"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

"Henry VII and the Tudor Pretenders" by Nathen Amin

 Henry Tudor, whose claim to the throne of England was tenuous, spent most of his early life in exile in Brittany and France before landing in England and, within three weeks, overcoming the superior forces of King Richard III to become King Henry VII. Not surprisingly, he never felt perfectly secure on his throne. Conspiracies throughout his reign endeavoured to topple him. Three of the most famous are those of Lambert Simnel, Perkin Warbeck, and Edward, Earl of Essex.

Lambert Simnel was probably the son of a joiner, or organ-maker from Oxford who was taken to Ireland when he was ten years old where he was proclaimed to be Edward, Duke of Warwick, son of George, Duke of Clarence (the brother of Edward IV and Richard III whose rebellious activities during Ed IV's reign got him killed in the Tower) despite the fact that Edward was still alive and living in captivity in the Tower of London (and despite the fact that Clarence had been attaindered following his rebellion so that his son had no legitimate claim on the throne). Little Lambert was crowned in Dublin Cathedral and then brought back to England with an army of Irish and mercenaries which was slaughtered at Stoke Field near Newark.  Lambert himself was captured, confessed, and given a job as a turnspit in the royal kitchens; he later became a falconer. The priest who allegedly groomed young Lambert is a rather mysterious character whose confession is recorded but who seems to have had no independent existence either before or afterwards.

Perkin Warbeck lasted longer. A native of Tournois he travelled, via Portugal, to Ireland. He was a good-looking lad and supposedly the spitting image of Richard, Duke of York, one of the Princes in the Tower, sons of Edward IV, who, it was said, had somehow escaped captivity although his older brother had been murdered. Claiming to be Richard IV, he gained support at the court of the French King Charles VIII and, after Charles had signed a peace treaty with Edward IV, the Burgundian court, before trying to land at Deal in Kent (the advance troops were massacred by locals) and then going, via Ireland, to James IV in Scotland where he got married and accompanied James IV on a border raid towards Berwick but getting cold feet and fleeing back to Edinburgh. He then attempted a landing in Cornwall and mustered rebels, getting as far as Taunton before again fleeing. He surrendered at Beaulieu Abbey and was kept under guard in Henry VII's court before again escaping and being recaptured and flung into the Tower before yet another conspiracy attempted to spring both him and Edward, Earl of Warwick (the real son of Clarence) which got them both executed.

This history focuses on these (and other) plots against Henry VII. There are lots of other details about him and his reign but they are not necessarily in chronological order nor are they very detailed so if you want to learn about him, go elsewhere. But it is well written and a good read and as informative as it can be given the scarcity of reliable sources. It even-handedly considers the possibility that the claimants were genuine rather than imposters. For example, Amin points out the the huge amount of detail in Warbeck's account of his early life compared to the vagueness of his account of how he escaped from the Tower probably means that he was an imposter but could be seen as a well-written but fictional 'manufactured' confession and the fact that it contains discrepancies with other sources could be explained by the vagueness of the times (eg over names) but might suggest fabrication. On the whole, though, he comes down on the 'imposter' side: 

• “This is perhaps the clearest indication of Henry VII’s certainty that Warbeck was not Richard of York, for is there was any doubt in the king’s mind that a legitimate rival to his throne still lived, his death would have been arranged ... by overturning Titulus Regis, the act Richard III passed who de-legitimised Elizabeth of York ... Henry had also re-legitimised her brothers.” (Ch 15)
• “If there is any one indication that Henry VII believed Warbeck and Simnel to be the imposters he claimed they were, then it is in the stark difference between his treatment of them and his treatment of the unfortunate Warwick - confined deep in the Tower, out of sight.” (Ch 16)

But the whole of this history is delightfully murky. For those like me, who are sceptical that Richard III murdered the Princes in the Tower (there is evidence to suggest that it might have been Henry VII), the widespread acceptance of the claims of Simnel and Warbeck suggests that some people, aristocrats as well as commoners, did not believe that the Princes in the Tower were dead. And the idea that a ten year old or a handsome Fleming lad could be touted as possible kings is delightfully romantic.

Good fun. March 2024; 344 pages

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

"The Reckoning" by Charles Nicholl

On Wednesday 30th Mat 1593, the great Elizabethan playwright Christopher Marlowe was stabbed to death by Ingram Frizer; Robert Poley and Nicholas Skeres were also present. This book is one of many attempts to get at the truth behind this event.

All four of the actors in this scene had links with the Elizabethan espionage world. Marlowe had been given a document by the Privy Council exonerating him when Cambridge had attempted to block his MA on the grounds that he was recruiting students to go to Reims where there was a college turning out Catholics for subversive activities; he later probably worked for Sir Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth's spymaster general who used a sting to gather evidence that Mary Queen of Scots supported the assassination of Elizabeth; Marlowe worked for Walsingham's brother Thomas, who was a diplomat and probably gathered intelligence from abroad. Poley was in and out of prison, sometimes probably as cover for his informing activities, at other times possibly to listen to prisoners, and was involved with Throckmorton and with Babington, Catholic plotters against Elizabeth. Skeres was also involved with the Babington plot. Frizer worked for Thomas Walsingham and also, later, the Earl of Essex. All four would have known one another before the meeting and all four probably, as spies do, mistrusted one another.

And Nicholl's thesis is that this world of espionage was responsible for Marlowe's death. He follows various twists and turns within this secret world but this part of the book is so tortuous that I was quickly confused, largely unimpressed and rather bored. In the end, Nicholl concludes, Marlowe was killed because he was associated with Sir Walter Ralegh, who, having fallen from the Queen's favour, was making a nuisance of himself in Parliament and whom the Earl of Essex wished to put down. I'm just not convinced that Marlowe was murdered for this. The fact that the spies were together for eight hours before the murder, eating and drinking together, makes this scenario unlikely. It is even more unlikely when it becomes clear that Poley worked for Robert Cecil who was an opponent of Essex. Why would Poley collaborate with Frizer, even if it were just to cover the crime up?

Furthermore, Nicholls more or less ignores other avenues. Marlowe was reputedly homosexual (he is reported to have quipped: "All they that love not Tobacco and Boys are fools" but this is by yet another lurker on the sidelines of espionage and may be untrue; this writer also accused him of atheism) but Nicholls avoids this dimension to the extent that 'homosexuality', 'sodomy' and 'buggery' do not appear in the index.

There is also very little discussion of Marlowe's plays. This must have been a major part of his life; despite dying at the age of 29 he wrote the best-selling Tamburlaine the Great parts I and II (which I saw in a production by the Lazarus Theatre Company at the Tristan Bates Theatre on Friday 28th August 2015), the Jew of Malta, Edward II, the Massacre at Paris, and his masterpiece,  Dr Faustus. Marlowe's literary work is chronicled in Shakespeare and Co by Stanley Wells; it also tells about the other playwrights in his life such as Thmoas Kyd, author of The Spanish Tragedy, with whom he shared a room and accusations of atheism.

A great book about the Elizabethan world of espionage is The Watchers by Stephen Alford. A fictionalised version of spying for Walsingham is AEW Mason's Fire Over England, a ripping boys' adventure yarn

The late great Anthony Burgess produced a brilliant fictionalised version of Marlowe's life and death in Dead Man at Deptford. This has all the bits that Nicholl has, and more, fictionalised but told with much more coherence.

The brilliance of this book, like The Lodger, also by Nicholl, about Shakespeare, is the meticulous forensic scrutiny of not just the main protagonist but all the other players in the scene; we find out that Frizer the assassin is buried in Eltham having lived into a presumably peaceful old age. But the price for meticulous detail is sometimes readability and this is better as a sholarly work than a general introduction to the topic.

May 2016; 337 pages

"Dark fire" by C. J. Sansom

This is the second of Sansom's Shardlake novels; it follows Dissolution.

Matthew Shardlake is a lawyer practising in Tudor London. He has to defend a young girl accused of pushing her half brother down a well. To gain time on this case, he agrees to investigate an alchemist who claims to have discovered the secrets behind Greek Fire, a flame that burns on water and could be used in naval battles. Murders follow.

This is a fun romp through the London to the background of Henry VIII's marriage problems with Ann of Cleves and the impending fall of Shardlake's boss, Thomas Cromwell. The best character is the bully-boy side-kick, Jack Barak, a grown-up street urchin of Jewish descent. Hunchbacked Shardlake is also interesting but the other characters do not convince. The plot is not the tightest example of the whodunnit genre but it certainly keeps you reading along. The scenery is interesting and there is a thriller element. But the puzzle fails to convince.

OK. I'll read the next one!

August 2014; 576 pages

Also see reviews of other Shardlake novels Dissolution and Heartstone.

"Leviathan" by David Scott

This is a history of England from the Battle of Bosworth which ended the Wars of the Roses and inaugurated the Tudor dynasty in 1485 to the Peace of Paris which ended the American War of Independence in 1783. It therefore charts the rise of Britain from a state riven with internal dissension to the pre-eminent world power. Scott's case seems to be that this was largely the product of luck. England happened to go Protestant because Henry VIII wanted a male heir. The delicate bloom of Protestantism managed to survive because Mary Tudor died young and Elizabeth survived and the Armada failed. Nevertheless, England tore itself apart again in the Stuart Civil Wars and still somehow managed to survive.

And this is where I found Scott's arguments rather weak. It seems to me that Britain had a significant underlying strength, a resilience, which enabled it repeatedly to bounce back. Fundamentally, despite the fact that the monarch was always strapped for cash (except for Henry VIII who extravagantly wasted not only the secure finances bequeathed to him by his father but also the windfall from the Dissolution of the Monasteries), the country seems to have kept wealthy.

The Dutch Republic was the model: it too was wealthy because of trade and because of innovative financial systems such as Banks and joint-stock companies and its wealth enabled it to survive the seventy year rebellion against the much more powerful Spanish and Hapsburgs combined.

Whilst England and Holland were prospering, Spain with all the wealth it looted from the Americas was lurching from bankruptcy to bankruptcy and the dominant militarism of Louis XIV's France bequeathed an equally debt-ridden crown to his successors. But England, although never being a land power, bankrolled troops across the continent, paid for a Navy and (crucially) the on-shore infrastructure to support it, and still made increasing profits from trade.

In summary, despite Scott's apparent attempt to debunk the Whig view of history, he left me thinking that it cannot have been solely luck that saw Britain's rise. Instead, I would suggest, the clearing out of old orders inherent in both the Monastic reforms of Henry VIII and the Cromwellian Republic, and the growth of Protestantism hand-in-hand with literacy led to a social structure in England that was able to innovate, progress and prosper.

This book never really surmounted its essential problem which was that as a history of nearly three hundred years it was spread too thinly. At the same time it was often slow. I found it mostly heavy going.

June 2014; 465 pages

"The Watchers" by Stephen Alford

This is a history of the Elizabethan espionage services. Because Elizabeth I continued her father's breakaway from Roman Catholicism and because she never had a clearly nominated successor there were many attempts to replace her by assassination, coup or invasion. The pope called for her replacement, branding her a heretic and a bastard with no legitimate right to the throne and therefore exonerating in advance any Catholic who might kill her. Mary Queen of Scots, who was for 29 years the next in line for the English throne and who was a member of the ultra-RC Guise family, was the focus for a number of attempts to replace Elizabeth, even when a deposed Queen under quite strict house arrest in England. Philip II of Spain, once King of England as the husband of Elizabeth's elder sister Mary, always threatened even though it was not until 1588 that he managed to launch the Great Armada invasion attempt (and there was a second Armada in 1596 which was wrecked by a storm off Finisterre before the English discovered it was on its way). And there were a number of assassination attempts (though some might have been more due to the zeal of rival intelligence services to discover plots than actual attempts). So there was a need for England to have people involved in what we know call espionage but they then called spiery.

First Sir Francis Walsingham ran a very successful intelligence service which, amongst other things, 'discovered' (or maybe manufactured or provoked) evidence for the Babington Plot in which Mary Queen of Scots appeared to assent to a plot to kill Elizabeth. After his Walsingham's death in 1590 the Earl of Essex and Sir Robert Cecil ran rival intelligence services (Cecil's prevailing and eventually, although this is after the book finishes, preventing the Gunpowder Plot).

This book chronicles the spies who worked for them, decoding ciphers, collecting information, penetrating conspiracies, acting as double agents and agents provacateur and disseminating disinformation. Some of these shadowy spies are working for ideals, others for money, others because they are fascinated by aspects of a life where one is never whom one seems to be. Many of them are turncoats and one often wonders how any spymaster could be certain that his men would not turn their coats a second time.

Alford's book has moments of extraordinary interest, especially when he describes the spies in the shadows. Concentrating on the characters as he tends to does mean that sometimes the narrative is not chronological and it is sometimes a little confusing when he repeatedly returns to an event to describe it again from a different point of view. Furthermore, not all of the spies are as interesting as their colleagues and there are moments when the story drags. I also would have liked more details about the spycraft; it would have been fun to have learned more about the ciphers used (Simon Singh's The Code Book has a fascinating chapter on the Babington code cipher which shows how a technical discussion of code-breaking can be very readable).

Overall, however, Alford's book keeps the interest going and throws light on what must be one of the murkiest areas of history. April 2014; 325 pages

"Spain 1469 - 1714" by Henry Kamen

Spain was unified under the joint monarchy of Ferdinand of Aragon and devout Isabel of Castille. Their rule was so unified that everything was officially done jointly, even if they were apart: one day it was reported that "the king and queen ... gave birth to a daughter". The secret of their monarchy was that they travelled ceaselessly: their mediaeval style of monarchy depended upon the visibility of the monarch(s). In their annus mirabilis of 1492 they completed the Christian reconquest of the peninsula by capturing Granada, they expelled the Jews, and Columbus discovered America on their behalf.

But their only surviving daughter, Juana, had married a Habsburg and was mentally unstable. On the death of her husband she went completely bonkers. So the throne passed to her 17 year old son Charles who was also Holy Roman Emperor and ruler of Naples and the Netherlands. With Spanish America, Spain was now a super-power, although one whose empire was inherited rather than deserved. The heartland of Castille was simply not rich enough to sustain the imperial demands. Gold and Silver from the Americas helped Charles balance the books but a financial disaster was waiting to happen.

When Charles' son Philip (who had once been married to Mary of England) became king he immediately restructured his debts. Although he no longer ruled the Holy Roman Empire, which had been passed to Charles' brother, Philip still ruled the Netherlands which now revolted. The costs of fighting this rebellion spiralled. Despite adding Portugal to his realm (another dynastic inheritance although one he had t, briefly, fight for) Philip went bankrupt. More than once. The destruction of the Spanish Armada didn't help.

Financial instability continued under his heirs; the country continued to decline. The last Habsburg king was the victim of genetic in-breeding: his jaw protruded so much that he found it difficult to eat and he was probably infertile and possibly impotent. He had no legitimate heirs of his own body so he bequeathed the throne to the French Dauphin and so started the War of Spanish Succession. This ended with the loss of most of the rest of Spain's European possessions so the new Bourbon dynasty was able to concentrate on rebuilding the land.

Thus a patchwork of mediaeval states became an accidental empire which declined into a nation state. This fascinating tale rarely flags. There is so much of interest; much is relevant today. The concept of convivienza, for example, in which Spanish Moors and Jews coexisted with the Catholic population was replaced with the racist limpieza de sangre (cleanliness of blood); even converted Moslems and Jews were persecuted. The medieval monarchy was based upon personal rule but the Hapsburg Empire had to develop bureaucratic and ministerial rule. And a country receiving previously unheard of wealth from the New World plunged into debt and inflation.

A wonderful tale, well told. August 2013; 275 pages

"Golden Lads" by Daphne du Maurier

The famous novelist does fact rather than fiction. This is the first part of the biography of Anthony and Francis Bacon. Written in the 1970s, Ms du Maurier brings her story-writing skills into the telling of history, creating characters and speculating on feelings while marshalling her material into a clear plot-line.

Wordsworth stated the "the child is father of the man" and Ian Mortimer in The Perfect King has suggested that "childhood is the most important" stage in life and therefore essential to a biography even though the early years are least likely to be well-documented. This biography starts on page one with their mother, Ann. She was a remarkable, a formidable, woman! Intensely protestant, she became a minor best-seller in Calvinist circles for her translations of Italian sermons. Fanatically protestant, her letters to her sons repeatedly warn them of the dangers of Roman Catholicism lurking in every foreigner and anyone else who might not conform to her strict ideals. Instead she insists that they behave in accordance with her highly limited and puritanical code. She moaned a lot! Not that it seems to have done any good at all.

Anthony spent most of his young life abroad, especially in France, mingling with Papists and fondling young pages. There is evidence that his Romish connections may have been because he was spying on behalf of Walsingham. There is also evidence that he probably was homosexual: he broke off an early engagement and never subsequently married, there are a number of reports about the young boys, and while in France he was accused of sodomy and only escaped being burned alive by the intervention of the future Henri IV of France.

Back in Britain he was more circumspect, at least in this respect. Becoming spymaster to the Earl of Essex was not in hindsight a brilliant career move. The Earl repeatedly fell out with Queen Elizabeth, once being placed under house arrest for laying his hand upon his sword after she boxed his ears for turning his ack on her and finally being executed for treason following an abortive coup.

Meanwhile Francis spent most of these years as a lawyer. He redeemed himself (and his brother?) following the fall of Essex by being part of the prosecution team at the Earl's trial. This despite the Earl repeatedly trying (although failing) to help him in his career: many historians have seen this as base ingratitude on the part of Francisd although it might have just been his way of extrication the Bacon brothers from the tricky situation in which the anyway-doomed Earl had already placed them.

Du Maurier highlights the crazy way in which Elizabethan finances worked. Both Bacon brothers spent huge amounts of their own money in pursuit of their patron's interests. Anthony paid many of Essex's spies from his own pocket; he also subsidised his brother because Francis had inherited nothing from their father. As a result of both brothers' expenses, they had to borrow, top mortgage and to sell much of their inheritance. This draw predictable and repeated complaints from their mother who was expected to live from the income of at least some of these properties; clearly this income dwindled with time. The Bacon's were not alone. The great Walsingham died in poverty because he had pauperised himself running and paying for Elizabeth's secret service. Given she escaped repeated assassination attempts and plots against her life and throne, this does seem somewhat ungrateful of her.

One thing that really annoyed me about this book is du Maurier's habit of quoting in French and Latin without offering a translation. I have ranted about this before! It seems to me that the author is saying: 'I am fluent in foreign languages and if you aren't then perhaps you are too stupid to read my book'. I beg all future editors not to allow this practice.

Despite this flaw, this is an interesting tale, engagingly told. I read it in a single sitting (albeit I was a captive audience on a ten hour flight to Cuba not forgetting the two hour train ride to the airport and the two hours sitting in the departures lounge).  It was particularly illuminating about Anthony, of whom I had not previously heard.

August 2013; 260 pages

Also considering Francis Bacon is Lytton Strachey's double biography of Elizabeth and Essex

"Winter King" by Thomas Penn

This fascinating biography of Henry VII focuses on the years between 1500 and his death in 1509. This was the time when Henry, having fought his way to the throne and married Elizabeth of York to legitimise his issue, suffered the twin succession crises of losing his first born and his queen leaving a very young Henry VIII (still only 17 when he ascended in 1509) as heir at a time when father to son succession had not occurred for nearly a century and with the Plantagenet pretender de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk, waiting abroad.

And Henry VII became the richest monarch in Europe through tax avoidance (he smuggled Venetian alum to circumvent the papal monopoly) and extortion (by accusing almost anyone of trumped up crimes and then either fining them or binding them over in excessive sums).

A fascinating and compelling portrait of one of England's lesser known (and least charismatic) kings. 

But I so wanted to lerarn about the first half of the reign. After the Battle of Bosworth in 1485, Henry had to reunite the country still reeling from the divisive Wars of the Roses. His own claim on the throne was marginal (Henry V's widow, ex Princess of France, had married her household steward). So how did he persuade everyone to follow him? This story deserves to be told.

Quotes: 

• John Skelton exhorted us to "Love poets: athletes are two a penny but patrons of the arts are rare."
• Henry VIII's tutor Lord Mountjoy lived near Greenwich Palace at Sayes Court (later lived in my John Evelyne, Admiral Benbow and briefly Czar Peter the Great)
• Lady Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry VII, lived at Collyweston Palace near Kettering
• Henry VII confiscated Ampthill from the Earl of Kent because Kent was in debt here there and everywhere and mismanaging his lands
• Another compulsory purchase was Hanworth which he made into a palace. 
• Catherine of Aragon's wedding procession (to Henry VIII) went [ast the Cardinal's Hat Tavern near where the Globe now is.

A wonderful, beautifully written book. April 2012; 378 pages