1: What Makes a Great Historical Novel?

Hi everyone, I’m Cathy from Inkspot Publishing and welcome to the first episode of the Indie Book Club. We’ll be talking about all sorts of things on these podcasts, starting with historical fiction. Winston Churchill said, “History will be kind to me because I intend to write it.”  So we all know that history is written by the victors. But luckily there are hordes of historical authors who are also willing to have a go. So history tells us more or less accurately what people did. But historical fiction really brings alive their thoughts and feelings. And great historical fiction doesn’t necessarily involve falsifying the past. Rather it involves reimagining it. It’s an empathetic interpretation of actual events.

And when it’s done really well, readers can sympathize with historical figures, even the ones who are remembered as pretty ghastly villains. So, as a teenager, I was absolutely addicted to Gene Ply novels. And the titles of her Medici trilogy, for example, tell you a lot about the way in which the principal character Katherine de Medici was perceived. So, the titles are really pajorative.  The first one is the Italian woman followed by Queen Jezebel and Madam Serpent. Katherine was a very wy woman supposedly a wicked scheming poisoner blamed for the massacre of St. Bartholomew Museve which resulted in the deaths of thousands of Hugenos. But whose real name was Elellanena Hibet depicted a scene from Katherine’s early life which I’ve never forgotten.

So as a child under the tutilage of her aunt Clarissa, she was instructed never to forget her dignity, never to show or complain of physical weakness, and to hide her true feelings as this would make her vulnerable to her enemies. And she was brought up incredibly strictly with very little affection. So it’s not surprising that her two little silky spananiels meant so much to her. She had these little dogs and she absolutely adored them.  And as a punishment for losing her temper, her aunt fed one of the dogs a slow acting poison and forced the little girl to watch the dog die. And it was made clear to her that if she showed a single hint of emotion, it would result in the death of her other dog, too.

So, I’ve got no idea if the scene I’ve just described was true or imagined, but the point is that Ply succeeded in creating sympathy for Catherine which make her future actions more understandable. So, so many royal brides, her marriage was arranged for political advantage without any regard for her feelings at all.  But she did love her husband Henry II, that’s Henry Durr, but she suffered multiple public humiliations at his hands. So for example, he openly flaunted his mistress Diane Deatierz as his true love, giving her practically all the public honors which should have been due to Katherine as queen. And apparently Diane was quite happy to put the queen down whenever she had the opportunity.

And one of Ply’s great emissions as a novelist was failing to depict Dian’s fate after Henry’s sudden death as the result of a jousting act accident.  So, first of all, Diane’s lost her protector. and Katherine, because she’s the mother of the underage king, the DOA, she suddenly acquired immense power. And I would not have wanted to be in Dian’s shoes, particularly as Katherine was not known for her forgiving nature. And Diane probably retweeted into quiet obscurity, keeping her head down.

But if I’ve been writing the story, I’d have included a scene depicting Katherine taking her revenge on Diane. It just would have been too tempting to avoid. So, of course, we do have a duty not to misrepresent the dead, but you can squint a little bit and look a scance at the gaps and the emissions and the gaping holes between the known facts and you can color them in with your own perception of psychological truth. And if you’re a good historical novelist, you can really do that.  you can imagine the possibilities and the pieces of the puzzle that actually may fit. And in the absence of exact truth, which we’ll never really have, the ring of truth is surely enough. So Hillary Mantel in her wreath lectures described history as it’s a really beautiful description What’s left in the civ when the centuries have run through it, a few stones, scraps of writing, scraps of cloth.

and she points out that facts are not truth. So her TUDA trilogy was really fascinating reading despite the central events of her story being known to practically every school kid in the land. Nigel Jones actually writing for the spectator accused her of left-wing bias of portraying Thomas Cromwell as some kind of workingclass hero.  And he does have a point because workingclass Thomas Cromwell may have been, but there’s no question he was only interested in enriching himself and in shoring up his own power base and he certainly had no desire to fight for the common man and he had practically no firm principles at all. So Jones is right that she imposes her own beliefs on Tudtor England. But don’t all authors do that. The point is she did it successfully and so ultimately she got the last laugh.

So, how can authors like Gene Ply and more recently Philip McGregory and Hillary Mantel write about known historical figures and actual events which inherently include plot spoilers and yet still write really compelling books. We all know what happened to Anne Berlin and Katherine Howard and everyone knows that Lady Jane Gay lost her head after being queen for a pitiful nine days.  But despite all this, it is still compelling as the authors can imagine conversations, they can flesh out personalities, they can interpret events, and they can also hint at alternative endings if circumstances were even slightly different. So, Philip McGregory, for example, she writes brilliantly imagine conversations and really skillfully brings alive history from a woman’s point of view.

Her book, for example, The Red Queen, concerns Margaret Bowett, the mother of Henry VIIIth. And it describes in detail how Margaret’s family treat her as a complete political p***, no regard for her personal feelings at all. So, she’s also brought up with very little affection and is resented by her own mother for not being a boy. And it’s made completely clear to her that her only purpose in life is to marry and bear a son to ensure the ultimate succession of the Lancastrian line.  So she’s married off at a ridiculously young age to Edmund Tuda who was so desperate for an heir that he impregnated her when she was only 13. It’s pretty revolting really but common practice at the time. Then she had to undergo a horribly traumatic birth while she was still a child. And there’s a scene in the book where the physician remarks that it’s a pity her hips are so narrow but what can anyone do about it?

So, she has no pain relief, appalling hygiene, certainly no sympathy, and Gregory describes how the experience damaged her body so badly that it rendered her infertile. And I don’t know if that’s true or not, but it’s certainly plausible. And there’s a really brilliant scene in the book where Margaret is in conversation with Elizabeth of York. She didn’t like the girl.  She hated what she represented because after all, Elizabeth is from an enemy dynasty that Margaret had schemed and fought against all her life. And I’ve actually got the scene here in so it says I let her come to me in the great hall and I stay seated in my chair and make her stand before me like a servant being dismissed. She says nothing.

She just looks at me with her beautiful gray eyes as if she’s waiting for me to finish my sermon and release her. So Margaret then taunts the girl and basically points out that either she’ll marry Henry VIIth, I Margaret’s son, and become queen, or she’ll be shamed and disgraced, and she’ll have to marry her uncle.  And the girl, she says, “For a moment, I think she has not heard me, for her eyes are on the floor, and she does not flinch at this prospect. She’s quite unmoved by the threat of being married to a young man who must hate her, or a man who’s blamed for the murder of her family.” Then slowly she looks up at me, and I see that she’s smiling, as if she were happy. “Either way, you will be disgraced,” I say harshly. “You should be aware of it, shamed in public for all to see.

But the bright happiness in her face does not falter. “Yes, but either way, shamed or not, I shall be queen of England, and this is the last time you will ever sit in my presence,” she says. And the scene ends with Elizabeth leaving, Margaret stunned into silence. This is why the books are so compelling.  And if you read the white queen your sympathies are utterly with Elizabeth Woodville who was the of sorry Edward IV and reading the red queen your sympathy shifts towards Margaret even though she’s a pretty cold fish But it’s always much more fun reading historical fiction and learning about history through fiction people and places.

Scrap So, I’ve always loved reading historical fiction as it’s far more fun to learn about particular periods, people, and places via fiction than through history books, which can actually be very dry. But I don’t think I could write historical fiction. This is really for two reasons.  one because it’s very difficult to create sympathetic characters who hold repulsive world views which were pretty universally held even by people who are remembered really fondly by history.

So anti-semitism, racism, homophobia, othering people with different religious views, sexism. The women were pretty sexist because they were all brought up to believe that, even by their mothers in the inherent superiority of men. And there were only very rare women such as Mary Wilstoncraft, who was Mary Shel’s mother, who genuinely believed that with proper training and education that women could be the intellectual, if not the physical equals of men.  

So some writers of historical fiction get around this problem just by avoiding it. Their characters never meet a gay person or a Jew or a black person. And this can be quite a successful strategy. You just avoid putting your character in any situation where they could betray themselves as having horribly bigoted views. But it is a bit limiting.

The other way you can do it is to address it honestly. You can try to imagine how a sympathetic character can hold these views and still be sympathetic. I’ve never watched Call the Midwife, but apparently there are portrayals of very likable characters who hold repulsive views and while this can make for very uncomfortable watching, it’s actually much more honest. and a lot of these views were almost universally held at the time, and it’s taken years for the tide to change, but it is important to remember that people did hold them. a less successful strategy is to endow historical figures with incredibly forward-thinking woke views which are just not believable.

So a good example of this is Ken Fitz the pillars of the earth which I’ve read in English and at the risk of sounding horribly pretentious in French too leilier deer the sequel is world without end. it’s not really a sequel although in the same fictional town of Kingsbridge, the action takes place about a century or two later with a whole new set of characters and there’s only a very tenuous connection to the first book. But in World Without End, the central character, Caris, accidentally walks in on two monks having sex and one of them is a friend of hers and he’s guilty of two pretty flipping monumental sins.

one of course of being gay and two of breaking his vows of celibacy so he’s guilty of a double whammy and later when she’s alone with him she laughs affectionately and tells him how funny he and his lover had looked so effectively she’s portrayed as a medieval f** hag and I just found it totally unbelievable and don’t get me wrong I still really enjoyed the book although I do think the pillars of the earth was by far the better book  And this one incident didn’t spoil the book for me, but it did take me out of the fiction of the whole immersive experience of being in medieval England. another form of historical fiction I love are alternative histories, and these can be incredibly thought-provoking.

So a great example is Robert Harris’s fatherland set in 1960s Berlin after Hitler’s won the war and his central character Zavia March is an officer and the criminal politi and he uncovers a plot to eliminate Nazi officials who attended a 1942 conference where the final solution was planned and the reason for this is so that the fate of the millions of Jews who were killed in the Holocaust will never be uncovered.  and the official line is that they’ve all been relocated east and the case is taken over by the Gustapo. But March, all good heroes, has a dangerous desire to get at the truth. And in the process, he’s denounced by his 10-year-old son, who’s a very enthusiastic member of the Jung folk, which is obviously a representative representation of the original Hitler youth.

So the novel gives us a glimpse into the horror of an all powerful watchful big brotherish state and inability to criticize the established leadership a society where citizens are encouraged to spy on their families their friends and ne neighbors and where dissident and anyone with an alternative lifestyle is just not tolerated. So while this is a reality for Chinese and Russian citizens today, we are also rapidly creeping towards it. So novels like Fatherland should make us really grateful for all the freedom we enjoy, but actually they’re under constant threat and they can never be taken for granted. And JD Vance has just stirred up a hornet’s nest by denouncing Europe for not championing democracy and free speech. But it’s really difficult to disagree with what he said.

you can’t mandate innovation or creativity. You can’t force people what to think and what to feel and what to believe. And he did include the US as part of the problem. So for example, when he was talking about misinformation, the idea that Corona virus was the leak from a Chinese laboratory. He said our own government encouraged private companies to silence people who dared to utter what turned out to be an obvious truth.  And you can take what he said as a pop at the previous administration. But if he’s right that under Trump’s leadership, as he says, we may disagree with you, but we’ll fight to defend your right to offer your views in the public square, then as the Yanks would say, if that is correct, then amen to that.

this podcast is on historical fiction and it’s not a political rant but it wouldn’t be complete without mentioning George Orwell whose books 1984 were a kind of future fiction and obviously Animal Farm and they gave such a dramatic and emotive warning of the horrors of totalitarianism which can unfortunately also be used as a complete blueprint for blue for big brother and exactly  how to go about it. So, as he points out, you start with policing free speech and that’s totally what we’ve done. So, Britain used to pride itself on upholding freedom of speech and we’ve completely lost it and we really need to get it back. the dictators totally understand the dangers of free speech and expression because they lead to free thought and debate and that leads to diversity of opinion and horror political opposition.

So free speech has to be crushed and in a liberal democracy the process of crushing starts with the policing of language with cancelling people who don’t agree with you and so the horrible fear of being cancelled leads to selfcensorship and that means that people stifle their true opinions and are afraid to speak out. I don’t write historical fiction but I do publish it.  So for example, we’ve published a book Fireweed, which is by Richard Vaughn Davis, and it is about a young British military lawyer posted to Hamburg in 1947 who falls in love with a German girl during a time when anti-ratinization laws existed between the Brits and the vanquished Germans.

And while the book it’s basically a love story and an adventure, but it does examine moral culpability during a time of war and it poses a uncomfortable question. So, it’s really easy from the safety of time and distance to condemn ordinary Germans for colluding with the Nazi leadership. But under similar circumstances, what would you have done?  Would you have risked your life, the lives of your family, your physical comfort, your neighbors good opinion to condemn what was happening around you? So, Hans Fader’s book, Alone in Berlin, it’s incredibly haunting book, depicts an ordinary working-class couple who start their own tiny rebellion against Hitler.

And they start dropping postcards around the city exhorting people to, for example, put sand in the machines or don’t pay into the winter relief fund or work slower as every stroke of work not done shortens the war. And actually all they succeed in doing is to instill terror in the unlucky recipients of the postcards who then feel compelled to hand them into the authorities.  And surely an elderly uneducated couple can’t do anything in the face of the almighty war machine which is seemingly wholeheartedly supported by the vast majority of the German population. But actually Falad’s book succeeds in conveying the idea that doing the right thing even if it’s tiny even if it seems futile is actually never futile.

So, another book we’ve published is Annie David’s Paradise Undone, a novel of Jonestown, which looked behind which takes a really good look at the ordinary people who followed Jim Jones, who was a complete megalomaniac, to the gy jungle. And again, it’s really comfortable to imagine that we would have been immune from, the horrors that happened in Jonestown. We wouldn’t have joined the cult. We wouldn’t have been that brainwashed or stupid.  But actually Annie points out so well in this book that a lot of the people who died that day were children who had no choice at all. There were 33 babies born in Jonestown during the course of the agricultural project and not one of them survived. And a lot of the people who died were forced to drink the cyanide laced flavor. It was actually flavor aid, not KoAid.

and even those who voluntarily were actually kept in a constant state of sleep deprivation. They were overworked. They were exhausted. And they had a very low protein diet. And it’s no wonder they could be whipped into a state of paranoia. And most of the people’s temple congregation were black from the big US city projects. And most of them had struggled with poverty their whole lives. They were treated as secondclass citizens in their own country.  And as part of people’s temple, they were fed, they looked after, they were given medical treatment, dental care, and they were encouraged to believe themselves to be part of a rainbow family. So, is it a surprise that they should look at outside interference in their new community with suspicion and hostility? And the book also asks an uncomfortable question, when does a community h A cult is a cult only to outsiders.

And the moment an insider recognizes it for a cult, they immediately become an outsider. So Mark Twain he said that 9,999 men in 10,000 are characterized by moral cowardice.  And obviously he was writing of men but obviously if he was writing today, he would have included women too. And really, wouldn’t it be nice to imagine that we would have been that one person in 10,000 who would risk everything we hold dear to do the right thing. But it’s one thing to risk it yourself. It’s quite another to risk your family, your friends, your children.And Big Brother really understands this fear and knows how to exploit it.

Another book we’re about to publish is The Colletta Cassettes by Bruno Noble. It’s a coming of age story set in Italy during the 1978 Football World Cup, which was hosted by the military dictatorship in Argentina.  And the book uncovers the extent of operation gladio which shows the extent of the CIA’s interference in Italian elections. And they were so terrified of communism that they funded the mafia i.e. organized crime to prevent its spread. So it’s very thought-provoking stuff and far more fun to learn about via fiction than via newspaper articles or history books.

The podcast, The Rest is History, which is presented by Dominic Sandbrook and Tom Holland, obviously focuses on historical facts, but they also digress to philosophy. how important are individuals? Can any one person really make a difference?  And if they do, is it because of their, physical or moral courage, their leadership, their brilliance, charisma, intelligence, or are these people merely products of their environment? And are they just lucky? Are they in the right place at the right time? And actually, they conclude that individuals don’t matter all that much. And obviously, fiction has to take the opposite view. I mean, how can you have a hero or a heroine who ultimately can’t really make a difference?

And personally, I do think individuals can make a huge difference. And maybe that’s just comforting to believe that there might be someone out there who can drag us out of the mess we’re in. But in the meantime, we should read and study history. Even if it’s fictional or even if it’s in a fictional setting, not just to avoid repeating it, but because the challenges we face are as old as the hills. There really is nothing new under the sun.  accept that now these challenges are massively amplified thanks to technology. So that’s all I have to say for today and our second podcast will announce when it’s ready. We’re not sure what it’s going to be on yet but please do comment, subscribe and go on our website and we look forward to seeing you again for the second episode. Thank you very much.