Councillor puts pen to paper to write of love and betrayal of love in historical books

The Ludlow councillor is pulling together books about a Buckinghamshire estate and the families who lived in and around there - including those with links to Shropshire.

And, while he is still spending a couple of days a week throughout August on council duties, he is spending much of the month writing.

The project began when Councillor Boddington was a science and technology consultation travelling across the world in his role.

His archaeological interests however led him to a meeting in the village he lived in, Finmere in Oxfordshire, in 1998 where he found himself 'volunteered' to lead the writing of the village history.

"Researching history was a relief from my 24x7 job," he said.

"It did not take me long to discover that a sizeable part of the village records was archived in California. Henry E Huntington, the man who built Los Angeles railways, the “Red Lines”had purchased a job lot of historic documents from a dealer in London. Around 350,000 in all. Many related to the Stowe estate in Buckinghamshire. Stowe House, now a school and National Trust property, was just three miles from my home.

"Going to California seemed too great a journey to just add a few pages to a local history book."

He combined a professional conference near Los Angeles with spending time at the Huntington Library.

"I discovered a tale of young love, of betrayal, of weak men and strong women.

A few weeks later he was on a break with friends in Goa and purchasing a two rupee notebook from the bookstal he scribbled the outline of the books he is finally writing.

"The next few years were turbulent. Over the next couple of years, my company fell apart. My mind followed suit."

Over the next decade he was helped by friends, people he barely knew to create a new life in Ludlow.

"Always, there was the idea of the books, of a movie to follow," he said.

In the early years of the millennium, he had spend weeks and months in the US in the Huntington Library and in archives in Aylesbury, Winchester and London and many other archives.

"I went to graveyards and to churches. I walked around the estates owned by the family I was researching."

"There was the time in the Huntington Library when I burst into tears as I realised something I should understood months before. It is the tragedy at the heart of the story - I guess I fell in love with Anna Eliza at that point."

Work on the project stalled when he was elected councillor in March 2014.

"I have not done any major work on the books since then. In May this year, I turned 68 years of age. I decided that if I was to complete this project, it was now or possibly never."

"Over the years, I have transcribed and copied more than a million words of information from original records and printed diaries of the period. There is more to research but that will wait a short while.

"This summer is dedicated to pulling together everything I have now, like a giant jigsaw. I have had a glimpse of the overall picture. I have assembled the edges. Now I am matching patterns, landscapes, buildings and people. But many pieces are missing and I may never find them."

Councillor Boddington will say only that that it is about people involved in politics of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

"Not about the politics but the way politics affect people. It includes military action, at least early on. But again, it is not a book on the Napoleonic wars. There are duels, affairs and illegitimate children. There is blackmail and a flight into exile. These are books about love and betrayal of love. Book about status and wealth and the loss of both. About poverty and slavery.

"There is nothing fictional in my work. With history this good, you don’t need fiction."

Mostly this is a book that takes place in Buckinghamshire, Hampshire and London, though there are connections to Shropshire through the Wynne family and the Lloyd family of Aston.