Monday, 12 December 2016
First of the Tudors by Joanna Hickson
Release Date: 1st December 2016
Publisher: Harper
Publisher: Harper
Genres: Historical Fiction
I am thrilled to have Joanna Hickson on the blog today with a fantastic guest post! First, lets find out what her book First Of The Tudors is all about.......
Book Blurb
Bestowing Earldoms on them both, Henry also gives them the wardship of the young heiress Margaret Beaufort. Although she is still a child, Jasper becomes devoted to her and is devastated when Henry arranges her betrothal to Edmund.
He seeks solace in his estates and in the arms of Jane Hywel, a young Welsh woman who offers him something more meaningful than a dynastic marriage. But passion turns to jeopardy for them both as the Wars of the Roses wreak havoc on the realm. Loyal brother to a fragile king and his domineering queen, Marguerite of Anjou, Jasper must draw on all his guile and courage to preserve their throne - and the Tudor destiny…
Book Blurb
Jasper Tudor, son of Queen Catherine and her second husband, Owen Tudor,
has grown up far from the intrigue of the royal court. But after he and
his brother Edmund are summoned to London, their half-brother, King
Henry VI, takes a keen interest in their future.
Bestowing Earldoms on them both, Henry also gives them the wardship of the young heiress Margaret Beaufort. Although she is still a child, Jasper becomes devoted to her and is devastated when Henry arranges her betrothal to Edmund.
He seeks solace in his estates and in the arms of Jane Hywel, a young Welsh woman who offers him something more meaningful than a dynastic marriage. But passion turns to jeopardy for them both as the Wars of the Roses wreak havoc on the realm. Loyal brother to a fragile king and his domineering queen, Marguerite of Anjou, Jasper must draw on all his guile and courage to preserve their throne - and the Tudor destiny…
GUEST POST
Historical curve
balls in a writer’s research.
What is a
historical curve ball you may ask? Well,
when history suddenly takes a swerve just after your intensely researched
manuscript has been sent to the printers, threatening your novel with an own
goal – that!
Let’s start with
one of the most controversial characters in English history – King Richard III.
At one time Shakespeare’s depiction of a megalomaniac, child-murdering cripple
was accepted as accurate but now those of us who wish to chart his opponent’s
story encounter messianic support for a ‘betrayed’ Richard, particularly from
the United States where Henry Tudor seems to have become a pariah by
default. How has this happened?
On a recent trip
to the Bosworth Battlefield Heritage Site I asked one visiting American why so
many of her compatriots were such passionate Ricardians and received a very
interesting reply. She told me that
Josephine Tey’s novel Daughter of Time, which
sets out to prove that Richard III was not guilty of murdering the Princes in
the Tower, was a set book in English in her State (Georgia) and many others and
has firmly fixed thousands of opinions over the years. It seems that such is the power of historical
fiction across the pond that Richard Plantagenet has become a misunderstood champion
of the people, a much-maligned man and monarch and a candidate for England’s
best-loved king.
Even in England
and particularly in Leicester, where his body was reinterred in the cathedral
after being almost miraculously discovered under tarmac in a local car park, he
has almost reached the status of a saint – not bad going for a king who only
sat on the throne for two years and six weeks and left a trail of executed
‘traitors’ in his wake – not to mention a couple of disappeared and
disinherited ‘bastard’ princes! (The
quotation marks are mine, intended to indicate that this was how Richard
himself described them).
Known as the
Foxes, even Leicester City football team’s promotion to the Premier League and
subsequent rise up that chart has been credited to the influence of ‘Saint’
Richard. In the Guardian newspaper, journalists Chris Moran and Stephen Moss
imagined the dead king’s relish of this elevation in a parody on Richard’s
famous soliloquy in Shakespeare’s play.
‘Now is the winter of our
discontent
Made glorious summer by this
championship.
Since Leicester was my final
resting place,
Following my reverse at Bosworth
Field,
The Foxes have become my second
love,
A steady passion for my vulpine
ways,
And after last year’s fight with
relegation,
How sweet the plaudits of a smitten
nation!’
It is not
documented that anyone actually prays for saintly intercession at Richard’s
spanking new tomb in Leicester Cathedral but it has certainly become a must-visit
destination for Richard fans and Leicester City supporters alike. For those of us trying to tell the story of
the Tudor rise to power, encounters with fanatical Ricardians can be a challenge. Not that we aren’t up to it of course and at
least we win the penalty shoot-out at Bosworth!
Other curveballs may
be kicked when fresh archaeology or research changes the ‘facts’ of
history. At Pembroke Castle in West
Wales for instance visitors are informed that King Henry VII was born in a
certain chamber in a certain tower and presented with a diorama in which the
swaddled baby is in the arms of a nurse and his mother, Lady Margaret Beaufort,
is seated beside the cradle at the fireside doing her embroidery. At the same time an icy wind is whistling down
the chimney, howling through the unshuttered windows and slamming the doors
that give access to the wall-walk along the battlements. Of course there is no real fire in the grate
in this exhibition but were there to be one, the flames would be battling to
give out much warmth in such conditions.
This was a tower built to give shelter and vantage point to the soldiers
of the garrison while defending the castle from enemy attack, not for
accommodating the birth of a child to a highly vulnerable thirteen-year-old
mother. Even allowing for the harshness
of medieval living conditions, it is hard to imagine a less suitable room for the
confinement of a young lady of high nobility.
By the time I
returned to my writing desk I had already decided that in my book Henry Tudor
would not be born in that chamber or that tower. But where to set such a historically important
event? It’s exact location is not
recorded; I would be flying in the face of tradition by removing it from the
tower but I could be facing ridicule if I set the scene somewhere that later
proved to be completely inaccurate.
It would be spoiling
readers’ enjoyment to reveal the location I chose but I will just say that some
news came out of Pembroke Castle only a week or so ago, some time after First of the Tudors went to print, which
I’m happy to say completely justified the choice I made.
One curve-ball
kicked into touch - phew!
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