I am delighted to welcome back Robert Stephen Parry to On the Tudor Trail, to chat with us about his latest publication: ‘Elizabeth – The Virgin Queen and the Men who Loved Her.’
Over to you Robert!
Robert Stephen Parry
Thank you Natalie for inviting me to your webpage today and for allowing me the opportunity to say a few words about my most recent publication: ‘Elizabeth – The Virgin Queen and the Men who Loved Her.’
There have been so many books, novels and articles written on the remarkable life of Elizabeth Tudor, as princess and as queen that indulging in the pleasure of researching and writing yet another was always going to be a challenge. How could anything new be added? What more could possibly be said? The solution was not to write a bigger book than anyone had ever done before but to write a smaller one!
At just 132 pages, it is in fact a novel in disguise, masquerading as a work of non-fiction and authored by a gentleman who attended a series of lectures on the subject of Elizabeth I at a mysterious country retreat at some unspecified time in the recent past. He recounts his experiences over a weekend in an old half-ruined Elizabethan house, and presents us with a series of biographical sketches delivered by a professor from the university of Louvain, a certain Dr Dejon. These describe the relationship between Elizabeth and each of the most important men in her life – beginning with her father, Henry VIII, followed by Thomas Seymour, then Robert Dudley, John Dee, Francois Duke of Alencon, Christopher Hatton, Walter Raleigh, William Cecil and finally Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex.
Each presentation corresponds to a chapter in the book and also concludes with what is called a ‘vignette’ – a fictional scene relevant to the relationship itself. So we find, for example, Elizabeth and Henry VIII alone in a room at Hampton Court in 1543, and then much later Elizabeth alone with Sir Christopher Hatton on a river near to Windsor in 1586.
The aim has been to go beyond the usual reading experience encountered by those of us who enjoy Tudor history, an experience in which we are presented with either a work of scholarly non-fiction, or else a novel with variable qualities of historical accuracy. I wanted, instead, to generate a certain ‘magical uncertainty’ with the facts – combining truth and fiction in which the sum becomes greater than its parts. This, I hope, might provide the reader with an overall impression of having learned and yet been entertained all at the same time.
There are additional chapters on the qualities of an Elizabethan courtier, and on whether Elizabeth herself really was a Virgin Queen, but the main content focuses on the relationships. It is, in other words, a collection of short stories set within a larger story – a special moment in time and space where reality and the world of the past and its inhabitants all meet up in the company of the reader.
‘Elizabeth – The Virgin queen and the Men who Loved Her’ is available in paperback and kindle. And it even has its own website: https://elizabethsmen.wordpress.com where you can view portraits of the gentlemen themselves, read the first few pages and see how the cover was made. I hope you enjoy it.
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