In early February I came to the unwelcome (although entirely obvious) conclusion that I was not going to be able to deal with all of Macintosh’s time in the Caribbean within a single chapter—Chapter 2—as I had originally planned. This month I have come to the equally obvious and equally unwelcome realisation that I am unlikely to be able to deal with it fully in two. Chapter 3, which I added to my writing plan last month, is expanding in all sorts of interesting ways as I continue to dig, read, and write and, although I am now at the half-way point in terms of acceptable word length, I am only just up to the winter of 1769–70 in the chronology, during which time the argument over French Catholic participation in Grenada’s government really comes to a head in the newspapers, printshops, taverns, and administrative offices of London. The figure of Thomas Hollis—whose fascinating and bizarre diary I read for the first time this month—looms large over these proceedings. While it has long been known that Hollis, a libertarian and fervent anti-Catholic, took an active interest in the debate over French Catholic participation in Grenada and Quebec, the full scale of his involvement hasn’t previously been written about, so it’s nice to be able to reveal this properly.

As it currently stands, I am hoping to be able to get to the financial crisis of 1772 (which was precipitated by Macintosh’s friend and financial supporter, Alexander Fordyce) by the end of Chapter 3, and to wrap up Macintosh’s Caribbean experiences in the first third of Chapter 4. I think this relative ballooning of chapters, in length and number, is a consequence partly of just how much there is to say and partly of the fact that there is next to no secondary literature on Macintosh that can do the job for me. Even then, I know that there is a huge amount of material from this period that I won’t be able to do more than hint at—material that I know will be of interest to historians of the Ceded Islands, but which really lies outside the core focus of the book. I keep having to remind myself that I can’t follow Robert Caro’s example and turn this into a five-volume epic.

The creeping sense of doubt and anxiety about ever being able to get to the end of this book has been allayed by three positive developments: 1) the reopening of schools on 8 March, which has allowed me to step back from my part-time role as home educator; 2) the prospect of the British Library and National Archives reopening in April, and 3) that the Leverhulme Trust has approved a request to extend the period of my fellowship to the end of the calendar year. This last piece of news is, frankly, an incredible privilege and something for which I am profoundly grateful. Having the chance to make up for time lost to home-schooling and the closure of libraries and archives is a huge relief, but I am acutely aware of what a privilege it is; so many of my colleagues (as well as my other half) whose research has been impacted in just the same way won’t have the same compensating opportunity.

Given recent experience, I am now rather reluctant to set out definitive goals for April (other than to take some proper time off during the school holidays), but I hope to be able to get back to the British Library to consult some manuscript material that I need in order to understand more fully the circumstances that led Macintosh to India in the first place, and to move Chapter 3 substantially closer to a conclusion.