The old film footage of Leeds that I posted last week proved very popular – astonishingly so. It certainly sent me scurrying around to discover more from 1899, the time of The Leaden Heart (which is published in the UK next week, as you probably know by now).

But before that, I have two big pieces of new. I mean, really BIG. The first is that I’m really proud to have had my first interview in a national daily newspaper, the Morning Star. I hope you’ll read it right here. Or, if you prefer…here it is.

On to the films.

I did manage to turn up a couple of pieces. The first one, seemingly filmed around what would become City Square, might be slow, but it’s worthwhile to see all the carts and wagons. Almost everything relied on horses. That would change, and eventually that change would seem rapid, almost overnight. But for the next 10-15 years, a motor car or motor bus on the road would remain a rarity.

The real gem of the pair, though, is this piece about the Leeds fire Brigade. They were still part of the police in those days – Tom Harper’s old friend and colleague Billy Reed had become a fireman before moving to Whitby to be Police Inspector there – although the uniform was quite different. It’s glorious to see the engine dashing out of the headquarters on Park Row, with the children running behind.

The most interesting part comes a little later, however, the procession of men with their sandwich boards, sent out to advertise performances at three and eight pm. The Sheldon at the top of each board meant the board itself belonged to Edward Sheldon, one of the first great advertising contractors. Sandwich boards were a common form of advertising in Victorian and Edwardian Britain. Take a look at the mens’ faces. There’s no pleasure, no joy to be seen there. It was the kind of job a man took when there was nothing else he could get, the work of desperation. Look again, and that resignation is right there in their eyes. It transmits itself across the years.

Also of interest is this image of Albion Place at the junction of Albion Street, courtesy of Anna Goodridge at the Leeds Library. It shows the shop of Beck and Inchbold, Stationers on the corner. The shop in a jeweller now. There’s also an invoice, with a telephone number – 140 – an indication of just how new the service still was back then. Like the motor car, like moving pictures, the telephone was progress as Leeds approached the 20^th century.

It was still a city of industry, but everything was changing. That’s what I’ve tried to capture in this book. New crimes, ready for a new century.

And with that, it’s time for the second massive piece of news. Even as this book comes out, I can tell you that the sequel, the eight Tom Harper book, will come out at the end of March 2020. It’s called Rusted Souls, and it’s set in 1908, against the backdrop of the so-called Suffragette Riot of October 10, when the Prime Minister visited Leeds. It will also mark 10 years of my publishing novels set in this glorious place.

But meanwhile….

The Leaden Heart. It’s a world of Victorian Industrial Noir. Try it. Out March 29.