 |
|
|
start of content
|
Five Boys: Little-known facts
- Through its creation the book was always known as The Bee King. It was only when it was about to go into production that Mick's editor pointed out that The Bee King didn't actually make an appearance until about two-thirds of the way through and that some readers might be a little baffled, so they agreed to call it Five Boys instead.
- Several scenes in the book are fictionalized versions of anecdotes which Jackson heard during his research, eg: the pig in a coffin... the soldier who has a breakdown just prior to being shipped out to France and fires his rifle at the weathercock... the residents of the commandeered area returning home to find live ammo and mines littering the fields and using their cattle as minesweepers, etc.
- The notice from the Ecclesiastical Insurance Office which Aldred reads whilst pumping the organ ('Destruction of Churches by Fires Originating in the Organs') is copied verbatim from a notice on the back of an organ in a church not far from Lewes, East Sussex.
- Jackson's grandad once bought him a Five Boys bar of chocolate when he six or seven and the five different faces on the wrapper (which were also moulded onto the chocolate itself) obviously made quite an impression. The author had been trying to find a way of incorporating the image into one of his projects for years.
- Someone has chiselled out the Ten Commandments into a rock up on Dartmoor, much as they appear in the penultimate chapter of the novel.
- As bee stings are considered, by some, to alleviate the pain of arthritis they are sometimes deliberately administered to painful joints.
- The author did find several stories of rat-catchers' dogs being dressed in 'waistcoats' made from the skins of the rats they'd killed to 'get them in the mood' for their next session.
- After asking real beekeepers endless stupid questions Jackson was encouraged to try keeping bees himself and work out the answers as he went along. The author kept bees for several years and had one or two bumper harvests until an incident in which the bees managed to get inside his veil and very nearly killed him - an event which he is convinced is the bee community's revenge for a similar scene in the book.
|
