The Favourite by Mathew Lyons

I have just published my interview with Mathew Lyons, author of The Favourite, ‘The true story behind one of the great love affairs in British history: Sir Walter Ralegh and Queen Elizabeth I.’

Book Description

When the adventurer Walter Ralegh first encountered Elizabeth I he supposedly placed his cloak over a puddle and allowed the queen to walk across it. Thus began one of the most intriguing relationships between a monarch and her favourite.

The Favourite explores the labyrinthine complexity of human emotion, ambition and ritual within the restricted confines of the Tudor court. Was the favourite a Machiavellian schemer who fooled the queen in her affections? Was Elizabeth willing to manipulate her courtier for her own ends? The Queen’s affection for Ralegh would protect him but he would soon become the ‘most hated man in England’.

In The Favourite, Mathew Lyons reveals a new portrait of an immortal relationship and a fascinating exploration of the many layers of love between Gloriana and Ralegh – courtier, chancer and privateer.

I think the book sounds fascinating and I really enjoyed reading Mathew’s detailed and interesting responses to my interview questions. The paperback will be released on 21 June and includes a new afterword.

Read the full interview here.

SPEAKING THE SILENCES: WRITING, ADVOCACY AND ENABLING VOICE –An extract from Wendy’s paper for the refereed proceedings of the 16th annual AAWP conference, Ethical Imaginations: Writing World.

The full paper can be found here:

Biographical note:

Dear Heart, How Like You This?

Wendy J. Dunn is obsessed with Tudor History. Her first published novel, the award-winning Dear Heart, How Like You This? is described as ‘one of the best novels ever written about Anne Boleyn’s life’. After completing her Masters in Writing at Swinburne University in 2009, Wendy took up a position as a sessional tutor in the same course and became a PhD Candidate.  Her own writing journey continues.

Historical Fiction and Advocacy

Historical fiction is a multifaceted and demanding genre with complex ethical considerations for the writer to surmount. As Jonathan Nield writes in his 1902 Guide to the Best Historical Novels and Tales,

The spirit of a period is like the selfhood of a human being – something that cannot be handed on; try as we may, it is impossible for us to breathe the atmosphere of a bygone time, since all those thousand-and-one details which went to the building up of both individual and general experience, can never be reproduced’ (Nield 1902: 41).

Continue reading here.

I know that we have many budding authors in our midst that may be interested in what Spartan Publishing is offering prospective authors. They offer a variety of comprehensive packages and services to assist in all stages of e-publishing, including:

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To find out more about Spartan Publishing please visit their website here.

Wycliffe College Chapel, Toronto

The Wycliffite bible will be displayed at the Norfolk Heritage Centre in Norwich during May and coincides with the Boleyn Festival Blickling – four days of all things Anne Boleyn!

Clare Agate, community librarian at the Millennium Library, said:

“In itself, just being a Wycliffite bible means it is of interest, but the connection for people in Norfolk is through Anne Boleyn. It is the sort of thing that scholars are usually more likely to be interested in for study, but with the Boleyn Festival going on we thought it was a good opportunity to let people know we have it and to let them have a chance to see it.”

I am attending the first two days of the Boleyn Festival Blickling and so hope to see this historic bible in the ‘flesh’.

The Boleyn bible will be available to view in the Norfolk Heritage Centre, on the second floor of the Millennium Library at the Forum in Norwich, from 2pm-4pm on May 2, 5, 8, 10, 16, 17 and 21; and from 10am-midday on May 4, 9, 15 and 23.

Robert Parry

On this, the 3rd birthday of Robert Parry’s wonderful novel Virgin and the Crab, I am delighted to share with you a guest article about the protagonist of Parry’s novel – the fascinating John Dee.

We are also giving away a copy of Virgin and the Crab to one lucky commenter, so be sure to leave a comment after Robert’s post.

You can read my review of this remarkable book here.

Welcome Robert!

Thank you Natalie, for helping me celebrate the 3^rd Birthday of my novel ‘Virgin and the Crab’ here on The Tudor Trail. The novel itself is set in the middle of the 16^th century, within that brief, extraordinary period in English history when we had no less than two kings and three queens in rapid succession, all within a twelve-year period. The main protagonist through all of this, is the astronomer, alchemist and spy, John Dee (1527-1609) and I would like to write a little here about how his reputation has suffered, often unjustly, over the centuries. For those who do not know too much about him, you can find a brief biographical sketch here.

Virgin and the Crab

In my story, Dee is a young man on an heroic mission, and many of the more controversial accusations to be levelled against him by his enemies, of which he had quite a few, had yet to be fashioned. But fashioned they were. As a character, he has made various appearances in novels and screenplays over the centuries, but unfortunately usually in a less-than-flattering guise. Often he has a walk-on part as some deranged magician or as a fantastical, half-wizard half-prophet kind of figure full of dire predictions of impending doom.

It is remarkable how someone who, in his time, was regarded as the greatest of humanist scholars, a man in possession of a library more extensive than that of most universities and who was consulted by almost every major player in Elizabethan society from the Queen downwards on matters as diverse as geography, mathematics, geometry, navigation, astronomy and optics, should have been virtually airbrushed out of history. But this has happened – and only very recently has there been any serious attempt by historians to rescue his name from obscurity.

John Dee

He did, at least, get off to a good start as far as character portrayal goes. He was almost certainly the source for the wizard Prospero in Shakespeare’s play The Tempest. He might also have provided more than a little inspiration for Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus. He makes an appearance in Spenser’s Faerie Queen and, a little later, Ben Jonson probably incorporated a piece of him in his play The Alchemist. But from there it all seems to have gone downhill rather fast.

The damage was already beginning to take place, in fact, towards the end of his life, after the passing of Queen Elizabeth and the protection she had afforded him. The new regime under King James, with its witch hunts and its suspicion of anything redolent of demonic forces, could only view his inquiries into the world of the unseen as an embarrassment and a threat. The man who had once held the attention and ear of so many of the kings and queens of Europe, from London to Paris, from Moscow to Prague, began to lose status.

Later, during the 16^th century, Dee’s posthumous reputation suffered a further blow due to the writings of a gentleman by the name of Meric Casaubon, a classical scholar who is said to have fallen foul of the government and church during the harsh Puritanical regime of Oliver Cromwell and who, for reasons perhaps best known to himself, resolved to argue against one of the fundamental principles of Protestant belief, namely that humans can receive guidance directly from divine sources, without intercession. Dee’s extensive records of angelic conversations were compiled in a volume by Casaubon as a means of demonstrating that such revelations could be evil and mischievous. Mud sticks, of course – and over subsequent generations, Casaubon’s character assassination of Dee in his lengthy introduction to his volume became ammunition for sceptics of the occult, and even of other, more sobre forms of spiritual enquiry.

By the Victorian era, Dee had been demoted to little more than a figure of ridicule. Any appearances he made in literature were often frivolous, trading merely on his vague associations with the world of magic and the occult and which could therefore always be trucked out to provide the occasional lurid touch for writers and dramatist in search of a ‘character.’ In our own times, Dee has occasionally fared a little better in fiction and on the screen, but not very often.

The fact is, John Dee, was a man who lived on the cusp between the old world and the new. That was what the 16^th Century did – gradually changing its priorities from spiritual values to material ones. Astride these shifting sands, Dee was not only one of the most gifted of scientists at the forefront of the change, but he also remained a devout Christian and a dedicated and faithful servant of the Crown. The accusation, repeated still, that he died alone in abject poverty, the victim of a life of foolishness and ignorance is probably more than a little inaccurate, therefore. Hearsay statements to this effect made years after his death by those who did not know him – by the astrologer William Lilly, for example – are confused and cannot be relied upon as evidence. Lilly even refers to Dee’s education being at Oxford, when in fact it was at Cambridge. Yes, it is true that Dee’s diaries indicate that he sometimes borrowed money or sold books, but this is not necessarily a sign of poverty. In Tudor times, well-to-do people in large households would borrow to maintain cash flow – it was the ‘credit card’ of the times. The fact is, John Dee enjoyed the company and patronage of numerous wealthy and noble families until the end of his days. His son was a successful physician, and his daughter appears to have been devoted to him. He is even known to have cast horoscopes for his grandchildren.

Perhaps we need to look at Dee in a more tolerant light – not because he was a man who believed in angels, but rather because he was a man who asked whether there might be angels. And there is quite a difference between those two statements. In my novel I have tried to portray him as an intelligent and courageous being, a force for good and for progress – someone at the very centre of the intellectual and political universe of Tudor England. I wanted to do that because I believe that was what he was like.

http://robertparry.wordpress.com

https://www.facebook.com/RobertParry.author

Conditions of Entry

For your chance to win a copy of Virgin and the Crab you must be subscribed to On the Tudor Trail’s newsletter (if you are not already, sign up on our homepage).

Then simply leave a comment after Robert’s guest post between now and May 4, 2012.

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

Good luck!

Had the Queen Lived: An Alternate History of Anne Boleyn by Raven A. Nuckols.

A guest post by Raven A. Nuckols, author of Had the Queen Lived: An Alternative History of Anne Boleyn.

In October 2011, I published my first historical novel entitled “Had the Queen Lived: An Alternative History of Anne Boleyn.” I set out to write my novel with what I thought was an interesting idea for a story that might appeal to fans of Queen Anne Boleyn, the second wife of King Henry VIII of England. I also thought that there could be many such fans because in recent years the popularity of the Tudor reign, particularly as portrayed on television and in film, has brought her story once more to the spotlight for a new generation to enjoy. The premise of the book is exploring the question of what might have happened had Queen Anne lived past her tragic execution in May 1536 on false charges of treason, adultery, and incest with her brother. With this idea as a starting point I created an entirely new universe for Henry & Anne, developing a history of England with possible events that Anne might have influenced. Using the actual history of the reign of Henry VIII as a foundation, I was able to select those specific events that I thought would have realistically been altered based on the continuing presence of Anne on the scene, as well as entirely fictional events that I believed Anne would have been responsible for making come to pass.

Creating a successful and believable storyline weaving together actual and fictional events and characters is challenging; however, it can be done and is wonderfully exciting. For example, in my novel I used the Pilgrimage of Grace as a key event leading to the downfall of Lady Mary Tudor. I spent months researching every piece of original material I could find as well as consulting the works of historians who wrote at length on the subject to ensure I fully understood not only the broad, actual history, but also key, in-depth details. I chose this event specifically to bring down Lady Mary because its history linked well with her deep loyalty to Catholicism.  The principal cause of the rebellion in actual history was to cease the Crown’s dissolution of the monasteries and to reinstate mass and other Catholic practices that had been stripped away with England’s breaking away from the Catholic Church. As Lady Mary was royalty and viewed as a figurehead behind the inspiration for the rebel movement, it was critical in establishing my story that I use this event to bring about her end. To make this happen, I had to exaggerate the number of deaths during the rebellion (790 from 330), but I made this alteration of history deliberately so as to show the influence Anne’s continued presence would have on the King’s state of mind, and dramatize how his desire for unquestioned authority would lead to bloodier actions to reinforce his decisions. Even so, I wanted to keep the inflated casualty number from being too excessive, to preserve historical believability, consistent with illustrating the power dynamics in Henry and Anne’s relationship.

It truly has been a rewarding artistic experience to create these wonderful plots with characters that changed the shape of British (and thus world) history. I look forward to writing future alternate histories and am working on finishing a trilogy set within the universe of Had the Queen Lived. There will be plenty more weaving of actual history and fictional events in the period of 1551-1601 for the first sequel, which I am currently in the research phase for and will cover the reign of King Henry IX, the fictional son had by Anne and Henry in the first book. I am also researching for works of actual history in the Twentieth Century on far different events of great personal interest to me, but nothing will take the place of my passion for writing about the Tudors and, in particular, Queen Anne.

By Raven A. Nuckols

A Visitor's Companion to Tudor England

When I first interviewed Suzannah Lipscomb in early 2011, she was immersed in researching and writing A Visitor’s Companion to Tudor England. Whilst talking to Suzannah about her book, I discovered that we share something in common – a love for walking in the footsteps of the great historical figures of Tudor England.

There is something magical about standing where Henry VIII or Anne Boleyn once stood, it is as though recorded in the walls of these ancient buildings are the very conversations that took place hundreds of years before. Listen closely enough and you can hear the courtiers whispering and politicking.

What really fires the imagination, is that when standing in these historical locations, it is only time and not space that separate us. If we could only peel back the layers of time, we would be there, face to face with the iconic characters of sixteenth century England.

Suzannah summed it up perfectly,

‘In the places featured in this book, the veil between the past and the present seems very thin.’ (pg. 8 )

It is in these locations, where history happened, that we can get close to the people whose lives we hope to understand.

In this wonderful book, Suzannah takes us on a journey to over fifty Tudor places, introducing us to the key characters of the Tudor age and sharing their fascinating stories.

I really enjoyed the variety of locations; we visit houses, palaces, castles, abbeys, tombs, Museums and even a tree! I also found the inclusion of information about other aspects of life in Tudor England – such as sports and pastimes, clothing and the royal progress, enhanced the overall experience.

Little Moreton Hall

Expect to find locations that you are familiar with, like the Tower of London, Hampton Court Palace and Westminster Abbey. But what makes this book stand out is the inclusion of less well-known houses, like Sandford Orcas Manor House and Little Moreton Hall.

Some of the locations included are ruins: Tutbury Castle, Kenilworth and Hailes Abbey, to name but a few, and these are worthy of inclusion, as the events that unfolded within their now crumbling walls, are of great importance.

Suzannah is an enthusiastic and knowledgeable guide who brings each location vividly to life through an engaging narrative.

Although academic references are not included, you can be confident that only verifiable stories and details have made the pages.

I eagerly awaited the release of this book and it has not disappointed. Judging by the amount of post-it notes that now reside on the pages of my copy, I have learnt a lot!

Tuck it under your arm on your next Tudor pilgrimage or enjoy it from the comfort of your own home. Who said that time travel wasn’t possible? Highly recommended!

I leave you now with the words of historian G. M. Trevelyan, quoted in Suzannah Lipscomb’s book:

‘The poetry of history lies in the quasi-miraculous fact that once, on this earth, on this familiar spot of ground, walked other men and women, as actual as we are today, thinking their own thoughts, swayed by their own passions, but now all gone, one generation vanishing after another, gone as utterly as we ourselves shall shortly be gone, like ghosts at cock-crow.’

http://suzannahlipscomb.com/

Keeper of the King's Secrets by Michelle Diener

By Michelle Diener

Thank you again to Natalie for having me back as a guest blogger. I know Natalie’s particular interest is Anne Boleyn, and while Anne plays an off-stage role in my Tudor-set Susanna Horenbout and John Parker series in the current books, Thomas Wyatt is a prominent secondary character in Keeper of the King’s Secrets, the second book in the series (released 3 April). Because Wyatt’s history is entwined with Anne Boleyn’s, I thought it might be fun to talk about Thomas a bit, and how I’ve portrayed him in Keeper of the King’s Secrets.

Wyatt is well-known for his poetry, and for the apparent unrequited love he had for Anne Boleyn. Their Kent family estates were close to one another, and it seems they grew up together. Wyatt is said to have behaved jealously in front of Henry VIII when Henry was pursuing her, making it obvious he was very interested in her, as well. My favorite story regarding this is the incident, recounted by Wyatt’s grandson, that Wyatt stole one of Anne’s lockets and refused to return it, no matter how often she asked. In retaliation, Henry took one of her rings. A few days later, Henry, Suffolk, Bryan and Wyatt were playing bowls and a dispute arose between Henry and Wyatt as to who was the winner. Henry pointed to Anne’s ring on his finger and said ‘I tell you, it is mine.’ Wyatt took off the locket, and used the chain to measure the balls, and said, ‘I hope it will be mine.’

Thomas Wyatt

Anne denied any feelings for Wyatt when Henry questioned her, and that does seem to be the case. Or in any event, there is no evidence she ever encouraged him.

The interpretation I’ve used in Keeper of the King’s Secrets is that while Anne and Wyatt are long-time friends, and Wyatt does have strong feelings for her, Anne has made it clear she will not be a married man’s mistress. And yes, the irony of Wyatt recounting Anne’s standpoint to Susanna and Parker, my main characters, given this is 1525 and really just months before Henry starts pursuing Anne, was delicious to write.

Wyatt was married (hence Anne not being interested), very unhappily, and had one son. His wife was apparently very promiscuous, and in Keeper of the King’s Secrets, I’ve created the backstory of Wyatt being forced into a marriage he didn’t want, to a woman who had some feelings for him. As her handsome husband takes mistress after mistress, she retaliates in kind, until there is no hope of a reconciliation. His father was very distressed by Wyatt’s habitual infidelity, and I’ve used that in Keeper of the King’s Secrets to affect the job Wyatt has at court.

Wyatt’s father was Master of the King’s Jewels, and Wyatt was Clerk of the King’s Jewels. They would have been the keepers of the Mirror of Naples, the magnificent jewel Mary Tudor illegally took from the French Crown Jewels and gave to Henry as part of her apology for marrying Charles Brandon without his permission. As a large part of the plot of Keeper of the King’s Secrets hangs on the disappearance of the Mirror of Naples, this puts Wyatt firmly in the frame, and his rocky relationship with his father is part of the problem. I also use his infatuation with Anne as part of the plot.

Another reason Wyatt was a perfect secondary character from my point of view was his connection to the Duke of Norfolk. Norfolk is one of the antagonists in Keeper of the King’s Secrets (and in the first book in the series, In a Treacherous Court), but he also happened to be Wyatt’s sponsor at court, and the godfather to Wyatt’s son. Poor old Wyatt is caught between a rock and a very hard place, being played by men far more ruthless than he.

He seems to have much preferred country life and spoke very disparagingly of court politics and dramas. He obviously also thought Henry’s infatuation with Anne was a passing fancy, and when, in 1527, it became clear Henry was very serious indeed, Wyatt actually asked the King for permission to leave the country for a bit, and laid very, very low at court when he finally returned. He was probably seriously regretting teasing the King with Anne’s locket at that point.

It was a gift for me, as a writer, to have a beautiful, blond poet, all brooding with unrequited love, whose carelessness and self-indulgence, as well as his misplaced trust, put him in an incredibly tight corner. He is a wonderful foil to Parker, one of my main characters, who is dark, straightforward and has never been careless in his life.

I’d like to end with one of Wyatt’s poems, which is thought to be about Anne Boleyn, entitled “Of His Love, Called Anna”:

What word is it that changeth not,
Tho’ it be turned and made in twain?
It is mine Anna, God it wot,
And eke the causer of my pain,
Who love rewarded with disdain.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this, whether you have an opinion on Wyatt, or not, and will be giving away a copy of Keeper of the King’s Secrets to a lucky commenter.

Michelle Diener

Conditions of Entry

For your chance to win  you must be subscribed to On the Tudor Trail’s newsletter (if you are not already, sign up on our homepage).

Then simply leave a comment after Michelle’s guest post between now and April 11.

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

Good luck!

Tudor Survivor: The Life and Times of Courtier William Paulet by Margaret Scard

I am delighted to welcome Margaret Scard, author of Tudor Survivor: The Life and Times of William Paulet, back to On the Tudor Trail.

Margaret has written a guest post for us about William Paulet- a fascinating figure. He served four Tudor monarchs – Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary and Elizabeth – and lived to tell the tale.

Thank you Margaret!

Tudor Survivor by Margaret Scard

For many historians William Paulet is a shadowy figure in the background of the Tudor court. Writers often give him only a passing mention. Yet to his contemporaries he was a man at the forefront of court life and sixteenth century politics.

In the length and breadth of his career together with his remarkable rise from being the son of a country gentleman to be the senior noble in England he stands apart from his contemporaries.  His success, though, was dependent not only on his own ability but also upon surviving the machinations of court life and on choosing to support the winning side.

Continue reading here.

Synopsis

The Time Traveller's Guide to Elizabethan England

We think of Queen Elizabeth I as ‘Gloriana’: the most powerful English woman in history. We think of her reign (1558-1603) as a golden age of maritime heroes, like Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir Richard Grenville and Sir Francis Drake, and of great writers, such as Edmund Spenser, Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson and William Shakespeare. But what was it actually like to live in Elizabethan England? If you could travel to the past and walk the streets of London in the 1590s, where would you stay? What would you eat? What would you wear? Would you really have a sense of it being a glorious age? And if so, how would that glory sit alongside the vagrants, diseases, violence, sexism and famine of the time?

In this book Ian Mortimer answers the key questions that a prospective traveller to late sixteenth-century England would ask. Applying the groundbreaking approach he pioneered in his bestselling Time Traveller’s Guide to Medieval England, the Elizabethan world unfolds around the reader.

He shows a society making great discoveries and winning military victories and yet at the same time being troubled by its new-found awareness. It is a country in which life expectancy at birth is in the early thirties, people still starve to death and Catholics are persecuted for their faith. Yet it produces some of the finest writing in the English language and some of the most magnificent architecture, and sees Elizabeth’s subjects settle in America and circumnavigate the globe. Welcome to a country that is, in all its contradictions, the very crucible of the modern world.

Visit Ian Mortimer’s official website here.