Anne Easter Smith's Blog, page 3

Dismantling Mantel!

 

I have somehow never been invited to join a book club, although I have spoken at many across the country. Perhaps having an author in their midst would make members nervous? I don't know why; I am a lover of books every bit as much as they are. I am thus not used to deconstructing books with others on a regular basis, and only leave reviews on my Goodreads account on occasion.

It was with trepidation that I agreed to be part of this podcast discussion about the legendary, double Booker prize-winning Hilary Mantel's third book of her Thomas Cromwell trilogy, The Mirror and The Light. But I could not resist Susanne Dunlap's offer, because she and Patricia Bracewell are respected colleagues and good friends. You could say I was "shamed" into reading at least this one of the trilogy as my enthusiasm to participate overcame my worry about tackling the tome (it's 759 pages, in case you hadn't heard!). 

I needn't have worried about the discussion; it was more than fun, it was exhilarating! Here is the link, with a caveat--it's 40 minutes long, so settle in with a cup of tea or glass of your favorite beverage and join in! Would love to know what you, too, think of this trilogy. 

 https://www.itsjusthistorical.com/episodes/three-novelists-discuss-hilary-mantels-the-mirror-and-the-light

Plague!

How are you coping with the strangeness of our new pandemic normal? I would argue that it is tougher to take all these weeks of trying to avoid COVID-19 than it was for those who went through the Black Death in 1340s and the Great Plague in London in 1665. Here are my theories, whacky though they may be!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QF6WVJFjiShC-ld3t7LYU7GLqW2doDtn/view?usp=sharing_eil&ts=5e9aec7d

Support from an idol!

I was lucky enough to be on a panel with Margaret George and Sharon Kay Penman at the 2015 Historical Novel Society Conference in Denver when we discussed writing about the "bad boys" of history!)
The great Sharon Kay Penman has graciously posted a Q&A with me on her blog! You have no idea how special it is to have the author of one of my favorite books give "This Son of York" such support.

http://sharonkaypenman.com/blog/?p=709

Sharon's own new book "The Land Beyond the Sea" comes out in March, so be sure to check out your favorite bookstore or library!

Christmas nostalgia

It's at about this time of every year that I get nostalgic for an Easter-family Christmas. (Yes, I have heard all the Easter/Christmas jokes!)

One of my first Christmas memories was at five years old during our three years in Germany. Our German nanny, Anneliese, taught my mother how to make an adventscrantz to hang in the hallway at the bottom of the wide staircase in our rented house in Hamburg. (My father was a British Army colonel and Port Commandant of the port just after WWII.) We learned the tradition of singing carols and lighting one of the candles each Sunday of the four weeks before Christmas.

There were a few celebrations where we were not altogether as a family, while my parents lived in Egypt and we three kids were farmed out to grandparents, godparents or aged great-aunts--and sometimes not together. But when we were back as a family in England, music played a big part in the festivities--my father being a trained singer and a self-taught pianist, and all of us loving to sing. We actually went to friends and neighbors carol-singing, and then came home to crumpets, mince-pies, a roaring fire and a nice cup of tea!

No one back then decorated the outside of their houses with anything else but a front-door wreath, and Christmas trees inside were trimmed with a few ornaments and real candles. Our Christmas stockings were old long wool socks of my father's and at the ends of our beds on Christmas Eve, to be filled while we were asleep by Father Christmas, who didn't bring gifts to put under the tree, he brought nuts, a tangerine, perhaps a pen, a hair ornament, and always chocolate money. Under the tree were the gifts from our parents--one for each child--and from various relatives. My mother would ooh and aah over a hair comb or package of needles I had spent my pocket money on! And lest you think we were under privileged, far from it! 

After turkey, stuffing, bread sauce and brussels sprouts, cracker-pulling, and a brandy-soaked Christmas pud set alight to squeals of delight, the family sat down--our colorful paper hats askew--at two o'clock to listen to the Queen's speech. We never missed one (if we were in England). It would not have been and English Christmas without it.

I have seen a lot of changes to Britain in my 50+ years living in the US, including the abandonment of pounds and shillings, the joining of the European Union, the privatization of public transportation (isn't that an oxymoron?), and allowing a female to inherit the crown. But for me one of the most poignant changes over the years is in the English Christmas. Christmas lights ubiquitously adorn houses now, Christmas music begins in stores in early November, and conspicuous consumption is rampant. The Harrod's Christmas Grotto exclusive experience to Big Spenders this year was the holly on top of the Christmas pud for me.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/...
The Queen still gives her Christmas message, but I wonder how many families still listen? I hope at least that tradition is sacrosanct!

Don't get me wrong, I love Christmas and I've learn to embrace the more lavish expressions of it that the US indulges in, but forgive me if, at my grand old age, I reminisce about the past on a day when my fellow countrymen and women are going to the polls to vote on yet another monumental change. To Brexit or not to Brexit? How wonderful if Father Christmas could make it all go away!

Happy Holidays, everyone!

Book Tours--Then and Now

Anne signing after the Jabberwocky launch on Nov. 15th.
"But surely this isn't right?" I told the bellman of the brand new Trump Hotel in Chicago (yes, I know!). "I am just a lowly novelist."

"I assure you this is your suite, madam," he replied, grinning and opening the door wider into two enormous rooms with floor-to-ceiling windows and a marble bathroom with a bath I could swim laps in. I squeaked a "thank you," and he retired with a paltry tip in his hand.

That was then--2009 to be exact--on one of the stops on my third book tour across the country in support of The King's Grace.. I'd made enough of a name for myself as a Simon & Schuster author to warrant them sending me to Ann Arbor, Grand Rapids, Chicago, Memphis, St. Louis, Portland OR, and Seattle. Now, it's couch-surfing with friends and Holiday Inns at our own expense.

Then: At each airport I was met by an escort who drove me to the hotel and checked me in, picked me up later for the event at a bookstore, took me to dinner, and drove me around all the bookstores the next day to sign stock and meet the managers. That's if I didn't also have a TV appearance or radio interview at that particular venue. It sounds glamorous, and it was, but it was also pretty gruelling, and my tours were a fraction of what the Big Boys usually do.

But that was before the publishing world cinched in its belt and re-evaluated sending B-list authors like me out on tour. It all came to a halt with book five, and it has happened to so many of my author friends. Did the sales justify the money spent on me? I maintain it did. Just meeting all the managers in several bookstores in each city and making nice meant they stuck the book in a more prominent place or were able to talk it up to customers. Bookstores also can't "remainder" (send back) books that have been signed, and I signed plenty! Being on TV, radio and in the local newspaper was also free publicity, but who am I to argue with a corporation!

With the downsizing of publishing during the recession, I found myself booked in places I could drive to--which meant New England and Northern New York State (where I used to live and was known). Sales for Queen by Right were not as stellar as my first three books, and by the time Royal Mistress arrived in 2013, I was no longer given the royal treatment and in fact, I was released by my publisher and now I am on my own to market This Son of York. It's tough.


But I think I did alright! I launched the book on Nov. 15th at my local fabulous bookstore, Jabberwocky Books in Newburyport, and thanks to invitations and stories in the local press, more than 100 people turned out to wish me and the book well!
I then got into my book-heavy SUV, with my patient, wonderful husband at the wheel, and drove off to Guilderland, NY for the first event of my little self-made tour. The audience was warm and welcoming and I got some of my most challenging questions ever from several extremely history-passionate members! That is the joy of speaking to a group about what I do--it's meeting those with whom my books really resonate. It makes all the hard work worthwhile.

Northward we went to Glens Falls, where the lovely people at Crandall Library have hosted me for three events before this one. They didn't let me down this time, either, and Scott had brisk sales at his cash register. Our final stop was at the Peru Free Library near Plattsburgh, where I had been Features Editor at the daily newspaper for 10 years in the '80s and '90s. How wonderful it was that friends and colleagues (and strangers) crammed into the space leaving standing room only. I truly felt loved.

It's true that, then, I sold tens of thousands of books to the masses with a huge publishing house behind me, but now I really appreciate the support and reviews I am receiving from my loyal readers, friends and family as I send my "passion project" (as I call this sixth book!) out into the world.

Who knows, with your help, perhaps it will exceed all expectations!

 

Dem bones!

Medieval bones found during renovations at the Tower of London recently.

I found this new story really interesting pertaining to another medieval-bones discovery at the Tower...

This discovery reminded me of the more famous unearthing of the alleged bones of the two young princes, who disappeared in Richard III's time, by workmen doing renovations at the Tower of London in the 1660s. So the story goes, the workers threw them in a heap with other rubbish but reported the finding to a higher up, who wondered if perhaps these were the bones of those princes and so retrieved them. Why would he have assumed they might be the princes' remains, you ask? Here's where Tudor propaganda once again comes to the fore. Sir Thomas More, writing at the court of Henry VIII, wrote "The Historie of King Richard III," a damning book about Richard, used by Shakespeare as one of his sources, in which More describes the princes' deaths by murderers sent by Richard:

"After the wretches perceived them, first by the struggling with the pains of death, and after long lying still, to be thoroughly dead, they laid their bodies naked out upon the bed and fetched Sir James [Tyrell--Richard's alleged chosen instigator] to see them. Who, upon the sight of them, caused those murderers to bury them at the stair foot [of the Tower building they had been housed in], meetly deep in the ground under a great heap of stones."

This is where most Richard detractors stop in More's statement, because the placement lends itself nicely to the excavated bones two hundred years later. But let us read on:

"Then rode Sir James in great haste to King Richard, and showed him all the manner of the murder, who gave him great thanks and, as some say, there made him knight. But he [Richard] allowed not, as I have heard, the burying in so vile a corner, saying that he would have them buried in a better place because they were a king's sons...Whereupon they say that a priest of Sir Robert Brackenbury [Constable of the Tower] took up the bodies again and secretly interred them in such place as, by the occasion of his death, who alone knew it, could never after come to light."

Obviously, King Charles was one one of those who stopped after the first paragraph, because he was convinced these bones were the princes' and had Sir Christopher Wren (of St. Paul's fame) create a fancy urn in which to seal them for posterity, now on view in Westminster Abbey. No one questioned the validity of the inscription (that these were the bones of the princes in the Tower cruelly murdered by their Uncle Richard) until the 1930s, when permission was granted to unseal the urn and forensic analysis (pretty basic) carried out. All the experts could say then was that the bones were from two young bodie--together with a few chickens! They could not determine exact age, male or female and, most important, they did not have the technology to carbon date them.
The Urn in Westminster Abbey allegedly holding the Princes in the Tower bones

And that's what I find so interesting about the Smithsonian article:
Still, over the course of its nearly 1000-year history, the Tower has functioned as much more than a prison. Construction began in the 1070s under the orders of William the Conqueror, who sought to solidify his rule with a fortress that would loom high over vanquished Londoners, and as the site expanded into a complex with additional fortifications and towers, builders added lavish royal lodgings, a menagerie, a mint, and a tower for storing royal garments and the Crown Jewels.
Recent discoveries show the Tower “has also been a home to those who worked within its walls,” Hawkins writes.

Those bones in the urn could have been two youths from any period of the Tower's existence who may have died of plague or other natural causes. Nothing in the forensics was found to indicate they had been murdered. And even if they had, it still wouldn't tell us who murdered them!

GUEST BLOG WITH AUTHOR "MEDICI'S DAUGHTER" AUTHOR SOPHIE PERINOT

I am so pleased to have been asked to share my thoughts about This Son of York with my friend and fellow historical-fiction author Sophie Perinot. If you haven't read her book Medici's Daughter about Marguerite of Valois (Queen Margot), then you are missing out! Sophie is a fabulous writer and has spent a weekend at our house when she was a panelist at the Newburyport Literary Festival. Her latest collaboration is Ribbons of Scarlet about the French Revolution with five other authors. I'm in the middle of it and am learning A LOT! Thanks again for hosting me on your blog, Sophie!

Research Reminiscences

The gatehouse of Brancepeth Castle, Co. DurhamMost of my on-the-ground research has been in England and Belgium, and I pride myself that I have pretty much explored everywhere my characters would have walked, although not all the venues look the same as they did in the 15th century. Two incidents—one serendipitous and one funny—come to mind when I look back on nearly 20 years of traveling for research.

In Mechelen, Belgium (Malines, Burgundy in Margaret of York’s time), my travel companion Maryann and I were traipsing around the town, she taking photos and I scribbling descriptions, making our way to one of Margaret’s principal residences. I knew it was now used as a theater but I really wanted to go inside and see if I felt any Margaret vibes. It was shut up tight, and I groaned.

Undaunted, I circled the building and saw a modern, glassed-in staircase tacked on the back. Before Maryann could stop me, I tried the door, found it open and marched up the stairs, no knowing where it would lead me. A woman appeared on the third floor and started down before she saw me trying a door on the second floor. “Puis-je vous aider” she asked a little perturbed at my trespassing. When I told her I was researching Margaret of York, she lit up. “This was her palace,” she told me, and I nodded and said I had so hoped to go inside. “I am the director of the theater,” she replied. “Come with me!” And so I got to have my goose bumps as she opened up the part of the theater that was still medieval. Margaret was definitely with me that day!

The other story was hilarious! My oldest friend Roxy, who lives in Devonshire, agreed to cart me around Yorkshire on my research trip for Queen By Right, Cecily Neville’s story. We stayed near Sheriff Hutton a little way outside York and radiated out to as many Neville locales as we could. I had been given the name of the owner of Brancepeth Castle (see photo)—a forbidding, rather unattractive hulk of stone but still very well preserved. She lived in one of the several apartments that had been created out of the building, but hers incorporated the great hall and medieval kitchens underneath.

We knocked on her door and heard a distinctly upper-class Brit call from a distance, “Come in! Come in!” in the style of Maggie Smith’s Lady Grantham. We pushed open the front door and walked in, and about 20 feet away was our hostess, pulling up her knickers in the hall bathroom— door wide open. She was in her 70s, with grey hair pulled back into a scraggly bun, a rather rumpled, not-too-clean heavy wool sweater over a plaid skirt, and very sensible shoes with baggy woolen stockings sagging around her ankles. “Come in, dears,” she said cheerfully, and we didn’t like to tell her, as she led us into the massive—and frigid—great hall (no wonder she was so warmly dressed), that she had tucked the back of her skirt into the aforementioned knickers! The impressive but drafty hall was her living room with two ancient leather chairs and a faded sofa covered in children’s toys. “Sit down, sit down! Just shove them all on the floor, my grandchildren were here last week,” she said. “Take off your coats while I make us some tea,” and she disappeared off. A true English eccentric! Roxy and I had a hard time containing our giggles, and there was no way we were taking off our coats. But she was kindness itself and had some wonderful knowledge about the Neville family for me--as well as the all-important good cup of Yorkshire tea!

For more about my books please see www.anneeastersmith.com

Open Day at Bosworth Battlefield Center...

I have been to the Bosworth Battlefield Center three times, and each time I am impressed by the changes that have been made. When I was there in 2017 on my pilgrimage to my homeland to see Richard's grave and new tomb in Leicester, I was welcomed by the staff at Bosworth as a member of the Richard III Society and given the royal treatment. There is much to see and experience (photos below), and I will never forget being able to use an electric wheelchair (due to an ankle injury) and turn up the speed going down the same hill they think Richard charged down! My poor husband must have felt as helpless as Richard's closest friends did as they watched him suddenly take off down the hill to engage directly at Henry of Richmond. Scott was able to head me off before I turned the cart over, however, and crisis was averted. Not so for Richard, who, as we know, lost first his horse and then his life on Bosworth field on August 22nd, 1485. He was the last English king to die in battle.

I was on the center website this weekend and see they have an open house next Saturday, 21st September. I encourage you to go, if you are in the neighborhood. It's a must-see for history lovers and those fascinated with Richard III! Sadly, my new book, This Son of York, won't be ready to include on the extensive bookshelves.

https://www.bosworthbattlefield.org.uk/events/heritage-open-day-event/

Medieval ideas of love and marriage

“Love and marriage, love and marriage, they go together like a horse and carriage” ...well, not so much in medieval times!
Margaret of York, Richard III and Edward IV’s sister, was promised to half a dozen men before her brother Edward finally gave her to a brute of a man, Charles the Bold, duke of Burgundy. And she never met any of the gentlemen and only met Charles a couple of days before their formal betrothal in Damme, near Bruges, in 1478 when she was the ripe old age of 22. For Edward it was a political win; for Margaret it meant leaving her family and her homeland for ever (well, except for a three-month visit back to England in 1480 to negotiate trade agreements for her new country) and being saddled with a man without scruples and very few morals.
Sometimes--in the case of King Henry VI and Margaret of Anjou--one or other had someone stand proxy for them and you might be married before you even saw your husband! Imagine dreaming about your knight in shining armor or your Guinevere and being forced to live the rest of your days with Eygor from Frankenstein or Cruella Deville. Yes, a familiar love grew between couples in many cases, but it was hardly what we know today as conjugal bliss! Romantic love was most definitely missing for these very often mismatched pairs, so was it any wonder a young woman would fantasize about love and romance and be susceptible to flirtations.
Yet woe betide those who lived out their fantasies; their reputations would be lost and, in many cases, suitable marriages as well. Somehow, and why are we not surprised, this was not the case with young men, who were expected to have their flings--often leaving bastards in their wakes. Richard III and Edward IV were good examples, although Richard is thought to have stayed true to his wife, Anne Neville, once they were married. Edward, on the other hand, enjoyed his mistresses until his death at 40 in 1483, and his queen, Elizabeth Woodville, had to grin and bear it.
It was delightful, therefore, to come across a love-match between Cecily Neville and Richard, duke of York, who were the subjects of my fourth book QUEEN BY RIGHT. For all his other faults, their third son who survived childhood, George of Clarence, managed to retain a spotless reputation for fidelity with his wife, Isabel.
In ROYAL MISTRESS, the fifth book in my series about the York family in the Wars of the Roses, my protagonist is Jane (born Elizabeth) Shore, Edward IV’s final and favorite mistress. Although she was not born noble, she was born into a well-to-do merchant family in the city of London and all the same rules applied: be demure, obey your father and marry whomever he chooses for you. In that class, the gain might be a merger in business, prestige for the family or a way for a father to divest himself of a mouth to feed.
Jane managed to avoid marriage to anyone until she was in her 20s, older than was usual, because many contracts were arranged between families when their offspring were only a few years old. But these young people might live at opposite ends of the country from each other and never meet until the legal age for marriage arrived: 12 for girls and 14 for boys. And so early in the medieval period, the troubadours began to sing about love and romance, which quickly spread to literature and, pretty soon, anyone born with a silver spoon in his or her mouth was caught up in what we would probably call affairs today.
We now refer to this idealized version of romance as “courtly love.” We would laugh at it now as it was exaggerated and artificial; we would also deem it highly dangerous as its most exciting aspect was secrecy. When a knight or lord fancied a lady, he was supposed to let her know by sending her secret gifts, singing her songs or penning flowery poems. The lady on the other hand was supposed to only afford her pining lover a mere nod of approval and hint at affection. The relationship was more of a mistress dominating her servant, and the men apparently went for it.
At the beginning of ROYAL MISTRESS, Jane meets a handsome young man, Tom Grey, and falls headlong in love with him. She so desperately wants to know what real love is, according to her poetry books (and Jane was quite literate, BTW), that she can’t help but begin the game of courtly love, much to Tom’s chagrin! Even when he tells Jane he is not free to love her, she believes this is all part of the game, because she knows for it to be true romantic love, it had to be hidden.
Everyone knew that marriage was just for begetting children, thus real love was precious and lovers should be allowed to carry on in secret. Andrew the Chaplain, a medieval clergyman, wrote: “Love rarely survives when it becomes common knowledge.” And Heloise is said to have told her lover Abelard: “The love freely given matters. The name of ‘wife’ may seem more sacred or more worthy, but sweetest to me will always be the words ‘lover, concubine or whore.’” Jane Shore ended up living her fantasy first with King Edward, then his chamberlain and friend, Will Hastings, and finally with Tom Grey.
The story of how she weathered marriage and annulment with William Shore and came to be Edward’s “merriest” mistress, is the stuff of fairy tales. But when her lovers let her down--two by dying and the third by lying--her fall was more the fodder of nightmares. Jane experienced the whole gamut of love between men and women: filial love, romantic love, friendship, sensual love, true love and conjugal love--and some with the same man! ROYAL MISTRESS explores them all and I hope gives us a woman we can all relate to today.