HISTORY IN THE MAKING, by Vanora Bennett

Being a part of history in the making is never comfortable. 

I learned that in my previous life as a foreign reporter, covering the various coups, conflicts, and crises that afflicted the people whose countries I was working in.

In those days I was usually in a foreigners’ bubble (with my finances and livelihood protected, a safe place to live, and a British embassy down the road), so I was a bit less bothered than everyone around me by whatever shock news was in the headlines that day. But still, there was something both utterly gripping and utterly boring about having to live through whatever the crisis was, in real time, rather than look back on it through a book or film.

It felt as though time itself started behaving in unpredictable ways when a crisis set in.

First it would race along – and someone’s career or life or a whole country would be gone before you’d had time to draw breath. But then things would slow agonisingly down. The rest of the story always took so long to unfold. You’d need to wait for the next day, or week, or month, for the next instalment, resignation, currency collapse, invasion, or whatever. 

And you’d need to fill the hours by worrying through the night, or fretting with friends about what would happen next, or doing the ironing or making breakfast, all the time itching with the enforced passivity of not being able to fast-forward to the happy-ever-after bit where it all finally gets sorted out.

I have since discovered, on starting to write historical novels, that one of the ways in which being a fiction writer is incomparably superior to being either a journalist or a person actually living through a public crisis is that you never need to live through the boring bits. You’re looking back, so you are in control of time, and have the power to just jump your characters from one speeded-up action moment in history to the next. The slow times are left out as if they never happened – at most, abbreviated to three dots.

Now, I think it’s safe to say most people in this country haven’t personally experienced major historical crisis, even if historical novelists do it vicariously all the time. But living through the past few weeks of Brexit Britain keeps reminding me of how bewildering time can feel when you’re in the grip of one - when reality starts doing that speeding-up-and-slowing-down thing, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

First came the time-flashing-forward bit. On referendum night, my very political teenager, who’d wanted to watch the whole vote-counting drama play out and the result be announced, finally conked out at 4am. We woke him up at 8 and told him that Britain had voted for Brexit and the Prime Minister had just resigned. “WOTTT,” he said disconsolately. He’d only been asleep for four hours, yet he’d missed the moment when his world had changed.

“Now what?” he said, once he had recovered. We couldn’t tell him. We didn’t know, any more than anyone else. And, for all the millions of words spoken and written about it in the weeks since, we’re none the wiser now. Because now we’re in the slow-motion bit. Waiting.

I think part of what felt so bleakly funny about the cropper Boris’n’Gove came more recently was the speed with which it happened. No need to wait for a punchline, it was on us almost before we’d heard the beginning of the joke. 

Another quick thing happening at last, hoorah! At last, something we could understand without waiting forever to get to the end of the story! At last, a break in the tension! 

I think part of the belly-laugh the nation gave was in sheer relief.

But it's worn off. Slo-mo is back. I’ve returned to fretting on Facebook and scouring the papers for clues, omens and portents, waiting for the next convulsion in the bigger real-life drama. 

I can’t help feeling that I’m behaving as foolishly as those fearful or exultant crowds that get an occasional three-line mention in historical novels, frantically checking out the comets or mumbling superstitiously about giant fish in the Thames while, centre stage, Henry VIII shrugs off Wife One and pulls out of Rome. 

But I can’t help it. Time – real time, not the time we novelists have the luxury of rearranging in our work – is hanging heavy on my hands, just as it did on those people’s. There is history in the air. And there’s nothing else to do.

Vanora Bennett's website

"Here lyeth Quene Kateryn" by Ann Turnbull

From Cleeve Hill in the Cotswolds you can look down and see Sudeley Castle, close to the small town of Winchcombe.

Sudeley has been restored, but some of the ruins of earlier buildings remain - notably the walls and tall Gothic windows of Richard III's banqueting hall, and the shell of a 15th century tithe barn, which now houses an enchanting garden of roses, hollyhocks, clematis and wisteria.

Sudeley - a stronghold since Anglo-Saxon times - was slighted after the Civil Wars and left uninhabitable. For two centuries it was used by tenant farmers for sheltering animals, and some of its stones were carried away. King Charles I's campaign bed - a great demountable four-poster of solid carved oak - lay forgotten in a barn on the estate. And the body of Queen Katherine Parr lay buried beneath a wall in the ruined chapel and was not rediscovered for more than two hundred years.

Katherine Parr? Well, when Henry VIII died in 1547, Sudeley passed to Thomas Seymour, who went on to marry the king's widow, Katherine Parr. So Katherine came to live at Sudeley, along with Thomas's ward, the eleven-year-old Lady Jane Grey. Sadly, Katherine's time at Sudeley was short - little more than a year. She became pregnant and died of puerperal fever a week after the birth, aged thirty-six. When her lead coffin was discovered and opened in 1782, her body was found to be wrapped in six layers of linen cerecloth, which had kept it perfectly preserved (though later openings eventually reduced it to dust.)  In the 19th century the chapel was rebuilt and re-dedicated as St Mary's Church, and Katherine was laid in a marble tomb inscribed with the words found on her coffin, "Here lyeth Quene Kateryn, wife to Kyng Henry VIII..."

The castle was sensitively restored by John and William Dent, wealthy glove-makers, who bought it in 1837. Since then, the present owners have built up some fascinating collections and exhibitions. Emma Dent, the Victorian chatelaine, was a great collector, and there is a room full of antique lace and embroidery, including a 16th century lace canopy said to have been made by Anne Boleyn for the christening of Princess Elizabeth. Emma also devoted energy to both buildings and gardens, and can be seen below, in topiary, sitting in her herb garden, reading a book - though she was so busy with good works around Winchcombe (providing almshouses, a school, a new church, a piped water supply, teaching at a night school and running sewing classes) that it's hard to imagine she had much time to sit and read.

Some highlights of the exhibitions for me were:

Katherine Parr's privy, curtained and upholstered in crimson velvet.

The Vertue drawings - copies of thirty-three portraits by Holbein of members of the Tudor court.

Charles I's despatch box, in which he kept all his correspondence during the Civil War - one of the spoils of the battle of Naseby.

Charles I's campaign bed - now restored and refurnished.

Katherine Parr's books and her letter to Thomas Seymour accepting his marriage proposal.

Oh, and the Roman mosaic - another thing for which we have to thank Emma Dent. But that will be the subject of a separate blog...

CAN WE TALK ABOUT WOLF HALL, AUTHENTICITY AND KNICKERS? – Elizabeth Fremantle

The airing of Wolf Hall’s small screen cousin has provoked a good deal of discussion: is it too slow; is it too confusing; is it too dark; wasn’t Henry fatter; wasn’t Cromwell more of a monster; is it accurate?

Mark Rylance with director, Peter Kosminsky (Radio Times)

The question of historical truth comes around again and again. The Imitation Game ruffled feathers for, amongst other things depicting Turing as possibly involved in (or knew about and turned a blind eye to) treachery when there is not a shred of evidence to suggest that this might have been the case. People have complained that there wasn’t enough science in The Theory of Everything, without stopping to think that the film is an adaptation of Jane Hawking’s book – it is her version of events not his. Mike Leigh’s Mr Turner provoked tumultuous critical delight over Timothy Spall’s snorting, grunting performance, which I personally found grotesquely over-played. ‘But he was supposed to be just like that,’ people cried in response to my criticism. ‘Based on what exactly?’ I asked. 

Anne Boleyn plus PA (Daily Mail)

We can get so wrapped up in the idea of accuracy that it is easy to forget such a thing is impossible. With Wolf Hall it’s all been about the authenticity, with costume designers talking about how they only used fabrics of the period and correct fastenings – mostly pins, in case you were wondering and not zips, which was the accusation levelled (hotly denied, I might add) at the recent White Queen adaptation. But, I ask myself are they all going commando because as all self-respecting Tudorphiles will know, knickers hadn’t been invented in the sixteenth century.

The ‘authentic’ lighting (mainly candlelight for interiors and nothing outside) has meant a good deal of viewers grumbling about not being able to see anything. ‘Ah but that is how it would have been,’ come the replies. That may be so but to our twenty-first century eyes, used to the brightness of the present, our response to it is jarring and confusing. A Tudor would not have responded in such a way; it would have been the norm, their eyes would have been accustomed to a dimmer world, more in tune with the seasons and fluctuating hours of daylight. What I’m trying to get at is that absolute authenticity remains out of reach, like Plato’s perfect forms, and to try so hard at it can be a futile project.

Rylance as Cromwell

Holbein's Cromwell

I like the gloom of Wolf Hall, not because of its historical veracity, but mainly because it works with the shadiness of its protagonist. Though unfortunately in some of the exterior scenes, shot in the gloaming it looks, on my brand new super-duper-HD TV, rather than atmospherically shadowy, depressingly redolent of low-tech BBC costume drama from the 1970s. But I sympathise with the intention even if the outcome is not necessarily wholly successful because I find myself noticing other things, like the puzzling absence of mud in the exterior scenes and the manicured gravel driveways and the dog that looked suspiciously like a cockapoo and Anne pronouncing his name (Purcoy) phonetically rather than the French way (Pur-cwa) as she would have. Now I'm just being a pedant and the point I'm trying to make is that none of it really matters; what matters is the effect it has.

Lewis's Henry VIII

Then of course there’s the question of Cromwell and his character. Views on this are polarised. A historian friend of mine believes Mantel’s Cromwell is too modern in sensibility. It seems to be Mantel’s project to explore the possibility that Cromwell was a remarkable self-made man, and yes, darkly complex and Machiavellian but not just, to borrow Dairmud MacCulloch’s term, ‘a thug in a doublet’; whereas revisionist historians seek to expose the Reformation, the promotion of which was Cromwell’s life’s work, as an act of monstrous destruction akin to the acts of fundamentalists in North Africa today. We will never find a definitive truth but what is good is that texts such as this open up discussion.

Rhys Meyer's Henry VIII

What a TV show like Wolf Hall is attempting to do is to set itself above the usual costume drama. It’s narrative is convoluted, it refuses to spoon feed us, makes us work hard, makes us think. It says ‘I am authentic,’ suggesting that Jonathan Ryhs Meyers in his hopelessly anachronistic, yet very fetching, faux-Tudor gear, is not – I couldn’t possibly comment. But when we watch TV we know that only a few feet away is a fellow with a big camera and that we’ve seen these actors in other roles, that they’re all pretending. We want to suspend our disbelief, we’re in on the sleight of hand, and do we care if they are wearing knickers? I suspect not.

Elizabeth Fremantle's Tudor novels Queen's Gambit about Katherine Parr and Sisters of Treason about the sisters of Lady Jane Grey are published by Penguin.

Find out more about Elizabeth and her books on elizabethfremantle.com

The Books That Made Me Fall In Love With History - by H.M. Castor

When I think of the six wives of Henry VIII, in my mind’s eye I always see their faces arranged in a curious geometrical pattern – and not in chronological order, either. That’s because of this book cover:

It’s a 'Pitkin Pictorial' book from the early 1970s, and my family owned a copy when I was a child (I’ve just been joyfully reunited with the same edition courtesy of a second-hand bookshop). For me, not only will Catherine of Aragon be forever squashed under the weight of Anne Boleyn, with Jane Seymour to her right and Anne of Cleves diagonally above, but those particular six portraits are, in some quintessential way, those women for me, no matter what other portraits I've seen since (and notwithstanding the fact that the ‘Catherine Howard’ – the woman in black at the bottom right – has since been identified as the portrait of a different person entirely).

I loved these large-format Pitkin books as a child, and they did so much to ignite my love of history. Now, when I look at them, I’m slightly mystified as to why. Compared to many children’s history books in the shops today, they were very low-key. They didn’t have jokes or flaps, strip cartoons or stickers. I’m not even entirely sure that I read the (small print) text – or not all of it, at any rate. But I did read the picture labels, and the layout of the pictures themselves is imprinted so deeply on my memory that I know I must have stared at them for what added up to hours and hours.

I think the size of these books was important. They weren’t overwhelmingly long, as the ‘kings and queens since 1066’-type books needed to be; in fact they were thin enough to be held together by staples instead of a spine – as many picture books, indeed, were then. Just one subject per book, too (though the 6 wives came as a job lot). And plenty of beautiful colour paintings (how I pored over those costumes!).

The Henry VIII & Mary Queen of Scots books above are survivors from my childhood. (Interestingly, the Mary book, I’ve just noticed, isn’t a Pitkin book – it was published by Jarrold & Sons, but in almost identical style.) What haven’t survived the years – but I wish they had – are the Jackdaw folders I loved when I was just a bit older. Anyone remember them? Folders full of facsimile documents on a particular topic… and when I think of how we had to look at ‘gobbets’ for A-level History (a rather unappetising name given to extracts from historical documents, upon which we were required to comment) I realise what a bonus it would have been to’ve been given them in facsimile form in a decorated envelope – ah, presentation is all!

Books on history weren’t the only kind, though, that made me fall in love with the past when I was a child. Historical costumes were always a focus of fascination for me, and my sister had a book of fairytales illustrated sublimely by Severino Baraldi, who clothed his characters in beautiful medieval and renaissance outfits. 

Who couldn’t be beguiled by these?

(To see more of Severino Baraldi's gorgeous illustrations from the same book, click here.)

Similarly, the illustrations by Errol le Cain in my Picture Puffin edition of Perrault’s ‘Cinderella’ afforded me many, many hours of happy absorption, and though they contain a charmingly eccentric mix of costume styles, still they conjure a firmly historical world:

Just look at these footmen!

Later, when I was a teenager, historical fiction played its vital part in fanning the flames of my enthusiasm for history, most triumphantly in the form of ‘The Lymond Chronicles’ by Dorothy Dunnett: a series of six meaty novels set in the mid-16^th century which I adored (and still do). They are superbly-written, grippingly-paced books, erudite, hilarious, exciting & moving: astonishing, in my view, both as literary achievements and as pieces of scholarship. They have suffered, over the years, the indignity of some terrible covers (the editions I first owned were so bad that I even started buying duplicates once I saw some better covers had been issued), but if you spy them any time, in good jackets or bad, I would heartily recommend that you pounce on them if you haven’t read them, as they are ferociously good.

One of the better covers, covering up some of the dodgy ones!

(Sadly, Dorothy Dunnett is no longer with us - she died in 2001 - but it’s only recently that I’ve seen this lovely interview with her.) 

What were the books that first fired your enthusiasm for the past?

H.M. Castor's novel VIII - a new take on the life of Henry VIII - is published by Templar in the UK and by Penguin in Australia. It is now available in paperback, hardback & ebook format.

H.M. Castor's website is here.

Books featured in this post:
The Six Wives of Henry VIII by G.W.O. Woodward, published by Pitkin Pictorials.
Henry VIII by G.W.O. Woodward, published by Pitkin Pictorials.
Mary Queen of Scots by Rev. J.A. Carruth, published by Jarrold & Sons Ltd.
Magic Fairy Stories from Many Lands edited by Susan Taylor, illustrated by Severino Baraldi. Copyright Ward Lock Ltd.
Cinderella or The Little Glass Slipper by Charles Perrault, illustrated by Errol Le Cain. Text copyright Faber & Faber Ltd. Illustrations copyright Errol Le Cain. Published by Picture Puffins.
The Lymond Chronicles by Dorothy Dunnett, published by Michael Joseph Ltd.

A FEW MESSY THOUGHTS ON PERFECTION by H.M. Castor

Odysseus loses a few sailors to Scylla (the six-headed
monster) while steering clear of Charybdis (the whirlpool)

There's one question that other writers frequently get asked that isn't (in my experience, at any rate) put to historical novelists - and it's this: "Is your work autobiographical?"

In interviews and at events connected with VIII - my novel told from the viewpoint of Henry VIII - I've been asked about research, about my enthusiasm for Tudor history and about putting words into the mouth of this famous king, but no one has yet asked me if I've written this novel about myself. (Don't get me wrong - I can see why not!)

Still, in a recent interview at the London Book Fair, Patrick Ness commented that every book is emotionally autobiographical - every book is about its writer (it's a great interview, and you can see it here). It's a subtle point - making the distinction between what you might call straightforwardly autobiographical and emotionally autobiographical - and I reckon he's absolutely right. The version of Henry I've created is, necessarily, the product of my imagination, my interests, my own psyche. As part of my research, I read psychological studies to help me unpick Henry's story, and what I took from them must have been what struck a chord with me, consciously or subconsciously - how could it be otherwise? 

With my current work in progress - a novel about Henry's elder daughter Mary - a similar process is unfolding. I am doing heaps of research and being as objective as I can, but - like every other writer of fiction or non-fiction who has approached the subject - I am conjuring my Mary, just as VIII was my Henry.

In both Mary's case & Henry's I've been thinking a great deal about idealism and perfectionism. Exploring the idea that Mary was trained to be an ambitious perfectionist is leading me to all sorts of interesting thoughts about her life... but also - precisely because the subject is of interest to me - a whole number of my own bells of recognition are also clanging! This week I've been reading a wonderful book by Canadian analyst Marion Woodman called Addiction to Perfection (Inner City Books, 1982). It is largely about eating disorders, but in the preface, Woodman writes about another kind of addiction to perfection that reared its head in her own writing process:

This book… has been hewn out of the hard rock of an addiction to perfection. Repeatedly, I have done battle with the black crow sitting on my left shoulder croaking, “It isn’t good enough. You haven’t anything new to say. You don’t say it well enough.” Repeatedly, I have had to stop trying to perfect a sentence here, a paragraph there, while the rest of the book remained unwritten. Fortunately there were deadlines to be met, or I would never have struck this book out of the rock in which it was buried. And the crow croaks, “Just as well.” …Thus I have steered my course through the Scylla and Charybdis of rigid scholarly methods and a whirlpool of material and landed my creation, rough-hewn, as delicately as possible without falling into my own addiction.”

Set aside Mary for one moment, as a writer sitting at my desk, this passage made me cheer. Whirlpool of material? Yes - just look at the tottering piles of books around my feet. Rigid scholarly methods? How I fear making some terrible historical blunder! And I know that crow - how does Marion Woodman know that crow? It's my crow!

Is it just me, or is there not a temptation for writers to focus on the end-product too soon, to try to get things too right on the first draft, and to that end to read just one more research book... oh, and that one... oh, and that one too...

...and to WORRY so much about whether the darn thing's going to work and hang together and do what you wanted it to that, should anyone ask you how it's coming along, you're in danger of developing a twitch rather along the lines of Herbert Lom playing Chief Inspector Dreyfus, boss of Inspector Closeau...

...not to mention forgetting, in the rush to the finished 'perfected' work, that the creative process has absolutely zilch to do with getting it 'right' and being 'good enough' and a whole lot more to do with that wonderful thing they do in nurseries called 'messy play'... Try out that crazy idea. Make a splurge. Play. Enjoy. Dare. Don't be neat. Leave those ends hanging out.

Of course the tidying up needs to happen. It can come later. Editors are great at helping with it.

I have a suspicion I'm writing this simply as a note-to-self, and that you, dear reader, have no such problem when you put pen to paper or finger to keypad. Try to make it 'good' too early? Worry about the faults before you've filled that blank page? Nah, you say, that'd be crazy! In which case, forgive me. But, doubling back in a structurally imperfect way, let me ask you: if you write, are your books about you in some way? And if you don't write but read novels, why do you think you are drawn to some subjects and not others?

I will leave you with those questions... oh, and with a postscript on the subject of perfection.

A very good place to get addicted to the pursuit of perfection is at ballet school. I went to one. And I was so desperately far off even the lowest foothills of Mount Perfect that I gave ballet up altogether (with a large dollop of self-disgust) at the age of 15. However, in my late twenties I worked at The Royal Ballet for a few years with dancers who had reached the higher slopes. Some of them, in fact, were as close to the summit as it is humanly possible to be. The very best dancers in the world are, quite simply, astonishing. Here are two very different short film clips as demonstration of that fact (and I must add, with deepest regret, that I did not work with either of these men).

First, please ignore the poor quality of the film and the fact that he's wearing a strange 1970s tiara; concentrate instead on Mikhail Baryshnikov's flawless virtuosity:

Mikhail Baryshnikov - Le Corsaire

Secondly, here is Fred Astaire. All right, so his singing perhaps isn't entirely sublime - but the dancing, for me, puts him right at the top of that mountain (the dance proper starts at 1 min 30 secs):

Fred Astaire - Puttin' On the Ritz

H.M. Castor's novel VIII - a new take on the life of Henry VIII - is published by Templar in the UK and by Penguin in Australia. It is now available in paperback, hardback & ebook format.

H.M. Castor's website is here.