Another WW1 story you might not have heard, that of  Eugene Bullard,  a young black man who found freedom and respect far from his homeland. I'd never heard of him until recently and  found there are heaps of parallels between his life and that of Mathew Henson,  a hero abroad but ignored in his native land. Bullard became the first ever black military pilot in 1916 and won the Croix de Guerre, but ended his life working as a lift operator in the Rockefeller Center.

Eugene Bullard

Eugene Bullard stowed away on a ship and ended up in Aberdeen. He said he witnessed his father's narrow escape from a lynching. He made his way to Glasgow and worked there for a while. Life outside segregated America held a whole load more opportunities for a young black man and he settled in Paris in 1913 and worked as a prize fighter and sometimes in the music hall. He enlisted in 1914 on the outbreak of war and joined the French Foreign Legion. His unit, the 170th Line Infantry Regiment were known poetically as L'Hirondelles de la Mort,  the swallows of death.

Regimental badge of the 170th

Seriously wounded at Verdun he joined the French Air Force and went first on gunner training and then as a pilot. He flew with other American pilots in the Lafayette Flying corps and shot down at least one German plane, eventually promoted to the rank of Corporal. When the Americans joined the war they organised for American pilots in the Lafayette Corps to transfer to the USA Air Force. Bullard, naturally, was refused on account of his colour.

Bullard had a row with a French officer and was punished by demotion to the infantry. He continued to serve in the 170th until the end of the war, his nom de guerre was The Black Swallow.

Bullard stayed in France owned his own nightclub, married a wealthy woman and was part of Jazz Age Paris, his friends included Jacqueline Baker, Langston Hughes and Louis Armstrong.

He joined up again for WW2,  but was seriously injured and fled to the States. However life for a black man in America was hard, he was no longer the celebrated flier and nightclub owner, he found work as a security guard and sometime interpreter for Louis Armstrong.

He suffered too in the Peeskill Riots in 1949, when a Paul Robeson concert was attacked by anti communist American veterans. Bullard was one of the victims, his attackers included Law Enforcement officers and even though the attack was filmed no one was ever bought to justice.

Bullard was not forgotten in France. In 1954 he  was invited to rekindle the flame that was lit on the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior and in 1959 he was awarded the Legion d'Honneur. Bullard died in 1961 of cancer but it wasn't until he was dead that the USA recognised his achievement; he was posthumously awarded the rank of Second Lieutenant in the USA Air Force.



Catherine Johnson

by Marie-Louise Jensen



I have a copy of the Hávamál, which is a collection of 1,000 year-old poems translated as 'Sayings of the Vikings'. I found useful when I was writing my Norse stories Daughter of Fire and Ice and Sigrun's Secret as well as more recent younger stories.






It wasn't that I used anything from it directly in my writing. It was more that it gave me a sense of how the lives of the ancient Norse people were different to ours and also in which ways they were similar.
One of the ways their lives were very different was danger; especially danger of violent death. Thinking of Iceland, for example, as that is the Norse culture I'm most familiar with, there were clear laws and those who broke them could be sentenced to outlawry or fines. But there was no law enforcement, so if the guilty party failed to comply, his enemies would take matters into their own hands. Moreover, Viking tempers were quick and their sense of honour was strong, so feuds frequently arose.
Thus the Hávamál has a few warnings for observing personal safety:

Advice to a Vistor:

When passing
a door-post,
watch as you walk on,
inspect as you enter.
It is uncertain
where enemies lurk,
or crouch in a dark corner.

Famously, assassins would climb up in the roof space of doorways and drop down on unwary victims, killing them before they knew what had happened.

This gives such a flavour of the era. It is impossible to imagine in our lives today (in Europe anyway) having to inspect a doorway before walking in.

There are also warnings on quarrelling at feasts as feuds can follow and on guarding your tongue and carrying weapons when you leave home.
Then there are the sayings that are as useful today as they were in the days of longhouses and battle axes:

When to keep silent

Often it's best
for the unwise man
to sit in silence.
His ignorance
goes unnoticed
unless he tells too much.
It's the ill-fortune of unwise men
that they cannot keep silent.


There are plenty of warnings, too, about alcohol: "drink is a dangerous friend," and "ale unveils [the] mind." There is no doubt that foolish behaviour after drinking is a thousand-year-old issue at least.

Highly recommended for some insight into manners and etiquette of the times!

 Before the bonfires are lit, the Societies, joined by societies from outlying towns and villages, parade through the streets bearing lighted torches and towing effigies which will be burnt. Many of the marchers wear smuggler uniforms, each Society sporting different coloured stripes. They are led by 'pioneers' in fancy dress: monks, buccaneers, Civil War soldiers, Mongols, Ancient Greeks and Romans depending on the Society.  The differences and rituals are impenetrable to all but locals. The only thing that a visitor can do is stand back- well back - some of the marchers drop bangers and set off strings fire crackers while spent torches are thrown down to gutter at the spectators' feet - and enjoy the spectacle.

Shipton-under-Wychwood Church

John Ball encouraging the peasants

Richard II meeting the peasants

John Wycliffe

Disclaimer: this is only a small summary of what I saw in the exhibition at the British Museum, or of my reactions to it!



Photo: Superoniskop via Wikimedia Commons

The first thing I really noticed when I came into this exhibition was a video of the fall of the Berlin Wall on the 9th November 1989. I can still feel the intense, almost incredulous joy and sense of release of that event; having seen and loathed the Wall every time I had been to Berlin before that. As previous readers of my blogs here will know, my family come from a portion of Germany so far east that now it is no longer Germany and never will be again; but I had family members who lived and died on the wrong side of the wall, and so I never knew them. Moreover, I had read German at university, concentrating on literature, and there were places I had only ever visited on the pages of books; oh, I could have travelled to them, yet the Wall seemed to place them out of reach, in a different world, almost. I love the above photograph, because it shows a horde of little people, with small hammers, tapping away at the hated obstacle. I have a piece of the Wall in my study, chipped away by one of my husband's colleagues on the 9th November, perhaps in a scene like this. It looks so easy that one might ask: 'Why didn't they do it before?' but anyone who had seen the Wall, with its armed guards, its alarm mechanisms, its floodlighting, can give the answer to that. On the other hand, the people power to get it down had come from the numerous brave demonstrations on the eastern side, people armed with nothing but candles, wanting peace and real democracy, not the kind imposed on the so-called German Democratic Republic by Stalinist apparatchiks returning to Germany in 1945. I had forgotten that this was the year of Tiananmen Square, which makes you realise how dangerous the marches felt to those participating in them, and indeed, the armoured cars were there, the troops appeared, only - thanks to Gorbachev, I suspect, they weren't deployed.

photo: British Museum


This poster was also placed there: 'We are a people' a woman entering behind me translated, so I turned round and corrected her (because it seemed important) 'We are ONE people.' Which is what it meant.

And yet - inspiring though the poster, from the demonstrations in Leipzig, is, what the exhibition celebrates is the diversity and messiness of what it means to be German, something more defined by language than anything else, which would annoy those nationalists rightly lambasted by Simon Winder in Danubia, who want to prove that Europe can be divided into neat categories who never mix. It would also annoy some Austrians, but that is too bad. Taking my own heritage as an example; my mother was born in Zabrze in Upper Silesia; some of my grandfather's ancestors came from Austria as Protestant refugees from Tyrol, others from Bohemia, as it then was. My grandmother had a Polish maiden name and spoke Silesian, which was and still is, apparently, a Slav language with German accretions. Till 1946, when she was cattle-trucked 'back' to Germany, my mother lived in Silesia and in Graz, Austria. Till I was ten, in fact, I believed I was half Austrian. My mother then told me no; I was German, but I do feel very at home in Austria and can speak the language more happily than I can the language of North Germany, which (in its raw, ungentrified form,is not a million miles away from Flemish or Dutch.
This introduces a different aspect of the matter; that of language. Though to be German, in the past, was more defined by language than anything else (Walther von der Vogelweide, writing at the turn of the twelfth/thirteen century, uses the term 'tiuschiu zunge' for 'the German people', but zunge means tongue, therefore language), there is the diversity of the language to be taken into account. The version of German I speak is a rather gentrified kind of Alemannic German, which is spoken in most of South Germany, apart from the Rhineland, where Platt (Low German, or North German) is spoken. I learned to speak this as a child, incidentally, and thus had never any difficulty in Alsace, where they used to speak Rhenish German, though French, apparently, is gaining more and more ground. If that sounds complicated; well, it just is.
Because under the Holy Roman Empire (of the German nation), which lasted till the Napoleonic era, Germany was a conglomeration of smaller and larger units, duchies, electorates (whose rulers had the right to elect the Emperor), all of which had a degree of autonomy (is that the right word?) but nevertheless owed fealty to the Emperor. The extent of the autonomy was demonstrated during the Reformation, with some rulers becoming Protestants, others remaining Catholic, though the Emperor was definitely Catholic and in cahoots with the Pope in Rome, hence the Roman bit. There was a decision made (not always stuck to) that 'cuius regio, eius religio' which is Latin for 'whoever rules decides the religion of their domain.
This variousness persists in the form of what the Germans often refer to with rolled eyes as 'Die Länder!' ie, the federal states who all have their own ideas about how things should be done. The exhibition tends to regard German diversity as a very positive thing; the enlightened Berlin bureaucrat looking at the intransigence of a Bavarian ultra-conservative Parliament may have a different idea, but hey.. it works. And I personally think Britain could learn from it. If Scotland is not to have its independence, what about a federal Britain, with England itself subdivided?
However, possibilities for a federal Britain is this is not what this blog is about!
A kind of standard German was established, as the exhibition will tell you, by Luther when he translated the Bible, though I have also heard it referred to as 'stage German' and my mother used to call it 'High German,' but this is confusing, since 'High German' also means Alemannic German (or I think it does, any philologists who know better are invited to comment.) However, a Bavarian, speaking posh, will still be speaking a very different language from a posh-speaking Hamburg person.
What I really liked about the exhibition was the way in which it opened up to non-Germans the rich and amazing German culture, which particularly British people don't have much idea about. There were some things that were new to me - like the exhibition of different coinages struck (sometimes only symbolically) by all those different little dukedoms and principalities - when I saw them, it made sense, but to one brought up on the post-war Deutschmark and pfennigs, it seemed strange to see just how many different kinds of Talers there were. The several versions of Euros are nothing to it.



This beautiful clock is now no longer in the cathedral at Strasbourg (or Strassburg, as it was once called) but the British Museum are lucky enough to have a reproduction of it. On the hour, angels sing (or rather, tinkle) and Death emerges to strike the hour, only then the figure of Christ comes out to banish Death.The clock's dials show the length of time till Judgement Day, a piece of German technology which could be pretty impressive, though when I joined a small knot of people to wait for twelve o' clock, we were disappointed. We got the angel song, but Death wouldn't do his stuff. I was lucky, for I had heard and seen an unscheduled strike of Death's hammer at about half past eleven. So I wouldn't be too sure about the projected remaining length of time for the world. However, what the clock awoke in me (it is there as a monument to German Renaissance humanism) was the memory of standing in various cities (Vienna, Munich spring to mind) waiting for the clock to strike twelve and music to play and little figures to emerge and process, or dance, or fight, or whatever else. Beside the clock were various German romantic landscape paintings, one of the Riesengebirge/Karkonosce/Krkonosce mountains, where my grandfather was born, a scene I recognised from going there a few years ago, one of the island of Rügen, a place I visited in 2003, partly because my mother used to have holidays on the Baltic coast, and partly because I had read about it in Fontane's 'Effi Briest.' It used to be on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain, as was the Riesengebirge. There is also a painting by the wonderful Caspar David Friedrich of a German oak (Germans, like English people, view the oak as peculiarly their own). This oak has big broken boughs as well as green ones, it is an aged oak that has had a few lightning strikes, but still burgeons, and if it symbolised Germany in the 19th century, when it was painted, it is an even more appropriate symbol now. Friedrich is in any case a sublime painter, and it is worth going to the exhibition just to see one of his paintings. Even better to go to Dresden, or Berlin, where there are a good many of them.



The above carving of the four Gospel writers, by Tilman Riemenschneider, is another good reason to visit the exhibition. Riemenschneider is a wood-carver little-known outside Germany, but he was enormously productive and famous in his time. He was, as well as an artist, one of the mayors of Würzburg at the time of the Peasants' Revolt, and he and the rest of the town council opened the gates of the city to the rebels in 1525. He has thus been celebrated by the Left as a hero, for it was said that he was tortured, and as a result could never carve again. Whatever the truth about Riemenschneiders's fate may be, you can see from this sculpture alone that he was a genius with wood. It is an intensely powerful piece. I have seen many marvellous carvings in my life (mainly in Germanic lands), but this has to count as one of the most wonderful.

The Peasants' Revolt was the subject of a set of prints by the great 20th-century artist Käthe Kollwitz, who also dealt with the subject of the Silesian weavers' revolt, which I learned about through studying the Silesian author Gerhart Hauptmann's The Weavers at university. She is also pictured in the exhibition, twice, later on. Here is one of the images, a self-portrait.



Kollwitz's younger son Peter was killed early in the First World War, and I read through her moving and fascinating journal of those years to inform my ideas about that period when I wrote my contribution to Stories of World War 1. She travelled from a passionate nationalism, provoked by the war, to a heartfelt and agonised pacifism, which is powerfully expressed in her work. She was forbidden to work by the Nazis, and died before the end of the war.



This iconic, in every sense of the word, painting, is Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who has in Germany the kind of status that Shakespeare has in England. A towering figure, he gained an international reputation with The Sorrows of young Werther, which is not my favourite of his works, but which was read with the kind of attention and disapproval as the Beatles music evoked in my childhood. Werther's eventual suicide (which, when I read the book, I hailed with relief, I am afraid) was supposed to have sparked copy-cat suicides all over Europe and was the voice of revolt against Enlightenment rationalism and the nascent Romantic movement. Jane Austen sniffed and wrote Sense and Sensibility, and if Marianne Dashwood hadn't read Werther I would be very surprised. But there is far more to Goethe than Werther. He went on to write novels, superb poetry, and plays, notably Faust, though there is some question as to whether Faust is in fact a play or a poem. I have seen the first part performed, anyway, and it works. Goethe was also a statesman, and a scientist; in fact his discovery of the intermaxillary bone helped Darwin formulate his theory of evolution, as it links us to other great apes (I think). He also formulated a colour theory, though Newton's won, and a plant has been named after him, goethea cauliflora, which is not (as you might think) a vegetable, but a rather pretty flowering thing. I was very glad to finally see the painting, which usually lives in Frankfurt, a city I have never spent time in.

Goethe had semi-divine status with my mother, and, like the Greek Gods, was thus allowed to get away with all kinds of behaviour and writing which she unhesitatingly condemned in lesser writers, such as the womanising by himself and by his characters, and his lack of conventional religious piety. In this, my mother was quite typical of members of the German 'Bildungsbbürgertum', a term very hard to translate, because though you can render it as 'educated middle class' this English term conveys nothing of the reverence and deep love of culture that goes with it.



The rhinoceros was made in the Meissen porcelain factory by Johann Gottlieb Kirchner, using as blueprint a print by Albrecht Dürer. Neither man had actually seen a rhinoceros, but I don't care about that; I adore this animal. It was made in the newly-discovered 'white gold' Saxon-crafted porcelain (the discovery of an alchemist who Augustus the Strong locked up till he had discovered the secret. Till then, actual porcelain had to be imported from China. So called 'Dresden' actually Meissen porcelain was the result. I visited the Zwinger porcelain museum in 2009, which was a wonderful experience for a person as obsessed with ceramics as I am. My husband bought a photography pass, so here are some other denizens of Augustus's porcelain menagerie.

photo: David Wilson
We were rather taken with the sad-faced lion. Meissen china is a taste I inherited from my mother, and I have bought a few pieces of the classic German/Czech/Austrian Zwiebelmuster'onion design' a blue and white pattern derived from Chinese motifs. If I could afford a complete dinner-service of this, I would, and if I ever get rich I will..

I'm doing a spot of multi tasking for my feature this month -  I'm posting some notes from an informal lecture I gave on  the 22nd November concerning King John and Magna Carta.

My lecture had a different slant in that I had been asked to give it to to the committee members of  NARES The National Association of Re-enactment Societies, a body that sets safety and professional standards for re-enactment groups. The talk took place in The Crow's Nest at the top of the National Motorcycle Museum just outside Solihull - what an interesting venue!

It won't have escaped anyone's attention that in 2015 we celebrate the 800th year since the signing of Magna Carta by King John at Runnymeade. With this in mind, the various medieval re-enactment socities are going to be very busy throughout the season it was thought it would be useful for someone (I was volunteered!) to give a half hour talk on the basicis.

Having been  a member of re-enactment group Regia Anglorum for 23 years, and also with my author hat on having written several novels about the reign of King John,  I was asked to give a brief overview to the re-enactment community as they plan next year's shows.

I thought it might be useful to post my piece here for posterity and to reach a wider audience as
 a resource/aid to further individual research.  So here it is:

KING JOHN AND THE CHARTER OF RUNNYMEDE: A talk given by Elizabeth Chadwick to the National Association of Re-enactment Societies on 22nd November 2014.

Magna  Carta 1215. Held in the British Library.

Magna carta was signed on the 15th of June at Runnymede near Windsor in 1215. King John was 49 years old at the time and had been on the throne for 16 years. He was forced to submit to the demands of a vocal party of his barons who were in rebellion against him. The Magna Carta or great charter was a document of 63 clauses aimed at limiting royal authority and establishing the principle that the King was subject to the law, not above it. It was originally known as The Charter of Runnymede and only became known as Magna Carta when it was reissued by William Marshal in the name of John's youngest son Henry III in 1217.

Two of its most famous clauses, numbers 39 and 40 have been enshrined in constitutions throughout the world including that of the United States of America. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 and the European Convention on Human Rights in 1950 also used these clauses and are the ones that will be most in evidence over the coming year's events.

39. No free man shall be taken, or imprisoned, or disseized, or outlawed, or exiled, or in any way harmed - nor will we proceed with force against him or send others to do so - save by the lawful judgement of his peers or by the law of the land.

40. To none will we sell, to none deny or delay right or justice.

Obviously these clauses have been adapted to the times and cultures of ensuing generations and don't always have the same meanings as they did then. For a start the 'free man' wasn't aimed at the run-of-the-mill population, many who were bound to their Lord and the land, but to the barons whose interests these clauses served. For example:

'Heirs may be given in marriage, but not to someone of lower social standing. Before a marriage takes place, it shall be made known to the heir's next-of-kin.

No man shall be forced to perform more service for a knight's fee or other free holding of land than is due from it.

So in other words, the first clause, was a protest about John selling off marriages to reward, bribe and sweeten men he desired to cultivate and bring into his affinity. In the second, the protest was that the king was demanding work above and beyond what was in the original contract!

 . Having set his seal to Magna Carta, John immediately reneged on it and had himself absolved of the deed by the Pope. The barons (who had known he would renege), continued in their rebellion, and for a while it was almost as if the charter had never been sealed at all. However, Magna Carta, was reissued after John's death with more success (and several tweaks) by the Regent William Marshal, and then again in 1225 under Henry III, by which time it had been substantially rewritten.

But how did this charter come about? How did we come to this place?

King John: there's a name to conjure with. He often gets a bad rap, justified in my opinion. W.L. Warren in his excellent biography of John sums him up thus:

It seems clear that he was inadequate to the tasks confronting him as king. Even in his achievements there was always something missing. He subdued nations to his will, but brought only the peace of fear; he was an ingenious administrator, but expedience came before policy; he was a notable judge, but chicanery went along with justice; he was an able ruler, but he did not know when he was squeezing too hard; he was a clever strategist but his military operations lacked that vital ingredient of success - boldness. He had the mental abilities of a great king but the inclinations of a petty tyrant.

The Histoire de Guillaume le Mareschal, completed within 10 years of John's death says:
'But all the time the king's pride and arrogance increased; they so blurred his vision that he could not see reason. Indeed, I know for a fact that as a result he lost the affection of the barons of the land before he crossed to England.'

And on his deathbed, William Marshal said to John's nine-year-old son Henry III: 'and if it were the case that you followed in the footsteps of some wicked ancestor and that your wish was to be like him, then I pray to God, the son of Mary, that he does not give you long to live and that you die before it comes to that.'

He earned himself the title of 'Softsword' when he lost Normandy. Compare that to his brother Richard the 'Lionheart' who earned his own title at the age of 19, or his half brother William 'Longsword', Earl of Salisbury. In his own lifetime, John was neither liked nor respected.

In appearance if anyone is going to represent him on the field and wants to be realistic, let me say we don't know a great deal, but we do have a few telling snippets. Chronicler Gerald of Wales tells us that he was a little smaller than average height but not greatly so. His older brothers Henry the Young King and Richard were tall. Geoffrey his third brother (died 1186) and John were not. We don't know his hair or eye colour. We do know that he was very fond of wearing a black leather belt, because it is mentioned in his chamber accounts and that he was accustomed to wearing it - as in it was a favourite. He also wore jewels around his neck. We don't know what kind but we do know he wore them because he lost them the paid the person who discovered them a nice reward, and again that went through the accounts, as did a chaplet of flowers to his mistress. We know that he bought in some ornate jewelled staffs, and again these are paid into his chamber. 'The 4th July at Marlborough. Note that we received in our chamber at Marlborough, on the Saturday next after the feast of the Apostles Peter and Paul one staff ornamented with 19 sapphires, and another with 10.
We know he had tunics lined with green cendal (a form of lightweight silk) and that he bought a black dress lined with saffron coloured cendal for Susanna, one of his mistresses. We know he had a 'ruby-red robe lined with green cendal.' And one of a russet colour lined with ermine. We also know that he clothed his huntsmen in blue and green, and his stewards in black and brown, so the servants were colour-coded!

This is a Victorian reproduction of King John's effigy at Worcester Cathedral. It's in the V&A and shows the embellished jewelled neckline of John's tunic to good effect

You will sometimes hear people say that many of his problems stemmed from Richard's spendthrift ways in bankrupting England to pay for his crusade and then his ransom. It's true that was a big and difficult financial drain on the country, but it didn't bankrupt England by a long chalk. John was still able to spend four times more than Richard raised for the Crusades in preparing for his own war to regain the Angevin lands across the Channel. The annual expenditure for England in the year running up to the crusade came to £31,089. Once Richard had departed there was a steep drop to £11,000 a year. The ransom bit hard after he was captured and illegally imprisoned on his way home from the crusade - 100,000 marks was a lot to find, but found it was  A mark was approximately two thirds of a pound.

John meanwhile had been trying to take over the country and tell everyone his brother was dead. When it became known that Richard had in fact been captured and imprisoned by the Germans on his way home, John then tried to strike a deal with Richard's jailers to keep him locked up indefinitely (didn't work - where would John get the money from?). It didn't do a lot for John's reputation in people's eyes.

When Richard eventually arrived home, he magnanimously forgave John, rubbing salt into the wound by telling him he was a child who had been misled by evil men i.e. John didn't have the necessary backbone or manliness. All of which would have been taken on board by those standing around listening. Here they had a real king, and a pretend one who had turned out to be a scheming loser.

Back to the money. Richard went to war with France and the annual expenditure rose again to around £24,000 a year. John's revenues in the early years of kingship averaged £22-25,000 but then skyrocketed in 1210 to £50,000 and in 1212 rose again to £83,000. By 1213, as a result of interdict profits and tallages he gathered in a staggering sum for the times £145,000. There was still money to be had and have it John did. In 1207 he levied a tax of a thirteenth on everyone's movable goods, and for the barons this included all their bling. Many of them were having none of it and resorted to hiding their wealth in the monasteries who owed them patronage. The king would then send in his heavies to search these monasteries and confiscate the goods if found, and levy a fine. So as far as taxes being levied and taxes being dodged goes, nothing changes.

A single mark of silver - 13 shillings and four pence or 160 pennies.

Basically John did not have the respect of his barons as they had respected and trusted Richard as an energetic military leader with clear directives. John was more of a tunnel building sort of person. If he could take the convoluted route, he would. He was renowned for giving secret signals and dodgy handshakes which only he and his spies knew. He'd send one message that was open, and a second message in secret code that was only to be acted upon if the dodgy handshake was activated. Sometimes he forgot whether he'd attached the dodgy handshake command to a letter and then he had to send follow-up letters with more instructions.

Following the incident of being caught with his fingers in the cookie jar when trying to keep Richard incarcerated, John mostly behaved himself. Once he became king he started off reasonably well without too many difficulties, but within the first five years his reputation was going to to hell in a hand cart. Richard had had to ceaselessly fight against the French to keep a grip on Normandy and the Angevin cross-Channel lands - but he had been winning according to historian John Gillingham.

As an aside here, you'll often hear it said that Richard didn't care about England because he didn't spend any time there after he was king, and sold offices to the highest bidder in order to fund his crusades. I've even heard it claimed that he hated England, but that's nonsense. The bottom line is that we just don't know what Richard thought of the country. He was born here and he spent time here before he was king - as a child, as an adolescent, and as an adult returning for family meetings while his father was still on the throne. It is true that Richard's focus was Aquitaine because he was its dedicated heir. If all Henry II's sons had lived, Richard would not have had England but that doesn't mean he hated it. Many of his Administration staff were English and many of his key players - William Marshal for example. By contrast John is sometimes claimed to have loved England, but we don't know if that's true either. John was the first King thrown back on his English dominions because he'd lost Normandy and Anjou - but his rule in England certainly ended in tears before bedtime!

King John Stag hunting Early 14thc. British Library

John was not made of the same military stuff as Richard. He was good on the short campaigns it's true but wasn't a man for the long haul. He did score a terrific victory at Mirebeau where he rescued his elderly mother from being besieged by her grandson Arthur. Arthur was John's rival for the English throne and the Angevin Empire. He was the teenage son of John's deceased older brother Geoffrey and a huge thorn in John's side - he had a valid claim to the English throne and was French-backed.  However, at Mirebeau, Arthur was taken prisoner along with many other dissidents and the black legends began in earnest.

'When the King arrived in Chinon, he kept his prisoners in such a horrible manner and such abject confinement that it seemed an indignity and disgrace to all those with him who witnessed his cruelty.'  This is from the Histoire de Guillaume le Mareschal - an eyewitness source. It is often said that every reign  in the Middle Ages was full of violent barbarism perpetrated by its kings and we shouldn't judge by modern mindset. That is very true, but this is eyewitness mindset of John's life and times.

Arthur went to Rouen and was never seen again. Rumours hinted that John had personally murdered him while in a drunken rage and had his body cast into the River Seine. Whatever the truth of the matter we know for a fact that Arthur entered Rouen Castle in April 1203 and was never seen again. King Philip of France demanded that John produce him and when John could not it was the excuse Philip needed - along with complaints of John having denied justice in his court to his vassals, to invade Normandy. From the high point of that moment of victory in taking Arthur, John was now on the slippery slope. As town after town fell or yielded to the French, John retreated and eventually quit Normandy. This was seen as a humiliation and disaster especially as many of the barons had land on both sides of the Channel and had to make a choice as to what they kept and what they lost, and naturally John got the blame. The Lionheart have protected them. John Softsword had failed and abandoned them.

Smarting from his losses, John began raising money via aforementioned unpopular taxes to get an expedition together to regain his lost continental lands. To compound his problems his very able Archbishop of Canterbury, Hubert Walter who had been an astute administrator with tremendous vision and drive, died. The man John would like to have appointed, John de Grey, Bishop of Norwich was not approved by the Canterbury monks who wanted one Stephen Langton for Archbishop. A huge argument ensued, that might well have gone the way of Becket. It didn't, but the country was put under interdict and sanctions by the Pope were imposed. Basically it meant the church went on strike and refused to perform its usual functions. So now people were lacking in the comfort and security of ecclesiastical routine, they were being taxed to the hilt, and had seen their king humiliated on the continent.

Ever suspicious, John had a penchant for employing mercenaries to do his work both the aboveboard kind and the dirty stuff. They were more trustworthy in the long run as long as you paid them, but the barons hated and despised them. Hence clause 50 of the Magna Carta

"We shall entirely remove from their bailwicks the relatives of Gerard D'Athee, so that they shall henceforth have no bailwick in England;Engelard de Cygnes, Andrew, Peter and Guyon de Chanceles, Gyon de Cygnes, Geoffrey de Martin and his brothers, Philip Mark and his brothers, and Geoffrey his nephew, and the whole following of them."

John  then fell out with one of his barons, William de Braose. He claimed that de Braose, a man of widespread lands and power and originally in high favour with him, owed him a lot of money for those favours but was showing contempt by not repaying any of it. The sums John was demanding of de Braose were astronomical and it was obvious that it was an excuse to bring him down. Perhaps John feared him with good reason. He demanded hostages from de Braose but when his agents turned up at the family domicile demanding hostages, their mother, Matilda, said that there was no way she was giving any of her children up to the man who had murdered his own nephew. How was she in a position to know this?  Interestingly de Braose had been at Rouen in April 1203 and if anyone knew what happened to Arthur, it would be him. The reports of the death of Arthur can be found in a Chronicle titled the Anals of Margham.  Margham Abbey's patron was William de Braose... Make of that what you will.

John went after the de Braose family with a vengeance, especially Matilda and her oldest son. They fled to Ireland where William Marshal gave them succour for a while and then they fled again, heading north, but were betrayed and caught. Matilda and her eldest son was thrown into prison at Corfe and starved to death. When the bodies were brought out of the oubliette into which they had been cast, it was found that the son had bite marks on his arm where his mother had turned cannibal in an effort to sustain her own life. This was shocking beyond belief to John's nobility and almost not quite the last nail in the coffin.

The final twist came when John taxed everyone until they squealed in order to raise the money for a huge campaign to win back his Norman and Angevin heartlands. He put everything into that campaign. This was the huge push to put the French back in their place. Unfortunately for John things didn't go to plan and the Battle of Bouvines in July 1214 (still a day marked by the French even now) was an utter disaster for the English. It left John's continental policy in ruins; it left him with a massive bill for the ransoms of those who have been captured and sent him crawling back to England with his tail between his legs - 'Softsword' indeed - at least as far as the barons were concerned. Bouvines was the final jigsaw piece slotting into the landscape that led to Magna Carta. Had Bouvines been successful, then Magna Carta may never have come to be. In failing to defeat the French it led the English barons to tally up their discontent against John. What they saw was an inept king who oppressed them, ignored their advice for that of his favourites and mercenaries, who taxed them to the hilt and then wasted their coin and their prestige by losing the battles. A man who quarrelled with the church, a man who disparaged them and disrespected their women (he had a reputation for being lecherous with the wives and daughters of his barons) indeed murdered them if he thought they were becoming nuisances or knew too much. It all had to stop, hence the organised rebellion against him, and the putting together of the clauses of the great Charter.

So, where did those clauses come from? Did they just spring out of the heads of the ringleaders? Of Stephen Langton the Archbishop of Canterbury? Well yes and no. The barons who gathered to form a committee to tie down King John and commit him to these reforms looked back in history for their initial source. The rough draft of the Magna Carta was based on a document titled The Charter of Liberties which had been issued in 1100 at the coronation of John's great-grandfather, Henry I. Prior to Henry I's reign, there had been charters on which Henry had loosely based his own - promises by kings to work for the common weal, but Henry I Charter went a lot further than that and was laid out a series of 14 promises concerning his behaviours King.  Such as:

'If any of my barons or other men should wish to give his daughter, sister, niece, or kinswoman in marriage, let him speak with me about it; but I will neither take anything from him for this permission not prevent his giving her and that she should be minded to join her to my enemy. And if, upon the death of a baron or other of my men, a daughter is left as heir, I will give her with her land by the advice of my barons. And if, on the death of her husband, the wife is left and without children, she shall have her diary and right of marriage, and I will not give her to husband unless according to her will.' 

He also promises that he will take away all the bad customs by which the kingdom of England has been unjustly oppressed.

This document then, more than a hundred years old was the inspiration and working blueprint for the Magna Carta, with Stephen Langton at the head of the steering committee, John was loath and indignant to put his seal to such a treaty. He felt he was being very wronged and that his own liberties were being undermined. The moment it was sealed, he reneged on the deal. Some of the barons was so convinced he would renege that they rode off in the opposite direction and continued to make war. At this point John had  'sold' England as a vassal state to the Pope, and thus put an end to threats of excommunication and interdict. Instead, these were turned on the French who were intent on invading England and on the rebellious barons desiring to get rid of John.

The only real answer was for John to die, which he duly did, having lost the crown jewels in the Wash - as everyone has joked about for decades. He ended his life in Newark Castle in October 1216, the traditional cause of death is stated at a surfeit of peaches and cider, but that may not be the literal truth. Peaches were viewed in the Medieval table of humours as being cold and moist and could very dangerously put out one's internal fire and cause death. So it was a good way to explain a terminal stomach disorder. The same goes for Henry I's surfeit of lampreys.

John's body was borne to Worcester Cathedral. William Marshal became regent of England, responsible for the nine-year-old Henry III and for getting the country back on its feet, reunited, rid of the French, and solvent, all of which he more or less succeeded in doing before his death in 1219. With William Marshal at the helm Magna Carta could be reissued and tweaked to make it acceptable to all, and the rebuilding could begin. Not everyone was enamoured but people trusted and respected the Marshal and recognised a safe pair of hands, especially as under the latter's generalship the French were whipped twice, once at the battle of Lincoln Fair in May 1217 with the Marshal leading from the front, and then at the sea battle of Sandwich later that year when the Marshal watched from the clips. The force was with the Marshal, and unlike John, his light sabre was the right colour!

There has always been push and pull between ruling factions. Magna set out the interests and requirements of a disgruntled nobility, that weren't being met by a king they saw as being tyrannical and absolutist. Perhaps in a perverse way, we could say that King John is at the root of it the man responsible for the words enshrined in many of the world's democracies - countries he didn't know existed when he sat down under coercion to put his seal to a most historic piece of parchment.

At a recent book festival, a panel of illustrious 'literary' writers won their spurs as diplomats. The event was being filmed, and the camera swung round to reveal a beaming young woman, barely more than a child, her arm thrust into the air, desperate to ask a question.
An adult alongside, presumably her parent, was even more aglow with pride. And the question was?
You’ve guessed it:
“I am an aspiring writer (pause for exchange of smug smiles with parent). Where do you get your ideas from?”
Of course, the only honest answer would be: “Listen, honey, if you have to ask that, there’s not much chance that you’re suited to this writing game.” But I’m glad to say that none of the literary titans on the stage yielded to the temptation to deflate a youthful ego in public. No one said, “Did your Mummy tell you to ask that?” Nor did anyone challenge the girl about whether she wanted 'to be A Writer’ or to write - the former being a far more common ambition these days.
One or two of the panel blethered on as best they could to fill the time until it was decent to call on another questioner. But there was no mistaking the looks of bored exasperation that passed between the others as they dodged the ball.

I couldn’t help wondering whether there is a literary equivalent of the song “Don’t Put Your Daughter On The Stage, Mrs Worthington.” Do let me know.

Just for fun, here are some suggestions for how Miss Worthington might find ideas for her first novel - to show her how they can come from anywhere, and why you don’t need to agonise about seeking them out [as any normal child would say: 'well, derrr’].
Indeed they can come from the least promising places, as I found when I went to take photos to illustrate a post I wrote here a couple of months ago.
I came across this ugly memorial, oddly positioned on what used to be part of the Napier University campus and is soon to become an over-developed modern dormitory for the very rich.

This month, on 9th November, six weeks after Scotland voted to remain a part of Great Britain, ‘a self-determination referendum’ was held in Catalonia. The citizen participation process on Catalonia's political future was originally the 'Catalan Independence Referendum' but was rebranded as a 'popular consolation' after the original was suspended by the Constitutional Court of Spain.
The Catalonians who voted, expressed by a whopping eighty/twenty percent majority their preference to be self-determining.
This result did not surprise me one bit. Last year, I was caught up in a demonstration in Barcelona and no one could deny the massive turnout and the fervour.

The concept of genres annoys me. People say ‘what kind of book do you write?” and irrational fury rises in my normally placid bosom. As Duke Ellington said of music, there’s only two types, good and bad, and I like ’em both. 

Genres are for publishers and booksellers who want to know what shelf to put us on, and fair enough. But I’m not sure we have any business putting ourselves on shelves. It’s a bit too close to putting ourselves in pigeon holes. So I’ve never been big on the term historical fiction. There’s just novels set in different times. 

But there is one slight thing: books set in different times aren't often comic*. It's as if being historical is enough - you can't be funny too. Like in the old days when a woman couldn't be both pretty and clever. 

THIS HAS JUST CHANGED. 

In that pile of the frequently unreadable sent by the possibly desperate to the bewildered and unwitting, ie proofs from PRs, I turned up a book of great glory. It's called Crooked Heart, it's set in the north London suburbs during WW2, and it stars an array of anti-heroic survivors who flick from well-dodgy to irresistable in the beat of a heart. The author is one Lissa Evans. When I found that Lissa Evans had been also been a doctor, and a producer of Father Ted on the telly, I was somehow not surprised. You may know her from such previous novels as Their Finest Hour and a Half; she was new to me. Anyway - I liked her genre-busting book so much that I tracked her down, interviewed her, had lunch with her, and am now insisting on sharing her brilliance.






Crooked Heart is very funny, very touching, and actually heartbreaking. Funny + touching + dangerous is full of pitfalls, both technical and emotional, but you pull it off beautifully - as I once heard Louis de Bernieres cry to Elizabeth Jane Howard, 'how do you do that?'

It sounds disingenuous to say ‘I don’t know’, because that makes it sound as if the words cascade effortlessly from my lap-top  and land in perfect formation on the page.  In fact, I write incredibly slowly and I re-write ruthlessly as I go along – honing, polishing, moving, cutting, changing –  stripping back the sentiment, trying to nail the humour and crisp up the dialogue, aiming above all for clarity;  I don’t do a ‘first draft’ as such – by the time I get to the end of a book it’s usually about 90% there.   I suppose that the actual answer to this question is that I’m always trying to write the kind of book that I like reading, one that contains humour and humanity, bound together in a plot that is believable but unpredictable. 

 Tell us about Noel, your heartbreaking little boy.

Noel is ten years old.  It’s an age that I particularly like writing about, because I have a mental snap-shot of myself at 10 – we moved house and I had to adjust to a new school, a new town, and a new region of the country, and my memories of that age are very clear. Noel is the product of a singular education; he’s been brought up by his godmother, Mattie, a former suffragette and possessor of a formidable intellect.  Noel goes to school, but most of his learning occurs at home, and he has absorbed Mattie’s prejudices and outlook as well as her knowledge, making him utterly out of step with other children of his age.  When he loses Mattie, he loses his bearings and his joy in life.   Emotionally frozen, he’s evacuated from London and ends up being taken in by Vee. 

And a bit about Vee, your thoroughly flawed and equally heartbreaking heroine.

Vee is thirty-six and perpetually broke; she spends her time attempting to support her invalid mother and son through a variety of dodgy schemes which she’s too impulsive and desperate to see through to completion. .  She exudes a sort of semi-feral fecklessness  – at various points in the book, Noel sees her as resembling a pigeon  (…, drab and directionless, pecking at anything that looked as if it might be edible.  ) and a magpie (…She had sharp, worried features and she kept moving her head around, keeping a watch on everything, like a magpie hanging round a picnic).  She’s aware that her life is unfairly hard, but sees no way of changing it;  meeting Noel turns out to be the biggest opportunity of her life…

You've had some phenomenal admiration, from writers as various as India Knight, who says you're going on the shelf between the Dud Avocado and I Capture the Castle, and Juliet Gardiner, who says she doesn't like war novels but loves this. How does that feel? 

Praise from someone whose work you respect feels like having some kind of fabulous spa treatment, from which you emerge feeling twice the woman you were…

 Your online admirers are just as keen, except for one who thinks your characters are morally shaky, and one who seems to think it's a children's book. OF COURSE a novelist must NEVER respond to reviewers or tell them what they think, but hey - here's your chance! 

Ha!  Morally shaky’s fair enough, but I read the ‘children’s book’ review with some puzzlement; the reasoning seemed to be that because one of the central characters is ten years old, it must have been written for children. Funnily enough, it made me think about the time when I was hovering on the edge of  adolescence, wondering what to read next (this was  before the era of Young Adult novels);  my way into adult literature turned out to be  through  books with child protagonists – The Go-Between, I’m the King of the Castle, Father and Son, Frost in May….  I’d be more than happy for ‘Crooked Heart’ to be added to that list!

Cliched but actually very interesting question coming up: how do you go about your research? 

The first research I ever did was for my previous novel,  ‘Their Finest Hour and a Half’, which was published in 2009.  It’s about the making of a British feature film during the Second World War – a plot which linked a desire to write about what goes on behind the camera (prompted by my own TV experiences) with my intense and abiding interest in the home front, which sprang from reading (and re-reading) Norman Longmate’s book ‘How we Lived Then’ as a teenager. My method of research couldn’t really be dignified with the word ‘method’ – I explored in all directions: I read novels and memoirs of the era, dipped into reference books, trade papers, newspapers and leaflets (British Film Institute Library), watched countless long and short films (Imperial War Museum archive) talked to veterans (had to hunt them down), looked at and photocopied original scripts (particularly thrilling to discover hand-written annotations) and  kept a constantly-updated file of ‘language’  (phrases/words/references used during the period I was writing about).  I researched until I began to feel that I was comfortable in the era.  Most enjoyably, and usefully, I delved into specific archives held by specialist libraries and found there to be nothing more thrilling  than sifting through  ephemera :  memos, letters, notes, cards, cuttings – most of them untouched for more than fifty years…After finishing ‘Their Finest Hour and a Half’, I still felt completely steeped in the nineteen forties, and decided to write another book set in the  era.   ‘Crooked Heart’, however, presented me with an unexpected research problem:  the characters I was writing about  - petty crooks, debtors, marginalised people living on their wits -  aren’t the type who keep diaries or write memoirs or find themselves interviewed in later years; they’re invisible, living in the cracks, and I had to find a way to peer in.   My route was through the pages of  local newspapers.  The ‘Herts Advertiser and St Albans Times’ (now defunct) was my bible – a patchwork of stories that reflected all aspects of wartime provincial life, where bomb news and black-out  advice  nudged shoulders with  accounts of Masonic Social Nights and lists of people being prosecuted for defaulting on the rates.  Here are a few random transcribed snippets: 
 BRICKET WOOD COMMON
ANDERSON SHELTERS THAT ‘STAY PUT’
Daring robbery at St Albans Jeweller’s Shop

When my writing flagged, or I struggled with the plot, I’d always return to this source, and it never failed to inspire me. 

  
If I was your writing teacher, I would love to set you the task of rewriting it as a full on tragedy - what do you think? Would it work?

Yes, I think it would, though I imagine I’d  get rather depressed trying to do it.   I’d prefer to commission Bernard McLaverty or Rohinton Mistry to write it for me.  I remember finishing ‘Lamb’ and feeling like a wrung-out wash-cloth.  

How does - or indeed does - your TV comedy background affect your writing? Because I can't help observing that Father Ted is also very high on the funny/touching-o-meter.

I think it’s the other way round – I ended up working in comedy, and writing the way I write, because I’ve always loved books that make me laugh.   I remember when I was 7 or 8, literally weeping with laughter over Molesworth,  doubled up, stomach hurting  –  and I remember my joy in discovering other authors who had a similar effect on me, (Gerald Durrell, Michael Green, Betty McDonald) and whose work I absorbed so that, decades later, whole paragraphs are still embedded in my brain.  This love didn’t emerge in my own writing for a while – I still have my English books from school, and they’re full of self-conscious literary efforts, but I  wrote a pantomime when I was 18 and when I re-read it recently, I was struck by how tightly-structured it is; it’s not wildly funny, but it’s written with precision – I was using running gags before I even knew what the term meant! At university I wrote and performed in a stand-up group, and when I gave up medicine, the only employment (it seemed to me) that I was in any way qualified for was to work, in some capacity, in comedy.  I was lucky enough to get a job as a producer in light entertainment radio, which was where I learned to be a ruthless editor.  Later on, in television, I read a script of ‘Father Ted’ and fell in love; it was comedy writing of the highest order – wildly original and yet utterly precise, a master-class in timing and brevity.     The two series that I produced were the highlight of my comedy career, and after that I thought it was time I started writing for myself .

What are you working on now? 

I’m currently working on another children’s book, but I’ve also started researching for the sequel of ‘Crooked Heart’, which will be set about three years after the first.  I spent last week in the  Imperial War Museum, reading the war diary of a West Hampstead woman called Gwladys Cox.  There is nothing, nothing, like handling original material for sucking you back into an era; when I looked up, I expected to see barrage balloons floating above the roof-tops…


Why did you leave medicine?

 Over the decades I’ve thought long and hard about this question.  The bottom line is that I was terrified for almost every single second of my time as a doctor  (I gave up four years after qualifying).  Despite having completed a  five year course, I felt as if I knew almost nothing, and although I had a cheery and reassuring bedside manner, what my patients didn’t realise is that they’d have been much better off with a mumbling introvert who actually knew what they were doing.     My happiest day (or, possibly, only happy day) as a house officer was a sunny bank holiday during which there were no admissions and I sat on the grass outside the medical ward reading ‘The Longest Journey’ by E M Forster. What’s strange is that although it’s now nearly 26 years since I handed back my bleep for the last time, the intensity of the experience was so great that my memories haven’t faded in the slightest – I saw and heard things that I’ll never forget, and those four years have infused everything I’ve written.   

 Do you listen to music while you write? If so what?

I usually prefer silence, but  there are a few pieces  -  repetitive, low key, usually wordless –  that  I play over and over again, filling in the background rather than obtruding.  Track 4 of the Baka Beyond World Music Compilation is my muse…. 

What (if anything) do you read while you're writing? 

For the three years that I was researching and then writing  ‘Their Finest Hour and a Half’,   I limited myself to fiction published between 1938 and 1941 (at The London Library, the date of publication is printed on a book’s spine, so it’s very easy to browse).  I know this sounds completely fanatical, but what it brought me was an absolute confidence in my knowledge of the vocabulary, the parameters and the preoccupations of the era. I’ve eased off a bit since then… Currently reading a Stephen King! 

CROOKED HEART by Lissa Evans is published by Random House

Lissa Evans 

PS: NB *I am aware this is a contentious statement. Please correct me if I'm wrong about history and comedy, and direct me to a marvellous stream of vastly amusing literature of which I am unaware . . . .

There has been much in the press this month about Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red, the impressive art installation of 888,246 ceramic poppies, each representing one British military casualty during the First world War, that flooded the Tower of London moat earlier this month. For many this was a beautiful and powerful statement of the size of Britain's sacrifice, for others, a mawkish display of nationalism. The wonderful Ring of Remembrance Notre Dame de Lorette, an elliptical structure engraved with the names of the dead of all nationalities in northern France, is another powerful but controversial war memorial. The who, what, how and why may be contentious, but what is generally agreed upon is the importance of remembering.

Fresh from her short-listing for the Children's section of the Costa Award, our special guest for November is Kate Saunders.

Photo by Hannah Love

Kate Saunders is a full-time author and journalist and has written numerous books for adults and children. Her books for children have won awards and received rave reviews, and include future classics such as Beswitched and The Whizz Pop Chocolate Shop. Her adult books include The Crooked Castle and The Marrying Game. Kate lives in London.


In this month of Remembrance in the Centenary of the outbreak of World War One, it seems especially appropriate to feature a book that begins in 1914 and takes some well-loved characters into danger in France. E. Nesbit's Five Children and It has become a classic for children; it was published in 1902 and it's not a great stretch of the imagination to see that the older children in the story would have been caught up in the "Great" War.

Cyril (Squirrel) is off to the Front, soon to be followed by Robert (Bobs). Anthea (Panther) becomes a VAD, while Jane (Pussy), much to her mother's horror,  wants to train as a doctor. The Lamb (never known as Hilary, except to his mother) is a schoolboy and the five "children" have been joined by a sixth, Edie.

Three VAD nurses 1916 Source: Europeana 1914-1918

There are familiar characters like the Professor and Old Nurse and new ones like Ernie, Lilian and the Lamb's best friend at school, Arthur Winterbottom, known universally as Winterbum, And of course the grumpy wish-granting sand fairy, the Psammead.

I started by asking Kate if the Nesbit books had always been a favourite with her.

Kate Saunders: 'Five Children and It' was a great favourite when I was a child. I also loved the two sequels - especially 'The Phoenix and the Carpet' because we lived near Kentish Town Road, where the carpet was purchased.

Mary Hoffman: At the end of Five Children and It, the children agree that Psammead will not give them any more wishes. Did this give you a massive problem? (As it must have done for Nesbit with the two sequels)

Frontispiece to Five Children and It

MH:  You manage to maintain E. Nesbit’s tone in the dialogue among the children very well, with all the slang of the time. Did that come easily?



MH: Was it you who changed the Psammead into a desert god or was that Nesbit in the two sequels?


MH: Setting your book in this centenary year of the outbreak of WW1, were you conscious of introducing the subject to young readers?

KS: I was highly aware of introducing young readers to the First World War, and giving them the broadest possible picture; thanks to the Psammead, I could take the children right to the front line, besides showing how lives were affected at home.

Life in the trenches by "Simon Q" Creative Commons

MH: You give Amanda Craig an acknowledgment for “saving someone’s life.” No spoilers but I think I can guess who that was. Were you going to be more ruthless initially?

MH: You have known great personal loss, through the death of your son at nineteen. Did that inform what you wrote and was it in any way cathartic to write it?


MH: You have very thoroughly made it impossible for there to be a further book about the Psammead, at least not by you. What is your next project likely to be?


MH: Did you go and see the poppies installation at the Tower?

KS:  I missed seeing the poppies in the flesh, but loved the pictures - a beautiful work of art and the strongest possible statement of remembrance.

Thank you, Kate, for  generously giving us your time in this busy month and good luck for the Costa!





You can read my review of Five Children on the Western Front here.

To win one of five copies of Kate Saunders' Five Children on the Western Front, leave an answer to this question in the Comments below:

"Which children's classic would you most like to see a sequel to and who would you like to write it?"

Please also email your answer to me at: maryhoffman@maryhoffman.co.uk so that I can have a contact address for you. Some people lose out on prizes through not doing this.

Did you see the first episode of Dan Jones's Britain's Bloodiest Dynasty on Channel Five last Thursday? Even if you didn't I expect you can guess who they were (though strictly speaking "England's Bloodiest Dynasty," which doesn't have the same alliterative ring).

Yes, it's our old friends the Plantagenets and Dan Jones knows more about them than most. His book of that title, first published by Harper Press in 2012, is now available as a chunky (600+ pages) paperback. Very accessible narrative of the Kings from Henry the Second to Henry the Fourth and all for just under a tenner.

With the discovery of Richard the Third's bones, apparently it's official that the Plantagenets have knocked the Tudors off the top spot in popular history. This is according to Chris Skidmore, MP, who told the Henley Literary Festival that he could get a book contract in 2009 for his latest book, on the battle of Bosworth Field only by adding a subtitle of "the Birth of the Tudors." The wars of the Roses were not a "sexy topic" then. But that's all changed.

As Dan Jones says, they were the family who "turned England from a war zone into a European superpower.

He has followed up his first volume with a second, The Hollow Crown: The Wars of the Roses and the Rise of the Tudors, oddly published by Faber rather than any imprint of Collins, which begins with another Henry, the fifth of that name and finishes with the notorious eighth.

But with the new Channel Five series, Jones is back with his first Henry, Henry the Second, the one we know about from the murder of his Archbishop and one time friend, Thomas Becket.


 "Betrayal," the first episode, starts well with young Henry (aged only 20) fighting with his barons for dominance. The historical re-enactments are well done and show the king, eventually father to four sons and two daughters, crowning his eldest son (if you leave out William, who didn't make three years) as the next king before his own death.

Henry, the "Young King" was resentful that his father didn't give him more lands and power and did in fact predecease his father. But before that three of the four sons (though Geoffrey is not mentioned) had fallen out with their father, encouraged by their formidable mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine. The Young King had even thrown in his lot with Louis the Seventh of France, Henry's old rival and Eleanor's former husband.

The quarrels with his wife and sons led to the long imprisonment of Eleanor until her favourite son, the next Plantagenet king, Richard l, released her. I would have liked more about Eleanor but this is a show about blood and battles, treason and murder, and we did have Helen Castor's She-Wolves not so long ago.

Dan Jones made the point that although Henry ll did some good things, including inventing the Civil Service, what he is remembered for is the murder of Thomas Becket, at which the outrage in Europe "went viral."

In 1174, Henry went on a barefoot pilgrimage in Canterbury in an attempt to wipe this crime from people's memories. He was scourged by a hundred monks but in modern terms that would have warranted a small paragraph on the inside pages, compared with a screamer front page headline.

And in 1189, Henry was again at war with his son Richard and rode out to meet him but died two days later.


Asked how he had chose the subjects for the four episodes of Britain's Bloodiest Dynasty, Dan Jones replied that he had chosen "the formative stories, the human stories."

The remaining episodes feature Henry the Third and Simon de Montfort; Edward the Second (yes, even that infamous red hot poker) and Richard the Second. Throughout the members of the English Court speak french, with subtitles. It is only when Henry Bolingbroke claims the throne that it is done in English.

Dan Jones is a personable presenter and with his look and vocabulary is clearly intended to introduce a younger audience to these fascinating characters and stories. Much has been made of the series being on Channel Five rather than, say, BBC4.

I wonder if the series would have been made or at least made in this way - "big, bloody and thrilling" - if it hadn't been for the success of the TV adaptation of George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire (now known by the title of the first book in the sequence, 'A Game of Thrones.') Martin is known to have based his epic power struggle on the Plantagenets, a case of life being stranger than fiction.




Britain's Bloodiest Dynasty is produced by David Wilson, Executive Producer Dan Gold, directors James Tovell and Oliver Twinch.

Dan Jones is our December guest on the History Girls (29th), when he will be talking about his new book on Magna Carta.

The romance of the ruined castle: Richard's Gaillard in Normandy.

Tales of Moorish mills near Cordoba.

The Middle Ages as an archaeological detective tale: Paris in 1985