Carol McGrath’s latest is a fictionalised biography of the life of 13th century Queen Ailenor, wife of Henry III. You probably know her (if you know her at all) as Eleanor but McGrath prefers the alternative spelling.
I knew practically nothing about the 13th century when I started this book and I was certainly massively better informed by the end. It is packed with politics and personalities as well as details of everyday life.
McGrath used to teach history and her knowledge of the period is evident throughout the book. It is a great primer for anyone wanting to understand the power plays of the medieval period and the importance of marriages to bind together the families that controlled the countries of Europe. At the top, King Henry’s marriage ties together England and Provence, just as his daughter’s marriage will, in time, bond Scotland to the English throne. Further down the social scale, the marriage prospects of the embroideress, Rosalind, are viewed by her tailor father as a way to further his business connections, as his own marriage with a widowed haberdasher has.
The web of family relationships that marriages produce can bind the prosperity of a tailor to the political success of an earl. The personal is always political, the political always personal.
The book reminds us that England and France shared ties of blood as well as economic and political alliances. Tracts of what is now France were the property of King Henry, while Scotland then was a foreign country. And over all, there was the Church, a separate and mighty power, able to mobilise armies as well as threaten excommunication to those who crossed it.
Money, too, was central to the relationships in this book. Money has to be raised so that money can be spent. The church must be taxed and God appeased by ever more extravagant buildings. Henry is building Westminster Abbey and the nation is paying for it. Unrest is calmed with acts of extravagant generosity but stoked when taxes are raised to pay for them. Earls are, essentially, bribed to support the king against other earls who will, in turn, demand bribes of their own.
It’s a chaotic, dangerous world, in which Queen Ailenor often retreats to shelter amongst her own ladies, dressed in the finest gowns, eating food flavoured with spices imported from thousands of miles away – a life of unimaginable luxury, not only intrinsically desirable but necessary if she is to retain the status and authority of her role.
McGrath’s book offers an insight into a lost world. It almost makes the world of today’s political and economic powers look sane by comparison.
I’ve just had one of these Twitter things where you are asked to list your five favourite books or six favourite films or seven favourite dwarves. This one was “five favourite things”. As ever, I over-think my reply.
My first worry is: ‘are people things?’ The person who sent me the question is happy to include her “boys”, which I assume means husband and male children. She can probably get away with this, but if I mention my wife then, as a man, I could be accused of objectifying her. I’m not even sure that the PC brigade don’t have a point. She’s not a ‘favourite thing’, she’s a person. And if I do mention her, then what about my son? I mean, I love him too, but it’s a different sort of love now he’s grown up and moved away and married. So maybe ‘my family’. But how much of my family? My daughter-in-law? My sister I hardly ever see? Should I rate them against friends who, prior to covid, I saw almost every week?
Probably best to leave people out of it.
Home
Let’s say my very favourite thing is ‘Home’, which is handy, given the situation we all find ourselves in. And it does sort of include my wife, because ‘home’ is defined in part by the presence of both of us in it.
The bit of home I’m looking at right now.
Phew! One down, four to go.
Tango
The second one is easy. It’s tango. I’ve blogged too much about this already. If you want to know why I love it so much, then go and read my blog post HERE. Rather to my surprise, it’s one of the most-read posts I’ve ever written.
I miss dancing with my friends and I look forward to doing it again as soon as I can. Fortunately, though, we have the space to dance at home, so we’re doing a lot of practice at the moment. It keeps us happy and sane. (As sane as we ever are, I guess.)
Skating
The third is easy too. It’s street-skating. After three weeks stuck in the house (we had to isolate a week ahead of everyone else because my wife had a temperature and a cough) we decided to put our skates on and take our permitted exercise on the empty streets. It’s been bliss!
Arriving in Amsterdam (having skated from Hook of Holland)
Skiing
For the fourth I would have said skiing but we missed the season last year (for the first time in over 40 years) and our attempts to hit the slopes this year were foiled by the virus. Will we still love it as much when we get back? I do hope so. There is something magical about exploring the mountains on snow.
Wales
The fifth is another one where I’m not as confident as I would have been before covid. It’s mid-Wales. My wife used to live there as a child and we return often. Last year we spent about a month there all-told. We think of it as home and love it as much as home in London. It’s always been our bolt-hole in a crisis and this year we’ve been told by the Welsh government that we can’t go. In fact, we probably couldn’t have gone there anyway, because there is still work to do and a working internet is something we couldn’t live without for an extended period. (Perhaps I should make that a favourite thing?) I can see why the Welsh don’t want people visiting, but the joy of the place is that we literally go for days on end without seeing another soul, so it seems a good place to self-isolate. Anyway, even if the rule makes sense, just like the EU citizens who used to think of the UK as home, being told we’re not welcome colours the way I view Wales. I hope we still love it when we eventually get back, but right now, like a lot of covid couples, we’re on a break. I’ll leave it up anyway and hope to be happy there again when this is all over.
A word from our sponsor
Wow! I seem to have exceeded 240 characters. Obviously this works better as a blog post than a tweet.
I enjoy blogging, but it does take up quite a lot of my time and it doesn’t pay me a penny. It would be quite nice if, if you enjoy reading my blog, you consider buying one of my books. It’s not like you don’t have time to read right now. The cheapest of my books costs just 99p and all are available on Kindle, which is useful when Amazon is struggling to deliver them in paperback. There is information on all my books, with buy links, on this website: http://tomwilliamsauthor.co.uk/my-books/
There only seems to be one subject that everybody is talking
about at the moment so I’m going to join in with an account of lockdown life. Strangely, I’m finding less activity on my social media and
fewer hits on my blog, so it’s probably not the right time to be writing a
long, serious historical article. If you do want to read long, serious
historical articles, you could spend some of your time at home looking through
old posts of mine – check out http://tomwilliamsauthor.co.uk/blog/.
During the first days of lockdown I saw an irritating number
of articles suggesting that this was the time when I could finally achieve a
new and exciting goal. Lots of people told me that
Shakespeare had written King Lear
during a period of quarantine and psychologists rushed to assure me that I
would only be able to stay sane if I followed a rigorous programme of regular
exercise and possibly spent my evenings learning a new language. Anybody who
knows me, will realise that these ideas were unlikely to go down well. Since
we’ve been in lockdown I’ve had a birthday and my wife bought me a toy sloth,
which shows just how well she knows me.
All this means that you can be sure you will not get a
Pollyanna-ish blog about how lucky you all are not to be able to see any of
your friends. I am very aware that, besides the thousands of people who
are dying, many people are really suffering economically and emotionally from
what is happening at the moment. But it is worth remembering that there are
upsides.
Life is not fair and while there are too many families on minimum wage trying to survive in a small flat with children locked in almost all the time, the two of us are comfortable in a big flat in an airy part of London. We can still dance together (as in the photo above). We are both used to working from home – indeed, my beloved sometimes says it needs a crowbar to get me outside. So we are finding adjusting to this is very easy. In fact, much of the time, I don’t have to make any adjustments at all. It is worth remembering, though, that this crisis has led to some really good things that we might like to remember as we move back to “normal”. Could we, perhaps, try to hold on to some of the things that we have come to appreciate?
Like most people in West London, we enjoy the dubious privilege of living under a Heathrow flight path. Not having the peace disrupted every few minutes as another planeful of businessmen jet off on their ‘essential’ travel is bliss. Now that so many people have realised that their flights weren’t that essential after all, can we go back to a world where we just have a whole heap fewer aircraft?
The absence of planes and cars has meant noticeably bluer skies. This was the sky over the Albert memorial earlier this week. Trust me, it’s not usually like that.
How come we were at the Albert Memorial? We skated there. Skating is one of the main ways we exercise. Usually we have to skate in a large group, because traffic makes it at best unpleasant and at worst just too dangerous to skate around town. Personally I find even cycling in London can be unnerving. But not for the last few weeks. With fewer cars on the road, skating or cycling has become a pleasure. Not only is it quieter but the cars that are there all seem to be being driven more slowly and considerately now that they are not fighting for every inch of space.
I can hear the birds. They seem to be less frightened of humans, too, for some reason. I’d say this was my imagination but I’ve heard other people mention it. Sometimes it goes too far – we had to chase a couple of pigeons out of our bedroom last week.
Not only is the air cleaner, so is the water. Walking by the River Thames, you can see the bottom near the shore. Perhaps we need to ask if we really need quite so many pleasure boats going up and down it – especially when they ignore the speed limit and create massive amounts of disturbance, stirring up the silt at the bottom.
As we’re not driving anywhere and it is all too literally as much is your life is worth to risk public transport, we are doing much more exploring in the area near where we live. After almost 35 years, you’d think we’d know it really well, but it turns out that there are beautiful spots quite close to us which we have never visited. They’re not crowded either. Socially isolating means treasuring the quieter parts of London and it is surprising just how many there are.
Like a lot of people we have discovered that it is neither necessary nor desirable to shower every day. The river life that is no longer drinking our rinsed-off detergent is grateful.
As we are not going out, we eat home-cooked food every day. It tastes better, it’s better for us, and we’re not even putting on weight.
Less of a social life also means that we get to sleep when we want, rather than when the last train gets us home.
I see families in the park. There are fathers who can now remember what their children look like. I asked a neighbour (from two metres away) how her teenage son was taking it and she said he was just happy not to be doing exams at school.
And speaking of school, I hope this will be remembered next time that some self-important educationalist tells us that missing a single day of school can destroy a child’s education. Our son was home educated for GCSE (now has a good degree from a good university and postgraduate qualifications), so I have always had my doubts about this particular shibboleth. I hope some other people are going to question it too.
Different people will have
different blessings, but it’s probably worth remembering what they are. I fear that when this is over, we will very quickly try to go
back to what life was like before. If, though, we can remember some of the things
this experience has taught us, maybe something positive can come out of it.
I still haven’t written King Lear though.
Of course, I have written the odd other thing …
I am still writing. It would be nice if some of you were using this time to read one or two of my books. All are available on Kindle (important right now, when getting my paperbacks delivered can be tricky). Dark Magic is also available free to read on Kindle Unlimited.
Easter this year looks set to be rather different from usual. Although people are naturally alarmed about covid-19, we are at least not worrying that there may be rebellion and massacre in the near future. Spare a thought, then, for the British community in India in 1857. The events that the British still generally (and inaccurately) refer to as the Indian Mutiny were not to kick off until May, but by Easter that year there were already indications that things were not as they should be.
In my book, Cawnpore, my narrator, John Williamson, is the Deputy Collector — part of the British administration running India. He has arrived in India from Borneo. There is a reference in this passage to his guilt over killings he had witnessed there. Sadly, Victorian colonial history features quite a lot of massacres. John Williamson has been involved in a massacre in Borneo and (though he does not know it yet) is is about to see one from the other side in Cawnpore (now Kanpur). That Easter, though, the European community was determined to carry on as if there were no signs of trouble to come. This extract from my book reflects the reality of life at the time.
I took myself to my office and settled to work as best I could. There was plenty to do. The end of the week would be Good Friday and work in the office would stop while the Europeans took themselves to church for a day of prayer and fasting.
That evening I did not return directly to my bungalow but, instead, called in on the Club. I was not a regular visitor for I never felt truly comfortable with the gentlemen there. Still I took care to call in often enough that neither my presence nor absence caused comment. This evening I wanted to judge for myself the atmosphere in the European community.
All seemed much as it had been on my last visit a couple of weeks earlier. The waiters moved quietly from table to table pouring more brandies than might have been expected in quieter times and the newspapers were tattered from the number of people reading them but there was no sign of panic. Indeed, the promise of Easter seemed to be calming nerves. The stately rhythm of the ecclesiastical year seems to promise that the present crisis would pass. The story of the Resurrection and Christ’s triumph over death reassured believers (and none would admit to doubting) that the Lord would see them safely through their present travails.
So the days to Easter passed with no further excitement and, on Good Friday, I joined the faithful in St John’s Church to repent my sins. I listened to the murmured prayers of the men and women around me and wished that I could share their faith and their belief but I could not and I left the service still weighed down by the guilt of all that had happened in Borneo. Every Good Friday since I had stood by and watched my friend destroy his enemies, I had repented my sin, that I had not stopped him. Yet I did not believe that God had forgiven me.
My spirits were lifted the next day when I dined again with Hillersdon. It was a quiet evening with Charles treating me almost as one of the family. Lydia suffered with the heat, given her condition, but was as bright and cheerful as could be expected and we parted with best wishes for Easter Day.
The service on Sunday went well. The bright red of the officers’uniforms enlivened the place and their voices covered for any weakness on the part of the choir. All the European families had turned out to celebrate and decorated eggs were handed to the children as they left the church. Listening to their laughter and seeing their mothers in their Easter bonnets, it was easy, for a moment, to imagine ourselves back in England and the air of menace that had filled every waking moment for so long seemed temporarily lifted.
Cawnpore is available as an e-book at £1.99 or in paperback at £5.99. (Remember that Amazon can be slow to deliver books at the moment.) Although it is the second of three books about John Williamson, it can be read as a stand alone novel.
“For anyone who has a love for this period, Cawnpore is probably one for you.”
Apparently I’m not alone in struggling to remember what day it is. This has been a strange few weeks, hasn’t it? Obviously, as I sit at home and write most days, it’s made a lot less difference to me than to most people. Even so, it’s been rather weird. My beloved, who has been frantically busy the past few months, is still working, but from home. It’s strange having somebody else in the house all the time, but quite nice. Outside the wider world seems so dislocated from its normal self that is difficult to connect to things. I had expected to see a massive increase in the amount of activity online, but I find both Facebook and Twitter oddly quiet. I guess most of us feel we have nothing to talk about except the virus, and we really don’t want to talk about that more than we have to. Instead I’m spending more time on e-mails and messaging and much more time on the phone. My son, who is of a generation that will always rather text than make a phone call, says he has been rediscovering telephone calls and talking to friends he hasn’t actually had a conversation with in ages. We all reach out in the ways we can, I guess.
It seems to have affected the way people read as well. Readership of my blog is down. (I hope you’ll forgive this light-weight post because it seems a bad week to write anything heavy that I suspect people won’t read.) I’m hoping to see some increase in the sales of my books, though. Or, at the very least, an increase in the readership of Dark Magic on Kindle Unlimited. (It’s the only one of my books on Kindle Unlimited, so if you are a member you can read this one for free.)
Somebody on Twitter asked if people were changing the sort of books they read. Were they using the opportunity to catch up on really heavy things?
It made me think about my reading recently. One nice thing is that I’ve been doing rather more of it. Unable to go out dancing or skating (which between them would usually account for about four afternoons/evenings a week) I’ve definitely been reading a bit more. The things I’ve read have been either the literary equivalent of comfort food, or heavy books I’ve been putting off.
I finished Riflemen, which was a Christmas present. It’s a history of the 5th Battalion of the 60th (Royal American) Regiment, who were active in the Peninsular War. It’s an absolutely brilliant book (my review is here: http://tomwilliamsauthor.co.uk/riflemen/) but it’s not what you’d call an easy read. It was lovely to have the time to sit down and finish it. I also finished a short book of Lt Thomas Blomfield’s letters to his family from the battlefields of the Peninsula. The letters are fun to read, combining family gossip (“Give my love to Louisa and tell her I hope she is a good housekeeper”) and accounts of the horror of events like the sacking of Badajoz (“The town was given up to plunder for 24 hours and such a scene I never before saw.”) Even the bowdlerised accounts of some of the war, designed for reading by his family, are horrific. It’s a fantastic read for anyone interested though.
I’ve also been reading about police procedures for another contemporary novel I’m working on and I’m starting on Carol McGrath’s latest, The Silken Rose. It’s based on the life of the 13th century Ailenor of Provence which is rather outside my comfort zone, but Carol is a great writer, so I’m expecting to enjoy it.
At the other extreme, I’ve been indulging my not-so-secret vices: chick lit (Sophie Kinsella’s Sleeping Arrangements) and thrillers like Lee Child’s brilliant Reacher series and even the odd graphic novel (which is the posh name for comic books). Writers aren’t supposed to admit to that sort of reading, but it’s great – and it’s particularly great at a time like this.
I’m very lucky in being able to dance tango at home and we’ve started to video our efforts so we can identify the bits that need improvement. It turns out there are a lot of them, so we won’t be bored.
All in all, we’re lucky. The virus passed over without doing any significant damage, though my beloved has lost her sense of smell, which is more upsetting than you’d think. I’m honestly not sure if I’ve had it or not, though being in the same house gives that day of feeling a bit unwell a whole new significance. Every time I coughed we got nervous. We know people who have been really sick, so we appreciate how lucky we are.
Stay at home. Stay safe. Let me know how you’re spending your time.
