"Graven with Diamonds" by Nicola Shulman

 

A biography of Thomas Wyatt, twice sent to the Tower by Henry VIII and the man who introduced the sonnet to England. Winner of the 2011 Writer's Guild Award as best non-Fiction book.

Subtitled: The many lives of Thomas Wyatt: Poet, Lover, Statesman, and Spy in the Court of Henry VIII.

He must have been a remarkable man and his life is well-told by this very readable biography. A nice feature is the use of his poetry to explain what he might have been thinking as he took part in some of the momentous events of Henry VIII's reign, including the rise and fall of Anne Boleyn - was Wyatt one of her lovers or did he betray those who might have been?

She writes very well (“This was a time of immense change, when medieval values mingled with those of the inpouring Renaissance humanism in varying degrees of emulsification.”; Ch 1) and explains the historical contexts clearly, usually - but not always - explaining any archaic words.

I'd have liked more about the poetry: he was the first to use Italian forms such as the "eight-line strambotto and terza rima, as well as the Petrachan sonnet" (Ch 5) But I can't really complain because Shulman is quite explicit that her work is focused on the man, not the history of poetic techniques.

I was left wanting to know more about the poetry and some of the minor but fascinating characters in Wyatt's drama.

Selected quotes:

• “Kent was a turbulent region, sensitively located between London and continental Europe.” (Ch 1)
• “C S Lewis’s sense of humour is arguably his own weak point. There is only one joke in the Narnia books.” (Ch 1) What is it? I feel I should have been told!
• “Baldly put, Skelton believed that old texts and deep matters could be best understood through studying the commentaries of wise men, accumulated over centuries; Erasmus and Mountjoy respected these mediations as much as a picture conservator respects crude overpainting and yellow varnish on some fresh, delicate panel.” (Ch 2)
• “Wyatt has invoked the possibility of unconditional love and with that, he exits the Middle Ages. He leaves behind the medieval lover, that industrious model of masculinity who must always be doing something ... He becomes an inward man whose feedings towards women are not expressed by a series of prescribed, public actions but communed in tunnels of intimacy, from heart to open heart.” (Ch 9)
• “This was of interest ... for reasons beyond prurient curiosity: the arrested men were all in possession of extensive lands and offices, now about to come up for redistribution under the treason laws.” (Ch 12)
• “Descriptions of diplomatic heroism rose in inverse relation to diplomatic successes, as Henry's legates, whose missions were often doomed to failure through no fault of their own, pressed for the introduction of an effort grade as well as one for achievement.” (Ch 19)

May 2025, 355 pages
First published in the UK by Short Books in 2011
My Steerforth Press paperback was the first US edition and was issued in 2013

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God