What inspired you to take the leap from writing contemporary novels to writing about the Tudors?
Well, in a sense it didn’t feel to me, at the time, as if I were taking any leap – I wasn’t conscious, as it were, of any leaping! – because I’d simply decided to write a novel about (or, more specifically, in the voice of) Anne Boleyn; I didn’t see myself as embarking on “writing about the Tudors”. What happened was that I was stuck for an idea for a new book, and I asked myself what story really, really interested me. (And funnily enough, I’d never before thought primarily in terms of ‘story’, had always started with character/situation.) And the answer, coming from nowhere, very much surprising me, was: Anne Boleyn. (This was back in 2000, before ‘The Other Boleyn Girl’ and the telly Tudors.) I couldn’t even remember much of her story – bar the eventual loss of head, obviously – but I knew that I’d been captivated during my younger years, thanks to my mum’s Jean Plaidys. Anyway, I immediately jettisoned the idea – before it was even so much as an idea – because, as far as I was concerned, I didn’t write historical novels: it was out of the question that I’d tackle Anne Boleyn, I wouldn’t have a clue how to proceed (what did one do about historical detail?! I didn’t know any!). But then, twenty-four hours later, it suddenly occurred to me that I didn’t have to write it as what I was thinking of as ‘a historical novel’; I could probably do a kind of modern take on it. I don’t think I had any idea what I meant by that; it was just that I had the sense that there had to be a way that I could do it. Then I began the research, the reading, (the Eric Ives’ biog., principally), and I could ‘hear’ Anne, as it were, so very, very loud and clear! – and I knew that I wanted to write in that voice. I knew I could get her onto the page. I told my agent what I was intending to do, and he said, ‘Don’t just re-write history,’ i.e. find a different way to tell it, a different point of view. He didn’t want me to write in Anne’s voice at all. But I stuck to my guns on that, and I’m glad I did.
Readers are insatiable when it comes to Anne Boleyn, what do you think was and still is her lure?
Oh I wish I knew! I often ponder this, but I don’t really have an answer. It’s not that she’s a particularly tragic figure, I don’t think – she doesn’t come over particularly sympathetically, does she – but nor is she utterly wicked (or not to those of us who know our stuff, anyway), so that’s not why she’s compelling. Actually, now I’m wondering if it isn’t that complexity that makes her so interesting. (Well, and that what happened to her was, frankly, so extraordinary, of course! – that rise that was both sudden and yet so protracted, and her coming from nowhere, relatively, to supplant a much-loved queen, and then the swiftness and thoroughness of her downfall…) She was clearly hugely ambitious – and held out for exactly what she wanted over so many years and through such enormous difficulties – but the whole business was, I believe (and I think most other people believe, and I think we’re right), also, (or even primarily), for her, a matter of the heart. If it’d been just one or the other – that she was wildly ambitious and calculating OR that she’d been madly in love with the king for all those years – perhaps she wouldn’t be so interesting.
You have written novels about Anne Boleyn, Katherine Parr and Katherine Howard. Who is your favourite of Henry VIII’s queens and why?
I’m going to wimp out and say that I don’t have a favourite, and it’s true. Catherine of Aragon was, by all accounts, lovely: a lovely wife, mother, friend, employer and queen. An intelligent, thoughtful woman who ended up fighting long and hard and fair for her daughter. Tremendously admirable, and, I’m quite sure, enormously likeable. Anne Boleyn is, of course, compelling: I very much admire her interest in reform, her ambition and lack of compromise; her clear, very public impatience with protocol and hierarchy; her wit and outspokenness. She was cruel, though (how appallingly cruel she was to poor motherless teenaged Mary!), and I sense that she was one of those women who don’t like other women. We know almost nothing of Jane Seymour except that she was very kind to Mary and made a consistent (and successful) effort throughout her time as queen to rehabilitate her at court. I imagine she was likeable (is it obvious that I’m trying to avoid adding ‘if rather dull’, here..?!). Anne of Cleves liked a drink and a dance, and, although I’m no drinker and am always to be found talking in the kitchen at parties, I think I’d have liked her for that, and for how she dealt with her ‘demotion’, shall we say, with such good grace. Katherine Howard? Hmmm, well… Katherine clearly had a considerable hold over her friends, which is interesting, but I’m not sure I’d have been a friend (but what am I saying?! – I based her character in my novel largely on a close school friend of mine!) Katherine Parr would’ve made the best friend for me, I suspect. She seems to have been highly valued by her many friends, both male and female (and adored by her stepchildren – all of them, not just Henry’s children): open and warm, yet properly cautious; clever, forward-thinking, and full of gentle humour.
Do you believe that Henry VIII ordered Cromwell to fabricate the case against his wife, Anne Boleyn, so that he could marry Jane Seymour? Or do you think that Cromwell concocted the ‘coup’ in order to destroy the Boleyn faction, as he viewed them as a serious threat to his position (and neck…) and then presented his ‘findings’ to the king?
I think it’s a mix of your two propositions… I think Cromwell took it upon himself to fabricate the case against Anne so that his king would be free from the marriage; he knew what Henry wanted, but I doubt Henry ever came out and actually said it (that wasn’t the way he worked – he liked other people to do his dirty work for him, ‘work’ including coming up with the ideas). My sense is that Cromwell wasn’t too worried by the Boleyn faction, I don’t think he saw them as too much of a threat; I think he was quite confident (rightly so) in his position, at that time. What’s so very interesting, though, is that Cromwell couldn’t do anything, only a few years later, when it came to Anne of Cleves. And in that case, Henry was very open as to what he wanted, and Cromwell was painfully aware that his life depended on setting aside this Anne… yet he seems to have been utterly stumped by this situation, which should’ve been so much simpler.
Was there more to Katherine Howard than just a silly, naïve, nobody as she is so often portrayed?
Yes and no! She was indeed a nobody (despite being a Howard – she was bottom of the pile of the Howards, as it were), and she was indeed silly and naive (SO silly and naive! – how on earth did she EVER think she’d get away with what she was doing?!). But there was definitely more to her. There was the hold that she had over her small group of friends and lovers/ex-lovers: that’s very interesting, I think. And she was a sexually-confident young woman, which doesn’t come over, I don’t think, in those portrayals of her as a giggly air-head.
In your novels your characters use ‘modern language’. Can you tell me about the reasoning behind this?
I don’t know if I’d necessarily dignify it with ‘reasoning’! I think of it as more of ‘instinct’… I came at it, this modern-language-approach, from several different angles, and anyway I think it’s about more than language, it’s about sensibility. The first Tudor I ever wrote about – tried to re-create on the page – was Anne Boleyn, and she was such a very modern woman for her time (shockingly so), and also she swore like a trooper, and that was what I was aiming to capture on the page. Anyway, we don’t know how Tudors spoke, do we. We know how they – or how some of them – wrote, but writing is very, very different from speaking (much more so than most of us think – but if you doubt me, take a look at some modern-day transcripts of speech and you’ll see what I mean). That’s not to say, though, that I think that they sounded like they do in my novels! But in the absence of knowing how they sounded, I’ve decided to have them sounding like us: I took that decision, it was a definite decision on my part to emphasize the similarities between them and us in language and sensibility rather than the (undoubtedly many, profound) differences; I could just as easily have decided to go the other way with it, I suppose, but I’m aiming for readers to identify with characters rather than feel that they’re viewing them from down the wrong end of a telescope, as it were, and, anyway I felt I wasn’t up to it, couldn’t hope to write a Tudor-language that didn’t sound rather ‘cod’ nor reproduce a Tudor mentality. For instance, I’m acutely aware that religion would play a big part in these characters’ lives, but in my books I don’t have them thinking very much, if at all, of God; I sort of try to leave it alone as a given (i.e. I deliberately don’t ‘go there’!). That’s because I don’t DARE go there! – I was brought up as, and remain, an atheist, and I know I just couldn’t do justice to those characters’ faith.
What is your advice to people thinking about writing a Tudor novel?
I’d go with my agent’s advice to me: don’t just re-tell history (i.e. re-imagine it). Fiction – however closely based on fact – benefits from being about ‘What If…?’
Are you presently working on any Tudor books?
I certainly am! I’m looking at Jane Seymour, at a scandal that ripped apart her (hitherto quiet, conventional) family when she was a teenager.
Living in England, I’m sure that you’ve visited many places connected to the Tudors. Do you have a favourite Tudor location?
Sudeley Castle in Gloucestershire, I think: it’s where The Sixth Wife is largely set; it was Katherine Parr and Thomas Seymour’s marital home. Most – but not all – of it is now ruined, but it’s a magical site, with lovely, evocative gardens; and the part of the building where, we think, Katherine Parr had her private rooms is intact, with a glorious window that is thought to date from that time. That part of the building is still inhabited – and thus not open to visitors unless by special arrangement – but you can stand in the gardens and gaze up at that window and imagine Katherine gazing down.
If you could ask any historical personality a question, who would it be and what would you ask?
I think I’d ask Henry VIII why he felt he had to have Anne Boleyn killed, rather than sending her away to a nunnery or something (as she was – of course! – hoping would happen). She had no supporters or allies (unlike Catherine of Aragon); if she’d stayed alive, she wouldn’t have been the focus for any discontent. I doubt he’d tell me the truth, though; I don’t think he very often told *himself* the truth.
For more information on this author visit Suzannah’s official website here.
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