Q & A | H. M. Castor

Where did your inspiration for VIII come from?

I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t obsessed with Tudor history. It started when I was at primary school – back then it was the outfits and the executions that intrigued me most! For years I skirted round Henry himself – if you’d asked me, I would have said I was more interested in his wives, his children… but Henry was like the spider at the middle of the web: once I’d looked at everyone around him, I came to be fascinated by what was going on at the centre. And I began to feel that my impression of Henry was not really the same as any of the other versions out there.

How did you find your way into this well-known story?

I didn’t have to find my way in: rather, the feeling of having something I needed to say grabbed me and wouldn’t let go. And this was despite a lot of resistance – in me! After all, you could line shelves and shelves with the books written about Henry VIII, there are so many – and many of them are utterly fascinating and brilliantly written. How could I possibly dare to add to them? But I became convinced I had something new to say. That was immensely exciting. The urgency of it really took me over – sometimes I couldn’t sleep.

What was it that felt so new?

The more I read about Henry, the more forcefully it struck me that I hadn’t ever found a satisfactory explanation of why he did what he did. And some of the things he did are so incredible – so apparently contradictory – that the question just nagged at me.

Though in a way the story is well known, the well-known part is, in fact, only that: a part. Yes, he was that famous image: the fleshy, powerful-looking bearded king who had six wives. But just look at him earlier on… he’s an extraordinary boy: hugely talented, with astonishing warrior skills, and he’s said to be a model of virtue. What went wrong? How did that boy become one of the most villainous kings in British history?

How did you find it inhabiting Henry VIII’s head?

I had to try and sweep all the baggage out of the way, all the pre-conceived ideas I – and other people – had about Henry. One trick that helped was to use the name Hal rather than Henry – because as soon as the name Henry even sounded in my head the iconic image from the Holbein portraits came to mind. I couldn’t climb inside that icon.

At first it was daunting, but in the end it became amazing – intoxicating and intense. Always difficult to get myself there, mentally, but once I was there… well, I felt as if I’d created a whole world, a place to go to in my head – and now I’m reluctant to let go of it!

Why did you choose to tell the story in the first person?

Two reasons. I absolutely didn’t want there to be a distance between the reader and Henry. I didn’t want anyone to open the book and think, ‘Oh, this is someone who lived hundreds of years ago; he’s nothing like me’. Because of course Henry lived in a world that was in many ways very different from ours, but he still felt fear and rage and love and frustration like we do. He still got the hiccups, you know, he still tripped over. He was a human being, waking up in the morning, not knowing what was going to happen next in his life.

Secondly, I didn’t want to look at Henry from the outside; I knew that being on the inside and looking out at the world through his eyes would change the story entirely. I wanted to get a vivid sense of the particular world Henry inhabits in his mind – the claustrophobia of it, if you like, and the extent to which his thoughts shape what he perceives to be reality.

How much research did you do before writing?

I never stopped; I didn’t shut a book and think – OK, that’s the research done, now I start writing. In a sense I’ve been researching VIII almost my whole life (I’ve been reading about the Tudors since childhood, and I studied the sixteenth century at A level and then again at university) – but still, as the book developed, the story showed me how much more I needed to find out. For example, when Hal and his mother ride through London in the first chapter, I had to know their exact route and what they would see as they went along, so I needed to find sixteenth century maps of London. For the sword fighting, I read as much on the subject as I could find – there’s a wonderful book called English Martial Arts by Terry Brown that was especially helpful. But I also wanted to know what it felt like to face up to a real opponent – so I started martial arts lessons.

I spent many hours glued to a website called British History Online (www.british-history.ac.uk) – it has fantastic quantities of original documents; you can read letters, accounts, ambassador’s reports (some of them deliciously gossipy!) and dispatches. But even so, my book list was enormous: I read psychology books, biographies of Henry, books on his palaces, his clothes, his government, his army manoeuvres in France, plus the wonderful huge inventory that survives of all his possessions at his death – it’s utterly fascinating stuff. It’s especially fascinating to see from the inventory that, in his palaces, there were cupboards stuffed with old, worn-out and broken things, not just the new and the sumptuous. He still had belongings confiscated from old friends he’d had executed. He still had a robe that was his brother Arthur’s. No doubt he kept some things for sentimental reasons, as most of us do. And many of the items set me thinking – the cap-badge bearing the words Tristis Victima that appears in Part Four, Chapter XVII, for example, was prominent in this list of possessions at his death. It gave me a shiver; it seemed to me so apt for one aspect of his self-image.

How much of what happens in VIII is fact and how much is fiction?

As you might guess from my answer to the last question, I’ve tried to be as historically accurate as possible. My training as a historian makes this very important to me. Of course, I am telling a story, and I have had to imagine what it felt like to be Henry, what thoughts were in his head – but beyond that, I’ve used evidence from the time everywhere I can, down to the smallest detail. Very nearly every object you see is mentioned in an inventory somewhere, for example. I’ve worked reports of real conversations into the dialogue, and used surviving evidence as the basis for descriptions. The details of the tournaments are almost all taken from the time, though I’ve sometimes changed who is taking part, as otherwise the book’s cast of characters would have become too huge!

You’ve portrayed Henry’s relationship with his father in an interesting light. What led you to it?

When I look at the adult Henry and the extraordinary things he did, the decisions he took – other kings failed to have sons, for example, without reacting so devastatingly – the question for me is: what shaped this personality? What was it, early on, that constructed his emotional circuit board, if you like, and made him react as he did? So I looked at his childhood… and his relationship with his parents is fascinating to think about, particularly because of their own traumatic past.

The years before Henry’s birth were years of bloody struggle – the Wars of the Roses. Both of his parents were profoundly and very personally affected by the violence and upheaval, there’s no question of that – but, as to the exact lasting emotional effects on them, that’s an area for speculation. How did Henry’s mother feel about her young brothers who had apparently been murdered? How was his father affected by being on the run for so many years and then winning the crown in battle? It’s easy to say that last phrase, but when you think about the reality of it – the carnage, the murder of the previous king, and the possibility that the same thing could happen again, which was a very real danger – well, then the effect not only on Henry’s father but on Henry himself becomes a very interesting question to ponder.

What’s next?

Ah, I’m writing about an equally fascinating subject now! And in a way it’s a sequel. It’s a book about Henry’s two daughters, who both became queens: Mary I and Elizabeth I. They’re half-sisters, and much of what happens to them is a shared experience: each is born heir to the throne, a fêted princess; each is then declared illegitimate and loses her title and status. Each loses her mother in heart-rending circumstances caused directly by her father – and yet each comes to revere Henry and identify herself with him.

But, though so much is similar, the way Mary and Elizabeth react to these events is utterly contrasting – they have dramatically different personalities. How did they feel about one another? To have a sibling is a common thing, one many of us can relate to, but how does sibling rivalry feel when your sister has not only knocked you off your perch as an only child, but has also taken your title of princess? And how does sibling rivalry feel when your sister has the power to put you to death?