Books, Books Books...

This is going to be a bit of a strange post, as it's not just one, but four, simultaneous book reviews.  It'll make sense, I hope, because the books in question are not entirely unrelated.   And I might just drag a fifth book into it for good measure!

As I've probably mentioned, I've been chugging my way  through a massive backlist of fiction and non-fiction books by alternating one with the other.  I'm now only about three years behind, with ten books in the fiction list and 40 (only 40) in the non-fiction, though I haven't helped the situation by adding a further 8 non-fiction books from the Oxbow Bargain Bucket to the pile(s)...

You'd expect this reading matter to be quite eclectic, considering my interests are so varied.  But strangely enough, there's been a recurring theme this year, in that the books in question seem to be weighed heavily towards the life and times of the Tudor kings and queens...

My father once managed to buy a cheap job lot of books about the English kings and queens, but the one volume he omitted from the series was the one I really wanted to read, on Henry VII.  Thankfully, I was able to get hold of it in a second hand book shop (Henry VII, by Neville Williams, Book Club Associates, 1973) and I've now finally got around to reading it.  Now, Henry VII was always a bit of a mystery to me.  I'd come across him as a rather distant figure in Scots History (James IV seemed to enjoying bugging him in various ways), and let's face it, he's not exactly one of history's more glamorous and arresting figures.  Now, I make no secret of the fact that I LOATHE Henry VIII ('how can you?' asked my colleague The Classicist yesterday.  'He's Jonathan Rhys Myers. He's gorgeous.' I reminded her that in reality Henry was a fat, superating, smelly tyrant, but she just shrugged and said, 'That's history.  That's not the TV series.'  Hmmmm), but I have to admit that as English monarchs go, I've got a lot of time for Henry VII.  Simpsons fans will remember the song 'We are the Mediocre Presidents' - if there was an English Kings version, Henry VII would top the list.  Cautious, pragmatic, and reasonable, he's the antithesis of his bombastic son.   Neville Williams' work was a comprehensive and copiously illustrated, though probably unremarkable, account of an unremarkable king, and it helped fill the blanks somewhat.

Following swiftly on from that was Chronicles of the Tudor Kings, a glossy coffee table volume combining a series of essays by numerous authors from various respected British uni's, including UCL, Cambridge, Oxford, St Andrews, Glasgow, etc., drawn together under the editorship of David Loades (Salamander, 2002).  At £30, this is not the kind of volume I normally buy (I reserve such money for more academic tomes), but since it was going for a tenner  in the Borders sale, I went for it!

It's proved to be an extremely useful book, and I wish I'd had it on my shelves when I first started writing historical fiction set at the end of the fifteenth century.  It's really two books in one: it combines excerpts from contemporary accounts (authors as diverse as Edward IV and Thomas 'Call Me' Wriothesley) with a series of small, bite-size panels detailing various aspects of everyday and court life of the period, ranging from food and cooking, to the role of women, to overall summaries of English military and diplomatic activities in the wider world.  It is completely anglocentric, which wasn't a problem as far as I was concerned, because I acquired this volume precisely because I wanted to get my head round English history of the time.  It's just a shame we don't have anything similar for Scotland... 

It's probably best to take a pick 'n mix approach to this book, as trying to read it as a conventional narrative is irritating, as you're always trying to flick back and forth between sections.  But I did notice one little klangeroo which made me wince - the account of the Battle of Flodden was detailed in 1512, instead of 1513.  Either the author of that particular account was a skilled clairvoyant, or the editor was snoozing the day he read that part of the MS...  Still, it's a good introduction to the period, and I'd recommend it.  Its copious use of pictures also helps you realise how much the world changes through the reign of Henry VIII.  Early portraits of Henry are executed in a very naive 'medieval' way, but by the end of his reign, we're looking at the superb naturalistic works of Holbein. 

And now to fiction...  I like a good piece of historical fiction, but I find it incredibly hard to find anything that, hand on heart, I can really say I enjoyed reading.  So often, historical fiction seems to be written, or recounted, rather than experienced.  Earlier this year, I read Mary Queen of Scotland and the Isles, by Margaret George (Macmillan, 1992).  It was beautifully written, and flawlessly researched, but it suffered from precisely that problem.  As did The Sixth Wife, by Jean Plaidy, which chronicled the marriage between Henry VIII and Katherine Parr. 

Now, in yet another foray through a second hand book shop, I found Fatal Majesty by Reay Tannahill and sprang upon it.  I once read The World, The Flesh and the Devil by Tannahill and loved it, and while I wasn't so keen on her Richard III book, I was eager to see how she'd tackled the Mary Queen of Scots problem.  I'm now halfway through and loving it.  It really hits the spot, and what's more, the narrative voice has a darkly humorous edge which manifests itself from time to to time.

It's a gem of a book., which devotees of historical fiction set in Scotland really must put on their 'To Read' list, but it still doesn't quite hit my No. 1 15th/16th Century Novel Of All Time off the spot.  This is, of course, Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel. It's made such an impact on me that now every time I watch The Tudors or read books about this period (including The Sixth Wife and Chronicles of The Tudor Kings} I always think of Thomas Wriothesley as 'Call Me Risley'!

And if that's not a sign of a good book, I don't know what is!

One last aside...  In case you're shaking your heads in despair because I'm such a stingy parsimonious skinflint when it comes to buying books...  There's a book I want, that I really, really want, and I'm wondering how I can possibly justify saving up to buy it.  It's Early Celtic Art in the British Isles by Jope, I think it comes in a two volume set and I have it on very good authority that it's the definitive modern account of the subject. Which is one close to my heart, I must confess.  Trouble is....   It costs between £175 and £250!!!!!!   Aaarghhhh!!!!!!  And hey, it's not exactly likely to make it onto the Oxbow bargain bucket list - it's the kind of volume that people will buy as an investment and it'll be changing hands for £800 pounds before you know it.

I think I'd better start saving up.  I'm a sucker for a neatly engraved La Tene mirror or an enamelled crescentic terret.  Stead's cute picture guide from the British Museum is nice enough, but it doesn't quite do the trick.  I'm one of these saddos that likes nothing better than to leaf through a vast corpus, ooh'ing and ah' ing over page after page of inked line drawings of virtually identical snaffle bits and terrets.  Some might say I've got a taste for prehistoric metalwork porn, but I don't care!

Books, Books Books...

This is going to be a bit of a strange post, as it's not just one, but four, simultaneous book reviews.  It'll make sense, I hope, because the books in question are not entirely unrelated.   And I might just drag a fifth book into it for good measure!

As I've probably mentioned, I've been chugging my way  through a massive backlist of fiction and non-fiction books by alternating one with the other.  I'm now only about three years behind, with ten books in the fiction list and 40 (only 40) in the non-fiction, though I haven't helped the situation by adding a further 8 non-fiction books from the Oxbow Bargain Bucket to the pile(s)...

You'd expect this reading matter to be quite eclectic, considering my interests are so varied.  But strangely enough, there's been a recurring theme this year, in that the books in question seem to be weighed heavily towards the life and times of the Tudor kings and queens...

My father once managed to buy a cheap job lot of books about the English kings and queens, but the one volume he omitted from the series was the one I really wanted to read, on Henry VII.  Thankfully, I was able to get hold of it in a second hand book shop (Henry VII, by Neville Williams, Book Club Associates, 1973) and I've now finally got around to reading it.  Now, Henry VII was always a bit of a mystery to me.  I'd come across him as a rather distant figure in Scots History (James IV seemed to enjoying bugging him in various ways), and let's face it, he's not exactly one of history's more glamorous and arresting figures.  Now, I make no secret of the fact that I LOATHE Henry VIII ('how can you?' asked my colleague The Classicist yesterday.  'He's Jonathan Rhys Myers. He's gorgeous.' I reminded her that in reality Henry was a fat, superating, smelly tyrant, but she just shrugged and said, 'That's history.  That's not the TV series.'  Hmmmm), but I have to admit that as English monarchs go, I've got a lot of time for Henry VII.  Simpsons fans will remember the song 'We are the Mediocre Presidents' - if there was an English Kings version, Henry VII would top the list.  Cautious, pragmatic, and reasonable, he's the antithesis of his bombastic son.   Neville Williams' work was a comprehensive and copiously illustrated, though probably unremarkable, account of an unremarkable king, and it helped fill the blanks somewhat.

Following swiftly on from that was Chronicles of the Tudor Kings, a glossy coffee table volume combining a series of essays by numerous authors from various respected British uni's, including UCL, Cambridge, Oxford, St Andrews, Glasgow, etc., drawn together under the editorship of David Loades (Salamander, 2002).  At £30, this is not the kind of volume I normally buy (I reserve such money for more academic tomes), but since it was going for a tenner  in the Borders sale, I went for it!

It's proved to be an extremely useful book, and I wish I'd had it on my shelves when I first started writing historical fiction set at the end of the fifteenth century.  It's really two books in one: it combines excerpts from contemporary accounts (authors as diverse as Edward IV and Thomas 'Call Me' Wriothesley) with a series of small, bite-size panels detailing various aspects of everyday and court life of the period, ranging from food and cooking, to the role of women, to overall summaries of English military and diplomatic activities in the wider world.  It is completely anglocentric, which wasn't a problem as far as I was concerned, because I acquired this volume precisely because I wanted to get my head round English history of the time.  It's just a shame we don't have anything similar for Scotland... 

It's probably best to take a pick 'n mix approach to this book, as trying to read it as a conventional narrative is irritating, as you're always trying to flick back and forth between sections.  But I did notice one little klangeroo which made me wince - the account of the Battle of Flodden was detailed in 1512, instead of 1513.  Either the author of that particular account was a skilled clairvoyant, or the editor was snoozing the day he read that part of the MS...  Still, it's a good introduction to the period, and I'd recommend it.  Its copious use of pictures also helps you realise how much the world changes through the reign of Henry VIII.  Early portraits of Henry are executed in a very naive 'medieval' way, but by the end of his reign, we're looking at the superb naturalistic works of Holbein. 

And now to fiction...  I like a good piece of historical fiction, but I find it incredibly hard to find anything that, hand on heart, I can really say I enjoyed reading.  So often, historical fiction seems to be written, or recounted, rather than experienced.  Earlier this year, I read Mary Queen of Scotland and the Isles, by Margaret George (Macmillan, 1992).  It was beautifully written, and flawlessly researched, but it suffered from precisely that problem.  As did The Sixth Wife, by Jean Plaidy, which chronicled the marriage between Henry VIII and Katherine Parr. 

Now, in yet another foray through a second hand book shop, I found Fatal Majesty by Reay Tannahill and sprang upon it.  I once read The World, The Flesh and the Devil by Tannahill and loved it, and while I wasn't so keen on her Richard III book, I was eager to see how she'd tackled the Mary Queen of Scots problem.  I'm now halfway through and loving it.  It really hits the spot, and what's more, the narrative voice has a darkly humorous edge which manifests itself from time to to time.

It's a gem of a book., which devotees of historical fiction set in Scotland really must put on their 'To Read' list, but it still doesn't quite hit my No. 1 15th/16th Century Novel Of All Time off the spot.  This is, of course, Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel. It's made such an impact on me that now every time I watch The Tudors or read books about this period (including The Sixth Wife and Chronicles of The Tudor Kings} I always think of Thomas Wriothesley as 'Call Me Risley'!

And if that's not a sign of a good book, I don't know what is!

One last aside...  In case you're shaking your heads in despair because I'm such a stingy parsimonious skinflint when it comes to buying books...  There's a book I want, that I really, really want, and I'm wondering how I can possibly justify saving up to buy it.  It's Early Celtic Art in the British Isles by Jope, I think it comes in a two volume set and I have it on very good authority that it's the definitive modern account of the subject. Which is one close to my heart, I must confess.  Trouble is....   It costs between £175 and £250!!!!!!   Aaarghhhh!!!!!!  And hey, it's not exactly likely to make it onto the Oxbow bargain bucket list - it's the kind of volume that people will buy as an investment and it'll be changing hands for £800 pounds before you know it.

I think I'd better start saving up.  I'm a sucker for a neatly engraved La Tene mirror or an enamelled crescentic terret.  Stead's cute picture guide from the British Museum is nice enough, but it doesn't quite do the trick.  I'm one of these saddos that likes nothing better than to leaf through a vast corpus, ooh'ing and ah' ing over page after page of inked line drawings of virtually identical snaffle bits and terrets.  Some might say I've got a taste for prehistoric metalwork porn, but I don't care!