On September 30th, the British Academy Mid-Career
Fellowship which had funded the past year of monograph-writing came to an end.
When midnight struck, I was pleased that I could in fact point to a full draft
of the book, complete (for better or worse) with two more chapters than I had
originally planned on writing. However, I was
disappointed that – even with a full draft – finishing a book is such a slow,
drawn-out process, and that it will require a few more weeks of minor but
crucial editing before the MS is ready to send off to readers.
Above all, I was very sad that the Fellowship had come to an
end, because it had created an invaluable, exciting, stimulating space within
my career to think hard about one big problem for a concentrated, significant
period of time. My colleagues have all been great about respecting the hermit-,
purdah- like state of being on leave. It has probably been the most productive
and interesting time of my research career – less frenetic than being a
doctoral student (when you’re learning everything from scratch), less stressful
even than being a post-doctoral researcher (in Oxford parlance a Junior Research
Fellow), because so much of one’s research time then is spent applying for, and
worrying about, permanent jobs. Even so, the BA Fellowship probably finished at
the right time – there comes a moment when you need to leave a draft for a few
weeks, and clear your head, before tackling a raft of small,
precision-engineering changes.
It’s hard to know how to thank the British Academy – my main
‘human’ contact has been with their helpful administrative staff who have
answered my small queries along the way; the committee of scholars which read the
application and decided to support it was anonymous, and has long since
dispersed. So this blog – which has also been supported by the BA – seems a
fitting place to express public gratitude to them for a great year of history.
