I am hugely, almost obsessively, interested in the history of my country. I look at castles, abbeys and palaces and wonder at the lives which must have been lived therein; at costumes and jewels and who designed them, who chose them and who gifted them; at weapons and the thoughts of sons lost and at the everyday pots and bric-a-brac which survive against all the odds.
Melrose Abbey
My wonderment turned into embarrassment whilst playing ping-pong one day: as the scores were called out, an important date from history was married to them. “Anne Boleyn beheaded! Ah yes, Divorced, Beheaded, Died, Divorced, Beheaded, Survived”. I knew none of this detail – my education was rooted from an early age (a drawback of our education system) firmly in two disciplines: science and language. History, geography, art and philosophy belonged to other people. The family I married into were those “other people”.
The easiest way to begin my education seemed to be through the well-documented lives of our monarchs. I think that I can say, without too much controvercy, that the most interesting monarch who springs to mind is Henry VIII. I read voraciously, first biographies of the king himself then his wives and then back a little and forward a little. As I got a grasp of the era I became mesmerised by the politics, the courtiers, those who risked life, reputation and fortune on the whim of one person…
Henry VIII - Holbein
I read fact and fiction, learning (as with newspapers) to sniff out and disregard bias and supposition. I placed people on maps, marvelling at distances travelled on horseback, and went to those places where great people stopped to stretch their aching limbs and plunge the unfortunate hosts into debt we would be proud of today.
Every so often I make myself move forwards (or back) from the comfort of my nucleus: but then trip up from lack of material – currently I am stuck on James VI/I. Why is there not a plethora of material on this boy-king who united two kingdoms? Alternatively I am sucked (most enjoyably) out on a tangent to seek out texts on the players, rather than the stars: a big fat biography of Sir Walter Raleigh awaits me (a man whose pickled head was kept by his wife!).
What I have found is that there is almost an equal amount of gems to dross, and I would welcome any comments on which you think falls into either camp. I list a small selection here:
Alison Weir
Henry VIII King and Court; The Six Wives of Henry VIII; The Lady in the Tower: The Fall of Anne Boleyn; Innocent Traitor (fiction/fact)
Phillipa Gregory (fiction)
The Other Boleyn Girl; The Constant Princess; The Queen’s Fool
CJ Sanson (fiction)
Dissolution; Dark Fire; Sovereign; Revelation
Hilary Mantel (fiction)
Wolf Hall
Jane Dunn
Elizabeth & Mary
Raleigh Trevelyan
Sir Walter Raleigh
I have italicized those books which I felt had little merit or added little to my knowledge.
There are also, of course, the works of David Starkey and Lady Antonia Fraser – but I would be very interested to hear of those you have read which will widen my comfort zone.
