I am—after 115 days of writing and c. 99,000 words (including notes and references)—at the very end of Macintosh’s time in the Caribbean. It was, for him, such an eventful, complicated, and consequential period in his life that I never thought I’d be able to encompass it. There are, of course, a thousand stories in the archive that still remain to be told about that period, but since I don’t have the luxury of two or more volumes for this book, I will have to leave those for others to uncover. There are, equally, stories I’ve now written that will need to be cut or entirely discarded when I return to the job of editing and pruning this section of the book. It is, by any standards, too long, particularly with three big empirical chapters still to come (not to mention the introduction and the conclusion).

Moving, as I will do shortly, to the next part of the book—which concerns Macintosh’s journey to India—feels like starting an entirely new work. The context is different, the literature is different, the places and people are different. It took me much of the last year to really feel like I’d got to grips with the Caribbean (at least enough to contextualise Macintosh’s experiences) and now I’m starting that process again from scratch. It’s exciting, but also intimidating. I know, too, that I’ll have to do it all again for the final part of the book that deals with Macintosh’s time in France and his experiences of the Revolution. Again, thrilling and anxiety-inducing in equal measure.

This month’s blog post comes a little earlier than usual as the school half-term holiday (aka pandemic circuit breaker) starts tomorrow and I will consequently be downing tools until 1 November. I’ll then have six or seven weeks to push the India chapter forward, the first fortnight of which will likely be devoted to background reading and research. I’m particularly looking forward to puzzling out the sequence of events that led Macintosh to India. I suspect, but am not sure, that it was the result of a plan hatched with his long-time friend Lauchlin Macleane, but one ultimately scuppered by Macleane’s death. At this stage, who knows? I look forward to finding out.