Gillian Polack's Blog, page 77
March 10, 2014
gillpolack @ 2014-03-11T16:57:00
I'm behind on things today because I've been sleeping. The antibiotics have really begun to do their thing and my body is heaving a sigh of relief and saying "Things are better now, time to sleep." I pointed out to my body that this is a work day and that I've got stuff I want to do, but it's telling me that I've worked all the way through quite a few days that should have been sick days, and it's stopped listening to me. It has decided to go heal itself. Wherever it goes, it drags me with it and so I sleep a great deal and have strange dreams.
In my most recent dream (ten minutes ago), I walked out of Varuna (I need to go back there, sometime) and past a strange wedding, and got myself to Melbourne, where I went to my childhood home instead of to where my mother lives, and I was trying to get to her on the phone to say that I had no idea how to get there from here (in reality, it's easy - train from Glenferrie to Richmond, then change, or tram to Richmond then train or tram to Hawthorn Road then tram) and everything got in the way and went strange in small eerie ways. Do not spend time with horror writers when you are unwell, is all I can say.
In other news... Maxine McArthur gifted me with a zucchini so big that it counts as a marrow. I have unfrozen something from my freezer that looks as if it will stuff it (I think it's someone's idea of bulkogi mix that I was trying), for doing things from scratch is just not going to happen today, and I will need meals for the rest of the week when things will be better, but still not a walk in the park, and lo, I have a lovely zucchini and it says "Eat me."
In other news... I need to write sentences that don't sprawl.
In other news still, I haven't forgotten WHM. We have a lovely guest for today. I just keep falling asleep before I can post things. And it may not be just my whatever-was-wrong-with-me, people kept napping like cats at the retreat, complaining of headache and fatigue and other symptoms. If this is what's wrong with me, it'll be over by tomorrow. I don't think I"ll get my chapter written today, though.
In my most recent dream (ten minutes ago), I walked out of Varuna (I need to go back there, sometime) and past a strange wedding, and got myself to Melbourne, where I went to my childhood home instead of to where my mother lives, and I was trying to get to her on the phone to say that I had no idea how to get there from here (in reality, it's easy - train from Glenferrie to Richmond, then change, or tram to Richmond then train or tram to Hawthorn Road then tram) and everything got in the way and went strange in small eerie ways. Do not spend time with horror writers when you are unwell, is all I can say.
In other news... Maxine McArthur gifted me with a zucchini so big that it counts as a marrow. I have unfrozen something from my freezer that looks as if it will stuff it (I think it's someone's idea of bulkogi mix that I was trying), for doing things from scratch is just not going to happen today, and I will need meals for the rest of the week when things will be better, but still not a walk in the park, and lo, I have a lovely zucchini and it says "Eat me."
In other news... I need to write sentences that don't sprawl.
In other news still, I haven't forgotten WHM. We have a lovely guest for today. I just keep falling asleep before I can post things. And it may not be just my whatever-was-wrong-with-me, people kept napping like cats at the retreat, complaining of headache and fatigue and other symptoms. If this is what's wrong with me, it'll be over by tomorrow. I don't think I"ll get my chapter written today, though.
March 9, 2014
gillpolack @ 2014-03-10T08:17:00
I have given careful consideration to a request for the appearance of Princess Leia in my version of the Purim Spiel, so that one of my favourite honorary nieces will be properly costumed next Saturday. My conclusion is that this is an excellent idea, but that there must be other characters who ought to be part of Purim and who aren't. My challenge for this year, therefore, is to include all the characters (real, unreal, superreal and hyperreal) that my friends think would improve the story. So far it's Princess Leia (obviously), Dobby and the Ugly Duckling.
All suggestions gratefully incorporated.
All suggestions gratefully incorporated.
Women's History Month - guest post by Mary Victoria
Mary Victoria has lived in seven countries and managed to settle permanently in none. This is becoming problematic for customs officials trying to make sense of her passport. She has been at various times in her life a passable nanny, an over-anxious animator, a moody mother and an expert on French bureaucracy, and writes stories because she can’t help it—it’s in her blood. One of her ancestors started the trend long ago, spinning yarns to a certain manic-depressive sultan over the course of 2.74 years. Contrary to the tale as it is commonly told, the sultan did not fall in love with his loquacious bride but died of exhaustion waiting for the sequel to come out; and so modern fantasy was born. You can find out more about Mary’s far less hazardous stories on her website at maryvictoria.co.uk
The brief for this post during Women’s History Month was to speak about a woman I admire – a woman who inspires me to write, and about whom much could be written. Normally, I suppose this would be someone who achieved obvious successes in life, a “role model” in terms of creativity, contributions to society or just plain, high-flying adventure. And yes, I am fortunate to have known several brilliant women who are, or were, exactly that.
But in this instance, I will attempt to describe a different sort of person. I will tell you about the Great Warrior who first inspired me as a child, who taught me what it meant to be true to oneself, to meet the changes and chances of this world with integrity, dignity, and courage, no matter what the odds. She was not what we tend to call “a success.” Indeed, at first glance, her life was one of bewildering sadness and difficulty.
Her name was Zinat, and she was my great, great aunt. Born in the 1890’s, my grandfather’s mother’s sister, she lived almost long enough to see out the following century. This means, of course, that she lived through two world wars; a long-time resident of Lebanon, she also survived the conflicts that ravaged that country. Throughout her life she faced adversity with indomitable courage. Nothing appeared capable of dampening her resolve: not a childhood shadowed by prison and exile, not an early and difficult emigration to America, not personal tragedy within the family, nor even “the bombas, the bombas,” as she called them, that completely destroyed the Beirut she knew and loved in the 1970’s. She wouldn’t leave that city. She stayed in her apartment in the centre of town as the bombs fell around her, serene in the face of ruin.
If all this conjures up images of a fearless adventurer, a sort of eastern Amelia Earhart boldly going where no Beiruti woman has gone before (possibly while wearing pilot’s goggles,) it would be understandable. But this would be very far from the truth, at least in terms of physique. Zinat Khanum – “Khanum” means lady, and we never referred to her in the family without that mark of respect – was a tiny woman, bird-like. Small of stature, petite, feminine: all these adjectives applied to her. In the thirties, first in America then again when she returned to Lebanon, she ran a successful beauty business. It probably never happened that way, but I like to picture her dressed in decorous flapper clothing, mouth primly red and pursed, setting perms for the fine ladies of Chicago.
By the last decade or so of her life when I was privileged to meet her, she peered out at the world from behind thick spectacles which made her look even more like a bird, of the owl variety. She still enjoyed smoking a single long and ladylike brown cigarette a day, taken after dinner with coffee and great glee. She wasn’t loquacious. But what she said was pithy and to the point.
She had strong words of advice for my mother, recently divorced and feeling all the pressures and judgements directed at a woman in her position in the 1970’s, living alone with her young daughter. She told us, in no uncertain terms, that we had to believe in ourselves. That we had to have pride in ourselves. No one else would do it for us. People would try to control us, even bully us. We had to smile and nod politely, if that’s what it took, and do exactly what we thought was right.
“Horrh,” she would say to us, raising her chin and pursing her lips again to pronounce the wonderful, purring Arabic word. “You have to be horrh. To have pride.”
And every muscle in her little body would proclaim it: Dignity. Decorum. Unshakeable self-belief.
Why? Why stay in Beirut during a civil war? I imagine people asking her, later, while the “bombas” flew over her neighbourhood. I can also imagine her response to that, and many other questions.
Horrh. You have to be horrh.
Where did this warrior spirit come from? Some of her attitudes could perhaps be traced back to childhood years. Zinat Khanum was born in the penal colony of Akka, in Palestine, among a community of prisoners of conscience and despised heretics, back in the days when the Ottoman Empire used to banish communities wholesale. Wives, sisters, brothers, children: they all were born, grew up and lived their lives out in exile, generation upon generation. They would have had to have a sense of self-worth, just in order to survive. They were the ones who had stood up for their beliefs and been punished for it. This notion of fidelity to oneself must have been burned into her. Her memories of Akka as it was at the time were still so fresh, so acute by the end of her life, that she was called on to help in the renovation of some of the city buildings when they were restored in the late 1980’s. She remembered everything, down to the last detail of furniture and décor.
That 1980’s trip to Israel was deeply unusual, again, considering she was a resident of Lebanon, and the two countries had recently been embroiled in yet another war. But Zinat Khanum made it her business to cross boundaries and achieve the unusual, the impossible. During the first world war, she married a medical student from the American University in Beirut – or rather, was sent out to America to be married to him, rather like a package on the steamer. It was an arranged match, like most were in her milieu. Zinat’s husband brought her to Chicago, where he finished his studies and subsequently set up a practice in the twenties and thirties.
When she visited my mother and I in Cyprus, all those years later, she brought me a present. It was both a typical sort of present one gives to a girl child, especially in that region of the world – a baby doll, dressed in a yellow knitted jumpsuit and hat – and a little odd to me. I had never had such a thing before. My dolls were of two varieties: one beloved Barbie-type (actually a Charlie’s Angels Kelly doll, the black-haired one, if I remember correctly,) the protagonist of all my make-believe adventures, and other home-made dolls carefully fashioned by my mother out of wooden clothes pegs and scraps of material. Now, I had this great plastic baby, whose eyelids lolled shut when I lay her down. I didn’t know what to do with her.
I have thought many times since then about that present, and about Zinat Khanum’s staunch kindness, the way she had of making one feel worthy, of quietly encouraging and reaffirming individuality. I’ve thought of her particular gentleness towards children and young women, those who are often bombarded with messages of control and subjection. Hearing about her early years in America and what transpired there, I begin now, dimly, to understand why.
It must have been hard being stranger in a strange land, caught between east and west, and harder still for a girl who had grown up in a faraway prison colony. Zinat and her husband had one daughter, who went on to suffer tragically from what was probably a mental breakdown or period of depression in her teenage years, following the death of her father in the late 1930’s. The child was misdiagnosed by the American medical establishment and overmedicated: she finally died, institutionalized, back in Beirut. Her bereaved mother soldiered on in that city over the decades that followed, going from the beauty parlour to the “bombas,” enduring. Always enduring.
“Horrh,” she would tell us, when we complained of the little injustices in our own lives. “You have to be horrh.”
And she would pull herself up absolutely straight, her tiny body exuding utter fearlessness. What were bombs? What were everyday worries and anxieties? She had faced them all, faced them down with pride. She knew exactly who she was.
She didn’t leave the city until the end.
The brief for this post during Women’s History Month was to speak about a woman I admire – a woman who inspires me to write, and about whom much could be written. Normally, I suppose this would be someone who achieved obvious successes in life, a “role model” in terms of creativity, contributions to society or just plain, high-flying adventure. And yes, I am fortunate to have known several brilliant women who are, or were, exactly that.
But in this instance, I will attempt to describe a different sort of person. I will tell you about the Great Warrior who first inspired me as a child, who taught me what it meant to be true to oneself, to meet the changes and chances of this world with integrity, dignity, and courage, no matter what the odds. She was not what we tend to call “a success.” Indeed, at first glance, her life was one of bewildering sadness and difficulty.
Her name was Zinat, and she was my great, great aunt. Born in the 1890’s, my grandfather’s mother’s sister, she lived almost long enough to see out the following century. This means, of course, that she lived through two world wars; a long-time resident of Lebanon, she also survived the conflicts that ravaged that country. Throughout her life she faced adversity with indomitable courage. Nothing appeared capable of dampening her resolve: not a childhood shadowed by prison and exile, not an early and difficult emigration to America, not personal tragedy within the family, nor even “the bombas, the bombas,” as she called them, that completely destroyed the Beirut she knew and loved in the 1970’s. She wouldn’t leave that city. She stayed in her apartment in the centre of town as the bombs fell around her, serene in the face of ruin.
If all this conjures up images of a fearless adventurer, a sort of eastern Amelia Earhart boldly going where no Beiruti woman has gone before (possibly while wearing pilot’s goggles,) it would be understandable. But this would be very far from the truth, at least in terms of physique. Zinat Khanum – “Khanum” means lady, and we never referred to her in the family without that mark of respect – was a tiny woman, bird-like. Small of stature, petite, feminine: all these adjectives applied to her. In the thirties, first in America then again when she returned to Lebanon, she ran a successful beauty business. It probably never happened that way, but I like to picture her dressed in decorous flapper clothing, mouth primly red and pursed, setting perms for the fine ladies of Chicago.
By the last decade or so of her life when I was privileged to meet her, she peered out at the world from behind thick spectacles which made her look even more like a bird, of the owl variety. She still enjoyed smoking a single long and ladylike brown cigarette a day, taken after dinner with coffee and great glee. She wasn’t loquacious. But what she said was pithy and to the point.
She had strong words of advice for my mother, recently divorced and feeling all the pressures and judgements directed at a woman in her position in the 1970’s, living alone with her young daughter. She told us, in no uncertain terms, that we had to believe in ourselves. That we had to have pride in ourselves. No one else would do it for us. People would try to control us, even bully us. We had to smile and nod politely, if that’s what it took, and do exactly what we thought was right.
“Horrh,” she would say to us, raising her chin and pursing her lips again to pronounce the wonderful, purring Arabic word. “You have to be horrh. To have pride.”
And every muscle in her little body would proclaim it: Dignity. Decorum. Unshakeable self-belief.
Why? Why stay in Beirut during a civil war? I imagine people asking her, later, while the “bombas” flew over her neighbourhood. I can also imagine her response to that, and many other questions.
Horrh. You have to be horrh.
Where did this warrior spirit come from? Some of her attitudes could perhaps be traced back to childhood years. Zinat Khanum was born in the penal colony of Akka, in Palestine, among a community of prisoners of conscience and despised heretics, back in the days when the Ottoman Empire used to banish communities wholesale. Wives, sisters, brothers, children: they all were born, grew up and lived their lives out in exile, generation upon generation. They would have had to have a sense of self-worth, just in order to survive. They were the ones who had stood up for their beliefs and been punished for it. This notion of fidelity to oneself must have been burned into her. Her memories of Akka as it was at the time were still so fresh, so acute by the end of her life, that she was called on to help in the renovation of some of the city buildings when they were restored in the late 1980’s. She remembered everything, down to the last detail of furniture and décor.
That 1980’s trip to Israel was deeply unusual, again, considering she was a resident of Lebanon, and the two countries had recently been embroiled in yet another war. But Zinat Khanum made it her business to cross boundaries and achieve the unusual, the impossible. During the first world war, she married a medical student from the American University in Beirut – or rather, was sent out to America to be married to him, rather like a package on the steamer. It was an arranged match, like most were in her milieu. Zinat’s husband brought her to Chicago, where he finished his studies and subsequently set up a practice in the twenties and thirties.
When she visited my mother and I in Cyprus, all those years later, she brought me a present. It was both a typical sort of present one gives to a girl child, especially in that region of the world – a baby doll, dressed in a yellow knitted jumpsuit and hat – and a little odd to me. I had never had such a thing before. My dolls were of two varieties: one beloved Barbie-type (actually a Charlie’s Angels Kelly doll, the black-haired one, if I remember correctly,) the protagonist of all my make-believe adventures, and other home-made dolls carefully fashioned by my mother out of wooden clothes pegs and scraps of material. Now, I had this great plastic baby, whose eyelids lolled shut when I lay her down. I didn’t know what to do with her.
I have thought many times since then about that present, and about Zinat Khanum’s staunch kindness, the way she had of making one feel worthy, of quietly encouraging and reaffirming individuality. I’ve thought of her particular gentleness towards children and young women, those who are often bombarded with messages of control and subjection. Hearing about her early years in America and what transpired there, I begin now, dimly, to understand why.
It must have been hard being stranger in a strange land, caught between east and west, and harder still for a girl who had grown up in a faraway prison colony. Zinat and her husband had one daughter, who went on to suffer tragically from what was probably a mental breakdown or period of depression in her teenage years, following the death of her father in the late 1930’s. The child was misdiagnosed by the American medical establishment and overmedicated: she finally died, institutionalized, back in Beirut. Her bereaved mother soldiered on in that city over the decades that followed, going from the beauty parlour to the “bombas,” enduring. Always enduring.
“Horrh,” she would tell us, when we complained of the little injustices in our own lives. “You have to be horrh.”
And she would pull herself up absolutely straight, her tiny body exuding utter fearlessness. What were bombs? What were everyday worries and anxieties? She had faced them all, faced them down with pride. She knew exactly who she was.
She didn’t leave the city until the end.
gillpolack @ 2014-03-09T23:17:00
I didn't cook dinner tonight, which is just as well, for I've only just realised I have goat's cheese and not feta. I would have looked and looked in vain...
Instead, two of my close friends and I visited the last night of Enlighten. So I am, as last year, Enlightened. I have many, many photos. If anyone has a desire to be Enlightened, too, I can put some on Facebook, perhaps. My personal favourite (for obvious reasons) is Parliament House with the words "Magna Carta" blasted over the main entrance. (Why did spellcheck want to change Magna to manga? I suspect I should not ask.)
Instead, two of my close friends and I visited the last night of Enlighten. So I am, as last year, Enlightened. I have many, many photos. If anyone has a desire to be Enlightened, too, I can put some on Facebook, perhaps. My personal favourite (for obvious reasons) is Parliament House with the words "Magna Carta" blasted over the main entrance. (Why did spellcheck want to change Magna to manga? I suspect I should not ask.)
March 8, 2014
I caught this morning, morning's market
At the market this morning I bought hen eggs (free range, mixed sizes, impossibly cheap) and duck eggs (about the same price as hen eggs in the supermarket), two trays of zucchini flowers (one to be stuffed with feta, fried and eaten with hot sauce for dinner tonight), lots of peaches and nectarines, cucumbers, red capsicum and baby spinach. I also bought two loaves of Italian bread as my contribution towards lunch today. And now you know.
Women's History Month - guest post by Sue Bursztynski
Sue Bursztynski lives in Melbourne's beachside suburbs and works at a western suburbs secondary school. She writes children's and young adult books, fiction and non-fiction and speculative fiction. She is a member of the Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine team, for which she has edited an issue, #60, to come out this year. She blogs about books, reading and writing at The Great Raven, http://suebursztynski.blogspot.com Why not wander over and check it out?
The best place to look for my in-print trade books - Your Cat Could Be A Spy(aka This Book Is Bugged, the North American edition published by Annick Press), Crime Time: Australians behaving badly and Wolfborn - is www.booktopia.com or you can get Crime Time from www.fordstreetpublishing.com or order from your bookshop if you live in Australia. Cat/Bugged is now print on demand, so you can simply order it from your local bookshop. Wolfborn is also available as an ebook from Amazon and iBooks.
You can find such out of print books as Potions to Pulsars on ABEbooks - there were several copies available last time I looked.
There are also a couple of book trailers on YouTube - one for Wolfborn, created by a member of my book club, Kristen, which you can find here: http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8uvwrYxZHL0 and one for Crime Time here : http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oywLkZ6Okxw. I also read from my work on YouTube.
On Researching A Women's History Book: Potions To Pulsars: Women doing science
My children's history of women in science is a slim volume, about ten thousand words long, the length of a novelette, with art by the wonderful Marilyn Pride.
But there's a lot of research in it, done at a time when the Internet was new - and I didn't have it yet, so I paid one visit a week to the Internet cafe on Glenferrie Rd in Melbourne. The rest was done from books in the State Library of Victoria, some books I'd bought and a few children's science books from my local library.
When I put in my book proposal to Allen and Unwin, I thought, how hard could it be to gather a few biographies of scientific women? Not so easy, as I found - I had to understand the science to be able to explain to my readers what they had achieved. And children's books were all I could handle.
There wasn't a lot written on the subject at the time, but I started with a wonderful book in the State Library, Hypatia's Heritage by Margaret Alic. It had a chapter for each of its heroines and gave me the chance to choose some to follow up in other books. And these books in their turn showed me the way to other heroines.
In those days, the average history of science included one token woman scientist, Marie Curie. I almost left her out of my book, but my editor, Sarah Brenan, persuaded me not to.
In the end, I was glad I'd left her in. I discovered things I hadn't known, such as that one of her two daughters, Irene, became a Nobel-winning scientist herself, and that there was a granddaughter, Helene, a nuclear physicist. Her biographer daughter Eve was in a Women's Who's Who. It was a few years old, but it was amazing to think that I could have contacted Marie Curie's daughter!
According to my research, quite apart from the women who discovered major things, a lot of what women had invented was simple, practical everyday stuff that we all need but take for granted. Think of the basic equipment of the chemistry lab - it comes from the kitchen. And next time you buy food from a shop's bain-marie, remember it was named for the Alexandrian alchemist Maria the Jewess.
I unearthed a book about women who'd invented simple but essential things, Mothers Of Invention, with an introduction by actress Julie Newmar who had herself invented and patented a couple of simple, everyday things.
And speaking of inventive actors, how about the beautiful Hedy Lamarr? Some years ago, when she was already very old, she finally received a special award for contributions to science. "About time!" she snorted.
During World War II she and a friend, George Antheil, patented a system of frequency-hopping for communicating between submarines. She offered this to the US government and was told that if she really wanted to contribute to the war effort she should fundraise by selling kisses(she did). The information was put aside till after the war when someone finally got around to using it, and it eventually led to the technology used to create mobile phones. Yep. It was thanks to a woman that we now have mobile phones. Of course, that had to go into my book.
In the end, there was an embarrassment of riches - how to choose? I wrote eighteen chapters plus small "did you know?" paragraphs. I had to get a balance - different eras, different sciences, Australians. I didn't end up including many Asian women because in the pre-Google era the only modern one I could find was a scientist who'd worked on the Manhattan Project and I couldn't bring myself to make a heroine of someone for building the bomb. Still, the Chinese edition sold well and I got royalties on it long after the English version was out of print.
Late one night I was writing about Rita Levi-Montalcini, who worked on nerve growth factor in her bedroom during the war, using eggs, the only thing she could afford, when I heard on the radio that a woman scientist in Sydney, Rosanne Taylor, was working on making brain cells regenerate. I didn't have email at the time, so I faxed a letter to her at work and she replied. She was indeed working with NGF.
Soon after, I contacted Levi-Montalcini, in Rome, to check for accuracy. One of her staff rang to tell me that the fax number I'd given them kept getting a voice saying, "Hello?Hello?" It was a friend's personal fax, which connected to his phone. I gave her my school's fax instead. These days it would all be done by email.
I also managed to contact Nobel Prizewinner Rosalyn Sussman Yalow and Jocelyn Bell Burnell, who discovered pulsars, but never got the Nobel Prize because she was a PhD student at the time, so it went to her supervisor.
At least she could say it was standard practice. I still bristle when James Watson is named as the discoverer of DNA. If Rosalind Franklin hadn't been overly careful about publishing without being absolutely sure of her facts, she might be known as the one who figured out the double helix while Watson and his colleagues were still making it a triple helix!
I picked quirky stories children would enjoy - this was not intended to be a homework aid, though some have used it for that. (During one class in my library, a student picked up a date error that had missed the final proofread!).
Caroline Herschel, for example, never intended to be an astronomer. She was a gifted professional singer. But her brother William Herschel, who was Britain's Astronomer Royal and discovered Uranus, talked her into learning science so she could work with him; she discovered many comets herself. For the kids, I included the story of how she used horse dung while building a telescope.
Then there was a story about how,as a medical student, Rita Levi-Montalcini had to carry, on the public bus, a cadaver for dissection - a baby - and the foot stuck out of the parcel. How would you explain THAT? Of course, it went into the book.
Another choice was Hildegard of Bingen, a mediaeval abbess who wrote scientific treatises when she wasn't composing stunningly beautiful music that's still performed and writing plays. She is a Catholic saint, but the high churchmen of her day tended to hide whenever they saw her coming.
I simply had to include some women who disguised as men to practise medicine - Agnodike of Athens and Dr "James Barry", a 19th century girl whose family conspired to help her study medicine in Edinburgh. She went into the army and saved a lot of lives by insisting on cleanliness(and probably missed out on a knighthood because she'd embarrassed that saint Florence Nightingale in public over the filth of her hospital). I'm betting her valet knew what she was, but it seems nobody else did till after her death. The doctor who did the death certificate said nothing, but the cleaning lady who laid her out for burial did. She snorted at his suggestion that the late doctor had perhaps been a hermaphrodite - there were stretch marks on that body!
That suggests a story no one knows even now. Actually, maybe there was one other man who knew she was female...
The cleaner sold the story to the newspapers. The valet was hustled off back to Jamaica, possibly to keep him from giving interviews, and the whole embarrassing story was hushed up for over a century.
I discovered women practising and writing about medicine in 11th century Salerno, without having to disguise as men.
The women of science in my book ranged from ancient times to modern astronauts - the first woman to lead a shuttle mission had just been appointed when I was finishing the book.
I was invited to speak to a club for gifted children, who, boy and girl alike, were highly indignant to hear about the trials and tribulations of poor Agnodike, who was accused of seducing wives, so had to prove she was female and then got into trouble for practising medicine as a woman!
It was a fascinating experience researching the women who'd contributed so much to science, some from basements and bedrooms because no one wanted to know about them in a men's world. But it was not an angry book, it was a celebration of their lives. I remember being a little irked that the cover was a cliched picture of a woman in a lab coat holding a test tube! But she turned out to be a real scientist, not a model. I couldn't argue with that.
The book is long out of print, alas, and would have to be revised before going into print again, as a lot has happened since then. But it sold out and I'm proud of it, even more so as I spotted it in the bibliography of another book on women in science and it received a short but positive review in New Scientist.
How cool is that?
The best place to look for my in-print trade books - Your Cat Could Be A Spy(aka This Book Is Bugged, the North American edition published by Annick Press), Crime Time: Australians behaving badly and Wolfborn - is www.booktopia.com or you can get Crime Time from www.fordstreetpublishing.com or order from your bookshop if you live in Australia. Cat/Bugged is now print on demand, so you can simply order it from your local bookshop. Wolfborn is also available as an ebook from Amazon and iBooks.
You can find such out of print books as Potions to Pulsars on ABEbooks - there were several copies available last time I looked.
There are also a couple of book trailers on YouTube - one for Wolfborn, created by a member of my book club, Kristen, which you can find here: http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8uvwrYxZHL0 and one for Crime Time here : http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oywLkZ6Okxw. I also read from my work on YouTube.
On Researching A Women's History Book: Potions To Pulsars: Women doing science
My children's history of women in science is a slim volume, about ten thousand words long, the length of a novelette, with art by the wonderful Marilyn Pride.
But there's a lot of research in it, done at a time when the Internet was new - and I didn't have it yet, so I paid one visit a week to the Internet cafe on Glenferrie Rd in Melbourne. The rest was done from books in the State Library of Victoria, some books I'd bought and a few children's science books from my local library.
When I put in my book proposal to Allen and Unwin, I thought, how hard could it be to gather a few biographies of scientific women? Not so easy, as I found - I had to understand the science to be able to explain to my readers what they had achieved. And children's books were all I could handle.
There wasn't a lot written on the subject at the time, but I started with a wonderful book in the State Library, Hypatia's Heritage by Margaret Alic. It had a chapter for each of its heroines and gave me the chance to choose some to follow up in other books. And these books in their turn showed me the way to other heroines.
In those days, the average history of science included one token woman scientist, Marie Curie. I almost left her out of my book, but my editor, Sarah Brenan, persuaded me not to.
In the end, I was glad I'd left her in. I discovered things I hadn't known, such as that one of her two daughters, Irene, became a Nobel-winning scientist herself, and that there was a granddaughter, Helene, a nuclear physicist. Her biographer daughter Eve was in a Women's Who's Who. It was a few years old, but it was amazing to think that I could have contacted Marie Curie's daughter!
According to my research, quite apart from the women who discovered major things, a lot of what women had invented was simple, practical everyday stuff that we all need but take for granted. Think of the basic equipment of the chemistry lab - it comes from the kitchen. And next time you buy food from a shop's bain-marie, remember it was named for the Alexandrian alchemist Maria the Jewess.
I unearthed a book about women who'd invented simple but essential things, Mothers Of Invention, with an introduction by actress Julie Newmar who had herself invented and patented a couple of simple, everyday things.
And speaking of inventive actors, how about the beautiful Hedy Lamarr? Some years ago, when she was already very old, she finally received a special award for contributions to science. "About time!" she snorted.
During World War II she and a friend, George Antheil, patented a system of frequency-hopping for communicating between submarines. She offered this to the US government and was told that if she really wanted to contribute to the war effort she should fundraise by selling kisses(she did). The information was put aside till after the war when someone finally got around to using it, and it eventually led to the technology used to create mobile phones. Yep. It was thanks to a woman that we now have mobile phones. Of course, that had to go into my book.
In the end, there was an embarrassment of riches - how to choose? I wrote eighteen chapters plus small "did you know?" paragraphs. I had to get a balance - different eras, different sciences, Australians. I didn't end up including many Asian women because in the pre-Google era the only modern one I could find was a scientist who'd worked on the Manhattan Project and I couldn't bring myself to make a heroine of someone for building the bomb. Still, the Chinese edition sold well and I got royalties on it long after the English version was out of print.
Late one night I was writing about Rita Levi-Montalcini, who worked on nerve growth factor in her bedroom during the war, using eggs, the only thing she could afford, when I heard on the radio that a woman scientist in Sydney, Rosanne Taylor, was working on making brain cells regenerate. I didn't have email at the time, so I faxed a letter to her at work and she replied. She was indeed working with NGF.
Soon after, I contacted Levi-Montalcini, in Rome, to check for accuracy. One of her staff rang to tell me that the fax number I'd given them kept getting a voice saying, "Hello?Hello?" It was a friend's personal fax, which connected to his phone. I gave her my school's fax instead. These days it would all be done by email.
I also managed to contact Nobel Prizewinner Rosalyn Sussman Yalow and Jocelyn Bell Burnell, who discovered pulsars, but never got the Nobel Prize because she was a PhD student at the time, so it went to her supervisor.
At least she could say it was standard practice. I still bristle when James Watson is named as the discoverer of DNA. If Rosalind Franklin hadn't been overly careful about publishing without being absolutely sure of her facts, she might be known as the one who figured out the double helix while Watson and his colleagues were still making it a triple helix!
I picked quirky stories children would enjoy - this was not intended to be a homework aid, though some have used it for that. (During one class in my library, a student picked up a date error that had missed the final proofread!).
Caroline Herschel, for example, never intended to be an astronomer. She was a gifted professional singer. But her brother William Herschel, who was Britain's Astronomer Royal and discovered Uranus, talked her into learning science so she could work with him; she discovered many comets herself. For the kids, I included the story of how she used horse dung while building a telescope.
Then there was a story about how,as a medical student, Rita Levi-Montalcini had to carry, on the public bus, a cadaver for dissection - a baby - and the foot stuck out of the parcel. How would you explain THAT? Of course, it went into the book.
Another choice was Hildegard of Bingen, a mediaeval abbess who wrote scientific treatises when she wasn't composing stunningly beautiful music that's still performed and writing plays. She is a Catholic saint, but the high churchmen of her day tended to hide whenever they saw her coming.
I simply had to include some women who disguised as men to practise medicine - Agnodike of Athens and Dr "James Barry", a 19th century girl whose family conspired to help her study medicine in Edinburgh. She went into the army and saved a lot of lives by insisting on cleanliness(and probably missed out on a knighthood because she'd embarrassed that saint Florence Nightingale in public over the filth of her hospital). I'm betting her valet knew what she was, but it seems nobody else did till after her death. The doctor who did the death certificate said nothing, but the cleaning lady who laid her out for burial did. She snorted at his suggestion that the late doctor had perhaps been a hermaphrodite - there were stretch marks on that body!
That suggests a story no one knows even now. Actually, maybe there was one other man who knew she was female...
The cleaner sold the story to the newspapers. The valet was hustled off back to Jamaica, possibly to keep him from giving interviews, and the whole embarrassing story was hushed up for over a century.
I discovered women practising and writing about medicine in 11th century Salerno, without having to disguise as men.
The women of science in my book ranged from ancient times to modern astronauts - the first woman to lead a shuttle mission had just been appointed when I was finishing the book.
I was invited to speak to a club for gifted children, who, boy and girl alike, were highly indignant to hear about the trials and tribulations of poor Agnodike, who was accused of seducing wives, so had to prove she was female and then got into trouble for practising medicine as a woman!
It was a fascinating experience researching the women who'd contributed so much to science, some from basements and bedrooms because no one wanted to know about them in a men's world. But it was not an angry book, it was a celebration of their lives. I remember being a little irked that the cover was a cliched picture of a woman in a lab coat holding a test tube! But she turned out to be a real scientist, not a model. I couldn't argue with that.
The book is long out of print, alas, and would have to be revised before going into print again, as a lot has happened since then. But it sold out and I'm proud of it, even more so as I spotted it in the bibliography of another book on women in science and it received a short but positive review in New Scientist.
How cool is that?
March 7, 2014
Women's History Month - guest post by Ambelin Kwaymullina (International Women's Day guest)
Ambelin Kwaymullina is an Indigenous author, illustrator and academic who comes from the Palyku people of the Pilbara region of Western Australia. She is the author and illustrator of a number of picture books, as well as of ‘The Tribe’, a four-book dystopian series for young adults. Her books have been published in China, Korea, the United Kingdom, and (later this year) the United States. Ambelin is also an award winning teacher who works at the Law School at the University of Western Australia.
For more about Ambelin, go to: www.ambelin-kwaymullina.com.au
Around the turn of the last century, a child was born into the red dirt and blue skies of the Pilbara region of Western Australia. She was a girl of deep strength and bright spirit, and if she had been born in a different era she would have lived a gentler life. But around forty years before her birth, colonists had reached the north-west of Western Australia, and the world she came into was not the one her ancestors had known. Her name was Talahue. She was my great-grandmother, and like every other Aboriginal woman of her generation, she lived through the times that were among the hardest and most harrowing for Indigenous women in Australia.
Where are the records of these women? You’re unlikely to find their names inscribed on monuments or their achievements featured in historical texts. In fact, you’ll be hard-pressed to find their names written anywhere at all. They appear on the fringes, in the margins, and as part of the backgrounds. They stare out from photographs that bear titles like ‘Aboriginal women, 1913’. Most spent their lives in crushing domestic servitude, and – in one of the great ironies of history – many were nursemaids to non-Indigenous children in an age when the government labeled them ‘unfit’ to care for their own. I cannot imagine how they endured the long sorrow of not knowing where their babies were, or the daily anguish of being unable to keep their children safe. Or perhaps I can. Because I know some of the stories behind the nameless faces in the photographs. I know these were women of courage and strength who sustained their spirits with a thousand small acts of defiance. They resisted in ways that were designed to be invisible to the people and institutions and governments that ruled their lives and broke their hearts. They were practiced in the art of hiding in plain sight, and of concealing thought, feeling and cultural knowledge behind blank expressions that gave away nothing of themselves. They used their extraordinary memories to keep a detailed record of everyone they met, a roll of faces and names to be shared with other Aboriginal people who came asking for news of their families – have you seen my sister, my brother, my daughter, my son... They shared warnings, too, of the people and places that were to be avoided if avoidance was possible, the ones that were especially bad even by the standards of the time. These women defied cruelty with kindness; despair with laughter; and hatred by nurturing connections to each other and their Countries whenever and however they could. In the most inhumane of situations, they chose to act with humanity. I have heard them spoken of as victims, and it is true that they lived through terrible suffering and terrible injustice. But it is also true that what happened to them is not all of who they were. My ancestors. My heroes.
One of the lessons these women taught me is that choices have power. And I believe that anyone who has a greater range of choices available to them also has a greater responsibility to do what good they can on this earth. We live in a world marred by hatred, massive inequities, and acts of violence that are all to often aimed at women and the young. So on International Women’s Day, I say this: defy inhumanity with humanity. Do one thing today that embodies kindness or laughter or love into the life of a woman or a child who has less choices available to them than you. Volunteer whatever resources you have – time, energy, money, knowledge, or skill.
Make the choice that changes someone else’s world for the better, in the hope of a better world.
For more about Ambelin, go to: www.ambelin-kwaymullina.com.au
Around the turn of the last century, a child was born into the red dirt and blue skies of the Pilbara region of Western Australia. She was a girl of deep strength and bright spirit, and if she had been born in a different era she would have lived a gentler life. But around forty years before her birth, colonists had reached the north-west of Western Australia, and the world she came into was not the one her ancestors had known. Her name was Talahue. She was my great-grandmother, and like every other Aboriginal woman of her generation, she lived through the times that were among the hardest and most harrowing for Indigenous women in Australia.
Where are the records of these women? You’re unlikely to find their names inscribed on monuments or their achievements featured in historical texts. In fact, you’ll be hard-pressed to find their names written anywhere at all. They appear on the fringes, in the margins, and as part of the backgrounds. They stare out from photographs that bear titles like ‘Aboriginal women, 1913’. Most spent their lives in crushing domestic servitude, and – in one of the great ironies of history – many were nursemaids to non-Indigenous children in an age when the government labeled them ‘unfit’ to care for their own. I cannot imagine how they endured the long sorrow of not knowing where their babies were, or the daily anguish of being unable to keep their children safe. Or perhaps I can. Because I know some of the stories behind the nameless faces in the photographs. I know these were women of courage and strength who sustained their spirits with a thousand small acts of defiance. They resisted in ways that were designed to be invisible to the people and institutions and governments that ruled their lives and broke their hearts. They were practiced in the art of hiding in plain sight, and of concealing thought, feeling and cultural knowledge behind blank expressions that gave away nothing of themselves. They used their extraordinary memories to keep a detailed record of everyone they met, a roll of faces and names to be shared with other Aboriginal people who came asking for news of their families – have you seen my sister, my brother, my daughter, my son... They shared warnings, too, of the people and places that were to be avoided if avoidance was possible, the ones that were especially bad even by the standards of the time. These women defied cruelty with kindness; despair with laughter; and hatred by nurturing connections to each other and their Countries whenever and however they could. In the most inhumane of situations, they chose to act with humanity. I have heard them spoken of as victims, and it is true that they lived through terrible suffering and terrible injustice. But it is also true that what happened to them is not all of who they were. My ancestors. My heroes.
One of the lessons these women taught me is that choices have power. And I believe that anyone who has a greater range of choices available to them also has a greater responsibility to do what good they can on this earth. We live in a world marred by hatred, massive inequities, and acts of violence that are all to often aimed at women and the young. So on International Women’s Day, I say this: defy inhumanity with humanity. Do one thing today that embodies kindness or laughter or love into the life of a woman or a child who has less choices available to them than you. Volunteer whatever resources you have – time, energy, money, knowledge, or skill.
Make the choice that changes someone else’s world for the better, in the hope of a better world.
International Women's Day
Some people have breakfasts with powerful women on International Women's Day. I tried that once, and discovered I was not suitable for such things. I'm not a morning person, really. So what kind of person am I? I'm the kind of person who exposes the inner workings of women's interconnected lives.
What this means is that I've asked my friend Julia if she'd like to introduce my special blog guest for International Women's Day. Every year I ask someone particularly interesting who I particularly want to hear, and this year is no exception. Julia introduced me to her, and thus are inner workings revealed. Julia herself is the chair of the next Australian national SF convention, so I've asked her to introduce that as well. What you may not know about Julia is that she is one of the most radiant and vibrant women I know, has fine taste in boots and friends, and when I'm in Melbourne we find good food together if it's at all possible. So I have both Julia and Ambelin in my early morning. All I need is coffee and maybe some chocolate and my early morning perfect. This is what makes my mornings tolerable (in fact, this is what makes my whole life tolerable): friends.
And now, over to Julia:
I first started hearing about Ambelin Kwaymullina when more and more people in my twitter stream started reading The Interrogation of Ashala Wolf for the 2012 Australian Women Writers Challenge. It's always a delight to discover a new voice and Ambelin brings a true Australianess to speculative fiction in her Tribe series with the infusing of Dreamtime mythology into a post apocalyptic land. I am honoured Ambelin accepted my invitation to be a guest at Continuum this year and I'm really looking forward finally meeting her in June.
Continuum X: Carnival of Lost Souls is the 53rd Australian National Science Fiction Convention, and will be held at the Intercontinental Melbourne the Rialto in Melbourne on June 6th – 9th 2014.
Held over four days, Continuum is a fantastic celebration of science fiction, fantasy and horror in all forms, particularly books, TV, movies, gaming and comics. It is a great opportunity for fans to discuss and share their interests, meet like-minded people and discover new things in a fun, social setting. The convention features special Guests of Honour, authors Jim C. Hines and Ambelin Kwaymullina and a programme of discussion panels, workshops, presentations and book launches on a diverse range of topics. There will also be an exhibitor’s room, a dedicated tapletop games lounge, a masked ball, an awards ceremony and much more. For a better sense of what we’re planning please visit http://continuum.org.au/c10/programme/
What this means is that I've asked my friend Julia if she'd like to introduce my special blog guest for International Women's Day. Every year I ask someone particularly interesting who I particularly want to hear, and this year is no exception. Julia introduced me to her, and thus are inner workings revealed. Julia herself is the chair of the next Australian national SF convention, so I've asked her to introduce that as well. What you may not know about Julia is that she is one of the most radiant and vibrant women I know, has fine taste in boots and friends, and when I'm in Melbourne we find good food together if it's at all possible. So I have both Julia and Ambelin in my early morning. All I need is coffee and maybe some chocolate and my early morning perfect. This is what makes my mornings tolerable (in fact, this is what makes my whole life tolerable): friends.
And now, over to Julia:
I first started hearing about Ambelin Kwaymullina when more and more people in my twitter stream started reading The Interrogation of Ashala Wolf for the 2012 Australian Women Writers Challenge. It's always a delight to discover a new voice and Ambelin brings a true Australianess to speculative fiction in her Tribe series with the infusing of Dreamtime mythology into a post apocalyptic land. I am honoured Ambelin accepted my invitation to be a guest at Continuum this year and I'm really looking forward finally meeting her in June.
Continuum X: Carnival of Lost Souls is the 53rd Australian National Science Fiction Convention, and will be held at the Intercontinental Melbourne the Rialto in Melbourne on June 6th – 9th 2014.
Held over four days, Continuum is a fantastic celebration of science fiction, fantasy and horror in all forms, particularly books, TV, movies, gaming and comics. It is a great opportunity for fans to discuss and share their interests, meet like-minded people and discover new things in a fun, social setting. The convention features special Guests of Honour, authors Jim C. Hines and Ambelin Kwaymullina and a programme of discussion panels, workshops, presentations and book launches on a diverse range of topics. There will also be an exhibitor’s room, a dedicated tapletop games lounge, a masked ball, an awards ceremony and much more. For a better sense of what we’re planning please visit http://continuum.org.au/c10/programme/
Women's History Month - guest post by Isolde Martyn
Mistress to the Crown was published last year but a new edition is out in May 2014 and e-versions are available. Isolde Martyn has won the top awards for historical romance in the US and Australia. Her most recent books are historicals: The Devil in Ermine (with Richard III’s cousin, Buckingham, as the central anti-hero) was published last year and The Golden Widows (two famous widows during the Wars of the Roses) comes out in August.
Medievally Blonde?
Bunny ears! The pink soft fabric ones stitched to an Alice band.
When ‘Mistress Jane Shore’ won the balloon debate a few years back at the Richard III Convention and a crown was lowered over her bunny ears, perhaps that was when it occurred to me that her character would make a marvellous focus for a historical novel -- a heroine who would be at the heart of Westminster -- in the know!
Yes, Jane Shore would be just perfect, especially as she was considered a lover by one king and a treasonous whore by another. But how do you get under the skin of a courtesan when you’re a suburban wife who’s never been to a keys-in-the-hat party?
Was she a blonde, buxom, rollicking tapster-type wench? A beautiful medieval airhead? Or the goldsmith’s passive wife that Jean Plaidy depicted in her 1950 novel? I knew of Sir Thomas More’s description; gathering hearsay in 1513, he had given her a good press. Of the king’s many lovers, he wrote, ‘many he had, but her he loved.’ That ‘Mistress Shore’ sounded nice but my agent wanted a gold digger bitch.
And so the sleuthing began. Who was Mistress Shore?
Official papers were scant. Richard III’s proclamations gave no mention of her first name. However, through the help of the Goldsmiths’ Guild and the Mercers’ Guild in London and two excellently researched articles (in Eton College’s journal of all places !), Mistress Shore started turning from a shimmering hologram to flesh and bone. Well, not exactly the latter, I never found a visual depiction of her.
The woman who emerged from the shadows was the educated daughter of no less than the Sheriff of London, John Lambard. He was a high class mercer, a bigwig in the Mercer’s Guild, a man who lent money to the lords who wanted to depose King Henry VI during the Wars of the Roses. He was alderman for the ward of Farringdon, which contained St Paul’s Cathedral and Newgate Gaol . He and his wife Amy had three sons, Robert, John and William and a daughter called Elizabeth. The wills of John and of Amy, provided by the UK National Archives over the internet, confirmed that their daughter was the woman I was seeking.
But what about her personality? The Papal Archives stated that she acquired a divorce from her husband in 1476 and that she had already tried to do so several times. So a tenacious woman in an unhappy marriage. Her first husband, William Shore, was a mercer. He came from Derby, became an apprentice in the Mercers’ Guild and probably married Elizabeth when he was in his late twenties and she was in her early teens. This would have been at a time when her father’s fortunes were at low ebb; the faction he had backed looked to be losing and he was probably fearful of being fined or worse, being labelled a traitor , and certainly never seeing the return of his loan.
Sometime in the mid-1470s Elizabeth became King Edward IV’s mistress, probably through friendship with his chamberlain and close friend, Lord Hastings. She was part of the inner circle for the rest of his reign and still associated with Hastings and the king’s stepson, Dorset, after Edward’s death. So much so that Richard III, when he became Lord Protector, felt the need to imprison and publically humiliate her. That she married again is obvious in her parents’ wills.
Of course, much of my book about her is fiction but the historian in me has used what ‘facts’ exist. I recently heard one of the writers of the TV series Underbelly describe how they’d researched the real people, studied how they responded in certain circumstances, and used those observations to create a believable screenplay. This is no different to novelists creating scenes and putting words in historic people’s mouths whenever the records are silent.
I’ve no idea if my Mistress Shore truly mirrors her real counterpart but there are women who have that special ‘something’ and draw men. There was such a siren -- Jane Wilkinson -- in early colonial Sydney. However, I think Mistress Shore was intellectually up there, too. Sir Thomas More says she was witty and could tease or put people down without giving offence and she often intervened where she felt there was a case of injustice. I think she would have been at home in the salons of the eighteenth century France talking with the great minds of the day. In today’s world, you might find her invited to dinner at Geoffrey Robertson and Kathy Lette’s, and running the Mercers’ Guild or the Greater London Council.
What Elizabeth clearly wanted was freedom to pursue her own life and make her own decisions. To gain a divorce after a marriage of some thirteen years when Henry VIII could not even manage it without nationalising Holy Church, was an astonishing achievement. Maybe the decision to become the king’s mistress was the only way to achieve freedom from Master Shore but quite a delicious option even if it might have ostracised her from her former acquaintances and maybe her family for a while. Yes, there were downsides. It can’t have all been flowers and fun.
Maybe inspiration for the next book will be more conventional but thank you, bunny ears!
Medievally Blonde?
Bunny ears! The pink soft fabric ones stitched to an Alice band.
When ‘Mistress Jane Shore’ won the balloon debate a few years back at the Richard III Convention and a crown was lowered over her bunny ears, perhaps that was when it occurred to me that her character would make a marvellous focus for a historical novel -- a heroine who would be at the heart of Westminster -- in the know!
Yes, Jane Shore would be just perfect, especially as she was considered a lover by one king and a treasonous whore by another. But how do you get under the skin of a courtesan when you’re a suburban wife who’s never been to a keys-in-the-hat party?
Was she a blonde, buxom, rollicking tapster-type wench? A beautiful medieval airhead? Or the goldsmith’s passive wife that Jean Plaidy depicted in her 1950 novel? I knew of Sir Thomas More’s description; gathering hearsay in 1513, he had given her a good press. Of the king’s many lovers, he wrote, ‘many he had, but her he loved.’ That ‘Mistress Shore’ sounded nice but my agent wanted a gold digger bitch.
And so the sleuthing began. Who was Mistress Shore?
Official papers were scant. Richard III’s proclamations gave no mention of her first name. However, through the help of the Goldsmiths’ Guild and the Mercers’ Guild in London and two excellently researched articles (in Eton College’s journal of all places !), Mistress Shore started turning from a shimmering hologram to flesh and bone. Well, not exactly the latter, I never found a visual depiction of her.
The woman who emerged from the shadows was the educated daughter of no less than the Sheriff of London, John Lambard. He was a high class mercer, a bigwig in the Mercer’s Guild, a man who lent money to the lords who wanted to depose King Henry VI during the Wars of the Roses. He was alderman for the ward of Farringdon, which contained St Paul’s Cathedral and Newgate Gaol . He and his wife Amy had three sons, Robert, John and William and a daughter called Elizabeth. The wills of John and of Amy, provided by the UK National Archives over the internet, confirmed that their daughter was the woman I was seeking.
But what about her personality? The Papal Archives stated that she acquired a divorce from her husband in 1476 and that she had already tried to do so several times. So a tenacious woman in an unhappy marriage. Her first husband, William Shore, was a mercer. He came from Derby, became an apprentice in the Mercers’ Guild and probably married Elizabeth when he was in his late twenties and she was in her early teens. This would have been at a time when her father’s fortunes were at low ebb; the faction he had backed looked to be losing and he was probably fearful of being fined or worse, being labelled a traitor , and certainly never seeing the return of his loan.
Sometime in the mid-1470s Elizabeth became King Edward IV’s mistress, probably through friendship with his chamberlain and close friend, Lord Hastings. She was part of the inner circle for the rest of his reign and still associated with Hastings and the king’s stepson, Dorset, after Edward’s death. So much so that Richard III, when he became Lord Protector, felt the need to imprison and publically humiliate her. That she married again is obvious in her parents’ wills.
Of course, much of my book about her is fiction but the historian in me has used what ‘facts’ exist. I recently heard one of the writers of the TV series Underbelly describe how they’d researched the real people, studied how they responded in certain circumstances, and used those observations to create a believable screenplay. This is no different to novelists creating scenes and putting words in historic people’s mouths whenever the records are silent.
I’ve no idea if my Mistress Shore truly mirrors her real counterpart but there are women who have that special ‘something’ and draw men. There was such a siren -- Jane Wilkinson -- in early colonial Sydney. However, I think Mistress Shore was intellectually up there, too. Sir Thomas More says she was witty and could tease or put people down without giving offence and she often intervened where she felt there was a case of injustice. I think she would have been at home in the salons of the eighteenth century France talking with the great minds of the day. In today’s world, you might find her invited to dinner at Geoffrey Robertson and Kathy Lette’s, and running the Mercers’ Guild or the Greater London Council.
What Elizabeth clearly wanted was freedom to pursue her own life and make her own decisions. To gain a divorce after a marriage of some thirteen years when Henry VIII could not even manage it without nationalising Holy Church, was an astonishing achievement. Maybe the decision to become the king’s mistress was the only way to achieve freedom from Master Shore but quite a delicious option even if it might have ostracised her from her former acquaintances and maybe her family for a while. Yes, there were downsides. It can’t have all been flowers and fun.
Maybe inspiration for the next book will be more conventional but thank you, bunny ears!
March 6, 2014
gillpolack @ 2014-03-07T11:40:00
Later today there will be a lovely guest visiting my blog. Right now, though, you need to know (I'm not sure you need to know, just that I need to admit it) that the asthma attack in Sydney last week wasn't a blip, nor even a harbinger. I've got a nicely-entrenched chest infection and haven't been breathing properly for a while. This is because I'm amazingly clever...
Would I have got the Sydney job if I could breathe? This must remain one of life's mysteries. Will I take the nice big pills the doctor has prescribed? Of course.
What this means is that I should feel up to taking on the world again by this time next week. I should also stop doing stupid things. That's the trouble with anything that involves breathing. Lack of breathe actually lowers the IQ and makes one less capable. Only for a few days, though. Soon I shall be returned unto full intellectual whatever. Until then, I will continue working from notes, and writing them up, since that's something that I can do even without much breath. It's the original thinking and drawing 50 strange things together with great force that is currently beyond me.
Why do my strange weeks always come with extra whistles and bells and even bows? They really ought to come with dark chocolate and fine coffee. That's my preferred variety of strangeness.
Would I have got the Sydney job if I could breathe? This must remain one of life's mysteries. Will I take the nice big pills the doctor has prescribed? Of course.
What this means is that I should feel up to taking on the world again by this time next week. I should also stop doing stupid things. That's the trouble with anything that involves breathing. Lack of breathe actually lowers the IQ and makes one less capable. Only for a few days, though. Soon I shall be returned unto full intellectual whatever. Until then, I will continue working from notes, and writing them up, since that's something that I can do even without much breath. It's the original thinking and drawing 50 strange things together with great force that is currently beyond me.
Why do my strange weeks always come with extra whistles and bells and even bows? They really ought to come with dark chocolate and fine coffee. That's my preferred variety of strangeness.
