Book
Rogue’s March
First published 1981
James Alexander McAndrew rises from the rough world of Cardiff’s Tiger Bay and carries his appetite for drink, spectacle and reinvention to Paris. There he finds work around the nightlife of Montmartre, a milieu of artists, performers, cafés and outsiders in which a Welsh adventurer can attempt to become somebody entirely new.
The novel moves between late-Victorian Britain and fin-de-siècle Paris, using McAndrew’s relationship with Ellie Kendall to keep the story grounded in the loyalties he tries to escape. Cordell’s interest lies in social mobility from below: dockland toughness, casual labour and performance culture sit beside the celebrated artistic world associated with Toulouse-Lautrec. The result is a picaresque historical novel about class, self-invention and the price of leaving home.
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