tag:theconversation.com,2011:/uk/topics/wolf-hall-14489/articles
Wolf Hall – The Conversation
2022-09-23T17:28:15Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/191282
2022-09-23T17:28:15Z
2022-09-23T17:28:15Z
Hilary Mantel was one of the great voices of historical fiction – and so much more
<p>Dame Hilary Mantel was a writer of immense skill and originality, and her death represents an incalculable loss to British literature. She will be chiefly remembered for her trilogy on the life of the Tudor politician <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-mirror-and-the-light-hilary-mantel-gets-as-close-to-the-real-thomas-cromwell-as-any-historian-133091">Thomas Cromwell</a>.</p>
<p>The grace and vigour of these gripping novels transformed our understanding of what historical fiction can do. They were extraordinarily successful. <a href="https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-library/books/wolf-hall">Wolf Hall</a> (2009) and <a href="https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-library/books/bring-up-the-bodies">Bring Up the Bodies</a> (2012) both won the Booker Prize (she was the first woman to win the prize more than once), and <a href="https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-library/books/the-mirror-the-light">The Mirror and the Light</a> (2020) was longlisted. I was a member of the jury that awarded the Booker Prize to Bring Up the Bodies, and we were of one mind about the superb quality of that novel.</p>
<p>Adaptations for both television and stage followed, and it is a tribute to the power of Mantel’s exploration of the ambiguities surrounding Cromwell’s dramatic life that these versions brought many enthusiastic new readers to her novels. She became, relatively late in her life, a literary star.</p>
<p>The popularity of Mantel’s trilogy should not overshadow the remarkable range of her achievement. Her treatment of Thomas Cromwell brought a mass readership, but the accomplishment of her earlier novels had already won critical recognition. </p>
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<h2>A writer’s life</h2>
<p>Mantel graduated from LSE and Sheffield University, and married Gerald McEwan, a geologist, in 1972 (they divorced in 1981, and remarried in 1982). A short spell of employment as a social worker lay behind her first published novel, the darkly comic <a href="https://www.independentreviewofbooks.com/every-day-is-mothers-day-by-hilary-mantel/">Every Day is Mother’s Day</a> (1985), and its sequel <a href="https://readeratlarge.com/2010/04/04/vacant-possession-by-hilary-mantel-contains-plot-spoilers/">Vacant Possession</a> (1986).</p>
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<img alt="Book cover" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/486331/original/file-20220923-15071-4oxn6v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/486331/original/file-20220923-15071-4oxn6v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/486331/original/file-20220923-15071-4oxn6v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/486331/original/file-20220923-15071-4oxn6v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/486331/original/file-20220923-15071-4oxn6v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/486331/original/file-20220923-15071-4oxn6v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/486331/original/file-20220923-15071-4oxn6v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">A Place of Greater Safety.</span>
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<p>A major historical novel, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/childrens-books-site/2015/jan/09/review-hilary-mantel-a-place-of-greater-safety">A Place of Greater Safety</a> (completed in 1979, but not published until 1992) is a characteristically innovative interpretation of the French Revolution. Here, as throughout Mantel’s writing, a far-sighted grasp of the sweep of history and politics was fused with the inward particularities of individual experience.</p>
<p>Mantel had a lyrical sense of the irreducible strangeness of the world, with its vivid moments of beauty and threat, but this was never removed from her understanding of the moral imperatives of our shared responsibilities. She was never a neutral observer of the ebb and flow of history.</p>
<p>Mantel spent extended periods of her life overseas – notably in Botswana and Saudi Arabia – and she was always alert to a world beyond Britain. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/sep/11/featuresreviews.guardianreview23">Eight Months on Ghazzah Street</a> (1988) is a tense account of misunderstandings between westerners and Saudis living in Jeddah. <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/book-review-evil-weathered-under-african-skies-a-change-of-climate-hilary-mantel-viking-15-pounds-1431912.html">A Change of Climate</a> (1994) draws on her life in Botswana, and the traumatic social divisions she had witnessed in southern Africa.</p>
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<img alt="Book cover" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/486332/original/file-20220923-13704-hqtm9e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/486332/original/file-20220923-13704-hqtm9e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=919&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/486332/original/file-20220923-13704-hqtm9e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=919&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/486332/original/file-20220923-13704-hqtm9e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=919&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/486332/original/file-20220923-13704-hqtm9e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1155&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/486332/original/file-20220923-13704-hqtm9e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1155&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/486332/original/file-20220923-13704-hqtm9e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1155&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Fludd.</span>
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<p>Mantel had an unusually wide and well-informed grasp of social and cultural politics, but she never lost her interest in lives that unfold on the edge of what might be perceived as normality. <a href="https://www.publishersweekly.com/9780805062731">Fludd</a> (1989), describes a quasi-supernatural stranger whose arrival turns a dismal Catholic community upside down. It is never quite clear who Fludd is, or where he has come from, or whether he is an agent of good or evil.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.publishersweekly.com/9780805044287">The Giant, O’Brien</a> (1998), based on the Irish giant Charles Byrne and the Scottish surgeon John Hunter, is in part a rueful reflection on Mantel’s own Irish roots. The legacies of Irish Catholicism also shadow <a href="https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/98/10/11/specials/mantel-experiment.html?scp=28&sq=%2522The%2520Rime%2520of%2520the%2520Ancient%2520Mariner%2522&st=cse">An Experiment in Love</a> (1995), a novel that looks back on the lives of girls of Mantel’s postwar generation - eager to take advantage of new opportunities for education, but still haunted by the constraints of the past.</p>
<h2>A rich legacy</h2>
<p>The sense that another world exists, its presence flickering just past our everyday vision, underlies all of Mantel’s work. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2005/apr/30/featuresreviews.guardianreview30">Beyond Black</a> (2005) is an unsettling and brilliantly entertaining account of the life of a medium, who may or may not be a fraud. </p>
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<img alt="Book cover" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/486333/original/file-20220923-17-oc8rfh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/486333/original/file-20220923-17-oc8rfh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=927&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/486333/original/file-20220923-17-oc8rfh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=927&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/486333/original/file-20220923-17-oc8rfh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=927&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/486333/original/file-20220923-17-oc8rfh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1165&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/486333/original/file-20220923-17-oc8rfh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1165&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/486333/original/file-20220923-17-oc8rfh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1165&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Giving Up The Ghost.</span>
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<p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/may/10/featuresreviews.guardianreview18">Giving up the Ghost</a> (2003), a searing memoir, repeatedly returns to the ghosts that stalked her early years – family ghosts, ghosts of unborn children, ghosts of lives that might have taken a different shape. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/21/books/review/learning-to-talk-hilary-mantel.html">Learning to Talk</a> (2003), published in the same year, is a collection of short stories that turn on the same theme.</p>
<p>These stories are in part autobiographical recollections of Mantel’s childhood in Glossop, as she began to remove herself from the divided world of her family. Here too, it is the sharply observed details that linger – Miss Webster, for instance, the elocution teacher, with her careful accent – “precariously genteel, Manchester with icing”.</p>
<p>More recent short stories have been openly political, and sometimes controversial – notably <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/sep/24/the-assassination-of-margaret-thatcher-review-hilary-mantel-collection-short-stories">The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher</a>, the provocative title story in a collection published in 2014.</p>
<p>This shining stream of writing has now come to an end. It’s good to know that Hilary Mantel experienced and enjoyed all the success she had so richly earned, and that we are left with such a rich body of writing to relish and revisit. But the sense of immediate loss is painful. She was a unique and generous talent, and she will be hugely missed.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/191282/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dinah Birch does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
A short guide to the Wolf Hall author’s remarkably varied back catalogue.
Dinah Birch, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Cultural Engagement, Professor of English Literature, University of Liverpool
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/133091
2020-03-09T15:01:28Z
2020-03-09T15:01:28Z
The Mirror and the Light: Hilary Mantel gets as close to the real Thomas Cromwell as any historian
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/319257/original/file-20200309-58017-1y2x6sb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=16%2C310%2C2747%2C2569&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Thomas Cromwell by Hans Holbein.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Frick Collection</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Thomas Cromwell has had a remarkable and lasting impact on English history. The role that Henry VIII’s chief minister played in the country’s break with Rome and Catholicism and the focusing of power in the hands of the king’s government continues to have repercussions today as modern states debate their place in the world. </p>
<p>The question of Cromwell’s influence on the king and his role as backroom mastermind continues to fascinate modern audiences, holding up a mirror to more recent discussions over the role in today’s political sphere of special advisers such as Dominic Cummings or Alastair Campbell and their influence on modern-day leaders.</p>
<p>Cromwell’s life was lived largely in the shadows, so what can we make of his character and what is the truth of his existence? Historical evidence is limited and we catch only glimpses of Cromwell’s inner life in his own letters and the words that others said and wrote about him. </p>
<p>The basic skeleton of the historical record gives us a remarkable life, and yet it is a life that has – until relatively recently – been little discussed beyond the historical arena. Historians never anticipated that they would be able to capture a richer sense of Cromwell as a human being, so the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/may/02/wolf-hall-hilary-mantel">publication of Hilary Mantel’s Booker prize-winning Wolf Hall</a> in 2009 came as something of a shock to the world of Tudor history. </p>
<p>To suddenly encounter a fully realised individual, reliving the experiences of his childhood and violent father and grieving the shocking and sudden loss of his wife and daughters, formed a remarkable intervention in our understanding of a man who was described by Geoffrey Elton, the historian who admired him most, as being “<a href="https://www.historyextra.com/period/tudor/wolf-hall-author-hilary-mantel-talks-tudors-and-thomas-cromwell/">unbiographical</a>”. </p>
<p>The subsequent publication by Bring up the Bodies, which <a href="https://thebookerprizes.com/resources/media/pressreleases/2012/10/16/bring-bodies-wins-2012-man-booker-prize-second-triumph">won Mantel a second Booker prize</a>, and Diarmaid MacCulloch’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/sep/22/thomas-cromwell-life-diarmaid-maccolloch-review">2018 biography</a> completed Cromwell’s rehabilitation as someone we can make sense of when placed within his time and the events in which he took such a central role. But it has taken until now – more than seven years after volume two – for Mantel to tell the final phase of the story that she has transformed.</p>
<p>Mantel has <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/jun/03/hilary-mantel-why-i-became-a-historical-novelist">firmly stated</a> that it was not her aim to write a history. Yet her Cromwell is so real, so compellingly lifelike, that it has become very difficult to think about him without her interpretation coming into mind. For historians it is an important reminder that the figures we study were real people who lived and died – often in painful, even horrific, circumstances. </p>
<h2>Mantel’s small world</h2>
<p>It is easy, of course, for historians to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/may/31/students-take-hilary-mantels-tudor-novels-as-fact-hay-festival">find problems with Mantel’s account</a>. Mantel telescopes some events and adds to others for dramatic effect, providing Cromwell with motivations and a rich emotional inner life, all of which remains within the fictional realm.</p>
<p>What she really gives us is a version of what may have been possible. Just as historians disagree over the reading of a particular letter or incident, so we are free to engage with Mantel’s version of Cromwell. Her books are – and will continue to be – vital to the teaching of the subject and to the development of our understanding of Cromwell and his world. </p>
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<p>Historians have been increasingly drawn to thinking of the past not only in terms of the textual, material and visual records that survive, but also in terms of the architectural and geographical worlds in which people operated. The Tudor court was a small world of confined spaces and intimate relationships – an intense environment in which remarkable events took place. We can now add an imaginative reconstruction of that world, grounded in careful detail accrued from the years of research carried out by Mantel. </p>
<p>It is about as realistic a depiction as we could hope for and it provides a valuable frame for understanding how a whispered exchange might carry vital information or how Henry VIII’s sudden anger might terrify his subjects into compliance. While we can never be certain of the precise nature of Cromwell’s relationship with the king, we can now offer a range of possible interpretations, from shared memories of early military campaigns to a monarch requiring effective service of his subject, finding him wanting and therefore disposable.</p>
<h2>Decline and fall</h2>
<p>The question of Cromwell’s fall is one that has troubled historians. How did a man so immersed in the Tudor court, who had witnessed the destructions of Thomas Wolsey and of Anne Boleyn, miscalculate badly enough to end up on the scaffold? </p>
<p>Mantel offers us some possible routes into making sense of Cromwell’s miscalculation. The courtly world that Mantel depicts is acutely dangerous. From the start of The Mirror and the Light we see Cromwell surrounded by rumours of his fate in the aftermath of the fall of Boleyn – someone to whom he had been so close. Later on he squabbles with her uncle the Duke of Norfolk and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer – ignoring the latter’s warning not to get too deeply involved in the matter of the king’s marriage after the death of Jane Seymour. </p>
<p>Cromwell’s trust in Henry, and his belief that the king will stand by his assertions of loyalty and the signs of warmth that Henry gives, prove to be his downfall. In the face of the warnings from those around him, Cromwell follows his role to its natural end. Elevated to become Earl of Essex, Cromwell holds “the shining bowl of possibility … all is mended” – a final cruel miscalculation. </p>
<p>When it comes, Cromwell’s enemies physically closing in on him to strip him of rank and title, this provides a fundamental truth about power and about the reality of being a king’s councillor or special advisor: in the end, everyone falls.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/133091/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Janet Dickinson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Mantel’s prize-winning novels put imaginary flesh on the skeletal historical record and gives us the complete picture of the Tudor courtier.
Janet Dickinson, Senior Associate Tutor in History, University of Oxford
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/43316
2015-07-01T06:21:03Z
2015-07-01T06:21:03Z
Historical fiction on TV is equally about the here and now
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86952/original/image-20150701-25052-d2hmpk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Wolf Hall is based on historical events – but its producers don't claim to be telling a true story.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">BBC/Company Productions Ltd</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Historical drama’s currently popularity on the small screen has put the concept of historical authenticity in the spotlight. <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3508050/">Banished</a>, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0944947/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Game of Thrones</a> and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3556920/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Wolf Hall</a> diverge significantly in genre, tone, subject matter and the ways they engage with the past. </p>
<h2>The ethics of representation</h2>
<p>Both Banished and Game of Thrones have instigated debate about the ethics of representation and the contemporary implications of historical representation.</p>
<p>Banished, the BBC’s miniseries about the first weeks of Sydney’s penal colony does not feature any Aboriginal Australians, while fantasy medieval epic Game of Thrones regularly uses rape as a plot device. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Trailer for Banished.</span></figcaption>
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<p>These depictions are problematic because they perpetuate power dynamics that are not only historical, but which continue to marginalise Aboriginal Australians and women. </p>
<p>While it is the role of the fictional past in the present that is of concern here, historical authenticity is at the heart of such discourse. Critics have not focused on the identification of error <em>per se</em>, although Banished and Game of Thrones each mis/represent aspects of the past that are verifiable: it is fact that Aboriginal people lived in Australia for thousands of years before British colonisation, and women were raped in medieval Europe. </p>
<p>These facts are not under debate. Yet, historical representation is far more complex than merely providing the facts. “Where the totality of the past remains elusive,” British historian <a href="http://www.inth.ugent.be/directory-of-researchers/beverley-southgate/">Beverley Southgate</a> in his 2009 book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/History-Meets-Fiction-Beverley-Southgate/dp/1408220121">History Meets Fiction</a>, “appropriate selections are made for purposes thought to be appropriate”. The same challenges exist for writers of historical fiction.</p>
<h2>Perspective or misrepresentation?</h2>
<p>Jimmy McGovern, creator of Banished, <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/thelist/banished-segment/6539414">told RN’s Cassie McCullough</a> that the show was made for British audiences who wanted to watch a tale about convicts – this purportedly was not an issue of erasure, but perspective. </p>
<p>The show, he argued, was not inaccurate; it merely focused on a particular subject and there had been an intention that a second series would explore an Aboriginal point of view. </p>
<p>Conversely, defences of rape in Game of Thrones have, as sociologist <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/debra-ferreday-161291">Debra Ferreday</a> has <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/08164649.2014.998453">shown</a>, invoked historical accuracy: dragons notwithstanding, it would be inaccurate to depict medieval warfare without addressing sexual assault.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/77413/original/image-20150409-18075-n5su94.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/77413/original/image-20150409-18075-n5su94.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/77413/original/image-20150409-18075-n5su94.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/77413/original/image-20150409-18075-n5su94.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/77413/original/image-20150409-18075-n5su94.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/77413/original/image-20150409-18075-n5su94.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=528&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/77413/original/image-20150409-18075-n5su94.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=528&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/77413/original/image-20150409-18075-n5su94.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=528&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Game of Thrones Season 5 – Cersei and Jaime Lannister.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Home Box Office, Inc.</span></span>
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<p>Both justifications are informed as much by audience expectations as history. These programs engage with the past, even when they invoke fantasy, and have been greeted with an expectation that they remain accurate and authentic. But what is interpreted as authentic can be shaped by audience expectations – by the image we, as viewers, hold of colonial Sydney or medieval Europe. </p>
<p>For many Australians, we can assume McGovern’s explanation rings hollow. Thus authenticity denotes the impression of accuracy that can be shaped both intertextually and culturally, taking into account moral stances that apply equally to the present as they do to the past. </p>
<h2>An untrue telling of the truth</h2>
<p>So, what happens when the subject of representation is simultaneously familiar and unknown? </p>
<p>The television adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6101138-wolf-hall">Wolf Hall</a> series takes Henry VIII’s court as its subject. This text offers an interesting counterpoint to other historical fiction because, in spite of its apparent realism, it nevertheless exclaims that it is not a “true” story. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Trailer for Wolf Hall.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Where Banished <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-30052433">aims</a> for historical accuracy and Game of Thrones is a<a href="http://junkee.com/last-nights-game-of-thrones-was-just-a-terrible-episode/57040"> medieval fantasy</a>, Wolf Hall reminds us that there is no simple distinction between truth and fiction. </p>
<p>In the novels, protagonist Thomas Cromwell tells us, “It’s the living that turn and chase the dead”. In doing so he articulates one of the series’ key themes: we are forever trying to capture the past, but we distort it in the process. </p>
<p>Perhaps unsurprisingly, the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/apr/30/wolf-hall-codpieces-too-small-says-literature-researcher">costumes and codpieces</a> of Wolf Hall were scrutinised for historical anachronism; but both the show and Mantel’s books have been widely celebrated as historically accurate. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/72943/original/image-20150224-25693-1vf30wd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/72943/original/image-20150224-25693-1vf30wd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/72943/original/image-20150224-25693-1vf30wd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/72943/original/image-20150224-25693-1vf30wd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/72943/original/image-20150224-25693-1vf30wd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/72943/original/image-20150224-25693-1vf30wd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/72943/original/image-20150224-25693-1vf30wd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/72943/original/image-20150224-25693-1vf30wd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A sombre end for Anne Boleyn.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">BBC/Company Productions Ltd</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Feminist philosopher <a href="https://gws.as.uky.edu/users/bordo">Susan Bordo</a>, in her 2014 book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Creation-Anne-Boleyn-England%C2%92s/dp/0547834381">The Creation of Anne Boleyn</a>, took exception to Mantel’s depiction of Anne Boleyn. She suggested that “Mantel paints Anne through Cromwell’s eyes as a predatory calculator, brittle, anxious, and cold”, before adding that she “adored Wolf Hall” in spite of this “nasty portrait”. </p>
<p>Indeed, this is an apt description of Mantel’s Boleyn — as Cromwell remarks, “the only way to please that lady is to crown her Queen of England”. </p>
<p>But Bordo also signals the central element of Mantel’s representation – we, the audience, can only view Anne via Cromwell. </p>
<p>Having met Boleyn for the first time, Cromwell’s sister-in-law asks him, “So, what’s she like, the Lady Anne?” This question is never definitively answered throughout the series. </p>
<p>At first glance, Anne’s motives are clear. But the many silences of Wolf Hall regularly hint that Cromwell’s interpretations of her may be misguided. For instance, Cromwell’s belief that she will be happy once she is queen is undermined by his careful study of her face during her coronation during which she appears careful, pensive and fearful, not haughty and triumphant — but ultimately, neither Cromwell nor the audience can know what she is feeling. </p>
<p>This realisation is not confined to Wolf Hall nor, indeed, to historical fiction. For Bordo, Mantel’s Boleyn is inauthentic because it is at odds with her own interpretation of the ill-fated queen, but neither version can be confirmed.</p>
<p>Despite the wealth of scholarship on the Tudors and its power players, we can only speculate as to the internal emotions, motivations and intentions of individuals such as Cromwell and Boleyn.</p>
<p>As Mantel wrote in her Author’s Note to <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13507212-bring-up-the-bodies">Bring up the Bodies</a>, the second novel in the series, “Anne is still changing centuries after her death, carrying the projections of those who read and write about her”. </p>
<p>That is, perhaps, one of the few definitive statements that can be made about her, and about our treatment of history for modern entertainment.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/43316/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Laura Saxton does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Historical representation is far more complex than merely providing the facts – which is why debate continues to rage about the authenticity of popular televised historical dramas such as Game of Thrones and Banished.
Laura Saxton, Sessional Lecturer in History , Australian Catholic University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/42830
2015-06-04T11:56:18Z
2015-06-04T11:56:18Z
Ali Smith wins Baileys Prize – historical fiction is on the up
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/83925/original/image-20150604-11713-p50nj2.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Ali Smith accepting her award.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Baileys</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The runaway success of Ali Smith’s <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-32995250">How to be Both</a> signals a new and original approach to 21st-century historical fiction. Its shimmering linguistic audacity has been rightly celebrated. Her Bailey’s award scoops a hat trick of prestigious prizes – she has already won the Costa and the Goldsmiths – and the novel was shortlisted for the <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/booker-prize">Man Booker</a>. </p>
<p>Split into two halves that can be read in either order, it evokes the passing moment with passionate intensity, and questions our ability to recall or understand such moments. It’s exciting to see such a playful and audacious novel given such accolades.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/83932/original/image-20150604-11723-nerywo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/83932/original/image-20150604-11723-nerywo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=718&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83932/original/image-20150604-11723-nerywo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=718&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83932/original/image-20150604-11723-nerywo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=718&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83932/original/image-20150604-11723-nerywo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83932/original/image-20150604-11723-nerywo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83932/original/image-20150604-11723-nerywo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Thanks to Mantel, Cromwell has a new face.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But Smith is not alone in experimenting with the past. Hilary Mantel’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/wolf-hall">Wolf Hall</a> and Bring up the Bodies aren’t conspicuously experimental in the manner of Smith. Mantel’s territory is familiar: the terrible Tudors and their predilection for the block. Yet her revisionist portrayal of Thomas Cromwell – the courtier formally known as a Machiavellian torturer – is powerfully subversive. Not only is this a reappraisal of his character, but a formal experimentation with point of view. Time is slippery and disorientating in her novels, as it is in Smith’s, though in a more conventional context. Mantel conveys the consciousness of Cromwell as she darts forward and backwards: recalling, assimilating, plotting.</p>
<h2>Out of time</h2>
<p>Conventional historical novels are fundamentally anachronistic. Planting a modern sensibility in the past should stretch credulity beyond its limit, yet it’s one of the tropes of realist historical fiction that readers accept almost without question. “Factual accuracy” is highly prized – but how is this defined? All sources are biased, all experience is partial, even our own memories are flawed and confused. Facts aren’t reliable blocks of certainty that form the basis of true knowledge – historians know this just as novelists do. The past is malleable and mysterious.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/83934/original/image-20150604-11723-1ikvjjp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/83934/original/image-20150604-11723-1ikvjjp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/83934/original/image-20150604-11723-1ikvjjp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=982&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83934/original/image-20150604-11723-1ikvjjp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=982&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83934/original/image-20150604-11723-1ikvjjp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=982&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83934/original/image-20150604-11723-1ikvjjp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1234&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83934/original/image-20150604-11723-1ikvjjp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1234&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83934/original/image-20150604-11723-1ikvjjp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1234&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Penguin</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Historical fiction also falls within the Venn diagram of literary fiction. (Historical novels have been awarded the Man Booker prize for the past three years.) It’s also fertile ground for experimentation – as demonstrated by the Goldsmiths prize for experimental fiction. The inaugural 2013 shortlist included historical novels by Jim Crace (<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/feb/16/harvest-jim-crace-review">Harvest</a>); Philip Terry (<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/may/28/tapestry-philip-terry-review">tapestry</a>) and David Peace (<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/aug/08/red-dead-david-peace-review">Red or Dead</a>), while in 2014 Paul Kingsnorth was shortlisted for his first novel <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/apr/02/the-wake-paul-kingsnorth-review-literary-triumph">The Wake</a>, which is set in 11th century Lincolnshire and has its own invented language.</p>
<p>How to be Both is a meditation on the passing and layering of time, and the way in which experience is lost or preserved in our consciousness or in the (perhaps misleading) artefacts we leave behind. Smith suggests in the novel that history is an energy rather than an accumulation of facts: “That shout, that upward spring.”
Novels like this are asking questions about history, but also about the nature of reality itself. How do we interpret external information, the partiality of human perception and the ability of language to engage with what is felt and lost in the passing moment?</p>
<h2>Interrogating history</h2>
<p>Smith, Mantel et al are part of a tradition in experimentation in historical fiction that goes back to William Godwin and Walter Scott. In 1797, Godwin suggested that history is “other” and that even contemporary human experience is so inchoate that all attempts at clarification must fail. He was convinced that the deliberate artifice gave a “truer” account of lived experience than attempts to capture solid facts.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/83935/original/image-20150604-11710-164qeej.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/83935/original/image-20150604-11710-164qeej.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=876&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83935/original/image-20150604-11710-164qeej.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=876&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83935/original/image-20150604-11710-164qeej.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=876&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83935/original/image-20150604-11710-164qeej.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1100&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83935/original/image-20150604-11710-164qeej.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1100&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83935/original/image-20150604-11710-164qeej.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1100&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Virginia Woolf in 1927.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Scott’s Waverley – published in 1814 – is playfully self-referential and pokes fun at received versions of history. Edward Waverley, its naïve and misguided protagonist, owes much to <a href="https://theconversation.com/probing-cervantess-pages-offers-more-than-his-bones-ever-will-26128">Cervantes</a>’ ageing buffoon Don Quixote. Both Cervantes and Scott had a sophisticated take on myth and chivalric romance.</p>
<p>Just over a century later, Virginia Woolf staked her claim for women’s place in experimental historical fiction. The eponymous protagonist of <a href="http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/culture/2013/02/shape-shifter-joyous-transgressions-virginia-woolf%E2%80%99s-orlando">Orlando</a> strides through the centuries unfettered by age or sex, and is a forerunner of Jeanette Winterson’s Villanelle in <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=znFNkb6T2L0C">The Passion</a> – and indeed Ali Smith’s Francesco del Cossa in How to be Both. Woolf mixed vividly deployed research about 16th and 17th-century England, her obsession with Vita Sackville-West and her experiments with the rendering of thoughts and consciousness to surreal effect. </p>
<p>History is not a finite resource. It is looming behind us: growing and morphing and consuming the space age and glasnost and Blairism; Britpop and 9/11 and the Arab Spring. The future experimental historical novel might attempt to encompass the millions of Facebook-users in 2015; the looking-glass world of celebrity and structured reality; YouTube executions and Islamic State. It may be digital; it may be post-digital; it may be unmediated by elites; it may be atomised or seek to give the impression of being atomised.</p>
<p>No doubt there will always be a market for tales of romance and derring-do and the cosy pleasures of heritage fiction. But the necessity for experimentation in this genre is the one certainty we have. The past is “other” and the future is unknown: historical fiction will need new modes of falsification to address this.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/42830/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sally O'Reilly does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The runaway success of Ali Smith’s How to be Both signals a new and original approach to 21st-century historical fiction.
Sally O'Reilly, Lecturer in Creative Writing, The Open University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/38011
2015-02-25T06:28:18Z
2015-02-25T06:28:18Z
Wolf Hall: intelligent, subtle, artistic – but meticulous costumes have stolen the show
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/72956/original/image-20150224-25698-1vobutr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Colour tells the story, as well as the script.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">BBC/Company Productions Ltd</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>We’ve seen the hotly anticipated release of Hilary Mantel’s books, and the stunning success of their adaptations for the stage. Now the TV adaptation, starring Mark Rylance and Damien Lewis, is drawing to a close. </p>
<p>The final instalment of the BBC’s six-part <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02gfy02">Wolf Hall</a> sees the fall of one Queen and her retinue. In a brilliant shift of emphasis, the death of one queen marks the rise of another. Thomas Cromwell now stands, again, at the beginning of a tangled series of webs and relationships he is expected to manage, tease apart and carry, on increasingly sagging shoulders. </p>
<p>It is no secret that the mastermind behind the rise and fall of Anne Boleyn will be the next to fall victim to the complex power relationships of the Henrician Court. Kosminsky’s masterful and dazzling adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s novels to date neatly sets the stage for, presumably, a television sequel as eagerly awaited as Mantel’s own conclusion to the tale.</p>
<p>Wolf Hall has stood apart as intelligent, subtle, artistic viewing. All kinds of aspects of the show have been analysed and admired, but what particularly stood out to me as outstanding was the costume. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/72943/original/image-20150224-25693-1vf30wd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/72943/original/image-20150224-25693-1vf30wd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/72943/original/image-20150224-25693-1vf30wd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/72943/original/image-20150224-25693-1vf30wd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/72943/original/image-20150224-25693-1vf30wd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/72943/original/image-20150224-25693-1vf30wd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/72943/original/image-20150224-25693-1vf30wd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A sombre end.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">BBC/Company Productions Ltd</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Looking back in time</h2>
<p>The quality and authenticity of the settings has been commented on widely. Much praise has been heaped on the use of locations such as <a href="http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/montacute-house/">Montacute</a> for “<a href="https://theconversation.com/wolf-hall-cut-and-pastes-architecture-so-is-it-authentic-37084">authenticity</a>”. A closer look shows that the care and attention paid to the environment went beyond the superficial use of locations, permeating every aspect of the storytelling. Some commentators, notably <a href="https://theconversation.com/adapting-wolf-hall-for-tv-how-i-played-historical-guessing-game-36150">Catherine Fletcher</a>, have referred to the challenges of getting the material and visual culture of the Tudors right, and “whether screen history engages with what we know”. The answer is definitely an emphatic yes.</p>
<p>The costumes and fabrics in Wolf Hall reflect the very best of contemporary scholarship on the look and feel of Henry’s Court. Take, for example, the meticulous attention that has been paid to the dressing of the protagonists, notably Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn and Thomas Cromwell. </p>
<p>Anne wears the French hood contemporaries always commented on, dressed in very strong colours, while Henry VIII, on the other hand, wears garments of considerable intricacy, often cloth-of-gold, decorated with sumptuous embroidery, and supplemented by jewellery. Anne’s clothing is laced, Henry’s is fastened by buttons. Anne’s clothing is best shown off inside, Henry’s emphasises his athleticism and outdoor sportsmanship. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/72946/original/image-20150224-25664-1ykz50v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/72946/original/image-20150224-25664-1ykz50v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/72946/original/image-20150224-25664-1ykz50v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/72946/original/image-20150224-25664-1ykz50v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/72946/original/image-20150224-25664-1ykz50v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/72946/original/image-20150224-25664-1ykz50v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/72946/original/image-20150224-25664-1ykz50v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An incredible attention to detail in costume.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">BBC/Company Productions Ltd</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Cromwell perpetually dresses in black, but a closer look reveals the change in the status of the man, as wool and linen give way to increasingly voluminous fur-lined cloaks and of the most sumptuous black dye. Black was the colour of the professional man, so Cromwell denotes his status in his dress throughout Wolf Hall as the professional who faithfully serves his master. In doing so, he gains in significance and draws ever closer to the centre of power. </p>
<p>As the series progresses, Henry’s and Cromwell’s relationship becomes increasingly tactile, as Cromwell stands closer to the monarch and spends less time observing in the shadows. Of course, this new visibility means he makes himself vulnerable – and we all know how this will end. </p>
<h2>Storytelling with costume</h2>
<p>But I don’t only admire the costume for its accuracy. Like the use of dress in contemporary Tudor portraits, it has also been used here to add additional layers to the unfolding of the narrative itself.</p>
<p>Watch for example the way clothing is used to tell emotional stories. In the case of Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII, their early scenes show a couple often dressed in vivid, brilliant, and often contrasting colours, the other figures of the courts appearing colourless and pale in comparison to the drama that attaches itself to the protagonists. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/72939/original/image-20150224-25689-1ftz6n7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/72939/original/image-20150224-25689-1ftz6n7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/72939/original/image-20150224-25689-1ftz6n7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/72939/original/image-20150224-25689-1ftz6n7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/72939/original/image-20150224-25689-1ftz6n7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/72939/original/image-20150224-25689-1ftz6n7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/72939/original/image-20150224-25689-1ftz6n7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In tune in red.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">BBC/Company Productions Ltd</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Then there follow scenes where Anne and Henry wear complementary colours, fashioned from similar material, their common purpose reflected in their garb. Towards the end, Anne dresses increasingly in red, often holding flame-haired Elizabeth in her lap, with Henry choosing muted colours, which makes the closing sequence of the series all the more shocking. Note how the sombre colours worn by Anne and her ladies-in-waiting on Tower Green give way to the exuberant gold and red of a jubilant Henry, who again dons his courting robes from earlier in the series, this time in honour of Jane Seymour. Colour and clothing makes power relationships visible.</p>
<p>Many of the scenes are framed enclosed by walls, by hedges, by courtyards. Events unfold that are only ever visible to a small group of spectators. Rare indeed are the occasions when the actions in Wolf Hall are played out in bright sunshine and to a crowd, and for those crowds of onlookers, of eyewitnesses, the clothes of the protagonists tell the story they remember. </p>
<p>The intricacies ad subtleties of the dangerous power games at the heart of court remain largely invisible, and of course, they centre around the ever still and always dark-clad figure of Thomas Cromwell. The colours of the courtiers swirl and change around Cromwell, yet he alone never changes his colours (so to speak) and remains the emotional anchor and centre of Mantel’s complex story. </p>
<p>After all, as <a href="http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/R/bo3631967.html">Stephen Greenblatt once wrote</a>, the Tudor Court is about self-fashioning an identity. Performance is at the heart of these relationships and they become nowhere more visible than in the small details of the fabrics of Wolf Hall.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/38011/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gabriele Neher does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Costume in the TV adaptation is not only authentic. It also, like the use of dress in contemporary Tudor portraiture, helps tell the story.
Gabriele Neher, Assistant Professor of History of Art, University of Nottingham
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/37084
2015-02-19T06:13:45Z
2015-02-19T06:13:45Z
Wolf Hall cut and pastes architecture – so is it authentic?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/72398/original/image-20150218-20814-16uv1yh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Different inside and out.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">BBC/Company Productions Ltd</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It is 1529. Cardinal Wolsey leaves his palace at York Place, giving way to the triumphant Anne Boleyn, who holds court in the long gallery. But this York Place is not the princely residence of the Archbishops of York in London (Whitehall, between the Banqueting House and the River Thames), which burnt down in January 1698. As we sit in front of our televisions in 2015 watching the BBC television adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall, we see an imagined York Place, filmed within the state rooms of Penshurst Place, Kent. </p>
<p>These are real spaces, resonant with the acoustic qualities of timber, stone and lime plaster. They offer the actors what no stage set can: a full sensory experience. But what do we as the audience get out of this substitution of one historic space for another? It is sometimes possible to spot disconcerting edits in films, as actors exit from one building into the courtyard of an unrelated place. Does it matter that architecture is cut and pasted to suit the production needs of filming? Using historic settings might signal a dramatic quest for authenticity, but there is a difference between being genuinely historic and being authentic.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/72354/original/image-20150218-20806-1sfqej.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/72354/original/image-20150218-20806-1sfqej.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=357&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/72354/original/image-20150218-20806-1sfqej.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=357&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/72354/original/image-20150218-20806-1sfqej.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=357&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/72354/original/image-20150218-20806-1sfqej.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/72354/original/image-20150218-20806-1sfqej.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/72354/original/image-20150218-20806-1sfqej.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Penshurst state rooms (the long gallery in red brick).</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/philip_talmage/3079983963/">Philip Talmage</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A modern audience</h2>
<p>The audience of 2015 is, after all, an audience of consumers. We consume media images with a degree of understanding about the gap between the final airbrushed edit and the mundane original. We are familiar with brands and with the process of branding that turn objects and people into desirable products. </p>
<p>The concept of authenticity is woven into business and advertising: brands promise individual self-fulfilment if we buy them, allowing us to express our authentic selves. We consume the historic settings presented on screen similarly; our perception that we are being offered genuine historic settings for a historical drama contributes materially to our enjoyment of the resulting production. A real Penshurst Place that is not York Place needs to be understood as both a genuine thing, in being a real building, and an authentic experience, in contributing to the value we get from the dramatic experience. </p>
<p>In business, authenticity is not something fixed or “real”, but rather a form of expression, whether of a style of leadership or as the values behind a brand. The term authentic in this context carries a very fluid interpretation: authenticity is created by doing something that provides an experience. </p>
<p>This is rather different from the definition of authentic most commonly applied to works of art, in the sense of being genuine – not faked or altered. There is a second and equally important definition of authentic, used by philosophers and adopted by business thinkers, and that refers to the expressive qualities within art that appeal to our senses.</p>
<p>When historic houses are used as stage sets, they are genuinely historic. But they are also used to express a set of values about the past that the drama depicts, values that are shaped by the creators of the drama.</p>
<h2>Sense of a building</h2>
<p>Penshurst Place, a beautiful medieval house with Tudor and Jacobean additions, is shown in its stage set role with its historic interiors dressed with rich textiles of the 16th century. The long gallery wasn’t built until 70 years after the period depicted in Wolf Hall, but this does not detract from its evocative appeal. </p>
<p>Getting this quality right is a challenge for location scouts and directors: the success of Castle Howard, a great Yorkshire country house used for the 1980s TV adaptation of <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083390/">Brideshead Revisited</a> is the classic point of reference, where a house became a character in the drama. More commonly, historic locations are reassembled on screen to represent an imagined single place, but if the parts don’t feel right, the whole will lose its expressive authenticity.</p>
<p>Understanding authenticity as an experience also explains how historic settings are used to send signals about status and behaviour for the characters. Multiple Jane Austen adaptations offer us several ways of “seeing” how the Bennett family live, for example. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/BxbJq2x0D-w?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>And Jane Campion’s <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0810784/">Bright Star</a>, the biographical film about the relationship between John Keats and Fanny Brawne, rejects Keats’s surviving house (a small white Regency villa) in favour of an older, more architecturally formal house to represent their shared home. This choice has a strong aesthetic role in heightening the contrast between the formal qualities of the architecture and the informality or rejection of convention expressed by the inhabitants. </p>
<p>Mike Leigh’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/mike-leighs-mr-turner-is-no-oil-painting-34291">Mr Turner</a>, on the other hand, prioritises using “complete” houses, allowing actors to move directly from entrances to interiors, which is the product of his improvisation technique. </p>
<p>All these examples show that historic buildings in TV may not be genuine. But they can still preserve a sense of the authentic: we just know it when we see it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/37084/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Susie West does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
It is 1529. Cardinal Wolsey leaves his palace at York Place, giving way to the triumphant Anne Boleyn, who holds court in the long gallery. But this York Place is not the princely residence of the Archbishops…
Susie West, Lecturer in Architectural History, The Open University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/37194
2015-02-06T06:36:55Z
2015-02-06T06:36:55Z
What was sweating sickness – the mysterious Tudor plague of Wolf Hall?
<p>In the first episode of BBC historical drama <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02gfy02">Wolf Hall</a>, based on Hilary Mantel’s novel of the same name, Thomas Cromwell returns home to find his wife and two daughters have all died during the night, victims of a pestilence – the “sweating sickness” – that is scything through the Tudor world. </p>
<p>The speed of onset of this disease, which saw victims literally being well today and dead tomorrow, and its relentlessly high mortality rate gave the sweating sickness the same aura of terror that we attach to <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/ebola">Ebola</a> today.</p>
<h2><em>Sudor Anglicus</em></h2>
<p>Contemporary accounts describe an illness that began with a general feeling that something was not right, a strange premonition of oncoming horror, followed by the onset of violent headache, flu-like shivers and aching limbs. </p>
<p>This was succeeded by a raging fever complicated by pulse irregularities and cardiac palpitations. Death often simply seemed to occur due to dehydration and exhaustion. As <a href="http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199702203360812">one commentator said</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>A newe Kynde of sickness came through the whole region, which was so sore, so peynfull, and sharp, that the lyke was never harde of to any mannes rememberance before that tyme.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The sweating sickness first appeared around the time Thomas Cromwell, later chief minister to Henry VIII, was born, at the end of the dynastic Wars of the Roses, and there has <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2059547/?page=1">been some debate</a> concerning the possibility that it arrived with the invading army of the first Tudor king, Henry VII, in 1485. </p>
<p>By the time it disappeared in 1551 it had caused <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3917436/">five devastating outbreaks</a>. To observers on the other side of the Channel, whose countries had apparently remained miraculously untouched (though a later outbreak did spread to Calais), this disease was <em>Sudor Anglicus</em>, or the “English Sweat”.</p>
<h2>Doctor without borders</h2>
<p>During the Tudor and early Elizabethan eras, the merest rumour of sweating sickness in a certain locality was enough to cause an exodus of those who could afford to leave. </p>
<p>Thomas Le Forestier, a French doctor originally based in England, <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3917436/#B45-viruses-06-00151">wrote about the 1485 sickness</a> after his return to France, providing information about its appearance and impact during this first outbreak. </p>
<p>But one man’s name became synonymous with the sickness. Norwich-born and Cambridge-educated John Kays had spent his early medical career travelling extensively on the continent, returning around the end of the reign of Henry VIII with a fashionably Latinised moniker, Dr Johannus Caius. The sweating sickness panic during <a href="http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/88611/John-Caius">the outbreak of 1551</a> gave him the ideal opportunity <a href="http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/gutbook/lookup?num=33503">to make this new name known</a> to everybody. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/71119/original/image-20150204-28601-1196ld4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/71119/original/image-20150204-28601-1196ld4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=596&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71119/original/image-20150204-28601-1196ld4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=596&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71119/original/image-20150204-28601-1196ld4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=596&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71119/original/image-20150204-28601-1196ld4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=749&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71119/original/image-20150204-28601-1196ld4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=749&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71119/original/image-20150204-28601-1196ld4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=749&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Striking the rich: Henry Brandon second Duke of Suffolk. His brother died hours later.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweating_sickness#mediaviewer/File:Hans_Holbein_the_Younger_-_Henry_Brandon,_2nd_Duke_of_Suffolk_%281535-51%29_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg">Ras67</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The fact that the wealthy seemed to be more frequently affected also gave him the opportunity to make money. Despite most of Caius’s patients still ending up dead, he was eventually rich enough to make a splendid endowment to his old Cambridge college, which changed its name to Caius College in his honour. To the rest of us, Caius left <a href="http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/88611/John-Caius">his classic description</a> of the disease: Account of the Sweating Sickness in England, first published in 1556.</p>
<h2>Medical speculation</h2>
<p>A minor academic industry has developed speculating on what sweating sickness could have been. </p>
<p>Given that it had few symptoms other than a violent fatal fever, medical historians have had little to go on. But suggestions that have been made over the years include influenza, scarlet fever, anthrax, typhus or some SARS-like pulmonary enterovirus. All, however, have had some clinical or epidemiological aspect that meant they didn’t quite fit the description on the “most wanted” poster for sweating sickness. </p>
<p>Then in 1993, an outbreak of a remarkably similar syndrome occurred among the Navajo people in the region of Gallup, New Mexico. This episode, known as the <a href="http://www.cdc.gov/hantavirus/hps/history.html">Four Corners outbreak</a> after the region of south-western USA in which it was located, turned the attention of sweating sickness investigators towards its causative agent: Sin Nombre virus. Sin Nombre is a hantavirus, a member of a group of viruses that were mostly previously known in Europe for causing a kidney failure syndrome, and a cousin of several tropical fever viruses transmitted by biting insects. The new disease was given the name hantavirus pulmonary syndrome (HPS).</p>
<h2>Made in Chelsea</h2>
<p>Aside from the similar clinical descriptions of sweating sickness and HPS, one other factor stands out in favour of their equivalence: rich people in Tudor times were more likely to be victims. </p>
<p>The end of the Wars of the Roses meant that people at last felt safe to invest in property without the risk of it being immediately ransacked, and the dissolution of the monasteries created a new upwardly mobile class that suddenly had the means to build. And build they did – Tudor London and the regional cities of England experienced a massive housing boom. Large households needed large staff, and large numbers of people need large kitchens full of large deposits of grain and other foodstuffs. Shortly after the people moved in, the rats and mice followed.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/71215/original/image-20150205-28598-1ocej06.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/71215/original/image-20150205-28598-1ocej06.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=304&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71215/original/image-20150205-28598-1ocej06.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=304&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71215/original/image-20150205-28598-1ocej06.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=304&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71215/original/image-20150205-28598-1ocej06.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71215/original/image-20150205-28598-1ocej06.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71215/original/image-20150205-28598-1ocej06.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Who me?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/23912576@N05/2905817600/sizes/l/in/photolist-5qM5ks-j6Yz8U-4uxrMf-pyemqT-8MDUtY-opCL3N-omKJsT-6rHpsi-5sLePN-6XoZN5-MFbR-auAqXA-4HbvPV-dYMen8-7JZRra-iEapLj-3FHLW-5rh6kD-5sT9pe-5t11KK-2gwpS-5ig4sM-aDoMD7-4uMLGr-qzpJs-66hZkp-reRq-7b8Yqs-g3yESZ-5agXos-eQcEm5-9mhF3D-7WnxtN-2HFNAX-abkbvs-9PWDEH-4XARu6-3yeLoD-67F8Na-owvnv6-9H9B7-3hyaER-4M6zkc-2ZXpo-8MATnt-fz5nbj-3hycjR-oiNfSH-nDsVDK-j6Wp9h-7jKZkR/">Laverrue</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Four Corners outbreak was due to the presence of Sin Nombre virus within the droppings of deer mice living in the vicinity of the Navajo dwellings. Aerosolisation of the virus when the droppings were disturbed, for instance when a broom passed over them to sweep them away, created an environmental airborne infection. </p>
<p>Whereas nowadays rodents plague the poor, in post-medieval London they were a feature of all levels of society. Rather than try to remove the rats, an almost impossible task, Tudor housekeepers, fastidiously brushing their droppings away, may have released a cloud of <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23607444">hantavirus-loaded dust</a>, triggering the sweating sickness across England. All this assumes, of course, that the sweating sickness was an early variant of HPS. Other candidate pathogens have generated <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3917436/">other explanations and scenarios</a>.</p>
<h2>So where did it go?</h2>
<p>Sweating sickness had disappeared by late Elizabethan times. Its reign of terror barely lasted a century. If indeed it was an ancient variant of HPS, we can perhaps speculate about what led to its demise. The virus may have mutated to a less virulent form, perhaps in the process acquiring the capacity to be passed between humans as a more benign feverish illness, rather than being just a sporadic environmental hazard. Or perhaps its evolutionary trajectory took it in the other direction, becoming more fatal to its rodent hosts, thereby reducing the quantity of infected droppings around human habitations. </p>
<p>There is a third possibility – we know that the climate of Europe was becoming progressively colder from the late middle ages onwards. Perhaps some subtle change in rodent ecology made life harder for the virus. For instance the Four Corners HPS outbreak was <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10823755">linked to the El Niño climatic oscillation</a>. We’ll never know for sure. Much of the mystery of sweating sickness remains. However, we do know that hantaviruses are still with us, and their day could come again.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/37194/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Derek Gatherer receives funding from Rosetrees Trust and the NHS to study influenza C virus, and from Sunway University Malaysia to study enterovirus 71.</span></em></p>
In the first episode of BBC historical drama Wolf Hall, based on Hilary Mantel’s novel of the same name, Thomas Cromwell returns home to find his wife and two daughters have all died during the night…
Derek Gatherer, Lecturer, Lancaster University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/36179
2015-01-22T06:55:20Z
2015-01-22T06:55:20Z
Wolf Hall may be historically accurate, but it’s also a bit dull
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/69641/original/image-20150121-29743-1csb5f3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">All that research has made Tom a dull boy.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">BBC/Company Productions Ltd</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In his <a href="http://www.lrb.co.uk/v20/n08/james-wood/the-great-dissembler">biography of Sir Thomas More</a>, Peter Ackroyd audaciously asks us to imagine pre-Reformation London as the street markets of Marrakesh. Cheapside would have been a bustling surge of traders and customers, alive with noise and smells, packed with barrels and panniers of fish, fruit and spices, more like a bazaar than the modern city. Equally, to imagine the interiors of English churches in the 1520s, think Andalusian gaudy rather than Hawksmoor’s classicist austerity, the walls covered in brightly painted scenes, the chapels filled with statuary and icons. </p>
<p>Early Tudor London was a bright, brash and bustling place, unlike its whitewashed Protestant successor, and its inhabitants behaved in similarly extravagant fashion. Foreign ambassadors were surprised by Englishmen’s capacity to weep openly and publicly at the slightest provocation. Satirists condemned the aristocracy and burghers for wearing too much bling: flaunting their status in chains of gold so heavy you were amazed they could walk at all. </p>
<p>Hilary Mantel catches a lot of this passion and swagger in Wolf Hall. Writing in the Guardian, she reminds us that Thomas Cromwell was part of this world too: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The scowling asocial Cromwell is an invention of posterity, over-influenced by Holbein’s dour portrait. His contemporaries saw easy charm and social adroitness. He was ingenious, keen to please, irreverently funny; his energy seemed inexhaustible. </p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/69645/original/image-20150121-29754-1luc7w9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/69645/original/image-20150121-29754-1luc7w9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69645/original/image-20150121-29754-1luc7w9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69645/original/image-20150121-29754-1luc7w9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69645/original/image-20150121-29754-1luc7w9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69645/original/image-20150121-29754-1luc7w9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69645/original/image-20150121-29754-1luc7w9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Henry is one of the only characters permitted to wear colour.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">BBC/Company Productions Ltd</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Sadly, no one seems to have given Peter Kosminsky, the director of the keenly anticipated <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02gfy02">BBC adaptation of Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies</a>, the memo on this. According to episode one, Cromwell’s London was a drab, homespun place, and its residents equally understated in dress and demeanour. Far from easily charming, Mark Rylance’s Cromwell is a dour, taciturn figure, of few words and fewer smiles. When asked if he thinks it’s a peculiarly English trait to set up great men only to pull them down, he replies, addressing no one: “It’s not the English; it’s just people”. </p>
<p>A recurrent motif has Rylance striding towards the camera in long tracking shots, or away across courtyards, too busy for more than a word of conversation or instruction (“fetch dry kindling”, “I need to get a seat in parliament”), scowling anti-sociality personified. He seems habitually uncomfortable, prone to pick fights rather than set folk at their ease. He drives More from the dinner table with a belligerent: “You’ve become Lord Chancellor… what’s that, a fucking accident?” With his superiors he seems merely awkward, performing a stilted bow (what the Tudors called “making a reverence”), always just a split-second too late to seem spontaneous, clutching stiffly at his bonnet to doff it from the rear. No doubt this is based on careful research: that’s how “they” would have done it, but it looks clumsy and learned, suggesting the opposite of a convincingly lived world of protocol and deference. </p>
<p>Equally the costumes, beautifully designed and no doubt scrupulously researched, make Tudor society less, rather than more, intelligible. Only Cardinal Wolsey (a melancholic Jonathan Pryce) and Henry VIII (Damian Lewis on imperious form) are allowed bright colours. Everyone else, aristocrat and commoner alike, wear gowns in muted blacks, browns and greens, and so all look much the same – especially as so many scenes take place in near-darkness. </p>
<p>Because of this the social gulf that divides a commoner like Cromwell from the aristocrats (and drives the plot of Wolf Hall) is largely invisible at first glance. Bernard Hill has to tell us he is the Duke of Norfolk, and a gentleman – and that Cromwell is not – for us to get the point. Research seems to have got in the way of storytelling here, where the novel elegantly combined the two. As with the sparsely populated outdoor settings, the details may be correct but that sense of Cromwell’s world as bright and bustling has been lost.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/69642/original/image-20150121-29736-1sqwh1x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/69642/original/image-20150121-29736-1sqwh1x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69642/original/image-20150121-29736-1sqwh1x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69642/original/image-20150121-29736-1sqwh1x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69642/original/image-20150121-29736-1sqwh1x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69642/original/image-20150121-29736-1sqwh1x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69642/original/image-20150121-29736-1sqwh1x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">No passion.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">BBC/Company Productions Ltd</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Similarly, where Mantel writes with warmth and passion, Kosminsky seems determined to leach it all out. Compare the striking opening scene with its counterpart in the novel. Norfolk and Suffolk arrive to deprive Wolsey of his seal of office (“Wolsey, you’re out”, Hill roars in a jarringly modern opening line). Cromwell convinces them they cannot unless they bring the Master of the Rolls. </p>
<p>In the novel, Mantel has master and servant embrace each other in fleeting triumph. When the dukes go, Wolsey turns and hugs him, his face gleeful. Though it is the last of their victories and they know it, it is important to show ingenuity; 24 hours is worth buying when the king is so changeable. Besides, they enjoyed it. “Master of the Rolls”, Wolsey says, “did you know that, or did you make it up?”</p>
<p>In the adaptation, on the other hand, Wolsey stays seated and Cromwell stands, invisible behind him.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>– Did you know that, or did you make it up?<br>
– They’ll be back in a day.<br>
– Well, these days 24 hours feels like a victory.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Melancholy replaces childlike glee. And we also lose the crucial sense of friendship that underpins Cromwell’s fierce loyalty for his master, and that lasting, bitter resentment of those who hounded him to his death which will drive him in Bring Up the Bodies. </p>
<p>So, what we are left with, despite Mantel’s best efforts, is the scowling asocial Cromwell of posterity restored. The episode ends with his first brief encounter with Henry and the sense that the king has noted him as someone who could be useful. The world of colour and swagger is beckoning, but Cromwell is off again, alone.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/36179/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Greg Walker has received funding from the AHRC.</span></em></p>
In his biography of Sir Thomas More, Peter Ackroyd audaciously asks us to imagine pre-Reformation London as the street markets of Marrakesh. Cheapside would have been a bustling surge of traders and customers…
Greg Walker, Regius Professor of Rhetoric and English Literature, The University of Edinburgh
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/36150
2015-01-20T06:20:15Z
2015-01-20T06:20:15Z
Adapting Wolf Hall for TV: how I played historical guessing game
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/69411/original/image-20150119-14489-1cnwk0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">How to get it right.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">BBC/Company Productions Ltd</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02gfy74">television adaptation</a> of Wolf Hall and Bring Up The Bodies is already being hailed as possibly the “<a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2912524/A-7m-budget-stellar-cast-BBC-s-unmissable-Wolf-Hall-Greatest-Period-Drama-Made.html">greatest period drama ever made</a>”. </p>
<p>Certainly, much has been made of its attention to historical detail. Hilary Mantel’s Booker-prize-winning novels are based on extensive research. As the author herself <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jan/17/hilary-mantel-on-the-tv-wolf-hall">put it</a>: “they wrap the fiction around the historical record”. The adaptation is aiming to do the same. But what did this mean in practice?</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/69417/original/image-20150119-14466-13vpd9h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/69417/original/image-20150119-14466-13vpd9h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/69417/original/image-20150119-14466-13vpd9h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=719&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69417/original/image-20150119-14466-13vpd9h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=719&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69417/original/image-20150119-14466-13vpd9h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=719&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69417/original/image-20150119-14466-13vpd9h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=903&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69417/original/image-20150119-14466-13vpd9h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=903&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69417/original/image-20150119-14466-13vpd9h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=903&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Portrait of Georg Gisze, Hans Holbein the Younger, 1532.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As one of a number of expert advisers to the production, I worked with the art team as they tried to ensure that props and sets reflected what we know of Tudor material culture, particularly when it came to religion. I work in this area – <a href="http://www.sheffield.ac.uk/history/staff/catherine-fletcher">my own research</a> explores diplomatic and court culture in relation to liturgical ceremony – but my discussions with the Wolf Hall team brought home to me just how many gaps there are in our visual record of the past.</p>
<p>While the <a href="http://www.bl.uk/">British Library</a> and <a href="http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/">National Archives</a> hold hundreds of volumes about the Tudor court and its doings, visual depictions of palace and church interiors are far rarer. The star artist of Henry’s court, Hans Holbein the Younger, was mainly a portraitist. That said, in the margins of Holbein’s works we find clues to interior style: a <a href="https://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/asset-viewer/the-merchant-georg-gisze/VwFTBKeaJVASog?hl=en">carpet over a table</a> here, a <a href="http://www.louvre.fr/en/oeuvre-notices/william-warham">luxurious cushion</a> there. We can see from his paintings how letters were folded and sealed. All these little details help.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/69418/original/image-20150119-14495-1ysxejk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/69418/original/image-20150119-14495-1ysxejk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/69418/original/image-20150119-14495-1ysxejk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=850&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69418/original/image-20150119-14495-1ysxejk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=850&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69418/original/image-20150119-14495-1ysxejk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=850&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69418/original/image-20150119-14495-1ysxejk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1068&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69418/original/image-20150119-14495-1ysxejk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1068&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69418/original/image-20150119-14495-1ysxejk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1068&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Wriothesley Garter book.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Royal Collection Trust/© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2014</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>One preoccupation for the production team was getting the details of Tudor ceremony right (if press reports are correct, we will see a full <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/event/article-2890196/Wolf-Hall-Damian-Lewis-motorbike-crash-turned-Henry-VIII.html">eight minutes of cap-doffing</a> across the series). Ceremony was a vital expression of power and hierarchy at the Tudor court. Documents such as this <a href="http://stagingthehenriciancourt.brookes.ac.uk/resources/set_images.html">seating plan</a> for Anne Boleyn’s coronation banquet and the Bodleian Library’s roll of the <a href="http://bodley30.bodley.ox.ac.uk:8180/luna/servlet/detail/ODLodl%7E1%7E1%7E30682%7E113752:Procession-to-Parliament-?sort=Shelfmark,Folio_Page&qvq=q:procession+house+lords;sort:Shelfmark,Folio_Page;lc:ODLodl%7E1%7E1&mi=0&trs=13">1512 Procession of the House of Lords</a> (though of later date) help us visualise the scenes. The image to the left of <a href="http://www.royalcollection.org.uk/collection/1047414/the-wriothesley-garter-book">Henry VIII at the opening of parliament</a> comes from the book of Thomas Wriothesley, Garter King of Arms, whose nephew (also Thomas) is mocked in the novels as “Call-Me-Risley”.</p>
<p>Religious ceremony was in many ways more of a challenge. Much English religious art was destroyed in the Reformation. We have continental images of Catholic mass from the 1520s and 30s, but it is not easy to be precise about how things looked in England. Still, there are occasional sources to be found. A manuscript from Christ Church College Oxford shows <a href="http://www.chch.ox.ac.uk/library/western-manuscripts/ms-179">Henry VII and his family praying</a> on their knees. A later 16th century <a href="http://www.joh.cam.ac.uk/hall-portraits">painting</a> in the collection of St John’s College Cambridge shows Henry VII’s mother, Margaret Beaufort, in similar pose with her book of hours, in a richly-decorated royal closet. Putting together these clues, we can come up with some idea of how prayer might have looked – or at least how it was supposed to have looked.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/69425/original/image-20150119-14489-24rlvy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/69425/original/image-20150119-14489-24rlvy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69425/original/image-20150119-14489-24rlvy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69425/original/image-20150119-14489-24rlvy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69425/original/image-20150119-14489-24rlvy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69425/original/image-20150119-14489-24rlvy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69425/original/image-20150119-14489-24rlvy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Pomp and ceremony.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">BBC/Company Productions Ltd</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Some religious objects can be linked definitively to specific individuals at the Tudor court. Anne Boleyn’s <a href="http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/onlineex/henryviii/greatmatter/annebol/">Book of Hours</a> – in which she and Henry exchanged marginal messages – is one. A French bible associated with Anne – often cited as evidence for her interest in reformed religion – is another. In the Victoria and Albert Museum we find a <a href="http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/videos/r/video-royal-writing-desk-writing-box/">writing desk</a> with the arms of Henry and Catherine of Aragon, another rare luxury object from the Tudor court. These surviving artefacts were the type of material that could help point to the right look for the show.</p>
<p>Other types of object, though, would always pose problems. Metalwork has a poor survival rate. A rare exception is the V&A’s <a href="http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O7684/the-howard-grace-cup-cup-unknown/">Howard Grace Cup</a>, dating from 1525-26. It escaped the more typical fate of Tudor silver and gold: to be melted down and remade into the latest fashion. Another very special Tudor object is to be found in the Museum of History of Science in Oxford: <a href="https://www.mhs.ox.ac.uk/epact/catalogue.php?ENumber=43055">Cardinal Wolsey’s sundial</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/69423/original/image-20150119-14472-pb3qmk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/69423/original/image-20150119-14472-pb3qmk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69423/original/image-20150119-14472-pb3qmk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69423/original/image-20150119-14472-pb3qmk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69423/original/image-20150119-14472-pb3qmk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69423/original/image-20150119-14472-pb3qmk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69423/original/image-20150119-14472-pb3qmk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Mark Rylance as Thomas Cromwell.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">BBC/Company Productions Ltd</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In his seminal work on history on screen, Visions of the Past, <a href="http://www.rosenstone.com/">Robert Rosenstone</a> argued that by its nature historical film (at least of the mainstream type) is obliged to invent. When we don’t know what an interior looked like, we have to create and imagine. But there is “true invention” – which engages with the historical record – and “false invention” – which does not.</p>
<p>As a historian, arguments about the “accuracy” of historical television sometimes frustrate me. However far one would like to know everything, when it comes to recreating the look of the past there are bound to be gaps in the evidence. Some degree of imaginative guesswork, some degree of painting in the missing elements, is going to be necessary. The question is whether screen history engages with what we do know. And in the case of Wolf Hall, the answer is certainly yes.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/36150/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Catherine Fletcher received a consultancy fee for her work as an adviser on Wolf Hall.</span></em></p>
The television adaptation of Wolf Hall and Bring Up The Bodies is already being hailed as possibly the “greatest period drama ever made”. Certainly, much has been made of its attention to historical detail…
Catherine Fletcher, Lecturer in Public History , University of Sheffield
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/27206
2014-05-27T20:11:42Z
2014-05-27T20:11:42Z
Historical fiction deserves a future – and at present it’s looking good
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/49524/original/svktwcqz-1401168971.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Historical fiction rewards both the readers and writers who love it.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Carsten Tolkmit</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Historical fiction is booming. The much-publicised success of Hannah Kent’s <a href="http://www.panmacmillan.com.au/display_title.asp?ISBN=9781742612829&Author=Kent,%20Hannah">Burial Rites</a>, Eleanor Catton’s <a href="http://www.themanbookerprize.com/books/luminaries">The Luminaries</a> and Hilary Mantel’s <a href="http://www.themanbookerprize.com/books/wolf-hall">Wolf Hall</a> is just the tip of the iceberg for a genre that rivals any other in contemporary publishing.</p>
<p>As an author of some 30 books – of which only one is set in contemporary times – this pleases me, but also makes me question why readers opt away from contemporary novels to those focused on the past. In my own case, the reasons are clear. </p>
<p>I have always loved books set long, long ago and far, far away.</p>
<p>When I was a little girl, I spent many summer holidays with my great-aunts. They owned two big old encyclopedias called <a href="http://www.rookebooks.com/product?prod_id=14210">The World of Wonder: 10,000 Things Every Child Should Know</a>. Unlike most encyclopedias, these books did not arrange their topics in alphabetical order, but rather grouped them under subject headings such as Marvels of Machinery, Wonders of Animal & Plant Life, Wonders of the Sky and Marvels of Chemistry and Physics. </p>
<p>My favourite section was always the Romance of British History. I would flick through, skipping the pages on how a force pump works, to find stories about how the minstrel Blondel found King Richard the Lion-hearted when he was kept captive in a tower, or how the Black Prince won his spurs. </p>
<p>At school, I’d scour the library bookshelves for books with girls in quaint costumes or boys waving a sword on the cover. I loved the novels of <a href="http://rosemarysutcliff.com/">Rosemary Sutcliff</a>, <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/obituary-geoffrey-trease-1141717.html">Geoffrey Trease</a> and <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-leon-garfield-1335398.html">Leon Garfield</a>, and used to dress up in my mother’s clothes and pretend I lived in the past. </p>
<p>As I grew up, I devoured all my grandmother’s <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-jean-plaidy-1479699.html">Jean Plaidy</a>, <a href="http://www.georgette-heyer.com/">Georgette Heyer</a> and <a href="http://www.dumaurier.org/">Daphne du Maurier</a> books, and discovered writers such as <a href="https://theconversation.com/jane-austen-discovery-theres-still-much-to-learn-about-faith-and-the-clergymans-daughter-23095">Jane Austen</a>, <a href="http://marywebb.org/biography/">Mary Webb</a> and <a href="http://www.biography.com/people/charlotte-bront%C3%AB-11919959">Charlotte Bronte</a> whose books – although set in the authors’ own times – read like historical fiction to me. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/49500/original/pg735wx9-1401164030.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/49500/original/pg735wx9-1401164030.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/49500/original/pg735wx9-1401164030.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=265&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/49500/original/pg735wx9-1401164030.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=265&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/49500/original/pg735wx9-1401164030.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=265&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/49500/original/pg735wx9-1401164030.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=334&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/49500/original/pg735wx9-1401164030.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=334&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/49500/original/pg735wx9-1401164030.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=334&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Novelist Georgette Heyer was a pioneer of the historical romance genre.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Flickr</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>All this time I was dreaming of being a writer. I wrote novels all through my childhood and adolescence (the one I wrote when I was nine was called Far, Far Away). In time, I was published, writing books that spun together history, mystery and magic. I kept on reading too, and my collection of favourite historical fiction takes up half my library. </p>
<p>So why do I – and millions of other readers – love fiction set in the past so much? For me, it’s the feeling that I am learning things I didn’t know about our human past and what forces shaped us and our world. </p>
<p>History textbooks can be a dry and dusty collection of facts and figures. But historical fiction brings the past vividly to life. The reader is with the frightened drummer-boy on the battlefield, hearing the thunder of the cannon-fire and smelling the blood and the smoke. The reader is with the queen crouched in the corner of her dank prison, waiting to be dragged out to face the executioner’s axe; they know her terror and despair as if it was their own. </p>
<p>The reader lives in the past while they are within the pages of a historical novel, and when they return to their own times, they do so with fresh eyes, understanding all that we have gained and lost. </p>
<p>When I write historical fiction, I feel my most important job is to bring the past to lucid and vital life, allowing the reader to be utterly absorbed into the world of the novel. To do this, I need to know everything there is to know about the time and place and the people who lived then. This means a great deal of intensive research, which can be very difficult sometimes if your subject is not very well-known.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/49498/original/49pxcvbr-1401162858.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/49498/original/49pxcvbr-1401162858.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/49498/original/49pxcvbr-1401162858.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=928&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/49498/original/49pxcvbr-1401162858.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=928&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/49498/original/49pxcvbr-1401162858.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=928&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/49498/original/49pxcvbr-1401162858.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1166&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/49498/original/49pxcvbr-1401162858.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1166&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/49498/original/49pxcvbr-1401162858.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1166&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Kate Forsyth’s recent historical novel, The Wild Girl.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Random House Australia</span></span>
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<p>My most recent historical novel <a href="http://www.randomhouse.com.au/books/kate-forsyth/the-wild-girl-9781741668506.aspx">The Wild Girl</a> tells the story of the forbidden love affair between <a href="Wilhelm%20Grimm">Wilhelm Grimm</a> and the young woman who told him many of the world’s most beloved fairy tales. The life of the Grimm brothers was well-documented and they wrote many letters and diaries which gave me a sense of both their individual voices and their inner lives.</p>
<p>The inner life of my heroine, <a href="http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Wild-349">Dortchen Wild</a>, was an utter mystery, however. No-one was even sure what year she had been born, let alone what she longed for and feared most. All I had of hers was one letter written as a 13-year-old child confessing her teenage crush on Wilhelm, the handsome but impoverished boy-next-door; and a brief memoir, dictated to her daughter on her death-bed.</p>
<p>Oh, and her stories! I spent months discovering what fairy tales she had told Wilhelm Grimm, and when, then building my novel around them. I knew that Dortchen Wild had told him three extraordinary tales – <a href="http://www.pitt.edu/%7Edash/grimm028.html">The Singing Bone</a>, <a href="http://classiclit.about.com/library/bl-etexts/grimm/bl-grimm-6swans.htm">Six Swans</a> and <a href="http://www.pitt.edu/%7Edash/grimm056.html">Sweetheart Roland</a> – on January 19 1812, in her sister Hanne’s summer house in Nentershausen, which was a day’s journey away from Wilhelm’s home along terrible roads, in the snow. </p>
<p>She told him another dark and violent tale – <a href="http://www.pitt.edu/%7Edash/grimm065.html">All-Kinds-of-Fur</a> – on October 19 1812, only a few days before the first edition of the Grimm brother’s fairy tale collection was typeset. Later Wilhelm was to rewrite this story to give it a happy ending, and compared the story’s heroine to a Wild deer, the capitalisation of the W a clear reference to his beloved’s last name.</p>
<p>From the few facts I had, and from what her choice of stories told me about her, I spun a 500-or-so page novel told totally from Dortchen Wild’s point of view. As often as I could, I put words into the mouths of my characters that they had actually said, in letters or diaries or articles. I studied their actions and tried to understand their motivations. </p>
<p>I learned everything I could about their lives, and then took the known facts and used them as the pegs around which I wove my fancy. All the time, I kept in mind two often opposing necessities: the need to be respectful of the truth as it is known and the need to write an utterly compelling story.</p>
<p>Did I make stuff up? Of course. Did everything that I write about in the novel actually happen? Of course not. Does the novel tell what may have happened, and make it plausible? I think so. I hope so.</p>
<p>I was determined not to change a single known fact about the lives of Wilhelm Grimm and Dortchen Wild, even when it would have made a much better story if I had. One thing I would have changed is how long it took the two of them to overcome all the obstacles in their way and finally get married. 12 years! That’s a long time to sustain sexual tension in a book. </p>
<p>But I need my readers to trust that I am truly bringing the past to life in the best way I know. I want them to feel as if my novel is a time-travel machine that has transported them back to the terrifying years of the Napoleonic Wars, when a young woman named Dortchen Wild told a young man named Wilhelm Grimm some of the most beautiful fairy tales ever told. </p>
<p>Historical fiction deserves this type of attention from the readers and writers who love it.</p>
<p><br></p>
<p><em>Kate Forsyth will be speaking at the <a href="http://ausnzfestival.com/">Australia & New Zealand Festival of Literature and Arts</a> on June 1. She will also feature on the panel discussions <a href="http://ausnzfestival.com/event/historical-writing/">Historical Writing</a> on May 30 and <a href="http://ausnzfestival.com/event/once-upon-a-time-in-oz/">Once Upon a Time in Oz</a> on June 1.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/27206/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kate Forsyth does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Historical fiction is booming. The much-publicised success of Hannah Kent’s Burial Rites, Eleanor Catton’s The Luminaries and Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall is just the tip of the iceberg for a genre that rivals…
Kate Forsyth, DCA candidate, University of Technology Sydney
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.