At 7pm o
n Wednesday 2nd May at 
Lord Leycester’s Hospital
Harriett Castor will be talking about our ‘Book Of The Year’ for 2011 ‘VIII’
and Nicola Shulman will be talking about her book on Sir Thomas Wyatt
We are delighted to welcome to Warwick two wonderful Tudor authors. Harriett Castor’s ‘VIII’ is the story of Hal: a young, handsome, gifted warrior, who believes he has been chosen to lead his people. But he is plagued by the ghosts of his family’s violent past and, once he rises to power, he himself turns to murder and rapacious cruelty. He is…….. Henry VIII. The Tudors have always captured the popular imagination, but in ‘VIII’, Henry is presented in a totally different light. It is Henry’s story as told by himself. It’s a wonderful, wonderful novel based on the meticulous research of a genuine Historian, written for teenagers but definitely for adults too. Here is Frances’ review……”I have never really been a huge fan of historical fiction. Although a lot of it, surprisingly, is written by real historians, it tends not to be very convincing. This however is different. Harriett is a first-class historian (her sister Helen is too) and the amount of research she did for the novel really shines through. Not just along historical lines either…she consulted psychoanalysts and in particular the Jungian analyst Matthew Harwood, as well as clothing experts, martial arts gurus,experts on the Italian Wars and anything else you can think of. So the first criterion for an historical novel – that it is believable – is met in spades.
But it is, as other reviwers have said, a real page turner. You just don’t want to put it down. The unique view point from which it is written, inside Henry’s own head, helps it enormously and gives an immediacy which is brilliant. Breathtaking. And it really does give us an opportunity to re-assess what we think of Henry, and take a different view on him than that provided by the portraits with which we are so familiar…the ogre who thinks nothing of executing wives or friends, or the gross, obese tyrant totally self-centred, vain and dictatorial.
It is without doubt the best book I have read this year, the most exciting, the most thoughtful, and one I would recommend without resrvation to teens or adults. Do read it.”
H. M. Castor has been obsessed with the Tudors since primary school. She studied Tudor History at Cambridge University, and despite spending time after that doing a variety of jobs – including teaching English in Prague, the Tudors have never lost their hold on her. In particular she has been fascinated by the story of Henry VIII. I’ve read a great deal about his life, she says, but still a huge question has remained: just how does this extraordinary boy become one of the most villainous kings in British history? He is hugely talented, has astonishing warrior skills, and is said to be a model of virtue. So what turns him into a monster? In writing’ VIII’ I’ve set out to answer that question.
Nicola Shulman is herself a modern Marchioness, although she’s certainly not one to play up that aspect of her life. However it does perhaps resonate in her writing and in ‘Graven With Diamonds’ a book both intriguing and amusing she tells the story of Henry VIII, – his court, his victims and his Queens – from the perspective of a powerful but little-discussed influence in the lives of those involved: poetry. Learned divines despised it, sober heads ignored it, but for Henry, the beau ideal of chivalry, poetry made things happen. It affected his wars, his diplomacy and his many marriages.
It was at the root of his fatal attraction to Anne Boleyn, the source of her power and it was the means of her destruction. In this witty and accessible account, Nicola Shulman interweaves the bloody events of Henry’s reign with the story of English love poetry and the life of its first master, Henry’s most glamorous and enigmatic subject: Sir Thomas Wyatt. Courtier, spy, wit, diplomat, assassin, lover of Anne Boleyn, and favourite both of Henry and his sinister minister Thomas Cromwell, the brilliant Wyatt was admired and envied in equal measure.
His love poetry began as an elite and risque entertainment for the group of ambitious men and women at the slippery top of the court. But when the axe began to fall among this group, and Henry’s laws made his subjects fall silent in terror, Wyatt’s poetic skills became a way to survive. He saw that a love poem was a place where secrets could hide.
From its first appearance Nicola’s book has received rave reviews
“This glitteringly brilliant book… dazzles in its scope, its scholarship and its originality… As a biography it is exceptionally accomplished, as an illumination of the function of literature under tyranny it is extraordinarily modern. Everyone who cares anything for poetry should read this vivid, dynamic and exhilarating account of how and why words matter”. –Times Literary Supplement, Book of the Year
“Masterly… the best work of history this year” –AN Wilson, Book of the Year – Evening Standard
