A call to authors

Published in 1831, the enormous popularity of Victor Hugo’s novel Notre Dame de Paris led to the restoration of the cathedral itself. Indeed, the de-Christianisation phase of the French Revolution (leading to the cathedral being used as a food storage facility at one stage) contributed to the cathedral being in an advanced state of deterioration by the nineteenth century. Victor Hugo’s novel changed that, leading to a renewed interest not just in Notre Dame de Paris but in religious Gothic architecture. From 1845 onwards, the architects Eugène Viollet-le-Duc and Jean-Baptiste Lassus began a restoration program that would last twenty-five years. Today, Notre Dame de Paris gets around 13 million visitors a year and it’s hard to imagine that its future was ever in jeopardy.

The reason for this quick history lesson is to suggest to the writers out there that there might be another solution for helping British monuments, museums, objects, works of art, forests, theatres etc survive the looming cuts. Why not take a leaf out of Victor Hugo’s book and create a story where [insert building here] is not just a setting but a central character? The world is full of examples of literature creating new tourist attractions and there’s plenty of room for new ones.

I’m going to call this the Victor Hugo project, I think. There is no prize except for the satisfaction of making the object of your story live on even when and if a short-sighted government cannot see its value.

‘And the cathedral was not only company for him, it was the universe; nay, more, it was Nature itself. He never dreamed that there were other hedgerows than the stained-glass windows in perpetual bloom; other shade than that of the stone foliage always budding, loaded with birds in the thickets of Saxon capitals; other mountains than the colossal towers of the church; or other oceans than Paris roaring at their feet.’ (Victor Hugo, Notre Dame de Paris, trans. by Isabel Roche, Barnes & Noble, 2004, p. 157)