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0:52

By the mid 17th century, we have

0:54

several journals and diaries written by gentlewomen

0:56

about the tumour of the time. But

0:59

for the mid 16th century, such voices

1:01

of women are harder to find. Yet,

1:05

they lived through their own upheaval,

1:07

as the old ways were effaced in

1:10

preference for the new. Today's

1:12

guest has, in her sparkling new

1:14

novel, imagined herself into the

1:16

story of a gentlewoman living in the

1:19

1540s, writing her book of days.

1:23

It is a spellbinding evocation of Tudor

1:25

England. A meditation on

1:27

a lost time. My

1:29

guest is Francesca Kay. She

1:32

has written three previous books. Her first,

1:34

An Equal Stillness, won the Orange Award

1:37

for New Writers. Her second, The Translation

1:39

of the Bones, was long listed for

1:41

the 2012 Women's Prize for Fiction. Her

1:44

latest novel is called The Book of

1:46

Days. Francesca,

1:53

welcome to not just the Tudors. Thank you. Thank

1:55

you. It's really lovely to be with you, Susannah.

1:57

I want to start by saying that I... loved

2:00

your book. I found it such a beautiful

2:03

meditative read and it made

2:05

me really feel that I

2:07

was back in the mind of

2:10

this Tudor gentlewoman. And I wanted

2:12

to ask you first how

2:15

you found your way into her voice

2:17

and how you would describe her. What

2:20

a beautiful question. With any character

2:22

in a novel I think it takes a very

2:24

long time to feel oneself

2:26

into their voices, to

2:28

become sufficiently within the

2:30

skin of the character for

2:33

the character themselves to have their own internal logic

2:35

as it were, to do what only she would

2:37

do, not that I would think that she would

2:40

do. I often think

2:42

that the process is a little bit

2:44

like the old-fashioned process of developing photographs.

2:46

At first there was just

2:49

a very blurry image and then

2:51

as the photograph itself spends longer

2:53

in the solution eventually

2:55

the details, the delineation becomes

2:57

clear and for the narrator

3:00

of my novel it did take a long

3:02

time really to understand her and

3:04

her voice. I think I must have

3:06

written the beginning 50-60 times to see

3:08

the first

3:11

section again and again and again in long

3:14

hand until I really began to

3:16

see her absolutely clearly and to

3:18

feel what I felt that she

3:20

would be feeling as a woman

3:22

of her time in her circumstances.

3:25

So I'm really really pleased that

3:27

you liked listening to her. I

3:29

did and I actually feel rather breath that

3:31

I can't continue to listen to her which

3:34

is what you should feel when you finish

3:36

a good book. But I was struck by

3:38

that analogy because it almost

3:40

feels like that as a reader as well

3:42

that you're gradually seeing her come into focus.

3:44

We learn her name quite late into the

3:46

book and there's a

3:48

point at which I realized something about her voice which

3:51

is when she says no that's not quite the right

3:54

word and so that helps me get that

3:56

sense of her narrative because

3:58

we've got an illusion here. of

4:01

a journal, a book of days. And

4:04

one question that came to me

4:06

is that we have so few

4:08

pieces of historical evidence like this

4:10

from the period, journals that allow

4:12

us to access a woman's interiority.

4:14

And I wondered if that had been a reason that

4:17

you had written it to create what we wish we had,

4:19

I suppose. It would have been

4:21

a very good reason, but it probably wasn't exactly

4:23

what did occur to me at the beginning. The

4:26

historical time in which she lived

4:28

was probably less important to me

4:30

overall than exploring her

4:32

sense of belonging and her

4:34

sense of loss and solidariness.

4:38

Although, of course, it is very important that she is

4:40

where she is, although women for

4:42

centuries before and afterwards were

4:45

still in that same position

4:47

of isolation, dependency, and

4:50

complete lack of agency. Yes,

4:52

it would have been an interesting experiment, perhaps.

4:55

And I did very much try to make

4:57

sure that as far as I could, the words

4:59

that she uses are the words that would have

5:01

been used by a person at her time. Sometimes

5:04

that was quite difficult to do. I had

5:06

no idea, for example, that the word petal

5:09

doesn't exist in England until about

5:11

1701 or something. You'd think that

5:14

petal was such a crucial word and it's

5:16

very difficult to describe flowers and roses and

5:18

so on without ever using the word petal.

5:20

So sometimes there are things that are anachronistic.

5:22

But on the whole, as far as I

5:24

could, I would try to make it true

5:26

to her voice. I did

5:28

read nearly contemporary women.

5:30

There are not chosen exact contemporary

5:32

women, but there are people like

5:35

Marjorie Kemp or Julian of Norwich,

5:37

some idea of women's

5:39

internal voices. But hers is her

5:42

alone, really. And as you rightly

5:44

say, it's the illusion of a

5:46

journal. She's essentially talking to herself

5:48

and sometimes writing things down, but

5:50

it's an internalised voice mostly. I

5:54

was struck by your choice of language.

5:56

Your similes are wonderful. I noted

5:58

a couple of them down. the hillsides in

6:01

the drought looking like the flanks of brindled

6:04

hounds or the wind still

6:06

howling like a soul in grief

6:08

this morning. These are wonderful and

6:11

it made me aware that you were very

6:13

careful to choose images that she would have

6:15

known and that sense

6:17

of the delicacy of language was very much

6:19

there as well. Yes, well I love it

6:21

that you noticed that she sometimes searches for

6:24

words. She's always trying to think how do

6:26

I think what I think and

6:28

when I know what I think how will

6:30

I say it. So she is tentative in

6:33

many ways she's quite tentative in her

6:35

life. She doesn't have a secure place

6:37

in her world or any world so

6:39

she is searching and she is trying

6:41

and she is testing language and

6:43

yes we all know the sort of songs you

6:45

know which are set in Tudor times and then

6:47

suddenly you see a flash of a mobile phone

6:50

you know one has to be very aware that

6:52

she can only know what she knows in

6:55

her very limited world she can only see

6:57

what she sees. I think that

6:59

that question of what people in history really

7:02

did see is itself

7:04

incredibly interesting by thinking a

7:06

lot about color when I was writing the book

7:08

about color as it

7:10

would have been perceived by ordinary

7:12

people who didn't have access to

7:14

jewels or illuminated manuscripts or the

7:17

brightest colors they would have seen were the colors

7:19

in nature a kingfisher a

7:21

buttercup a very bright sunset

7:25

but nothing of the kinds of colors

7:27

that we take so much for granted so I tried

7:29

to make sure that she saw only

7:31

what she could have seen. Yes

7:34

and when you describe the installation

7:36

of stained glass windows and

7:39

use some of those references kingfishers and

7:41

so on to bring them to light

7:43

the colors seem to me brighter in

7:45

my imagination than I think stained glass

7:47

windows had ever been in my vision

7:49

so you carried it off very well.

7:52

You mentioned that there's grief and

7:54

there's a sense of solitude in

7:56

this in fact a newborn

7:59

child who has has died pervades

8:01

the novel, as it must

8:03

have pervaded many women's lives in this

8:05

century. And you evoke it hauntingly.

8:08

What inspired you here? What did you

8:10

want to convey? Well, Robert

8:12

Frost famously said a poem begins with

8:14

a lump in the throat. And I

8:17

think that a novel begins with a

8:19

lump in the throat too. Not necessarily

8:21

my own, although grief did play quite

8:24

a larger personal part during the writing

8:26

of the novel, but not,

8:28

thank God, not grief for a

8:30

child or a newborn. But I

8:32

think that the pervasiveness

8:34

of death until really very, very

8:37

recently is something that we have

8:40

forgotten or rather turned our backs

8:42

on. We'd rather not think about that.

8:44

But for somebody of my

8:46

narrator's time and for centuries

8:49

afterwards, as I said before, death

8:51

was so present that childbirth

8:54

itself must have always seemed

8:56

a bit like going into

8:58

a really dangerous battle out

9:00

of which you might emerge if you were lucky.

9:02

And if you were very lucky, you and your

9:04

baby would emerge, but you could easily not.

9:07

And now, thank goodness we dance to

9:09

look at women about to give presents and

9:11

go dear, you really better say your prayers.

9:14

But that sense of life being so

9:16

vulnerable and fragile and

9:18

the only way that you could

9:20

possibly even begin to manage that

9:22

would be by thinking about the

9:24

rituals that helped to console

9:27

you through them is a

9:29

very large reason why I wrote the

9:31

novel, thinking about grief, that lump in

9:33

the throat and how one might live

9:35

with it. Yes. And

9:37

our protagonist is forced to

9:40

think about death and grief throughout

9:43

the period that this novel covers.

9:45

And she's made to imagine what widowhood

9:47

meant for a woman in the 16th

9:49

century, which was the loss of almost

9:52

everything, wasn't it? Yes, I think

9:54

she probably hadn't thought her own

9:56

way through this. She

9:59

doesn't realise until... much later on until almost

10:01

the end of the novel, that she

10:03

could essentially be entirely homeless, literally

10:06

thrown out by her

10:08

stepdaughter and not

10:10

welcomed back into her father's house. And then

10:13

where would she go? What

10:15

would she do? It's a terrifying thought

10:17

that women of all classes

10:19

were so undefended. It's not

10:21

just a woman in the early modern

10:24

period of late medieval. I'm

10:26

often haunted by Jane Austen sending

10:29

letters appealing for some male

10:31

relative to come and rescue her from

10:34

a stay that was far too protracted and

10:36

she didn't want to be with

10:38

whoever she was with in Kent for

10:40

months on end, an unwelcome guest, but

10:42

she couldn't leave until a man came to

10:45

take her away. So yes,

10:47

my protagonist has probably no

10:49

idea what she would do. You will

10:51

know far more than I do about

10:54

Tudor wills and Tudor entail and Tudor

10:56

testament, but they are incredibly complicated and

10:58

no doubt there would have been some

11:00

sort of portion for her. She wouldn't

11:03

have been literally starving, but

11:05

many women did. She's in

11:07

a very, very undefended position. One

11:10

of the great works of art that's been

11:12

constructed in this book is a tomb and

11:14

in the story an Italian

11:17

sculptor or an image maker, as

11:19

they call him, comes

11:21

to sketch the protagonist and her

11:23

husband, Master Piero. And

11:25

I've just recently been looking at Holbein's preparatory

11:28

sketches and so I read your description of

11:30

Master Piero at work with Wanda. It felt

11:32

like I had gone back in time. How

11:35

did you arrive at it? Yes, I've been

11:37

looking at Holbein's sketches too and they

11:39

are absolutely a bridge into the faces

11:41

of the people of the time, a

11:43

window into their souls and into their

11:45

faces. I imagined out of

11:48

a combination of looking at lots of

11:50

different, both paintings, but also

11:52

sculpture of the period. But

11:54

it was very specifically inspired by the

11:56

tomb of the Duchess of Suffolk, Alice

11:58

de la Pole. in the

12:01

very small village church of UL, which

12:04

is a village just in South Oxfordshire. I

12:06

lived in that village for a couple of years when

12:08

I had a one-year-old, so she was

12:10

two and a half or something, and there was really nothing

12:12

to do in that village. You'd have to go for

12:15

a walk every single day. Then we looked at the

12:17

tomb because that was the

12:19

end point of our walk, and

12:21

it is absolutely completely worth seeing.

12:23

It's a spectacular tomb. And

12:26

the most beautiful serene effigy

12:28

in white alabaster, hands

12:30

plussed in prayer, and perfect,

12:32

beautiful profile. She's just

12:35

astonishingly beautiful. And then if you lie

12:37

down on the floor and you really

12:39

have to lie down or crouch very

12:42

low, you'll see the other side of

12:44

it, which is the writhing, pain-ridden, not

12:46

quite dead, almost dead body of the

12:48

serene woman. She still has the same

12:51

perfect fingernails, which we can only

12:53

see now with her aid of her court. So

12:56

it was that tomb that I very much

12:58

had in mind. That's, of course, a tomb

13:00

for one person in my book. It's a

13:03

rather more heavily occupied tomb, and there are

13:05

examples of triple tombs and

13:07

double tombs that you would all be

13:09

familiar with in country churches, village churches

13:11

everywhere. I'm going to go

13:13

and see that again next time I'm nearby. Well,

13:15

if you do, Susanna, the thing that I didn't

13:18

know when I was all those years ago living

13:20

in the village of Ualm, I didn't know until

13:22

quite recently after I had started writing the book,

13:25

is that underneath of the

13:27

stone slab above the cadaver,

13:29

above the corpse part, very

13:31

low down, there are frescoes.

13:34

They're definitely not done by Maestro

13:37

of any kind. They

13:39

are very much the sort of gentle village-y

13:41

painting, one is the Annunciation and the other

13:43

is Mary Magdalene and John

13:45

the Baptist. And they are

13:47

entirely invisible. It's only now with modern

13:50

photography that we know that they're there.

13:53

So they must have been painted

13:55

purely for the consolation of the

13:57

dead body underneath. And for

13:59

no other... reason because nobody else can see them.

14:01

And I think that that's something really

14:04

magical about that, both as

14:06

all these years they've been hidden, but

14:08

also that sense that you could console

14:10

the dead or the dying, and

14:13

also it's a wonderful metaphor for all sorts

14:15

of things, that they've been there like a

14:17

hidden story. Yes, that's really

14:20

very beautiful. One of the

14:22

things that really came out of this

14:24

for me is the wonderful way in which you

14:26

detailed what came to be called

14:29

superstitions, the beliefs about Sir John's

14:31

Eve, for example, a night when

14:33

you write, or

14:35

at least your protagonist says, the veil

14:37

between the world is cobweb thin. Can

14:40

you give us a bit of a sense of some of

14:42

these stories and beliefs

14:44

and superstitions that you were drawing

14:46

on to create this story of

14:48

your own? Well, I read as much

14:50

as I could of sort of folklore

14:52

and collections, and I absolutely loved these

14:55

ideas that, for example, if you ate

14:57

fern seed, you would be invisible on

14:59

Midsummer's Eve. I loved that

15:01

sense that they couldn't, especially

15:03

in Midsummer's Eve, and then again on

15:06

the eve of All Hallows'

15:08

Eve, which must have been

15:10

a particularly terrifying time when

15:13

the winter was properly beginning to

15:15

get dark, and you had that

15:17

turning world, and the sense

15:19

exactly that it was cobweb thin, that

15:22

you could turn a corner and see your

15:24

own ghost coming out of the church. That's

15:27

not just confined to that period of

15:29

history. When I was a girl at

15:31

my convent boarding school, everybody

15:33

tried to stay up on the mid-morning of Midsummer's

15:35

Day because apparently if you looked in a mirror,

15:37

you'd see the face of the man you were

15:39

going to marry. Never worked,

15:42

even in the 20th century. There

15:44

was still some sense of these

15:46

rituals, but the things that were

15:49

so much part of country life,

15:51

the divination with flowers, for instance,

15:54

all those different kinds of

15:56

ceremonies gathering due on May

15:58

morning, because it would have special

16:00

properties to do and make you

16:02

beautiful. They were so much

16:04

the texture of her life and life at that

16:06

time. And there's also very

16:08

much a sense of the

16:11

rhythms of the year. That is something you

16:13

do on May Day and that's something you

16:15

do at Midsummer. And that really conveys a

16:17

powerful sense to me of how people live.

16:19

That and the impact of the weather, the

16:22

rain, the heat and the difference it made.

16:24

Those who sort of rooting

16:26

ideas the sense of patterns across the

16:29

year seem very important in the writing

16:31

of this book. Yes, extremely important both

16:33

in reality for people at that time and

16:35

for the writing of the book. It gives

16:38

the book its shape. It

16:40

moves very specifically through days which

16:42

are as close as I could

16:44

possibly make them to the actual

16:46

calendar of that period. Bearing in

16:48

mind that the calendar of that

16:50

period is pre-Gregorian. So it's slightly

16:52

out of sync in terms of

16:54

exactly where we would be now and

16:57

what would have been flowering and so

16:59

on. But that rhythm both agricultural and

17:02

seasonal and what was in flower

17:04

and what was not, what you would eat and what you

17:06

would not harvest time. All

17:09

the sorts of small rituals of the countryside.

17:11

I didn't know for example that there was

17:13

a particular time when they

17:15

sowed the eyelids of hawks and

17:17

they seal the eyelids of hawks

17:20

at a particular time or a particular time when

17:23

you flaunt to the

17:25

animals. So that rhythm is

17:27

absolutely central to the

17:29

whole purpose of the book, to give

17:31

it its own momentum but also her

17:33

life, its shape. I want to quote

17:35

a little passage. This will give the listeners

17:37

an idea of the joy of reading this

17:39

book. But it also connects

17:41

to a very important theme

17:44

which is the period in which these events

17:46

are situated. So you

17:49

write, the world is turning faster than

17:51

a weather vane in a gale. What

17:53

was truth one year is heresy the

17:55

next. And erstwhile saints are scraped out

17:57

of the prayer books. We

17:59

have been... by crosswinds like birds

18:01

tossed in a storm, barely having any

18:04

say over our direction and no one

18:06

truly knowing right from wrong. And

18:09

I found this such a powerful

18:11

evocation of the nightmarish uncertainty of

18:15

imposed religious variation with

18:17

its potentially fatal consequences.

18:19

What about this time of change

18:22

spoke to you? I've always

18:24

been extremely interested in this time

18:26

of change. I was brought

18:28

up as a Catholic, as I said, I went to a

18:30

Catholic boarding school and was therefore

18:33

deeply immersed in the

18:35

litanies, the ceremonies of

18:37

Catholicism. And also

18:40

that sense of Catholicism in that

18:42

particular environment, Catholicism has been a

18:45

very central way, mainstream. And

18:47

there were the English martyrs, Thomas

18:49

More, there was all that sense

18:52

of Catholic history was part of

18:54

what we just took

18:56

for granted growing up. I know now that

18:58

it was to some extent partial, but it

19:00

was a very compelling picture of history and

19:03

has stayed with me. An example in

19:05

the history of our country in which

19:08

conscience and individual thought

19:10

was absolutely impossibly compromised

19:13

by authority. We can think about

19:15

lots of other periods in the history of the

19:17

world. East Germany's is

19:19

a good analogy, you know, there would have been in

19:22

one person's lifetime quite possible to have

19:25

three quite contradictory forms of

19:27

ideology. You were not quite on pain

19:29

of death then, but suddenly in parts

19:31

of Tudor England, yes on pain of

19:33

death, but you have to accept them.

19:36

And it must have been such a rupture

19:40

in the soul, the psyche

19:42

of people. Irrespective of the

19:45

doctrinal shades of difference or

19:48

who was right or who was wrong,

19:50

just simply to be told that what

19:52

you had been brought up to believe or

19:55

to at least to accept, to practice, most

19:58

particularly of course praying for the dead. was

20:00

not just useless, but

20:02

actually dangerous. And I

20:04

think how hard it must have been if, say,

20:07

you had been a woman about

20:10

to give birth and frightened of

20:12

what might happen, to be

20:14

told that you were not allowed to

20:16

light the candle to whatever saint in your

20:19

little tiny parish church might

20:21

have been the patron saint of women

20:23

in childbirth, that you couldn't pray

20:25

that having any sort of rituals,

20:28

expels incantations, was

20:30

forbidden. That enormous

20:33

sense of loss and

20:35

loss of the visual as well,

20:37

of course, later, that whole incredible upheaval

20:40

against which lives had to be led

20:42

and continue to be led. And in

20:44

the case of the people

20:46

in this novel, it's only really

20:48

the men who have any sense of what's going

20:50

on in the outside world. The

20:53

women are in their own

20:55

world entirely having

20:57

to take whatever is coming their way, having

20:59

no agency over what is done, what

21:02

isn't done, just like the words in

21:04

the Gail. It

21:06

must have been really terrifying

21:08

because it wasn't a slow

21:10

and steady development, properly maintained

21:13

gradual reformation of belief.

21:15

It went backwards and forwards and backwards

21:17

and forwards and at one point, you

21:20

were still allowed to light candles and

21:22

then you weren't allowed to light candles.

21:24

And then Sir Thomas Beckett was scraped

21:26

out literally by knives out of everybody's

21:28

prayer books and then candles brought back

21:31

and then doing and froing between

21:33

the more reformists and

21:35

the traditionalists in the court of

21:37

Henry VIII. I

21:39

have been very much written about in

21:41

other places, but that sense of what

21:43

they actually did for individuals, ordinary

21:46

individuals, not people whose names we know out

21:48

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21:50

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23:29

my history hit every Monday and Thursday wherever you

23:31

get your podcasts. You

23:43

said the enormous change and that was what

23:45

really struck me, the enormity of the sensory

23:47

change of the end of Henry VIII and

23:49

the sort of iconoclastic start of it with

23:51

the six. And as

23:54

you mentioned also, there's this huge theological questions

23:56

that are being addressed and those are touched

23:58

on here. There's a

24:00

point at which I almost wanted to sort

24:02

of bellow at these incredible craftsmen who are

24:04

making rude screens and stained glass windows in

24:07

the summer of 1546. It's

24:09

sheer folly, don't do it, but

24:11

they don't know what's to come. They're living in linear

24:14

time as we all do. And there's

24:16

that sense of impending doom if you know your history.

24:19

But for them, it seems like

24:21

an entirely reasonable idea that you

24:23

will put in this beautiful art

24:25

to worship your God, and

24:27

then it also seems entirely reasonable that it shall

24:29

come out. Let's talk about

24:31

that visual change and how it

24:34

might have been experienced. Well,

24:36

it's certainly true that they were pushing a

24:38

little bit in the timing over there, building

24:40

the chapel. And some of the characters in

24:42

the book do say this is maybe the

24:44

right time to be putting your money into

24:47

stone and buildings, and you should be putting

24:49

it into grain or gold. But

24:51

in those years, there had been a certain

24:53

kind of after Thomas Cromwell died,

24:55

and when things had sort of calmed down a

24:57

little bit from the out of supremacy and the

24:59

dissolution of the monasteries, there might have

25:02

been a sense that the old ways

25:04

would continue and you could just pretty well manage to

25:06

muddle on and nobody would really notice what you were

25:08

doing as long as you were doing it out

25:10

of sight. And in the

25:13

case of the craftsmen are

25:15

all employed. It's not up to them

25:17

what happens to their craft afterwards. It's

25:20

the man with the money

25:22

who so desperately wants his

25:24

own lasting memorial. But

25:26

it is really terrible that it all

25:28

gets smashed up or buried. And

25:31

I think that probably is one of

25:33

the most lasting consequences of

25:35

the English reformation for all of us, the

25:38

way in which our whole

25:40

emphasis turned from the visual

25:43

and in a not of course

25:46

completely pre-literate, but where literacy was

25:48

much less, especially in country cases,

25:51

your sense of the world outside would very

25:53

much have been based on

25:55

the pictures that you saw in churches,

25:57

the images that you saw. were

26:00

covered in paintings, you know, it's now we think

26:03

of their sort of austere, but there wasn't a

26:05

single inch was there of a medieval

26:07

chapel or church that wasn't covered

26:09

in some sort of picture, some

26:11

sort of image. And then when

26:13

all that changed, what did we

26:16

have instead? Instead of having, say,

26:18

a picture of the doom or

26:20

enunciation or the nativity, we tend

26:22

to have the Ten Commandments in

26:24

stern black Gothic lettering. And they

26:26

are themselves so different. I mean,

26:28

Commandments, most of them are prohibition,

26:30

so I shall not. It's repeated

26:33

again and again, not, not, not.

26:35

It's very categoric and

26:37

very uncompromising. And even

26:39

if you weren't all that good at reading

26:41

and writing, you'd still get the message, wouldn't

26:43

you, big black lettering in front of you

26:45

where you might have once seen something comforting

26:47

like the angel Gabriel. So

26:50

I think it had huge benefits. What

26:52

we have out of that is

26:55

the King James's Bible in the Book

26:57

of Common Prayer and the language of Shakespeare. And

26:59

we wouldn't have had that necessarily if we

27:01

had muddled on in the same sort of

27:03

way as they had done 100 years before

27:06

that. But we did lose the visual. And

27:08

I'm not sure that in England we ever

27:10

really quite got it back again. And

27:13

one thing I think you do so well in this

27:15

novel is to give that sense of the

27:18

range of responses to religious change.

27:20

I was struck by the attractions of

27:22

the wandering preacher, the

27:24

enthusiasm for law breaking, which of course is

27:26

only ever more so when it's in a

27:29

crowd, but also the distress caused by the

27:31

new rules. One of the lines that saved

27:33

me was that the women

27:35

of this village will never own necklaces

27:37

of rubies. They will only ever have

27:39

their precious rosary beads, that sense of

27:41

riches taken from them. Can

27:43

you talk me through some of these

27:45

reactions that you wanted to convey? Well,

27:48

losing their rosary beads, I think that

27:50

must have been because telling the rosaries,

27:52

saying the rosaries, having the rosaries, that

27:54

was an important thing. Probably

27:56

one of the most difficult things was not being able

27:59

to have any offerings, little

28:01

altars in churches, little shrines,

28:03

little places with whatever your

28:05

local saint was, holy wells,

28:08

places that you could go

28:10

to to draw some sort

28:12

of inspiration or comfort or

28:14

just because people had always

28:16

done so. And candles

28:18

in the beginning of the proper

28:20

set of injunctions after the death

28:23

of Annie the Eight, the only candles

28:25

you could possibly burn were two candles on

28:27

the root cross and then later on they

28:29

were banned too. The lighting

28:31

candles, the whole question of

28:33

the gills being responsible

28:35

for candles, people building their

28:38

own little tiny amounts of

28:40

money for candles, light in

28:42

a world without any artificial

28:44

light. Candlelight must have been

28:46

in itself a marvelous thing

28:48

to have and that sense of something

28:50

glowing and burning there all the time,

28:54

even if you couldn't have had much candlelight

28:56

in your own house and you might have

28:58

just had brushes or whatever. I think losing

29:00

all that and especially also the tokens

29:03

in the book, there is quite a

29:05

lot about the girdle of St Margaret.

29:07

The legend is itself wonderful because St

29:09

Margaret of Antioch was swallowed up by

29:12

a dragon preferable to losing her virginity

29:14

and then essentially expelled by the dragon

29:16

and bizarrely because she was expelled so

29:18

easily by the dragon. It was a

29:21

sort of parallel potentially

29:23

with childbirth, so you know, it's

29:25

not perfect. So she was this

29:27

patron saint of women in childbirth

29:31

and a little scrap of her girdle

29:33

in this book is the biggest treasure

29:35

that the people of this small village

29:37

have. Of course, I'm not entering

29:39

any sense of how many bits of

29:41

girdle would there have been all over

29:43

Christendom, it's the same sort of well

29:46

rehearsed argument about the number of

29:48

fragments of the true cross. It doesn't matter

29:50

whether it was real or not, what matters

29:52

as they thought it was and they thought

29:54

that it would possibly help them and

29:56

that it was carried around in a special

29:59

little case because it was. so precious and

30:01

the parish priest would bring it to you

30:03

and lay it upon your belly in labour.

30:06

And somehow, although clearly it wouldn't have

30:08

always worked, somehow it helped. And there

30:10

is something sad about having to lose

30:12

all those little scraps of

30:14

things, little scraps of girdles that might

30:17

help you through a hard life. You

30:20

mentioned just very briefly there the death

30:22

of Henry VIII. And

30:24

I enjoyed the bit where you imagined

30:26

the popular reactions to his death.

30:28

What do you think ordinary people might have made

30:31

of their late king? Well, I was

30:33

careful in the book not ever to

30:35

mention that king by name, or the

30:37

young king by name, or any other

30:39

word that we would

30:41

now use, like say Protestant

30:43

or Reformation. Nobody ever

30:46

says King Henry because they just wouldn't

30:48

know the old king, the young king,

30:50

the king. I think that

30:53

from her quite removed

30:55

and remote way of

30:57

looking, my young narrator

30:59

would have a certain amount

31:01

of glee that this person

31:03

whom she saw mainly as

31:05

the reason for motherless children,

31:07

a man who killed the

31:10

mother of his own child.

31:12

That is what she mainly

31:14

feels about this monarch. As a woman

31:16

who wants to be a mother so

31:18

badly, that was the thing that made

31:20

him so unforgivable. But I

31:22

think also when we think about,

31:25

for instance, the pervasiveness of the

31:27

Treason Act by word or by

31:29

writing, by word, by word, just

31:31

saying the slightest thing

31:33

against the king could

31:36

land yourself possibly on

31:38

the scaffold if that fear that he

31:42

inspired must have been a relief,

31:46

that he had gone and they didn't know that

31:48

it was not going to be a lot easier.

31:50

How would they know that the little boy that

31:52

came onto the throne, in

31:55

many ways, would have equally

31:57

devastating consequences? They

32:00

go on named ah perhaps

32:02

the only. Historical

32:04

people in the book. The any other exception

32:07

I wondered about was Henry Machen because there

32:09

was a chronicler by the same name, but

32:11

I wasn't sure if that was deliberate or

32:13

not. at his age is didn't quite work

32:15

and I wanted to us you as they

32:18

sometimes when I'm speech people who have written

32:20

novels about. Real. People

32:22

who lived. I want to ask

32:24

them about the dusty of doing

32:26

that ahead and as those by

32:29

contrast I want to osu about

32:31

choosing people who aren't known to

32:33

history, people that you have invented

32:35

oh mean, with and are conveyed

32:38

to us what underlies that choice.

32:40

He was a novelist or another

32:42

story and and anyway, And I

32:44

wouldn't want anybody to sink as I

32:46

was pretending to be one. I wouldn't

32:49

have had the audacity to write a

32:51

properly historical novel in which historical figures

32:53

appeared. I greatly admire people who can

32:55

do that, but that really wasn't what

32:57

I was trying to do. I was

32:59

trying to write about what it might

33:02

have felt like to live. Then she

33:04

was very, very important that they want

33:06

people whose own lives were to some

33:08

extent at a chronicle, by themselves, in

33:10

their own writings, or at least in

33:12

the historical record. It was

33:14

a city and interesting to me who

33:16

was at the court at the time.

33:18

They had no effect on the people

33:20

of this particular vintage. Every now and

33:22

again somebody might go to and from

33:24

London, but any report act the younger

33:26

men and in the village of the

33:28

other men in the hustle have some

33:30

connection with Lincoln's Inn. They were sent

33:32

to the on the fringes of it's

33:34

but even they don't bring back stories

33:36

of the court and who was in

33:38

and who was out. That wasn't the

33:40

point of as a tool. The point

33:42

was to feel. This. What it

33:45

feels like this is what we are

33:47

now because I think of it in

33:49

history is of out trying to make

33:51

sense of the past impulses through that

33:53

part to said some. Light on how

33:55

we think about ourselves known about our present.

33:57

I apologize if anybody. They

34:00

would learn in history from reading

34:02

this book. I mean it won't

34:04

give you any dates or any

34:06

such involved with anything. At.

34:08

Some point somebody's dare say into

34:11

the Greediest to the Wolves is

34:13

Dead and bouts of dancing reference

34:15

to com ireland sense of the

34:17

extraordinary exchange of money and land

34:19

and gold and property that happens

34:22

and the years of crumble under

34:24

suspicion monsters. but these events happened

34:26

before the time. Of the Normal and what

34:28

goes on Afterwards as was out of the scope of the

34:30

novel. It's really just that

34:33

year or two in the

34:35

life of one small English

34:37

village, and particularly through the

34:39

eyes of one very observant

34:42

and clear sighted but isolated

34:44

young woman. Wealth.

34:46

As a historian myself I beg

34:48

to disagree. I think that what

34:50

you do have a here is

34:53

history. It may not be rooted

34:55

in the injunctions as that happens.

34:57

Isn't seven So yeah but it

34:59

how authors something much more interesting

35:01

see my view which is a

35:04

sympathetic imagination which takes us into

35:06

the period in a way that

35:08

self flawless to me. So as

35:10

someone who spent my time thinking

35:12

about this period a lot I

35:14

would highly recommend this. To people

35:17

who are interested in this period

35:19

of time because it really evokes

35:21

that and the reality of ordinary

35:23

people. An ordinary. Within. I.

35:26

Want was one last question

35:29

given that this novel has

35:31

among other threads wasn't through

35:34

it bereavement and was just

35:36

change. Can. We talk a

35:38

little bit more about something we've

35:40

already addressed in pot, which is

35:43

what those changes meant for death

35:45

and for how it was processed

35:47

and for how people. Dealt.

35:49

With grief it feels at this

35:51

as. I don't want to

35:53

reduce your beautiful novel to a message,

35:55

but it felt like the loser thought

35:58

hear about how it as a. The

36:00

people we equipped to don't to

36:02

clip ourselves to deal with something

36:04

we've lost all faith. Yes, that's

36:06

a beautiful question. A very big

36:08

one. And I would only half struggles

36:11

was an answer. I think. I don't think that.

36:13

Is an answer. But underlying

36:15

the exploration of the novel

36:17

is that. Sense that the

36:19

dead on not entirely lost to

36:21

us, that as a communion between

36:24

the living in the dead, I

36:26

don't want to be distracted by

36:28

discussing the doctrinal questions of indulgences

36:31

and poetry and the Calvinist stick

36:33

opposites in it. Salvation by Grace

36:35

The technical questions to do with

36:38

the doctrine of salvation steps really

36:40

interesting, but then society beyond the

36:42

scope of this know nor any

36:45

novelist but was I feel that

36:47

there really was. This strong sense

36:49

that by singing for the dead, by

36:52

praying for the dead and remembering. The

36:54

Dead by saying their names

36:56

again and again and again.

36:58

And. If you were like the Lord

37:00

of the Manner in the novel your pockets

37:02

with deep enough to have somebody. To.

37:05

Pray and sing for you every

37:07

single day. In. The hearing

37:09

of other people there, Was this continuity?

37:11

This continuity. Of the Living in

37:14

the Dead when you quoted added when

37:16

the World was cobweb, Sin. That.

37:18

Isn't just the cobwebs in today's

37:20

initial to wouldn't sense of ghostly

37:22

and sort of spooky. It was

37:25

also that the living in the

37:27

Dead were not necessarily incredibly far

37:29

away. You'd soon join them because

37:32

you'd be dead one day of.

37:34

Meanwhile, you could keep them in

37:36

your heart and keep. Praying for

37:39

them losing that sense. That

37:41

there was anything that could be

37:43

done for the ones do had

37:45

lost. I. Feel that That must

37:47

have deepened the grief that they suffered so

37:50

much. Because ritual and right remain concerning

37:52

for some of us, and they were very

37:54

much encouraged to do that and to do

37:56

it for themselves as well to think about

37:59

what they might. For their own

38:01

salvation of their souls. I'm. Not really

38:03

sure that we've managed quite to put anything.

38:06

So. Effective in that place because

38:08

the dead now seem in a

38:10

modern world to be quite lost

38:12

to us. But I think that

38:14

in the medieval world he probably felt that

38:16

they with just round the corner. Well,

38:19

on that lovely and moving note,

38:21

we show finish, but I highly

38:23

recommend that people pick up a

38:26

copy of the Book of Days

38:28

because it's an amazing. He's.

38:30

A case in as you've heard

38:32

of this period and a very

38:35

enjoyable read. Printers kick Thank you!

38:37

So. Much fuel time and uses. Enter It

38:39

has been lovely to can tune and so

38:41

did lead to the to. Enjoyed my book

38:43

thank you very much. Thank

38:52

you for listening to not just the

38:54

Tudors in history. And he

38:56

said to my research and. He.

38:59

Did you see his Dad and an

39:01

attack? So who edited this episode where

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