Jamie Buxton
About Author
Jamie Buxton read English at Cambridge and has been writing all his adult life. He taught in the States for a while and splits his time between London, Dartmoor, his car, local cafes and libraries. He is married with one child plus dogs, cats and all their fleas.
He has also travelled extensively in the Middle East, which is what inspired Temple Boys as a new way of telling the most famous story ever told.
Interview
TEMPLE BOYS
EGMONT PRESS
MARCH 2013
Author Jamie Buxton has turned to the Middle East and a 2,000-year-old story as inspiration for his latest historical fiction novel, TEMPLE BOYS, aimed at readers aged ten to 13 years. His story explores the days up to the crucifixion of Jesus through the eyes of Flea, the smallest and mouthiest member of a gang of boys who struggle to survive on the streets of Jerusalem. When they hear that a magician is coming to town, they see it as an opportunity to steal a few purses but instead, find themselves drawn into the bigger plans of Jesus and his followers.
We spoke to author Jamie Buxton about TEMPLE BOYS.
Q: How hard was it to base your story on one - from the Bible - that is so well known?
A: I have always been very interested in the mystery of religion and the question of how they start. It usually starts with one person who ends up inspiring many millions of people.
I write historical fiction and thought I could explore this through a story. I wondered if I could take elements of reality and psychology from the story of the Bible and introduce elements of magic, too? That was my starting point but it took a long time to get the story to a point where I felt I could write it.
The story I have written draws on the Biblical account of the Crucifixion and because that is so well known, I had to make sure that I included lots of twists and turns in my story, to keep the reader involved.
Q: Did you need to do a lot of research into that period of history?
A: I love doing historical research for the books I write so I went into it in some depth for this book. There are the original sources you can research from, such as the Roman sources about what life was like at that time, and about people who existed like Pontius Pilate.
There is also archaeological evidence. I wish I could have visited the places I cover but I had to rely on Google Earth and maps for that. I also found some extraordinary reconstructions of places and buildings that would have existed during Jesus's time, and models of the Great Temple in Jerusalem.
Q: Did you also need to research the Bible?
A: I was interested in researching the real life history of Jesus and the Bible, which turns out to be very different from what you're taught in school. I had a very traditional upbringing and went to a Church of England primary school where we learned about the Bible and very little about other religions.
When I started my research for this book, the first thing I found out that was a surprise was that Jesus was not only a Jew, but a practicing rabbi and he was very passionate about his work.
The names that Jesus and his followers have in my story - Yeshua, Jude, Shim and Mat for example - are taken from the original Aramaic names that they would have had at that time. The names we use for them today are from the Greek versions of their original names.
The gospels were written up some 60 years after Jesus's crucifixion so they are not written by eye witnesses but according to historians today, if you have four really good accounts of a person's life - as we have for Jesus - and they tend to say the same thing, then historians believe there's probably something in it.
There were lots of other gospels too and lots of accounts of Jesus' life so there is a good bet that such a person, called Jesus or Yeshua, actually existed.
Q: Tell us how Flea, the troublesome gang member, came to be your main character?
A: I started to think about that dreadful night in the Garden of Gethsemane, the night when Jesus is said to have been betrayed by Judas, and in my mind I saw this slightly bonkers little child jumping up and down who can't understand what's going on.
This child has spent his whole life just trying to survive and live and he can't understand why these people are getting ready to die. I knew the boy, who I decided to call Flea, would be part of a gang and that this would be his story.
Q: Do you have any favourites amongst Flea's gang?
A: The characters in the gang came to me one by one. I wanted them to be the most rubbish gang in the city, so they bond through a sense of desperation as they need to be part of a gang to survive. They are all called by their disability - Crouch who can't stand straight, Clump who has something wrong with his foot and Snot whose nose is always running. I drew on my school days for inspiration; we were always being labelled for one of our short-comings.
I rather like the two red-headed twins who are pickpockets. My hair is a little red and my daughter is a redhead, so I wanted to redress the balance a little by having red-headed characters in my book.
Q: Can you tell us more about the 'Results man', the Roman?
A: I found this was a difficult book to write because I was working with such a well-known story and I was incorporating things from my story with the stories of the Bible.
I found it hard to pull away from the Biblical account and to make it my own story; I even found myself using Bible language and so get away from that, I introduced the 'Results Man', a Roman, who represents everything the Roman Empire stood for; he is totally ruthless.
When he hears that Jesus is offering eternal life, he applies it to the Roman point of view and dreams of an army that never dies; that's what he wants to create. It's a complete re-write of what Jesus was actually promising.
Q: What are you writing next?
A: I would love to revisit Flea's story and describe what happens next, which I might be able to do through the story of the Holy Grail. The Holy Grail is the cup that Jesus drank from during the Last Supper (which Flea still has at the end of this book) and there are stories that it came to England. In Temple Boys, Flea is tempted to travel, to visit lands where he is told it 'never stops raining' and where people paint themselves blue - that is England, and it would be epic to write about the Holy Grail coming to these shores.
For now, I'm writing a story set in Ancient Egypt and it's all about pharaohs and tomb robbers, and a boy who is made to steal a map of a pharaoh's tomb from the palace.
Q: What do you do to relax when you're not writing?
A: I live in the South West of England and I love it here; I get to walk all over Dartmoor. I also love to travel and my favourite parts of the world are Syria and Turkey. I'd love to be able to go back to Syria one day; they are an interesting people and wonderfully kind.
Q: Do you have any bad habits while you're writing?
A: I have lots of bad habits while I'm writing involving pots of coffee and pottering around. Whether I decide to write 100 words or 1,000 words in a day, my motto is that I have to get those words down and then spend time going over them. I don't go out to write in cafes or parks; I have to be sitting at my desk and writing.
If I was giving any advice about writing to young people, I'd just say, find your own way that makes it comfortable for you to get the words down.
