VIII

so I needed to find sixteenth-century maps of London. For the sword fighting, I read as much on the subject as I could find – there’s a wonderful book called English Martial Arts by Terry Brown that was especially helpful. But I also wanted to know what it felt like to face up to a real opponent – so I started martial arts lessons.
    I spent many hours glued to a website called British History Online (www.british-history.ac.uk) – it has fantastic quantities of original documents; you can read letters, accounts, ambassadors’ reports (some of them deliciously gossipy!) and dispatches. But even so, my book list was enormous: I read psychology books, biographies of Henry, books on his palaces, his clothes, his government, his army manoeuvres in France, plus the wonderful huge inventory that survives of all his possessions at his death – it’s utterly fascinating stuff. It’s especially fascinating to see from the inventory that, in his palaces, there were cupboards stuffed with old, worn-out and broken things, not just the new and the sumptuous. He still had belongings confiscated from old friends he’d had executed. He still had a robe that was his brother Arthur’s. No doubt he kept some things for sentimental reasons, as most of us do. And many of the items set me thinking – the cap-badge bearing the words Tristis Victima that appears in Part Four, Chapter XVII, for example, was prominent in this list of possessions at his death. It gave me a shiver; it seemed to me so apt for one aspect of his self-image.
• How much of what happens in VIII is fact and how much is fiction?
     
    As you might guess from my answer to the last question, I’ve tried to be as historically accurate as possible. My training as a historian makes this very important to me. Of course, I am telling a story, and I have had to imagine what it felt like to be Henry, what thoughts were in his head – but beyond that, I’ve used evidence from the time everywhere I can, down to the smallest detail. Very nearly every object you see is mentioned in an inventory somewhere, for example. I’ve worked reports of real conversations into the dialogue, and used surviving evidence as the basis for descriptions. The details of the tournaments are almost all taken from the time, though I’ve sometimes changed who is taking part, as otherwise the book’s cast of characters would have become too huge!
• You’ve portrayed Henry’s relationship with his father in an interesting light. What led you to it?
     
    When I look at the adult Henry and the extraordinary things he did, the decisions he took – other kings failed to have sons, for example, without reacting so devastatingly – the question for me is: what shaped this personality? What was it, early on, that constructed his emotional circuit board, if you like, and made him react as he did? So I looked at his childhood… and his relationship with his parents is fascinating to think about, particularly because of their own traumatic past.
    The years before Henry’s birth were years of bloody struggle – the Wars of the Roses. Both of his parents were profoundly and very personally affected by the violence and upheaval, there’s no question of that – but, as to the exact lasting emotional effects on them, that’s an area for speculation. How did Henry’s mother feel about her young brothers who had apparently been murdered? How was his father affected by being on the run for so many years and then winning the crown in battle? It’s easy to say that last phrase, but when you think about the reality of it – the carnage, the murder of the previous king, and the possibility that the same thing could happen again, which was a very real danger – well, then the effect not only on Henry’s father but on Henry himself becomes a very interesting question to ponder.
• What’s next?
     
    Ah, I’m writing about an equally fascinating subject now! And in a way it’s a sequel. It’s a book about Henry’s two daughters, who both became queens: Mary I and Elizabeth I. They’re half-sisters, and much of what happens to them is a shared experience: each is born heir to the throne, a fêted princess; each is then declared illegitimate and loses her title and status. Each loses her mother in heart-rending circumstances caused directly by her father – and yet each comes to revere Henry and identify herself with him.
    But, though so much is similar, the way Mary and Elizabeth react to