

Dancing King

Dancing King Stories: Josh Gittings, Chief of Staff

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Josh Gittings Dancing King

In my second novel A Light Shining, Josh Gittings is a special assistant to Prime Minister Peter Bolting. And in his case, “special” means “political.” Gittings does what Bolting needs him to do, and much of that is ruthless. Gittings has been involved in Labour Party politics and working for Bolting since he graduated from college 20 years before.

He’s a character who understands what his value is, what his role is, and what’s expected of him. He knows he’s often called “Rasputin,” and he’s self-aware enough to understand that it’s a justified nickname. He watches everything. He pays attention to small details. He can deal with political friends and enemies alike, and he sees little difference between them, because who’s your political friend today will be your political enemy tomorrow.

Josh Gittings is a man of the political 21stcentury.

A Light ShiningWhen the royal family is assassinated in Britain and Michael Kent-Hughes is shot in San Francisco, Gittings, 41, is dispatched by the prime minister to California to be his man on the ground. He’s there to do the PM’s bidding. If Michael survives the shooting and surgery, Gittings is there to assist and guide. If Michael dies, Gittings is there to help Sarah Kent-Hughes and her newborn son. He’s there to make sure the world knows that the PM is with the new royal family.

It’s a cold, calculating, and rather bloodless job. And Gittings is perfectly suited for it. And it all goes according to Gittings’ playbook, until he meets and begins to work with Sarah, as Michael remains unconscious after surgery. Within two days of meeting her, he’s beginning to question what he considers the fundamentals of his career and of his life. When she speaks at her press conference, calling passionately for an end to The Violence in Britain, he finds himself in tears.

The third novel in the series, Dancing King, opens with Gittings leaving San Francisco with Britain’s new royal family. It is seven weeks after Michael’s discharge from the hospital; Gittings has spent those seven weeks working with Michael and Sarah, helping them in innumerable ways. And in the process, he has discovered that being with them has begun to change his own life profoundly. As he tells them later in the book, “I began to learn what’s really important in life.”

For those seven weeks, Gittings lives in Michael’s old apartment at St. Anselm’s Church, across the plaza from Michael and Sarah’s loft. He has ample opportunities to talk with Father John Stevens, the church’s head pastor and Michael’s boss. Father John plays a critical role as well, mostly in telling Gittings stories about the church and stories about Michael.

Dancing KingDuring the trans-Atlantic telephone conversations, Josh’s live-in girlfriend, Zena Chatwick, can hear the change that’s happening in Gittings simply by listening to his voice. When he arrives with Michael and Sarah in London, he tells Zena he’s moving out of their flat in Chelsea. And he asks her to marry him, “to make an honest man of myself.” He helps Michael interview and staff various palace positions, eventually submitting his own application for chief of staff. That such a ruthless character as Gittings becomes one of Michael’s closest confidantes raises questions in the minds of many. Michael doesn’t care; he knows how his new friend has changed.

The character of Josh Gittings is fictional, but there are elements of two people who contributed to his creation. One was an individual much like Gittings – political, ruthless, prepared to do whatever was required to achieve the desired ends. The other is rather more famous – Charles Colson, President Richard Nixon’s “hatchet man.” Colson was one of the most ruthless of political operatives, until the Nixonian world collapsed, he went to prison, and people reached out to him in love and faith. Colson became a profoundly changed man.

And that’s what happens to Josh Gittings in A Light Shining and Dancing King.

Photograph by George Hodan via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

Dancing King Stories: Trevor Barry, Attorney and Counselor

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Trevor Barry Dancing King

Trevor Barry is a case of a character who wasn’t meant to show up in Dancing King. He was originally destined for the next novel in the series. Somehow, he broke into line.

Trevor and his wife Liz live in the northwestern suburbs of London. They have two children, Jane, 16, and Andrew, 12. Both children attend International Christian School, which is where Jason and Jim, the two adopted sons of Michael and Sarah Kent-Hughes, will also attend.

It’s not through school that Trevor and Michael meet. Born in Yorkshire, Trevor is an attorney, or barrister. He works in chambers with several other barristers on Essex Street in the Temple area of central London, near the Royal Courts of Justice. He handles a variety of legal cases, but his specialty is constitutional law. And Trevor’s hobby is the monarchy – the hobby is so serious that he’s known as something of an expert on the monarchy, its history, its legal standing, and even the various coronations. He’s also an avid amateur cyclist, and he can often be found on weekends on the Northwest London trail (a fictitious biking trail invented for the story).

Essex Street Temple
Essex Street, where Trevor Barry has his chambers.

It’s the hobby that brings Trevor to the attention of Josh Gittings, Michael’s chief of staff, and what gets him hired as a consultant. But it’s his knowledge and understanding of constitutional law that becomes just as valuable to Michael. Michael needs tutoring in constitutional law and the history of the monarchy, and Trevor happens to be able to do cover both.

Gittings meets Trevor at the palace security station and escorts him to his first meeting with Michael. The two are the same age, 41 but it would be difficult to find two more different people. Gittings is the former political shark for the prime minister; Trevor is quiet, something of an introvert, and wondering how someone with Michael’s reputation could have aligned himself with someone like Josh Gittings. Gittings doesn’t wait for Trevor to ask, and he brings it up himself.

Michael is so impressed with Trevor that he asks him to join the Coronation Committee. Afterward, Trevor asks Gittings is his lack of enthusiasm – meaning faith – will hurt him with Michael. And Gittings says Michael is hiring him for what he knows. Michael is intrigued by Trevor’s neutral references to church and faith, but he recognizes that the man knows what he’s talking about.

Dancing KingAt 26, Michael is almost a generation younger than both men. He has come to rely heavily on Gittings, and he will come to rely equally as much on Trevor. Because of the challenges presented by the Archbishop of Canterbury and his political consultant Geoffrey Venneman, Trevor finds himself called repeatedly to the palace, including to help Michael deal with the protestors who have demanded a meeting. Trevor uses his courtroom experience to prepare Michael for what will be an intense discussion with the protestors.

The character of Trevor Barry injected himself in the Dancing Priest stories earlier than planned. The reason was that, in the rewriting and redrafting that went on, I needed an expert on the monarchy earlier than expected. So, I moved him up a book.

Trevor’s role in the Dancing Priest stories will grow and assume a greater importance. While he gives the appearance of a successful attorney, one who becomes connected at the highest levels of British government and society, Trevor has a history, unknown even to his own family. And it will be Michael Kent-Hughes who unexpectedly stumbles into it.

Top photograph by Ryan Holloway via Unsplash. Used with permission. I’m not sure if I would give Trevor Baryr a beard and mustache, but the man’s expression suggests something to me of what Trevor would be about.

Dancing King Stories: Geoffrey Venneman, Villain

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Venneman Dancing King

Every story needs a good villain, or at least someone with villainous tendencies. My first novel, Dancing Priest, didn’t really have a villain, or at least one as a main character. The second in the series, A Light Shining, has an unnamed assassin. The third, Dancing King, has a public relations and political operative named Geoffrey Venneman.

I spent a few decades in corporate communications, working with and for public relations people and often collaborating with outside public relations firms. Contrary to the common perception, most PR people, or at least the vast majority I worked with, were capable, ethical people. They didn’t do anything that might be asked, regardless of whether it was good, bad, or indifferent. They would argue with wrongheaded decisions. They resisted bad advice. They worked hard to stay true to industry ethics codes.

A reporter once asked me if I had ever lied for any company or client I worked for. I could truthfully answer a firm no. Of course, the reporter likely asked the wrong question. I might have had a different answer if he asked me if I had ever been asked to lie for any company or client I worked for.

That’s been my experience. It has also been my experience to know a few PR people, and a few journalists, and it is a very few, who would never have been accused of being ethical. And it is a composite of those people (many of whom are no longer alive) who form the character of Geoffrey Venneman in Dancing King.

Dancing KingVenneman won’t do any and everything his client (in the novel, the Archbishop of Canterbury) asks, but it’s less a matter of ethical concerns and more a matter of what will and won’t work. He’s working for church officials he feels profound disdain for, and he’s working against Michael Kent-Hughes because he hates the monarchy. Mr. Venneman has his own agenda, and he’s ruthless in pursuing it.

I could have just as easily taking his character from national news reports and even reports in my own state of Missouri at the moment. But he was conceived and appeared on my computer screen some years ago, long before current political issues and fights. Instead, he came from a remark here, an action there, a situation somewhere else, a few people who liked to operate in the shadows, and people pulling strings without being seen or identified. I’ve dealt with all kinds of people in my career, including these kinds.

Venneman is polished; he’s an Oxford graduate, after all, and he maintains a polished Oxford accent. He uses people, without any regret for what might happen to them as a result. But he’s resourceful, and he has keen insight and perception – he knows and can appreciate when Michael and his communications man Jay Lanham successfully beat back an attack, including his own.

His plans include falsely interviewing for Michael’s communications job, the one eventually filled by Lanham, and it’s here that he makes a strategic mistake. He thinks he’ll be able to easily charm Michael, because Venneman so easily charms everyone else. And he thinks that happens. What he doesn’t know is that Michael comes away from the interview instinctively appalled; he doesn’t know why, but he reacts badly to Venneman as a person.

In short, Michael recognized the evil at work.

Venneman largely fails in his repeated attacks on Michael, but not every operation ends in failure. And he will have a significant role to play in the next story in the series.

Top photograph: What Geoffrey Venneman might look like, by Drew Hays via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Dancing King Stories: The King’s Communications Man

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Jay Lanham Dancing King

This is the first in a series of profiles of some of the main characters in the novel Dancing King. Every character has a story, one that is much larger and more detailed than what can be included in the narrative.

In Dancing King, Jay Lanham becomes the communications director for Michael Kent-Hughes and the monarchy. He is all of 29, but he already has considerable communications experience behind him. He was graduated from the University of Northumberland, receiving a communications degree (with honours). He had had internships with The Guardian and The Telegraph and was hired by The Daily Mail right after graduation (from an editorial perspective, The Guardian would be considered on the left side of the political spectrum, The Telegraph slightly more toward the center, and The Daily Mail on the right side of the spectrum).

He worked for The Daily Mail for three years, and he then joined the communications staff of Britrail. He quickly gained a reputation for crisis communications following two train accidents, but what put him on the map in the communications industry was his adroit handling of a threatened strike by rail workers. Lanham didn’t know it at the time, but he effectively countered the plans of the would-be strikers whose unions had hired Geoffrey Venneman of the FBL public affairs firm. Two years younger than Venneman, Lanham had successfully anticipated almost every move by the unions.

After three years with Britrail, he set up his own consultancy, Lanham & Associates, which, as Josh Gittings, Michael’s chief of staff wryly noted, was likely more Lanham than Associates. He shared an office with other creatives in a small Whitechapel office building, and while his firm wasn’t an overnight success, he was managing to grow his client base. Single, he lives in a small flat in the Southwark area of London, about three blocks from the Borough Market and London Bridge Station.

Dancing KingHe applied for the job of palace communications director almost as a lark. While Gittings had been soliciting resumes, he hadn’t talked to Lanham, so the application was what’s called “over the transom.” It arrives at a propitious moment; Michael has interviewed several candidates, including the faux candidate Geoffrey Venneman, and not found anyone to his liking.

With his application, Lanham proposes a communications plan for Michael, based on what’s read about the new king and after reviewing the text and video versions of Michael’s sermons when he served as a priest at St. Anselm’s Church in San Francisco. Michael responds enthusiastically; he asks his wife Sarah to read the application as well, and she responds just as enthusiastically.

During the actual job interview, which begins at breakfast with the family at the palace and continues as Michael brings their adopted sons Jason and Jim to school, Lanham essentially starts doing the job – a large number of reporters are waiting at the school to film scenes of the boys’ arrival and toss questions at the king. Lanham handles the media so well that Michael hires him on the spot.

During the next six months after his hiring, Lanham will discover what it means to be Michael’s communications man. The king will be undertaking a series of sermons in London churches, and Lanham will help plan those communications. At the same time, the king will find himself the target of Geoffrey Venneman, hired by the Archbishop of Canterbury to stop Michael’s plans for the reformation of the church.

While Dancing King is a work of fiction, Lanham’s hiring and his crises experiences during the first six months of Michael’s reign are taken from real life and my own experiences in both corporate and crisis communications.

How Lanham is hired is based on an experience I had some years ago, when I was considered for a speechwriting job with a very large defense contractor. The CEO wanted a 20-something, savvy about social media. The recruiter saw that a 50-something candidate knew more about social media than the two 20-somethings being considered. All three of us were given an assignment of writing an article about a speech by the CEO for an employee publication. The other two wrote articles. I wrote the article, and then embedded it in a mocked-up newsletter with other stories, using pictures and charts I found on the company’s web site. As it turned out, none of us got the job (it wasn’t filled), but I did visit corporate HQ as one of the two final candidates.

Lanham handles a series of crises, all orchestrated by Venneman. All of them (including a protest) are based on my own experiences in crises communications, including figuring out who some of the hidden players are. And one section of story, involving one of the most important speeches Michael will make, mirrors almost exactly an experience I had writing a speech for a corporate executive.

Top photograph: An idea of what Jay Lanham might look like. Photo by Ali Morshedlou via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Dancing King Stories: The Coronation at Westminster Abbey

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Westminster Abbey

In the 1040s, King Edward of England (later St. Edward the Confessor) began to enlarge the church of a small Benedictine monastery near his palace. It was referred to as the “west minster,” to distinguish it from the “east minister,” aka St. Paul’s Cathedral. The large stone church was dedicated to St. Peter.

In 1066, William I invaded and conquered England. On Christmas Day, he was crowned in Edward’s church. Every English and British monarch since 1066 has been crowned in Edward’s church. The complex has grown over the tears, especially during the 13thto 16thcenturies. Today, Westminster Abbey is one of the most popular sites in Britain, visited by millions of tourists annually and a center of major worship activities.

It’s also a rather large cemetery. Some 3,300 people are buried here, including Queen Elizabeth I and her sister Queen Mary, King Edward (he was moved a century or so after his death), Henry V, Sir Isaac Newton, Geoffrey Chaucer, and Charles Dickens (he didn’t want to be buried in the Abbey, but no one paid attention to his wishes). Poet’s Corner is a veritable who’s who of British literary history, containing both graves and plaques (including a fairly recent one for C.S. Lewis).

The complex is soaked in British history, literature, science, government, and philosophy. The soaring Gothic architecture is overwhelming. The beauty of the Henry VII Lady Chapel is simply astounding. And the complex keeps growing, with a new Abbey museum, the Queen’s Jubilee Galleries, opening on June 11 this year.

Westminster Abbey interior
The interior of Westminster Abbey

A coronation of a monarch is a massive undertaking. The interior of the Abbey has to be remodeled to accommodate viewing stands, seating, platforms, and a number of other structures. Planning can go on for a year or more. The ceremony is plotted out to the smallest detail.

The last coronation in the Abbey was Queen Elizabeth II’s in 1953; consider that there had been three in the 36 years after Queen Victoria’s death in 1901.

In addition to quite a few YouTube videos (like this one), the primary resource for the coronation scene in Dancing King was Crown, Orb & Sceptre: The True Story of English Coronations by David Hilliam. It’s actually a fun read, full of odd things that have happened over the years and unusual events, like Richard III being crowned in his bare feet. Hilliam describes the processions to the Abbey and the ceremonies themselves.

Dancing KingThe coronation scene in Dancing King follows Hilliam’s description of Queen Elizabeth’s ceremony very closely, with a few major exceptions. The Archbishop of Canterbury, as the lead official in the Church of England, usually crowns the monarch. A different official does it in the novel, largely because of the ongoing conflict between Michael Kent-Hughes and the Archbishop of Canterbury, a major narrative line in the novel that is not resolved by the end of the book. Michael also makes changes in how monarchs-to-be-crowned are usually dressed and adds a segment to the ceremony at the end.

It is a moving ceremony. The coronation follows the near destruction of the royal family in A Light Shining, the second novel in the Dancing Priest series. There almost wasn’t a coronation, or anyone left to crown. Like the real coronation event, that of Michael Kent-Hughes is meant to signify the continuance of family, faith, and tradition, even in the face of constant societal and cultural change, and, in the Dancing King story, near-annihilation.

One element of the coronation that Michael does not change is the singing of “Zadok the Priest” by George Frederic Handel, which has become the traditional coronation anthem.