This is me meeting Philippa Gregory last Monday in York.
It was wonderful.
Meeting an idol: Philippa Gregory
The hall is filled with excited chatter. Perhaps the building excitement is due to the collective happiness in keeping dry from the thin rain outside, but most likely it a result of the fact that Philippa Gregory will walk through the door at any moment.
On 18th August 2014 I met Philippa Gregory. I met the wonderful historical fiction author whose books follow the fates of powerful Tudor and Plantagenet women in a world famous for its vivacious and downright dangerous men (yes, Henry VIII I am talking about you). She is the author of The Other Boleyn Girl, which became a brilliant screenplay starring Scarlet Johansson as Mary Boleyn and Natalie Portman as her more well-known sister, Anne. Additionally, the BBC series The White Queen (which I reviewed last year) is based upon Gregory’s work of the same name following the Plantagenet Queen/Witch (depending on which side of the War of the Roses you support), Elizabeth Woodville. She is a fantastic writer, truly bringing her characters to life long after their, sometimes awful, deaths.
Meeting her, for me, was like meeting a world famous pop-star to many, although admittedly less swooning and more history. She described how she chose the women she writes about, she said “I write these books because I have to tell someone! I have to let everyone know who this person was and recount their story”. I think that is wonderful. There are so many historical figures that I wouldn’t have researched without her books guiding me to the heart of their stories. Jane Rochford, Bess of Hardwick, Mary Boleyn, Elizabeth of York and even the young, beautiful Katherine of Aragon would have been shielded from my view by the “big players” within the Plantagenet and Tudor narratives.
I owe her so much. Gregory’s books sparked in me a further interest into the delightful realm of history from when I was merely eleven. I am twenty now and two-thirds of my way through a BA in History at the University of York; I owe my degree choice to the wonderful historical figures she brought to life on the page.
Thank you Philippa. You are wonderful.
Book Review: Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel is one of the best historical fiction books I have read in a long time. Maybe even ever.
Focusing upon the character Thomas Cromwell briefly from his childhood until the height of his career in courtly politics, Wolf Hall is a vivid, empathetic account of a historical figure who is often simplified as a destroyer of monasteries.
Through Cromwell’s eyes you can grasp the difficulties of working with the hot-headed, somewhat childish portrayal of King Henry VIII and the beautiful hardness of Anne Boleyn. As a figure who was the heart of the late Henrician court, Cromwell or ‘Cromweul’ as Anne pronounces it, is a perfect choice of narrator.
I implore anyone who is interested in Tudor Politics, the rise and fall of Anne Boleyn and of course the Tudors in general, to read this fantastic fictional account. Mantel truly brings Cromwell to life and offers an alternative view to his harsh reputation, choosing to focus upon his family relations and only loosely touching upon the dissolution of the monasteries, although not ignoring the importance of such actions.
I will be keeping a close eye on Mantel and her depictions of other historical figures.
London Bills of Mortality (pictured above in 1635 and 1665 respectively) have been largely ignored by historians studying cultural representations of disease, particularly plague. The Bills themselves acted as a record for the number of deaths within London, documented parish by parish in a weekly time-frame.
Scholars, such as Mark Jenner, have argued against such absence of study implying that these sources are not just statistical data but are a symbol of how those in the early modern period viewed disease.
For instance, the top picture depicts a skeleton brandishing an arrow and a hourglass in the forefront of the drawing, a reminder and interpretation of how death was all around those suffering from the plague epidemics. Additionally, by reading the title “Lord Have Mercy Upon Us” and acknowledging the group of figures in the left of the picture openly praying, we can deduce that plague was interpreted as a punishment from the Divine. These are just two of many cultural ideas which can be gathered from the London Bills of Mortality.
These sources give us fantastic insight into widespread ideas of disease as they were widely printed and distributed, were hung on doors, were occasionally sold (indicating the demand for such broadsheets) and were presented to the King in order for the advance of plague to be mapped; they reached all social classes.
London Bills of Mortality cannot be ignored as a cultural source when studying early modern ideas of disease.
So….He’s Kind Of Right?
historical-nonfiction:
Galen of Pergamum, a prominent surgeon to Roman gladiators, demonstrated that blood, not air, filled arteries, as Hippocrates had concluded. However, he also believed that the heart acted as a low-temperature oven to keep the blood warm and that blood trickled from one side of the heart to the other through tiny holes in the heart.
