The Crown by Nancy Bilyeau

To celebrate the UK release of the historical thriller ‘The Crown‘ by Nancy Bilyeau, I am delighted to share with you a guest article that Nancy has written about George Boleyn.

I am currently reading The Crown and enjoying every moment of it! I was hooked from the very first line,

“When a burning is announced, the taverns of Smithfield order extra barrels of ale, but when the person to be executed is a woman and one of noble birth, the ale comes by the cartload.”

I relish returning home in the evenings and losing myself in the pages of this truly engrossing story. Here is a little taste…

George Boleyn
By Nancy Bilyeau

On May 15, 1536, took place one of the most sensational trials of the 16^th century. George Boleyn, the brother of Queen Anne, answered charges of high treason—that he had committed incest with his sister and conspired at the king’s death.

Anne Boleyn, second wife of Henry VIII, had directly before been found guilty of treason. A jury declared that she had committed adultery with her brother and four other men. The Lord Mayor of London said, “I could not observe anything in the proceedings against her, but that they were resolved to make an occasion to get rid of her at any price.”

It would seem impossible that any other verdict than guilty could be reached for George Boleyn. Yet after hearing the evidence, Viscount Rochford defended himself “so well that several of those present wagered ten to one that he would be acquitted, especially as no witnesses were produced against him,” said a contemporary.

Read the full article here.

The Love Letters of Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn & Other Correspondence & Documents Concerning the King

To celebrate Valentine’s Day at On the Tudor Trail, I am giving away a copy of The Love Letters of Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn & Other Correspondence & Documents Concerning the King and His Wives.

Entry is only open to our newsletter subscribers (if you are not one already, sign up on our homepage) and residents of all countries!

To enter, simply leave a comment on any one of our posts or pages between now and February 14. The more comments you leave, the more entries you will receive – it’s as easy as that!

Don’t forget to leave your name and a contact email.

Be sure to email all your friends and family about this competition regardless of where they live- all welcome!

Our Valentine’s Day competition is opened until 10pm on the 14th February 2012 (Australian Eastern Daylight Time) and the winner will be announced shortly thereafter.

Good luck!

The Secret Keeper : A Novel of Kateryn Parr by Sandra Byrd

Ladies in Waiting, Book 2

The Secret Keeper by Sandra Byrd

Pieces of her black gown fell to the ground, one by one, like the locks of a condemned woman shorn before execution, though he stayed himself from touching her bright red hair before sheathing his dagger again. Her woeful face betrayed that she knew this would be her utter undoing. The gown was ruined and the black clumps, which had plummeted to the ground, received the breath of life of a sudden and became a flock of beady-eyed ravens which took wing toward the Tower of London, whilst we watched in horror and dread.

To be released June 5, 2012.

Pre-order now!

Her Highness, The Traitor by Susan Higginbotham

Her Highness, the Traitor by Susan Higginbotham

As Henry VIII draws his last breath, two very different women, Jane Dudley, Viscountess of Lisle, and Frances Grey, Marchioness of Dorset, face the prospect of a boy king, Edward VI.

For Jane Dudley, basking in the affection of her large family, the coming of a new king means another move upward for her ambitious, able husband, John. For Frances Grey, increasingly alienated from her husband and her brilliant but arrogant daughter Lady Jane Grey, it means that she—and  Lady Jane—are one step closer to the throne of England.

Then the young king falls deathly ill. Determined to keep England under Protestant rule, he concocts an audacious scheme that subverts his own father’s will. Suddenly, Jane Dudley and Frances Grey are reluctantly bound together in a common cause—one that will test their loyalties, their strength, and their faith, and that will change their lives beyond measure.

To be released June 1, 2012.

Pre-order now!

The Secret Life of William Shakespeare by Jude Morgan

The Secret Life of William Shakespeare by Jude Morgan

Publication date: September 27, 2012

The greatest writer of them all, brought to glorious life. How well do you know the man you love? How much do you think you know about Shakespeare? What if they were one and the same? He is an ordinary man: unwilling craftsman, ambitious actor, resentful son, almost good-enough husband. And he is also a genius. The story of how a glove-maker from Warwickshire became the greatest writer of them all is vaguely known to most of us, but it would take an exceptional modern novelist to bring him to life. And now at last Jude Morgan, acclaimed author of Passion and The Taste of Sorrow, has taken Shakespeare’s life, and created a masterpiece.

Keeper of the King’s Secret by Michelle Diener

A priceless jewel. A royal court rife with intrigue. A secret deal, where the price of truth could come too high . . .

The personal artist to King Henry Tudor, Susanna Horenbout is sought by the queen and ladies of the court for her delicate, skilled portraits. But now someone from her past is pulling her into a duplicitous game where the consequence of failure is war. Soon, Susanna and her betrothed, the King’s most dangerous courtier, are unraveling a plot that would shatter Europe. And at the heart of it is a magnificent missing diamond. . . .

With John Parker at her side, Susanna searches for the diamond and those responsible for its theft, their every step dogged by a lethal assassin. Finding the truth means plunging into the heart of the court’s most bitter infighting, surviving the harrowing labyrinth of Fleet Prison—and then coming face-to-face with the most dangerous enemy of all.

To be released April 3, 2012.

Pre-order now!

At the Mercy of the Queen by Anne Barnhill

A sweeping tale of sexual seduction and intrigue at the court of Henry VIII, At the Mercy of the Queen is a rich and dramatic debut historical novel about Madge Shelton, cousin and lady-in-waiting to Anne Boleyn.

At the innocent age of fifteen, Lady Margaret Shelton arrives at the court of Henry VIII and quickly becomes the confidante of her cousin, Queen Anne Boleyn. But she soon finds herself drawn into the perilous web of Anne’s ambition.

Desperate to hold onto the king’s waning affection, Anne schemes to have him take her guileless young cousin as mistress, ensuring her husband’s new paramour will owe her loyalty to the queen. But Margaret has fallen deeply in love with a handsome young courtier. She is faced with a terrible dilemma: give herself to the king and betray the love of her life or refuse to become his mistress and jeopardize the life of the her cousin, Queen Anne.

At the Mercy of the Queen by Anne Barnhill is the story of Anne Boleyn told through the eyes of her young cousin, Madge Shelton. Madge arrives at court as a lady-in-waiting to Queen Anne Boleyn but is unfamiliar with the machinations of the Tudor court and relies heavily on the guidance of her mistress.

Madge soon becomes one of Anne’s most trusted confidantes and privy to the queen’s innermost thoughts and feelings. While striving to help Anne keep the love of her king – sacrificing much in the process – she finds herself desperately trying to fend off the unwanted passes of a very sly Sir Henry Norris.

As the king’s love for Anne fades, Madge’s love for the Duke of Suffolk’s illegitimate son, Arthur Brandon, intensifies. Although we know how the story ends for Anne and Henry, Madge and Arthur’s fate is uncertain and I found myself eagerly wishing for a happy ending.

Barnhill has done a wonderful job of weaving fact and fiction and for the most part, has stuck to the facts but where history falls silent, Barnhill has employed a certain amount of artistic license. The result, in my opinion, is a fresh view of these well-worn characters and a highly engaging and absorbing story.

I turned the last page feeling like I had seen another side to Anne, a much more human side. I was also left with a desire to learn more about Barnhill’s young heroine. Who was the real Madge Shelton?

At the Mercy of the Queen is a tale of love, loyalty and friendship and a must read for fans of historical fiction and romance alike.

(Read my interview with Anne Barnhill here.)

Richard III and the North of England
By Robert Fripp

Richard III

Through the medieval period and into the early Tudor years it was common practice for a noble family to send a seven- or eight-year-old son away to receive military training in another, kindred household. The boy who would grow up to become Richard III was dispatched to the household of his older cousin Richard Neville, the sixteenth Earl of Warwick. There was no better place to toughen the boy: in time, Warwick’s power would earn him the sobriquet “The Kingmaker.” Young Richard joined Warwick’s household at Middleham Castle in the North Riding of Yorkshire, where the ardors of military training gradually prepared him for knighthood. The year was 1462.

Warwick died nine years later in battle at Barnet in 1471, and possession of Middleham Castle passed to the young Richard, Duke of Gloucester. Among those whom Richard had met as a boy during his time at Middleham was Warwick’s daughter, Anne.

Continue reading here.

Bring up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel

Bring up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel is the sequel to the Man Booker Prize winning Wolf Hall. I am really looking forward to reading this but unfortunately we all have to wait a little longer.

Australian release date: 01 May 2012

UK release date:10 May 2012

For now you can enjoy the synopsis!

‘My boy Thomas, give him a dirty look and he’ll gouge your eye out. Trip him, and he’ll cut off your leg,’ says Walter Cromwell in the year 1500. ‘But if you don’t cut across him he’s a very gentleman. And he’ll stand anyone a drink.’

By 1535 Thomas Cromwell, the blacksmith’s son, is far from his humble origins. Chief Minister to Henry VIII, his fortunes have risen with those of Anne Boleyn, Henry’s second wife, for whose sake Henry has broken with Rome and created his own church. But Henry’s actions have forced England into dangerous isolation, and Anne has failed to do what she promised: bear a son to secure the Tudor line. When Henry visits Wolf Hall, Cromwell watches as Henry falls in love with the silent, plain Jane Seymour. The minister sees what is at stake: not just the king’s pleasure, but the safety of the nation. As he eases a way through the sexual politics of the court, its miasma of gossip, he must negotiate a ‘truth’ that will satisfy Henry and secure his own career. But neither minister nor king will emerge undamaged from the bloody theatre of Anne’s final days.

In ‘Bring up the Bodies’, sequel to the Man Booker Prize-winning ‘Wolf Hall’, Hilary Mantel explores one of the most mystifying and frightening episodes in English history: the destruction of Anne Boleyn. This new novel is a speaking picture, an audacious vision of Tudor England that sheds its light on the modern world. It is the work of one of our great writers at the height of her powers.

Anne Barnhill in her Tudor shift, stomacher and red petticoat

I am delighted to welcome Anne Clinard Barnhill, author of At the Mercy of the Queen: A Novel of Anne Boleyn, back to On the Tudor Trail and excited to share, not only our interview but also details of a book giveaway made possible by Anne’s generosity!

You can read my interview with Anne here and an entertaining guest post by this author entitled ‘Playing Dress-Up’ here.

All you need to do to be in the running to win an autographed copy of At the Mercy of the Queen, is leave a comment after our interview detailing why you would like to win this book before January 19, 2012.

Once all entries are in, Anne will select one lucky winner! It’s as easy as that.

Now, enjoy our interview and don’t forget to leave a comment!

Dark Sovereign by Robert Fripp

I am delighted to share with you my interview with author and copywriter Robert Fripp who has written a modern play in the English language as it was available to William Shakespeare.

The play, Dark Sovereign, took Fripp four years to write and is a ‘counter-attack’ on Shakespeare’s play about Richard III.

It is written in the vocabulary, idioms and syntax in written use between about 1579 to 1626 and has been described as, ‘a cultural accomplishment of the highest order.’

I thank Robert for his time and I hope you enjoy our interview. Keep an eye out for a giveaway and guest post coming soon!

Read the full interview here.

Wicked Women of Tudor England: Queens, Aristocrats, Commoners (Queenship and Power)

Just a quick post to bring to your attention a new book that will be released on April 10, 2012 called ‘Wicked women of Tudor England : Queens, Aristocrats, Commoners (Queenship and Power)’ by Retha M. Warnicke.

Contents

I have not been able to find a synopsis but did find mention of a project that Warnicke worked on entitled ‘Re-Inventing the Wicked Women of Tudor England’ described here as revealing:

‘how historians have validated negative gossip about Alice More, Anne Boleyn, Katherine Howard, the Duchess of Somerset and the Countess of Leicester. This gossip, mostly mined from diplomatic dispatches or Catholic polemical literature, was spread by individuals who had little or no personal contact with the women they slandered. The context for her research is the gender and cultural hierarchy that privileged men.’

Anne Seymour, Duchess of Somerset (née Stanhope)

For those of you interested in reading Warnicke’s article ‘Inventing the Wicked Women of Tudor England: Alice More, Anne Boleyn, and Anne Stanhope’, originally published in Quidditas: Journal of the Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association, Vol. 20 (1999), click here.

I will endeavour to keep you updated as more information on this title arises.

In A Treacherous Court by Michelle Diener

I am delighted to welcome Michelle Diener, author of In a Treacherous Court back to On the Tudor Trail and excited to share, not only Michelle’s fascinating guest post but also details of a double book giveaway made possible by this author’s generosity!

You can read my interview with Michelle here.

All you need to do to be in the running to win either a copy of In a Treacherous Court or an advance reading copy of the uncorrected page proofs of KEEPER OF THE KING’S SECRETS, Michelle’s upcoming novel, is leave a comment after Michelle’s guest post before December 1, 2011.

Once all entries are in, Michelle will select two lucky winners! It’s as easy as that.

Now, enjoy the post and don’t forget to leave a comment!

THE FACTS IN FICTION

Thank you so much to Natalie for asking me back to On the Tudor Trail for a guest post. I thought it would fun to talk about some of the small details I included in In a Treacherous Court that are true. At the end of the book, I have an Author’s Note, where I talk about the larger historical issues which I include, and a few of the minor details, but not all of them. The note would have been way too long.

Firstly, I’ll start with my main character, Parker. He has to identify himself right at the start of the book, and he calls himself the Keeper of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell. I couldn’t resist that line because he really is. As Keeper of the Palace of Westminster, Parker would also have been Keeper of three of the houses on the palace grounds: Paradise, Purgatory and Hell. They were available as accommodation for nobles and visiting guests, and while I don’t know who named them, or why they were given these particular names, I was very grateful, as a writer, that they were.

As an aside, and also in keeping with talking about facts that I wove into the book, much later in the book, Parker encounters a character called Anthony Denny. He is much younger, a new arrival at court, and he helps Parker with various things. How they really met, I don’t know, but Anthony Denny and John Parker were good friends. Denny was named as the executor of Parker’s will, and Parker obviously recommended to Henry VIII that Denny be given his offices on his death, and Henry took that recommendation. Denny became Keeper of the Palace of Westminster, and ended up being one of Henry’s closest friends, and an executor of the King’s will. Towards the end of Henry’s life, he signed many bills and writs on the King’s behalf. Like Parker, Denny was not a nobleman, but one of the hated ‘new men’ of Henry’s court, who did well for themselves by being efficient, useful and loyal to the king.

Another detail I worked into In a Treacherous Court was the style of illumination which my heroine, Susanna, practices. She was trained in the Ghent style of illumination in her father’s atelier, and I researched that style very carefully to make sure I got the details right. The Ghent school loved accuracy, and their illustrations and paintings depict flowers, animals and people as accurately as they can. But within that, they believed in playfulness. They didn’t take themselves too seriously, and would include sly jokes, or fantastical elements in their work. So Susanna, while sketching the antechamber of the King’s privy chamber as she waits for her turn to see the King, draws the wallpaper, which has birds in the design, and lets one of those wallpaper birds break free and fly off. She draws a mouse hiding behind the guard’s shoe, and a cat gathering itself under a chair, ready to pounce. She’s about to draw just a hint of devil’s horns on the head of a priest waiting with her, before she is interrupted.

In the next scene she has made it into the Privy Chamber, but she has to wait for Henry to finish his lunch before she can see him, and again to pass the time she draws a sketch of the king, surrounded by his courtiers, eating his lunch. I took a real sketch of Henry eating his lunch in his privy chamber as the inspiration for the scene. Art historians don’t know who made the sketch, so it was even more fun for me to include this, as I wasn’t taking a sketch by a known artist. Who knows, maybe Susanna did sketch it?

The place where Parker and Susanna live, and the community around them, are integral to the story. I know Parker had property in Fulham, but it made sense he would also have a place closer to the King, so I gave him a house in Crooked Lane, in Cheapside. This street did exist in 1525, although it was destroyed to make way for the new London Bridge hundreds of years later. Not only is Crooked Lane real, St. Michael’s Church was at the end of the lane, and the priests of St. Michael’s did meet at the inn down the road with the Worshipful Company of Plumbers, whose guild church St. Michael’s was, instead of in the church vestry, just as I describe in the book.

I even spent about half a day trying to find the exact name of the inn where they met. In the end, I called it the Boar’s Head, because I found mention of an inn by that name in that area. I couldn’t get any further with the time and access to information available to me, so if the Boar’s Head was not the actual inn, it was at least an inn very close by. I find there is always a fine line to be walked with research. Yes, it’s wonderful to get every tiny detail right, but sometimes it isn’t worth it. As in this case, I had to be content with the fact that it was possible I was right, and leave it at that.

Paul's Walk

I’ve also written a short story featuring Susanna Horenbout and John Parker that bridges the first and second books, entitled DANGEROUS SANCTUARY. It is mostly set inside the old St. Paul’s Cathedral, and will come out as an ebook only. In it, I refer to Paul’s Walk, which is what the long nave of old St. Paul’s Cathedral was called, because Londoners would walk up and down the nave, collecting and exchanging gossip. At one end of the walk was a beautiful round stained-glass window. In later times, this type of window was called a rose window (and there are various arguments as to how it got this name), but in 1525, when my story is set, it wasn’t called a rose window. And I could not discover what it WAS called. Very frustrating, especially as most people today would know it as a rose window, but I couldn’t use that in the story. So I ended up calling it a circular window.

DANGEROUS SANCTUARY is set during a mass Henry VIII attended at old St. Paul’s Cathedral, and I was able to discover that Wolsey used the Sarum Rite in the mass, and the choir sang the Te Deum. A fun thing I was able to do with the story, because it was an ebook, was find a link to monks actually singing the Te Deum, and embed the link in the story, so readers can click on it, and listen to the song, as it would have been sung in 1525.

And finally, a sneak peek at one fact from the second book in the series, KEEPER OF THE KING’S SECRETS, due out in April next year. In the book, I describe how London Bridge acted as a kind of dam wall to the Thames. As the river encountered the bridge, it slowed down and backed up, because it had to force itself through very narrow arches. Because the Thames is tidal, this meant that the river was sometimes much lower on the sea side of the bridge at low tide than it was on the source side of the bridge. That difference was sometimes as much as six feet, and usually no one attempted to navigate through the arches at that time. But some did. It was called ‘shooting the bridge’ and it was a kind of extreme sport of the Tudor times. How could I have a book set during this time, and not make someone shoot the bridge?

Does anyone remember a fact from a book that they’ve never forgotten? I’d love to hear what it is!

I’ll give away an advance reading copy of the uncorrected page proofs of KEEPER OF THE KING’S SECRETS, which I found waiting outside my front door when I got back from holiday yesterday, to one commenter.

Michelle