Photo... Grrr. Late plane at Dallas Airport & pilot has lost his 'ead.

I have maintained a fairly keen interest in history for many years; after all, Britain is steeped in it.

One is never far from a hill fort, Roman road, Saxon church, timber-framed house, mansion or castle. Victoriana abounds in the streets, railway stations and town halls, and there are cityscape scars that remind us of battles that saved our country. Poppy-clad monuments stand proud in hamlets, towns and villages to commemorate fallen heroes. Today the dark satanic mills have gone but instead radio masts adorn the hilltops of this green and pleasant land. Indeed, to escape history in these isles it might be necessary to take to the sea, but even there lurk the ghosts of Photo... Grrr. Late plane at Dallas Airport & pilot has lost his 'ead.

I have maintained a fairly keen interest in history for many years; after all, Britain is steeped in it.

One is never far from a hill fort, Roman road, Saxon church, timber-framed house, mansion or castle. Victoriana abounds in the streets, railway stations and town halls, and there are cityscape scars that remind us of battles that saved our country. Poppy-clad monuments stand proud in hamlets, towns and villages to commemorate fallen heroes. Today the dark satanic mills have gone but instead radio masts adorn the hilltops of this green and pleasant land. Indeed, to escape history in these isles it might be necessary to take to the sea, but even there lurk the ghosts of Viking invaders, the Spanish Armada, Trafalgar, the grandeur that sank with the Titanic and the menace of German U-boats. The motor car arrived, and to testify to that a collection of wrecked oil tankers lies scattered beneath the waves.

There were those who left these shores for the new-found lands to create history elsewhere. John Cabot, for example, the Pilgrims in the Mayflower, Sir Francis Drake, Sir Walter Raleigh, Captain Cook, The Beatles, S’Cowell and all of those in One Direction.

In keeping with that fairly keen interest in history I followed Michael Wood’s television series In Search Of Shakespeare, and, extravagantly, I bought the accompanying book as well! In the book he suggests that Shakespeare might have known the author and historian Raphael Holinshed, who lived in a village not far from Stratford-upon-Avon. Holinshed compiled the work known as Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland which Shakespeare used as a source for fourteen of his plays.

I know the area pretty well, and it seemed to me far more likely than not that Holinshed would have known Shakespeare and his family.

By and by, over a several years bit by bit I researched and wrote a 160,000 word novel titled The Glover’s Son about Shakespeare and the real author behind the versifier. When it was finished my editor said it was far too long. She said it recounted events to the detriment of the plot. I was a little disappointed, well mortified actually, and said ‘Oh dear’, and a few other two and four letter words.

But she was correct. I then reflected a little. For a first novel the subject of William Shakespeare was maybe a tad ambitious. Indeed, for a second novel it was maybe a tad ambitious, and for a third or fourth ... Save it for another day I thought.

However, while researching The Glover’s Son (now retitled When The Audience Is In), I came across a number of names that I recognised from the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. Although they had many English Midlands connections, most were descendants of the instigators of the Yorkshire and Lincolnshire uprisings of 1536.

Those connections were intriguing but the discovery that the Henry VIII’s former mistress and mother of the king’s illegitimate son was in the thick of it in Lincolnshire I found compelling. Then I discovered that the son, Henry, Duke of Richmond, had been educated at Sheriff Hutton near York and he had served as the head of the King’s Council of the North there, and that inspired my novel, When The harvest Is In.

The sequel, When The Members Are In, centring on the Gunpowder Plot, will be published in the autumn of 2014 and the Shakespeare novel When The Audience Is In will be published in 2015. ...more

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Mark Thomas-James's Blog

The 1536 Rebellion Against Henry VIII

The rebellion of 1536 was a protest against the radical policies of King Henry VIII’s government towards the church and the pope, and its harsh tax laws.

Historians argue about the conception of the insurgence. Was it the consequence of advanced planning? Was it a popular movement that spread spontaneously by word of mouth, fuelled by rumour?

At its zenith, 50,000 were prepared to march on London. F Read more of this blog post »

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