True, even before I discovered Margaret, I loved History. I remember asking my parents’ friends to quiz me on historical topics during walks (“please can you ask me questions about the Titanic?” I would earnestly, and repeatedly, inquire. Or: “How do I spell apatosaurus?” Yes, I was That Kid). Castles and ruins were catnip to me. People in historical costume even more so. But History in school always left me cold. Secondary sources vs primary sources, writing essay questions, memorising facts… It did nothing for me.

I stuck with History because I still loved it as an idea, and ultimately went on to study it at University. But during my A Levels I could not have given less of a monkeys about the topics we studied. We did the Wars of the Roses, which seemed to be an endless list of battles in the midlands, where people named after different counties bashed each other in, for reasons I never fully understood. “Warwick gave chase to Somerset in Northampton…” It was too complicated, too messy. Too male for this teenage girl.

And then one day, while doing some background reading on the Earl of Richmond – who was trying to defeat Richard, even though they almost have the same name – I stumbled across a reference to his mother. I was 16. Richmond’s mother was younger than me. By my age she was already on her third husband. Hold the phone, I thought. WHO IS THIS? And why had she never been mentioned to me before?

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She was, as you may have guessed, Margaret Beaufort. The absolute bare bones of her story are bewitching to a teenage mind inclined to melodrama:

· She gets married at 7.

· Then again at 12.

· This husband dies when his castle is besieged by Yorkists – she gives birth at 13 – her child is then raised by the Yorkist responsible for his father’s death.

· She gets married twice more, rebels multiple times, is effectively imprisoned by her last husband, and somehow manages to conspire – with another woman!! – to get her only child on the throne, outlives him, and sees her last male grandchild crowned before dying by eating swan.

I mean, come on. How has this not been made into a Hollywood movie? (It has, incidentally, been made into a Sky History documentary I consulted on.)

I was bewitched. At the time, no one seemed to care about Margaret. I never studied her at University, although I forced my way into writing a thesis about her in my third year. I then researched women in the Wars of the Roses for my Masters. When I started working as a costumed interpreter at Hampton Court Palace in 2008, I saw Margaret’s portrait on the wall of the Haunted Gallery and was absolutely delighted. From then on, I was often found lingering near her during my ‘meet and greet’ slots, hoping to waylay an unsuspecting visitor with a Historical Fact Assault. (“Did you know she was married 4 times before she was 30? I know, even though she looks like a nun.”) Every time I discussed the decorative coats of arms in the ceiling of the Great Watching Chamber, I would make sure to point out the Beaufort portcullis heraldry, and say it was there because Margaret Beaufort was the reason the Tudors had a claim to the throne. (“Henry VIII might have been obsessed with having a son, but his right to the crown came from a woman.”)

9 times out of 10, though, when I mentioned Margaret Beaufort, I got blank looks. Then Philippa Gregory’s ‘Cousins War’ series was published. Suddenly people HAD heard of Margaret, but they had very surprising ideas about her. “No, no I don’t think she did kill the Princes in the Tower actually… Um, no, I don’t think she would have liked Joan of Arc… Was she in love with Jasper Tudor? Errr, I don’t think so…”

Margaret was no longer my own. It was like if your favourite band, who you’re always going on about, top the charts overnight and now everyone has their own idea about them. (Why yes I was born in the 80s. How could you tell?) It made me rather sad. I had been telling Margaret’s story for so long, I had definite ideas about what it was – and everyone else thought something completely different. Years passed. Hampton Court put a sign up by Margaret with some info on, so I didn’t need to lurk protectively near her any more. TV series also told her tale – or Gregory’s tale, I should say. When Margaret came up in conversation at my history talks, it always seemed to be in relation to Richard III. Staunch Ricardians from the C17 onwards have suggested that if Richard was framed, Margaret was somehow responsible. I see the rationale. I don’t buy it myself. And I certainly don’t think that the best way to shift the discourse from one unjustly maligned individual is to unjustly malign a different one.

And so, when in 2018, my modestly rising success as a History writer meant I was asked what book I’d like to write next, I knew the answer immediately. I wanted to write about Margaret Beaufort. I had always thought I would do this as fiction, but actually, when it came to it, I wanted to tell her remarkable story without dramatizing it. I wanted to treat her the same way I had ‘mad king’ Henry VI and ‘she-wolf’ Margaret of Anjou in Shadow King. I wanted to humanise her. Sift through every source I could possibly get my hands on to unravel the complex, messy, contradictory human being beneath.

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There were times during this process when I did not like Margaret. She was an aristocrat in the fifteenth century, after all. The waves of violence and political revolution meant most of them were, by our standards, acquisitive, mercenary and selfish. I also don’t have any religion of my own, so making sense of the profound, but paradoxical, piety of both Margaret and her peers took some work. To my surprise, I also found her relationship with her only son, the future Henry VII, more complicated than is popularly remembered. The more I investigated, the more I felt she had rejected him in his early years. This ideal Tudor matriarch was not so perfect after all.

As my research deepened, my appreciation, my affection, and hey let’s just say my admiration, for Margaret grew. Yes, she was courageous, yes she was shrewd. But she was also kind. She was a good manager of the vast staff she maintained – the enormous quantity of lands for which she had responsibility. She genuinely seemed to care about these people, and others who found themselves in need. Her household accounts yielded glimpses of someone surprisingly non-judgmental. Her home and her coterie of friends contained ex-Ricardians, minor criminals, adulterous men, women who left their husbands or remarried without permission, illegitimate children, the poor, the sick. In short, people who also had complicated personal lives, but whom Margaret still took care of. She used her power to protect them. She forged ties of friendship, of loyalty, extending across generations. Of all the things I thought I would learn about Margaret, I had not expected this: that I would genuinely like to have been her pal.

Whenever I was consulting Margaret’s archives at Westminster Abbey, I would sneak into the Lady’s Chapel where Margaret’s tomb lies. I would press myself close to the bars surrounding her, and say thanks. When I was a teenager, she opened up a whole world of History to me. While researching this book, she continued to surprise me. In short, she has been one of the most important inspirations for my work and she continues to inspire me today.

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1. Mathew’s Writing-not-a-nook

2. Where is your writer’s nook?

I am the sort of person whose first instinct is to panic when I’m posed a question, so when I read this I instantly wondered if I could, hand on heart, call this a nook. It is not a nook, and no amount of footling around with adjectives will make it one. And the truth is, I tend to work in various places as the mood - or practicality – takes. This is simply the most common.

I tend to find that moving around is quite good working practice. If I get stuck on something - and I often do get very stuck – going to sit somewhere else often works a treat. So I often work sitting on the sofa, especially if I have a lot of reading to do. I sometimes also work on the bed. I’ve lately taken to working in a local café, too. I get easily distracted by TV or radio, but I don’t much mind the white noise of conversation and the clatter of plates and coffee cups.

Most weeks I go into town into the library to work at least one day. I used to be a devotee of the British Library – Hums One, the desk in the far left corner, if possible. But the whole IT debacle made it impossible to use, and I’ve been seduced by the London Library, with its old-world charm, eccentric classification system, and aura of quiet intellectual endeavour. Plus the chap who comes in dressed, I think, in some kind of homemade nineteenth-century military uniform complete with the largest hat this side of Texas. You don’t get that at the British Library.

But, as you can probably see, my most reliable ‘nook’ is in the conservatory in the back of the house. Is it stiflingly hot in summer? Yes. Is it icily cold in winter. Also yes. But somehow that is part of its allure.

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3. What do you enjoy about your writer’s nook?

Well, it has the largest table in the house, across which I can spread my books and papers pretty extensively. That, I’m afraid to say, seems to be psychologically important. As I said, I tend to move about the house, but wherever I go, I seem to furnish the space around me with my stuff, like some ridiculous migratory bird endlessly building and rebuilding its nest every time it comes to earth.

But the conservatory also has a nice view into the garden, which, if the child next door isn’t screaming and other neighbours down the street aren’t out hoovering their lawns, jetwashing their cars, and otherwise creating a hullabaloo, can be rather peaceful. It also enables me to procrastinate healthily in summer by stopping every ten minutes to check on the Merlin app to see what birdlife might be passing through.

I can’t do anything about the auditory distractions, but I find the stillness of the garden helps quiet my mind – which is pretty much a prerequisite for me doing anything constructive – and even when it’s stormy and rain is thunderously pelting on the glass roof, there is something satisfyingly snug about being inside amidst the tumult.

One downside is the propensity of the wildlife to come in through the open doors. A few weeks back, a robin flew in, perched on the bin, shat on the floor, and then left. You don’t get that in the British Library either.

4. How do you light your space?

See above re the glass roof in daylight hours. But there are also a range of lamps - table, standard, anglepoise – for other times of day.

5. Can you point out an interesting thing in your writers nook e.g. a piece of art, your own books on display, a fridge.

Lauren, how did you know? I feel terribly seen. Just out of shot, to the back and left of where I sit, is a wine fridge. It just happens to be there, ok? It’s the best place in the house for it to live. Its position has nothing whatsoever to do with proximity to the workspace.

Looking round, there are various objects that came from my parents’ house after they passed away: a fruit bowl, some crockery, a couple of vases, my dad’s old ashtray from when he was an inveterate pipe smoker. There are lots of memories wrapped up in those: I think they all predate me.

And then there are the shelves where my partner, Leigh, propagates new plants every year. Pretty much everything has been planted out now, which luckily has freed the shelves for lots more books. I think just in shot in the picture are some of the entries in the HWA non-fiction award which I’m helping to judge this year.

6. Do you do anything apart from work in this space?

Yes, we use it alot! I refer you to my previous answer re propagation, but we also eat here - particularly if we’re entertaining - and Leigh uses the table for various crafts too: bookbinding, for example. And when she is working from home, we share the table.

7. Is your writing nook tidy or messy?

Hmm. Left to my own devices, it would quickly get extremely untidy. Some might say it is untidy, of course. But they haven’t seen what I can really do in the way of untidiness if I set my mind to it. Luckily, by virtue of the fact that work is not the room’s primary function, I do tidy my things away most evenings, rather than leaving them sprawling on every available surface, and then stacking things high, which would probably be my inclination

8. What are you working on in your writing nook right now?

There are various things on the go. The HWA judging. I have a couple of book reviews pending, one for Engelsberg Ideas, one for the Spectator. (The book for the latter has literally just popped through the letterbox while I’ve been writing this.) There are umpteen essays I want to write for the Broken Compass, at least some of which I have made some progress on. (The London Library book you can see in the photo will feature in one of them.) I’m also very behind on my regular book previews, which have not been remotely regular at all of late. I need to think about my next Months Past column for History Today, which will be for the September issue. (I had the proofs back for August to check a couple of hours ago.) And then there is a proposal I desperately need to clear some space to write…

Of course, I am doing none of those things right now. I can hear birdsong. I wonder if I should just check what it is?

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What I love in historical fiction is believable worldbuilding, in that the characters within it make sense. They don’t necessarily need to be historically accurate – the ones below involve nuns building mythical labyrinths and ghosts haunting cross-dressing novelists – but if they stray from historical veracity, I want to understand what their context is. Each of these books below creates a remarkable historical world, and in some cases more than one. And as an extra bonus, they all place fascinating female figures in the heart of their narratives*.

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Matrix (Lauren Groff)

I have never read anything like this, before or since. The (real life) twelfth century writer and abbess Marie de France is reimagined as a queer power-player determined to keep the masculine outside world away from her convent. The narrative lens is completely female focussed, in a way that I found utterly unique, and my god what a relief. Every man is defined through his relation to a woman, in direct contradiction of the usual historical narrative about women: ‘this woman was important only as the daughter of so and so and mother of a man…’ The women’s inner lives and exterior efforts are brilliantly revealed. It is part imagined biography, part mystical adventure, part monastic job manual. READ IT.

Silence of the Girls (Pat Barker)

If you liked the Odyssey, but wanted to know what happened to the women whilst Odysseus was rowing or running away from giants, this is the book for you. I have loved Pat Barker’s work since studying the Regeneration trilogy at school. Like that series, this book deals with the fallout of war. Unlike it, it turns the spotlight onto women. The heroine is Briseis, who you might recall as Achilles’ girlfriend in the movie Tory. Here, her enslaved status and the near-constant threat of sexual assault is moved to the fore, but she is not presented as a victim. Nor are any of the women, really, which is an extraordinary achievement since Barker is writing about girls whose entire male relatives have been slaughtered by the men now imprisoning them in a rape camp. I’m not making this book sound like the ideal beach read, I realise (although it definitely features a beach – albeit, outside Troy). But despite the horrors of the situation, it was a curiously uplifting read. The resilience and fortitude of women was alive and well.

Briefly, a delicious life (Nell Stevens)

Stick with me on this one, because there is no way to describe it without it sounding – odd. And it is. But it is also scintillatingly, shatteringly human.

This is the story of a one-time teenage nun called Blanca, who died in 1473, and who is now haunting the atmospheric (read: damp and stony) Charterhouse in Mallorca where novelist George Sand, her children and her lover, the composer Frédéric Chopin, rock up in the 1800s. Yes you see what I mean.

As a long-time lover of Chopin I was immediately intrigued by this set up, but really this story belongs to the two women at its heart. Blanca is an adolescent creation full of vibrancy and mild petulance, but also righteous (and rightful) indignation at a bitter betrayal enacted upon her. Sands, meanwhile, is a Victorian oddity who assumes male clothing and asserts paternalistic dominance – but whose increasingly desperate struggle to keep her children in her possession and her lover from dying are heart wrenching.

North Woods (Daniel Mason)

There are very few books, to be completely honest, that I do not want to end. This was one. Partly that was because the structure lent itself to a never-ending narrative of minor connections. These included an apple seed in a murder victim’s stomach in one story, which grows into an exceptional apple tree in another. There are multiple narrative voices, from the 1760s through to the future, and the interweaving of these narrative forms, stories and characters was extraordinary.

What are YOU packing for your summer holidays?

I’d love suggestions - especially for books written by people of colour, as I’m conscious how caucasian my author list is here.

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*North Woods less so, but it’s the women whose stories stayed with me after so I included it here.

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Turns out sitting still and talking for 4 ½ hours is horrendous. This is my number 1 learning from reading the audiobook of my latest book, Margaret Beaufort: Survivor, rebel, kingmaker. I asked to do it, as I am an experienced public speaker and performer and always regretted NOT asking to do the audiobook of Shadow King. I am very glad I did it, but I definitely won’t be making a career out of it. I only realised after that first day of recording, as my entire body tightened into agony, how much I did not know about how to do this job.

So, if you ever find yourself in the position of reading an audiobook, what are my top tips for you?

1. Warm up your voice.

In my life as a live interpreter I have performed in some very acoustically unforgiving environments (Tower of London South Lawn, where nearby stones consume the sound and visitors can be up to 50 feet away, I’m looking at you.) I blithely assumed that talking at my natural volume into a microphone would be a piece of cake compared to that.

Reader, it was not a piece of cake.

Unless cake is torture, in which case yes it was cake.

I did not warm up on my first day and I pushed through the afternoon without a break. This was, I know now, idiotic. Because your voice is a muscle, and your body is a machine. You need to warm them up and keep them lubricated otherwise – actually, I’ve extended this metaphor too far… Suffice it to say that reading an audiobook means maintaining a specific distance from a pop-guard in front of a microphone, whilst also keeping in sight an ipad with your book on it, which you need to scroll to read (without making noise) and this combination is likely to mean you are unnaturally positioned, and any unnatural position sustained over a long time is bad for you.

(My specific warm ups for public speaking of various sorts can be found at the end of this post.)

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2. Read slowly.

Think ‘slow and steady’. You need to give your eyeballs time to skim the line ahead, otherwise your mouth will stammer and blurt. You also probably want your reader to be able to take in all the information – in my case, which SPECIFIC Margaret or John I was talking about. As someone who constantly speaks too fast, at times the reading felt ridiculously slow, but honestly, it sounded better for it.

3. Take regular breaks!

Don’t be a hero, kid. Your body is in a stress position and your mind is working overtime. I realised about 90 minutes was as much as I should do before pausing and moving around a bit. Definitely not 4 ½ hours. What idiot would do that…

4. Commit to pronunciation.

St John. A name I have written so many times. In my head always pronounced ‘saint john’. In literature, I’m conscious, often pronounced ‘sinjun’. I had to commit to a pronunciation and be consistent with it throughout. I asked advice from performer and historian friends. Ultimately, I ignored most of them because when I spoke, ‘saint john’ came out. There was always something delicious about the name ‘John Saint John’ (the name of Margaret Beaufort’s half-brother and half-nephews…). I went for that.

5. Eat honey.

Everyone says that you should drink water, and you should. But I am otherwise incapable of following the proper strictures of audio performance. I will not give up coffee. I cannot avoid cheese or milk. But honey and warm water are god sends. So soothing on the vocal chords, plus a little shot of sweetness.

6. Prepare to be upset.

On the last day of my audiobook recording, I had to describe the protracted, agonising death of the protagonist’s beloved child. Though I say so myself, I had written a really moving death scene. Unfortunately, I then had to read it out loud. Whilst having spent the week away from my own child. Towards the end of the enormously emotional process of putting this book out into the world, which had not been lacking in the maternal loss stakes.

On my journey into the recording studios that day I felt physically sick at the prospect of doing it, and I experienced a genuine emotional release after I had finished that section. I did not cry, but I did want to. I took myself off for a little quiet break after – in a graveyard, because of course.

7. Do silly voices – a bit.

Now this was a fascinating discovery. As a giant ham who delights in stupid voices, I restrained myself a lot during this recording. Hilarious though I find my impression of Polydore Vergil, I was fairly sure that if committed to recording and disseminated, I would be confronted with the fact it was somehow offensive. So initially I restrained my impulses. Then, as I read quotations, I found impulsive suggestions of other voices coming out, to differentiate between my ‘narrator’ voice and the quote. The Crowland Chronicler was a bit reedy and bitchy. Child voices were higher. And, fascinatingly, Richard III bubbled right out of me in a northern deep voiced twang. I didn’t remotely plan any of this, and can only presume that these voices have been living in my head the entire time I’ve been writing without me realising.

8. Read the footnotes.

I wasn’t sure about this, since they’re not in the main body of the text. Turns out you DO read them, but you have to incorporate them into the narrative as you go, which is occasionally hard. Especially if it involves numbers in the hundreds of thousands, which for some reason my brain simply cannot compute.

9. BREATHE.

Everything always comes down to this, doesn’t it? That’s why yoga is so enduringly popular, because even if you have zero flexibility, it’s nice to have a lie down and remind yourself to use your lungs now and then. Before each new record, I would take a steadying, slow breath. I write egregiously long sentences, so running out of oxygen was a constant danger. But also I didn’t want the audiobook to be a series of rasping inhales. I spent a lot of the records with my hands on my waist, as a constant reminder to breathe low and long. It helped. But it may not have assisted the bodily discomfort.

10. Pat yourself on the back, literally.

We’re bad at self-praise, us British introverts. When faced with a compliment I usually deflect with humour whilst desperately wanting to sit in the glow of commendation for an hour and a half, dissecting why I am allegedly good at something. (No really. Please tell me. I need to know.) But on the last day of my recording, I was feeling a bit rubbish and a friend of mine reminded me that, contextually, this was a pretty amazing achievement. I had not only written a book, I had written THE book I had wanted to write for 20 years, whilst going through some really serious personal challenges, AND I was reading the audiobook. How many people get to do that? Yes, I allowed myself to think, it was quite good actually. And I raised my hand and patted myself, gently, on the shoulder. Which feels really nice. I recommend it to you, for whatever you have achieved today that was hard.

Specific vocal warm ups I did when recording my audiobook, and have often used in some form before recording podcasts/ giving public talks/ performing. You might found them useful, but I’m not a voice expert so don’t sue if you get ague of the face or something from them:

· Lie on your back on the floor, with your knees raised and feet planted. Breathe deeply, into the floor, for longer than you think.

· Still lying down, stretch your body out as much as possible so your arms are above your head and feet pointed then flexed. Imagining a banana shape, take hold of one wrist at a time and gently stretch the arm, whilst at the same time putting one foot over the other and stretching that leg.

· Hum. Move the hum around your body, from the top of your head and nasal cavities to deep in your chest.

· Stand up. Do it very slowly whilst thinking of stacking your vertebrae one on top of the other, keeping your head to last.

· Then flop over at the waist and shake out your upper body to release tension in your shoulders and neck.

· Stretch out your neck by dipping your ear towards your shoulder and holding it there for a count of 8. Do it to the other side.

· Massage your face, and especially your jaw. Imagine chewing a giant ball of gum, extending your jaw and contorting your face as you do so.

· Do the ‘tongue olympics’: poke your tongue out as far as you can; flatten it, point it, repeat several times. Then swish your tongue all the way around your teeth, first 5 times in one direction and 5 in the other, then 4 times, and so on down to 1. It really hurts, so give yourself another jaw rub after.

· Make embarrassing noises of almost any type, but especially: a creaky door, a crying puppy, a loud yawn, a spluttering horse, and an indescribable siren-ing. Direct the sounds into the distance, and make sure to support them

· The National Theatre vocal warm up youtube videos are brilliant for this, and my go-to for live performances. Do them in order, they only take 15 minutes.

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Oh, and a bonus tip:

11. Bite an apple. Or a bit of bread.

Full disclosure, I only tried the apple one. This was a tip from actor friends for gross reasons relating to saliva and really does work.

1. Meet my nook:

2. Where is your writers nook?

This is the shed in my garden. I built it last year after spending roughly a decade and a half justifying the expense. I visited a lot of garden centre showrooms. Last year I did some coaching to try and gain some focus in my highly splattergun freelance work life. I didn’t really achieve that, but I did finally buy the shed.

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3. What do you enjoy about your writers nook?

I love being out in nature – it feels like I’ve created a little tranquil space in our city garden. I usually work with the doors or windows open, even when it’s really cold (I have a heated blanket on my chair to stave off hypothermia). I look onto the back wall, but I’ve tried to cover it in foliage as far as possible: hops, hydrangeas, acer, weigela, grasses. I can see and hear birds coming and going – a robin recently built a nest in the ivy, and I’d see it ducking in and out. Robins always remind me of my late friend Claire, so it felt like she was encouraging me every time it peeped into view.

4. How do you light your space?

Fairy lights! And a single desk lamp. My dad’s catchphrase is ‘light more light’, so one of the first things I did was set up the fairy lights inside to provide twinkly warmth. Long before I installed any outside lighting, so I did fall over on the walk back to the house occasionally.

5. Can you point out an interesting thing in your writers nook e.g. a piece of art, your own books on display, the desk/ table you use, a fridge.

On the wall is a framed photo by EMMA HARRIS, a local artist. Every May Brighton does ‘artists open houses’ and because I am now middle aged it’s basically my Glastonbury. I flipping love it, and always look out for Emma’s work. I bought this piece because it is called ‘January’ (my entire family has birthdays in January) and it’s in the suffragette colours. It felt meant to be.

6. Do you do anything apart from work in this space?

I intended to make it a chill out area for myself, but actually I now find it easier just keeping it for work – whether podcasting or writing. It has accidentally become my daughter’s wendy house though. She sits at the desk and scribbles on all my post it notes. Often I am told to go away and shut the door. It’s like watching myself from the outside…

7. Is your writing nook tidy or messy?

An absolute shambles. Always. I keep tidying it, honestly. But the moment things get hectic it’s like a feral cat has got into my papers. I don’t really enjoy the chaos, but I do keep creating it.

8. What are you working on in your writing nook right now?

My PhD. I’ve been doing it since Covid and have had a kid so it’s a slow process – not to mention a surprisingly different one from researching and writing for popular history. I’m using documents in the National Archives (transcribed from the Vatican archives) to investigate how English Catholic exiles and Roman diplomats were interacting with each other after the Break with Rome. I cannot think of a way to describe it that makes it sound interesting, but I really do find it pretty fascinating. And it’s nice, whilst parenting a little person, to have something so cerebral to work on.

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It is all too easy, when you spend most of your waking hours absorbed in a long-gone past, to take the privilege of what you’re doing for granted. When your workplace is a centuries old building, or your ‘to do list’ includes transcribing ancient documents, you can get blasé. ‘Another day in the salt mine,’ you think, unboxing reams of tattered papers. Because the reality of historical research is that you read, potentially scan and certainly copy out and then analyse grotesque quantities of this stuff.

But every now and then a source punches through. It forces you to pause your process, and confronts you with the humanity – there is no other word for it – the humanity of what you are touching. Harry Stafford’s will is one such source for me.

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I would be willing to bet you’ve never heard of Harry Stafford. Or, to give him his proper title, Sir Henry Stafford. (Why did I change his name in this book? More on that soon.) Even in the Fifteenth Century when he lived, I’m not sure many people knew him. He is one of those benign, unassuming historical figures who bimbles their way gently through daily life. But not someone who leaves much of a mark on History.

He mattered to me because he was Margaret Beaufort’s third husband. And Margaret, as I will write elsewhere, has long been my obsession. She is also the subject of my latest book.

Case in point for poor Stafford’s irrelevance: we don’t even know when he was born. He was a younger son of the Fifteenth Century power couple Humphrey, duke of Buckingham and Duchess Anne (née Neville), and I estimated he was born in the mid-1420s. By January 1458 he had the good fortune to marry the teenage heiress Margaret, and they had a long, apparently content union. They weathered the Wars of the Roses by switching allegiance once it was clear the Yorkists had won, in 1461. After a bit of tactical flip-flopping when the wars re-erupted in 1469-71 (about which I am sure I will write later), in 1471 Stafford and Margaret fully committed to Edward IV of York. To prove their sincerity, Stafford saddled his horse, assembled his most trusted servants and rode to battle in Edward’s cause. How do I know? Because amazingly, Stafford’s movements at this pivotal moment in history – not just his own, but nationally – can be tracked to the day through surviving household accounts.

For lords and ladies in this period, careful accounting was essential. Every pound and penny had to be recorded to ensure you didn’t go into debt, which one easily could as the nobility were expected to display their wealth through ‘conspicuous consumption’: lavish hospitality (i.e. giving out lots of food and drink to almost anyone who asked), multiple servants (all wearing clothes you paid for), impressive manor houses (which needed constant upkeep), expensive fashion, a stable full of horses, a kennel full of hunting dogs, a mews full of falcons… You get the point. As a result, the money-conscious medieval aristocrat produced quite a paper trail. Unfortunately, in most cases these papers have subsequently been destroyed. But luckily for us, Margaret Beaufort was both an extremely careful accountant and had an archivist’s impulse to preserve her documents. Which meant that 550 years after the fact, I could track all Stafford’s expenses as he rode to war.

I could see that the night before what we know as the Battle of Barnet (13 April 1471), Stafford sent ten of his soldiers to Kingston to help him flee the field if needed; that he had to send for some armour to protect his thighs, perhaps because in the rush to get to the battlefield his servants had forgotten to pack it; and also that he sent one of his servants, John Day, back to his home. Presumably, to deliver Margaret his will.[1]

The reason I make that assumption is because incredibly – genuinely incredibly – this battlefield will also survives. It is in a different archive from the rest, and when you take it in your hands, you can see the lines where it has been repeatedly folded and unfolded. The seal was broken to open it – almost certainly by Margaret herself. The crinkled parchment testifies to the will’s age but also, perhaps, to its urgent journey from a battlefield to the hands of its intended recipient. This is not a formal document drawn up by a clerk in a chancery. Stafford specifically says, ‘this my last will I… write this with mine own hand’ (‘ys my last wyll I … wryt þis w^t myn own hand’). I made a note to myself when I first encountered this will:

Such a scrappy bit of parchment, folded up, signed and sealed, crumpled and creased and stained.

There are splodges on it, including ink dots and words where the quill has leeched too much ink eg. in writing ‘Syr Harre Stafford’ on penultimate line.

The lines don’t run straight, but creep downwards across the page. A sense of it being hastily scribbled.

It makes me want to cry.

It still does. Firstly, because although Harry did not die in battle at Barnet, he did within six months, and probably as a result of injuries incurred there. Secondly, because I imagine how Margaret must have felt to hold this document, knowing her husband was about to risk his life for their family’s political future. And thirdly, because of what the will reveals about both Stafford and his relationship with Margaret.

With remarkable sanguinity, Stafford asked that his body ‘be buried wherever it shall best please God that I die’. In the very next line, he named ‘my most entire beloved wife my chief executor and to do for my soul according most after her discretion and wisdom’. Essentially, with the exception of a little parcel of land owing to cover a debt, Stafford left everything, including his immortal soul, in Margaret’s hands. This speaks to profound trust and affection between them – something likewise intimated in their shared household accounts.

The will was one of the most important documents to help me make sense of Margaret’s third marriage. But it impacted me far more because of its emotional resonance.

I have often felt that I should not feel things in History. History, I was taught during my degree, is rational, analytical, arguably even a science. Which is true. I maintain that History is one of the best subjects to study in the 21^st century because it teaches us precisely the skills we most need to confront the rise of ‘fake news’ and media editorialising. It was only in my third year that a tutor opened my eyes to the possibility that you could, y’know, just find a historical thing cool. (This was in a lecture, and he pointed out a Merovingian brooch that yes, had historical significance, but also – was just really cool to look at.) It has been my experience that, for some reason, academic study of the 15^th century in particular seems to have an issue with emotion. Is it because this is a very traditionally male, militaristic period? I’m not sure, and hopefully things have improved in the past decade or so. But I always felt like my emotional response to History was wrong. And yet this is the era of civil war, international war, plague, infant mortality, child marriage, mysticism and magic… There is so much that invites emotion. I would argue that we should all be encouraged to feel it.

I also think that embracing that emotional response is a strength when it comes to narrative writing. It has consistently been the case that the writing I do which makes me feel the most in the moment is the same writing that stands the test of time (by which I mean, I tend not to scribble ‘rubbish’ all over it once I get to the redrafting stage). Also, it usually seems to land most with readers.

I would love to know, my fellow History fans, what you think: what moment in a History book has most stuck with you? What historical tidbit has had the greatest emotional impact? And is it OK to not just analyse – but also to feel?

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[1] [Westminster Abbey Muniments archive] WAM 12183, f. 50.

What links: sweet wine, a slightly rubbish sword, an old horse and William the Conqueror?

(I’ll give you a moment.)

SPOILER incoming…

The answer is…

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‘Bastard’.

I’m not being rude. All of those items were known as ‘bastard’ in the Middle Ages. As the child of unmarried parents, William the Conqueror was literally called bastardus in contemporary documents. And the other items were all associated with the sense of illegitimacy or – to take an authentically insensitive medieval attitude – something that was a slightly inferior version of an original. In fact, ‘bastards’ abound in medieval speech, particularly from the fifteenth century. You can have a bastard sword, bastard cannon, bastard cloth, bastard warship, bastard flour and one of the less-quoted Shakespearean contributions is this line from Henry IV part 1:

‘Anon, anon sir; skore a pint of bastard in the halfe moone.’

If you’ve ever watched a historical drama – and especially if you watched Game of Thrones – you’ll be familiar with the term ‘bastard’. Illegitimate children were a common phenomenon in the medieval times, not least because no one seemed to agree on exactly what made a real marriage or what a ‘bastard’ is.

Whilst doing a little research for an episode of the Gone Medieval podcast about royal medieval bastards (available here!) I went down a bastard rabbit hole. And some of the things I learnt were sufficiently absurd / fascinating I thought you might enjoy them too!

Did you know that a male ‘bastard’ in Latin was ‘bastardus’ but a female ‘bastard’ was a ‘bastarda’?

For instance, some people trace the origins of ‘bastardy’ back to Emperor Augustus, who wrote a law on adultery in 17 BC. He imposed penalties not only for adulterers (banishment, confiscation of property and occasionally death) but also for husbands who tolerated a wife’s adultery. And of course punishments varied by social status. This hints at the real intention behind most laws on bastardy: social control. Yep, it’s the blooming patriarchy again. Trying to assert masculine control over women’s behaviour and their own inheritance.

Naturally, the Church wanted to get in on this, although the early church fathers had a hard time thinking about sex at all. They all agreed that the best thing to be was a massive virgin. Even getting married seemed a bit impure. But Augustine of Hippo (354-430 CE) paved the way towards Church intervention in marriage and ideas of legitimacy when he suggested that marriage could be considered a sacrament. Which obviously tells you that it was not a sacrament originally.

As any good Catholic knows, there are 7 official sacraments, of which marriage is now one. But it took a millennium to become one. In fact it was the Synod of Verona in 1184 that first made marriage a sacrament. Unsurprisingly, it did so for political reasons. At the time, the Cathar religious sect was growing in popularity, and Cathars insisted that marriage and procreation were totally sinful. The Roman Catholic Church condemned them, and made marriage a sacrament.

In 1215, to get priests even more involved in weddings, the Fourth Lateran Council announced that all marrying couples had to first publish banns – although since most people couldn’t read, that meant the priest just announced the upcoming union in church so that there was advance warning for anyone who wanted to lodge a complaint. (We still have to publish banns, and there is still a section of the marriage ceremony, civil or religious, where ‘any person here present’ is invited to say why the marriage shouldn’t happen. As anyone who has ever accidentally coughed awkwardly during the accompanying silence will know…)

Interestingly though, you didn’t need to be married by a priest or have witnesses until the Council of Trent, in the mid-sixteenth century. So throughout the Middle Ages, marriage was basically a free for all. All you needed was a man and a woman saying ‘I marry you’, then having sex. Which inevitably meant that some people, to use a legal term, took the piss. And the people with the most power, i.e. royal men, took the most proverbial.

(If you want to know more about illicit marriages and rascally men, read my chapter ‘May’ in So Great a Prince: England and the Accession of Henry VIII.)

Word usage evolved alongside moral codification, and it wasn’t just the church telling people how to behave. In 1235, the Statute of Merton jumped on the illegitimacy bandwagon and insisted that anyone born to an unmarried couple could not inherit their parent’s land. Before that, where the word ‘bastard’ was used it was often quite literal: William the Conqueror was a literal (and figurative) bastard, and there is a ‘bastart’ listed in the Domesday Book. Indeed, it has be argued that until well into the 1100s, what really mattered was the social status and longterm lineage of your parents, not whether they had been properly married.

From the eleventh century, ‘bastard’ was used to mean inferior, but it really came into common usage, as far as documents suggest, from the 1320s. (Some variant of ‘bastard’ can be found from the 1300s onwards across France, Spain, Italy, Portugal…) ‘Whoreson’ also started to appear then. And yet curiously, accusations of illegitimacy weren’t being hurled about as freely as TV has suggested. Throughout the Middle Ages, illegitimacy accusations weren’t slanderous against a child so much as against the mother. And it was not unusual even in the fifteenth century to find royal documents that non-judgmentally referred to ‘my lord the bastard’. It was from the sixteenth century that it really became an offensive term, its use litigated against.

There are also some interesting peaks and troughs in royal bastardy. The Norman and Angevin kings, from 1066 through 1200s were absolute shaggers. Henry I had twenty illegitimate children, often several with one female partner over many years. Illegitimate children of kings tended to go into the church, although some sons became earls and some daughters made surprisingly high status marriage. Henry I’s daughter Sibylla became Queen of Scotland, and King John’s daughter Joan married Llewelyn ab Iorweth, prince of Gwynedd. She went on to be an important mediator in Anglo-Welsh relations thereafter.

In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, there were a lot fewer royal bastards in England, although in Sicily, Spain and Portugal at this time illegitimate children can be found foisting the throne away from legitimate royal children. The Lancastrian Kings Henry (mainly V, VI and VII) were famously sexually continent. It’s not even clear if Henry VI knew how to consummate his marriage for the first 8 years… [Read Shadow King for more.] Meanwhile, over in Milan, Francesco Sforza was illegitimate, married to an illegitimate bride, with 37 illegitimate children, presumably to make up for all those well behaved Lancastrians.

Bastardy became a hot topic in the Wars of the Roses. There was scarcely a powerful woman who was not accused of sexual malpractice – illicit liaisons, bewitching impressionable young kings into marriage, using wax dolls to murder rivals, smuggling fake babies into the royal bedchamber to cover their adultery… Cecily, Duchess of York was accused of having an illegitimate child by two of her own sons. It is a really quite savage irony that Richard III took the throne on/ with the excuse that his nephews, the Princes in the Tower, were illegitimate and so couldn’t legally be kings – and then he was deposed by a rival who was 100% from an illegitimate royal line. (That being Henry Tudor, whose royal claim came through his mother Margaret Beaufort’s family. Way back in the 1390s, their royal ancestor had married his mistress and retrospectively ‘legitimised’ their kids – the eldest of whom was already in his 20s.)

And with the arrival of Henry Tudor we move out of the medieval world and into the heyday of philandering kings with his son, Henry VIII. But that is a topic for another day.

What is your favourite bastardy fact?

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My hero Jane Austen did it at a portable sloped writing desk, bought for her by her father, or at a small unassuming table in her home. Both fit with the description given by Jane’s brother of her circumspection when writing:

‘She was careful that her occupation should not be suspected by servants, or visitors, or any persons beyond her own family party. She wrote upon small sheets of paper which could easily be put away, or covered with a piece of blotting paper.’

As someone who similarly squirrels my scribblings away from public gaze, I get it. I’ve written in all manner of absurd corners throughout my life. The least enjoyable? Probably the peak time Brighton-London train, with its elbow barging to secure a table, inability to get up for a wee and constant strobing light through the window (although occasional bucolic countryside, tbf).

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Most enjoyable? My parents’ house (fun fact: also Cary Grant’s childhood home). Obviously the frequent offers of cups of tea are a bonus, but the surroundings also put me into instant calm, whether sitting under a giant parasol in their beautiful garden or at the kitchen table early in the morning before anyone else is awake.

What these have in common - as with Jane - is the need to share the space with others. It’s the constant challenge of my writerly existence, and I suspect others, that I require total immersion in a project to actually get anything done. My gadfly brain cannot be trusted with background chatter, building works or music that has words in it. On that commuter train I would plug my headphones into a white noise app - ironically often ‘cafe’, because the low rumble of distant conversation and tinkling tea spoons doesn’t distract.

Cafes, of course, are perennially popular writing haunts. I edited most of ‘Shadow King’ in Cafe Nero on Lordship Lane, East Dulwich. A far more successful writer friend once told me he was going to put the local cafe staff in his acknowledgements, because they had been such constant companions during his writing. Every now and then I would encounter someone on a first date or interesting business meeting though, and that was me done for the day.

Libraries, by comparison, I find completely impossible to write in. They are either too quiet or too full of loud whispers. (The British Library Hums 1 reading room also had a gentleman I called ‘the library troll’ who spent his entire time huffing, harumphing and making indescribable guttural nasal noises.) Libraries are also stifling and airless, and there is something about the freedom to loudly proclaim my own idiocy or occasionally throw on some objectionable EMDR that I need.

Again, that impulse, that craving, to submerge yourself into an unobserved fantasy world is key.

What all writers really need, as Virginia Woolf once famously noted, is a room of one’s own. (Or possibly that was what women need. I’ll be honest, I haven’t actually read the book, which is particularly shameful because a friend gave it to me as a present once.) But when there isn’t a whole room to dedicate to your noisy keyboard smashing, what can you do? You just have to carve out a little nook for yourself.

One of my most cherished memories of writing, funnily enough, is of such a nook. I had just moved to London and started my first proper job. The job, admittedly, was dressing up as a Tudor queen in a literal palace, so I was already several steps into fantasy land. I was sharing a bedroom with my partner in a flatshare, so there was almost no private space. To get my writing out - a historical fiction about Henry VIII’s sister Mary, I believe - I crammed ikea’s cheapest table into the corner beside the wardrobe, and opened the wardrobe door. Thus, sandwiched between a wall and a wardrobe, I felt completely alone. I wrote almost a whole book that way and what’s most important, I enjoyed doing it.

As for my current writing nook, I’ll tell more in another post.

So, my fellow writers, whether you’re squeezing a little creative writing out of daily life that revolves around other people (kids, parents, co-workers…) or it is your One and Only Job*, I’d love to know where you write? What is the strangest spot? What is the best? And if any of you have a French chateau with a swimming pool you’d like to offer me for a retreat, do get in touch!

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*I know precisely no writers for whom writing is their only job. I have about 15 jobs. Fiction lied to us. The portmanteau freelance career is essential for survival.

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So what’s this all about then?

Yes, it’s another historian launching a substack. But wait! I’m not like those other historians you’ve met.

Sure, I read far too many books and have basically gone blind from squinting in archives over the years, but I have another life too. A secret* life. A double life, if you will. Yes I do sound like Batman don’t I.

1. Who I am

Alongside writing books and articles about fascinating people from the C15th and C16th centuries (the age of the Wars of the Roses, Hundred Years War, Tudors…) I have also spent the past *cough* many years working in live interpretation. It’s that thing where modern people pretend to be from the past, for public history events and education sessions. I worked both on the front-facing performance side AND behind the scenes as a researcher, writer and director.

Through my life in Live Interpretation and History I’ve learnt a few things which frankly don’t tend to end up in my books. I’d like to share them in this substack…

2. What this substack is

Fundamentally, I think people relate to people. I have never seen History as a bland, inert subject - it is something to be engaged with, retold, reinvented, questioned…

As a Live Interpreter I’ve had to snare people’s attentions and win their trust, quickly but respectfully, to let them know (a) that I know what I’m talking about, and (b) I also want to know what they’re interested in. (Also sometimes (c) - the toilets are just over there. Like I say, respectful.)

I try to bring that knowledge, and storytelling, to all my historical writing. And despite the many years I’ve spent shouting in castles, my first love remains writing. This substack is a way to keep my arm in, as it were, during the long, cold months when I’m researching and drafting, all alone in my shed/ the library. It’s a means of keeping the conversation about History going, continuing to learn from (and adapt to) an audience as I write. (That’s you guys.)

This is also a place to put all the fascinating nuggets of history - especially diverse but often marginalised history - that I stumble across in my research.

And finally, it will be a “how to”. Because over the years I’ve learnt an enormous amount about how to do history outside a university / book setting and, to my surprise, people seem to want to know about it.

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3. To pay or not to pay?

I think history should be accessible to all, so my posts will NOT be paywalled.

However, because I also need to buy lightbulbs and pens, I will provide some inducements for the most open-pocketed among you.

If you become a paid subscriber you will receive all my posts (including archived items) and also:

• Early access to posts

• A monthly Q&A, with questions YOU want answered

• The chance to suggest a topic for me to investigate and write

If you sign up as a founding member, firstly THANK YOU. Secondly, I will send you:

• one of my books (you can choose),

• dedicated however you wish,

• with a bookmark,

• free of postage within the UK. (Overseas postage will need to be paid, apologies.)

4. So if you’re interested in the following, SUBSCRIBE!

Some of my upcoming posts will include:

• Forgotten histories: women blacksmiths, naughty priests and black Tudor informants

• How to dress in Tudor times

• A peek inside The Writer’s Shed (ft. other exciting writers too…)

• How to get women into your History

• Motherhood, Margaret Beaufort and me

• How to promote your book: what I’ve done, what worked and what didn’t

• How to read an audio book

• Naming your characters when literally everyone in the 15th century is called Richard…

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*I mean, obviously it’s not a secret if you’ve ever looked at a single thing I do before. But it made me sound mysterious, right?

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