00:08:40.080But I did something with the girl that you have to read the book to find out anyway.
00:08:45.180Well, no, exactly. And that's where I was thinking, like, how can we carefully talk about your books without, which are based on history, but without spoiling things, especially because you're looking at figures who are not quite as well known.
00:08:56.980So the Agincourt Bride and the Tudor Bride, those are the two about her.
00:09:01.900And then your next duology was Cecily Neville was the main character.
00:09:29.400I mean, she was a brilliant character to write because there was so much about her that was actually recorded,
00:09:35.940which is very unusual for for women very hard to find you know records in in research
00:09:43.240that will fulfill you know a major novel about them um and then quite a bit of making up0.96
00:09:51.440sometimes has to go in which which i love doing anyway but um you know that's where the historian
00:09:58.080The true historians, in inverted commas, tend to downplay historical fiction because they don't believe it's really history.
00:10:09.100But that's where I think figures like this, where there's not enough history, to maybe write a traditional nonfiction biography about them.
00:10:15.340But the story has so many elements that makes them ideal for fiction.
00:10:18.880And that's the way you can make them better known, share their stories.
00:10:22.580Please. And this, I mean, I think Cicely was always pretty well known.
00:10:28.560She was from a very high ranking aristocratic family from the north of England.
00:10:34.540And she was the youngest of 22 children.
00:14:10.400No, it's another find that I made when I was doing my research, obviously.
00:14:15.100And I discovered her because she turned up in the household of the mother of King Henry VII, became King Henry VII.
00:14:26.180His mother, of course, was Margaret Beaufort.
00:14:28.740Her name was Margaret Beaufort, and she was married, actually, to Edmund Tudor.
00:14:35.380And that's where the link to the Tudors goes through.
00:14:38.780So that her son, the only one she had at age 13, was a Tudor.
00:14:43.780that's where the Tudor name came into the English throne really I'd like to point out that the
00:14:52.580protagonist in those two books about the Wars of the Roses were men and then I came out of those
00:15:00.160and out of Margaret Beaufort's household came this girl who was called Joan Vaux and I didn't
00:15:08.540really think about her to start with i just thought oh she's you know she's um looking after
00:15:12.940elizabeth of york who was supposed to marry or he did marry henry the seventh and there was a time
00:15:19.020when she was living with margaret beaufort um and waiting to marry henry the seventh and that's
00:15:26.780really the start of the first book she's found in in margaret beaufort's house um as elizabeth of
00:15:35.340York's companion and maid really um and her name is Joan Valks and Joan Valks turns out to be the
00:15:46.580most incredible character I mean she you know you couldn't make it up in any way it's all real I
00:15:53.900mean she has all her all that I write about her in my fiction practically all of it is real it
00:16:01.040actually happened. And so that was great. But I also added a few things in just to make it a bit
00:16:10.160more exciting. So Joan Fawkes became Lady Guildford, Lady Joan Guildford. When she married, she was
00:16:19.740almost forced to marry this man called Richard Guildford, Sir Richard Guildford. He was a knight
00:16:25.600of henry the seventh court and he was a very close friend of henry the seventh and had
00:16:33.200several very important posts that he he operated in in the court so um he he was an important figure
00:16:41.760and um because elizabeth of york after she married henry the seventh wanted joan to be in
00:16:50.340one of her close companions and and ladies-in-waiting but she couldn't be a lady-in-waiting
00:16:56.340unless she had a title she was either the daughter of a of a title family or she had married a knight
00:17:05.680at least and so she was although she she really didn't want to get married at all
00:17:10.900she had to marry in order to be um this lady-in-waiting to queen elizabeth of yore0.69
00:17:17.560Could you talk about, sorry, sorry to interrupt, but I just want to make sure that you discuss also why she didn't want to get married, how educated she was, what her background.
00:17:30.620Well, we could start at the beginning of her life because this is what these two books are about.
00:17:36.200And her life, I mean, she's a remarkable woman because actually she lived until she was 75 or 76, which is remarkable for a woman in that period.
00:17:47.560And so she covered a lot of the Tudor ground, and she remained very important in the Tudor court and in the Tudor story,
00:17:57.040mostly through the women, because she was a lady-in-waiting, as I said.
00:18:02.120She became lady-in-waiting to Queen Elizabeth of York and a very close friend of hers.
00:18:08.500and having married this Sir Richard Guilford,
00:18:29.040because it meant that at least we knew who he was0.66
00:18:33.540as opposed to all the Henrys that were around him.
00:18:35.500Anyway, that's a side story. But the amazing thing about her was her education. And we don't know where she was born because her mother was Italian and her mother came into the country in the household of Queen Marguerite, as I call her, Queen Marguerite of Anjou, who was married to King Henry VI.0.99
00:19:01.700and she came in through her court with her mother.
00:19:07.040So her mother married one of the knights in that court
00:19:11.760and so she was able to be called an English citizen
00:19:16.520because she was born in England to a woman who was also Italian
00:19:23.440but was living and married to an Englishman.
00:19:26.960and so there she is in the court of Henry VI
00:21:22.760but her mother was really almost attached in skin to Queen Marguerite
00:21:29.660and wouldn't leave her and couldn't leave her.
00:21:31.740I mean, Marguerite was desperate because her husband was,
00:21:35.820she didn't know where he was, but he was in the Tower of London.
00:21:38.940And her son, the Prince Edward that she had had with him, who was supposed to be the next king of England, had died on the battlefield as well.
00:21:47.320So she was fraught and she was taken to the Tower of London as a prisoner and begged Catherine Vaux, Joan's mother, to come with her.
00:21:59.500so she ended up in the Tower of London and Joan ended up in Margaret Beaufort's house
00:22:08.860household because Margaret Beaufort was still in London and just about hanging on to some sort of
00:22:16.500life because Edward IV was on the throne so during that period she learned English quite
00:22:22.860obviously because everybody was speaking English and she also learned Latin because
00:22:27.920There was a fantastic library in Margaret Beaufort's house, and it was filled with books.
00:22:34.120And most of the books were in Latin because that was the educational and collegiate and court language of Europe.
00:23:56.460Kingdoms were reduced to cinders, and armies scattered like bones in the dust.
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00:25:26.900And just the idea of growing up in the house of little Margaret Beaufort, who is such an interesting and smart woman, like just thinking what the influence of that would be.
00:25:38.480she would have the ability to educate herself in a way that so many other young women just
00:25:46.540wouldn't have but also not just book learning but just kind of learning how to behave in a court
00:25:51.500you know how to be resilient all those things that margaret beaufort was really known for
00:25:55.640she did indeed and that that was a great help to her and she was margaret beaufort was very fond
00:26:01.500of her too and and very fond of her mother and they were best friends because they'd served
00:26:06.860marguerite of anjou when they were in her court years before so they were friends and there's
00:26:15.060you know all these links in the courts of that at that time were quite interesting um so but but
00:26:21.980if you're following joan i mean joan was once she had married uh into um the sort of royal
00:26:30.200situation. She could become a lady-in-waiting as she was Lady Guildford, Lady Joan Guildford.
00:26:38.500And she also, because of this, had an apartment in the Tower of London. So Sir Richard Guildford
00:26:46.080had this house in the Tower of London, so Joan was able to live with him there because he was
00:26:53.160the master of ordnance and armaments, which was the king's, obviously, one of his main
00:26:58.860um appointments it's very important when you're trying to hold on to your throne
00:27:04.680to have a good a good man in that position so um they lived in a house in the tower of london
00:27:12.360and that's why the first book of these two is called the lady of the ravens because as we all
00:27:18.700know um the ravens were a very important part of the uh tower of london's life um and it was there
00:27:27.920It was believed by the locals in London that if the ravens left the tower, the tower would fall, and so would the kingdom.
00:27:37.360So, you know, the whole point of having the ravens there was to keep them there for this reason.
00:27:44.440And Joan became very fond of them anyway.
00:27:46.700That's all in the book, so if anyone's interested, they can read it.
00:27:51.040But the one thing I did find very enjoyable was researching the ravens in the tower.
00:27:58.520And I went and visited the raven master, who is a man, a very nice man indeed.
00:28:06.160And he has written his own book. His name is Chris Scaife.
00:28:10.660And he has written his own book about the ravens.
00:28:13.740But he very kindly showed me all their tricks and things.
00:28:17.740And I had a great time in the Tower of London.
00:28:20.460I want to say, sorry, just to the listeners, having read The Lady of the Ravens, I can tell that you interacted with the actual ravens, the writing about them.
00:28:30.320It's very interesting and lots of interesting details.
00:28:33.720Well, they mostly come from Chris Cave.
00:28:38.960So anyway, so there she was set up in her Tower of London.
00:28:43.320And as a result of this, serving the Queen as well, that was difficult because, I mean, the Queen travels around the country.
00:28:51.900She had to go with her. She wasn't always with her husband.
00:28:55.120They had a very sort of patchy marriage, but it seemed to work vaguely.
00:29:00.140He also grew very fond of her, but he'd already had six children by his first wife.
00:29:05.140He was an older man. And he had properties down in Kent.
00:29:13.320And it was a nice, another nice piece of research that I was able to do to go to Kent and to look at the places in which they lived and where they own, which they own.
00:29:26.220But there was one house that I was particularly interested in because it had actually belonged to Joan, not to her husband, but to Joan.
00:29:35.840And it turned out that he had actually given it to her the year after their wedding because he had admired ability to look after his six children and and be his wife.
00:29:50.780And he found he this was her reward. He gave her this house. It was a manor and the manor that went with it.
00:29:57.820And so that proved very important later on in her life when she needed it. That came in the second book.
00:30:05.840Well, my question actually is, when you finished the first one, did you know you were going to do a second one about her?
00:30:13.240Yes. Yes, I did, because I knew that there was a big story there.
00:30:17.980Yeah, it was impossible not to to do two books because they were so different.
00:30:24.380I mean, I think, you know, the book where she actually is at the court and the court is straining against all these conspiracies against the new king, because Henry VII, of course, came in and nobody knew who he was.
00:30:43.180I mean, who is this Tudor man who's just suddenly sat on the throne?
00:30:45.960You know, it was a very difficult time in that court.
00:30:50.500And when he married Elizabeth, there was a lot of Yorkist thought that she should be the queen, not him, the king.
00:31:14.880But also her son, her own son, who she managed to have and never had another, sadly, another child.
00:31:22.200But she had an appointment because of her connections in the nursery of the king's family, which was in Elton Palace, which is just outside London.
00:31:35.800And she became governess to the girls who were born to the king's marriage.
00:31:41.560and that was another sort of angle for her importance in the court
00:31:48.700and her son went with her and became a very close friend of the next king
00:31:55.140we didn't know it was going to be him then but it was Henry VIII eventually
00:32:00.340and so he was a good close friend of Henry VIII's
00:32:03.300which was pretty well made Joan important as well
00:32:10.300And because she was so educated and spoke all these languages,
00:32:15.560she met Erasmus, who was the important scholar of Europe at the time,
00:32:21.040and came into England and wanted to visit the children of the king
00:32:26.220to see how their education was and what they were representing.
00:32:32.700And he met Joan there, and he found her very interesting
00:32:36.880and spoke long with her on the two visits that he made
00:32:40.880and wrote later to tell the world that this had happened.
00:32:47.160So that, again, was an important bit of research
00:33:30.480i was just thinking when i was reading the books and then later just quickly reading a bit about
00:33:36.040her historical biography i mean what a gift to you as a writer of historical fiction all the
00:33:40.840situations she lived through just one after another like and the fact that she maintained
00:33:46.520her importance and her role really speaks to how valued she was how trusted she was but just the
00:33:52.420amount like you get into again i don't want to spoil the books but there's so much happening
00:33:57.760in that royal court and she's right there and she would have been in real life yes and that was what
00:34:03.400so so marvelous to discover because because as you say it hadn't really been shown and the funny
00:34:09.780thing is that um Holbein you know came into the court of Henry VIII and painted all these paintings
00:34:15.640of people and there is a painting um of Joan Guildford among them but it's not Joan it's it's
00:34:23.840actually the the the wife of her son oh um sadly uh you know because a lot of people think that
00:34:31.600that is joan and i'm very happy to be able to tell the world that it isn't because actually
00:34:35.860she's not very beautiful and and not not and i think joan was probably a lot more handsome than
00:34:42.040this woman painted by hold by it's a great shame really but but it means that she wasn't
00:34:48.260in history she hasn't been so important because there isn't a portrait in the court0.66
00:34:53.280And I think that's important to say, because, you know, women didn't have, however clever and brilliant they were, they didn't have the, I suppose, the pizzazz in the court. And it wasn't, it didn't get through down to history until later.
00:35:10.480and i'm just curious to know again not to not to spoil your book but how you chose to end the
00:35:18.820second book knowing that she was going to go on to live to be 76 how you decided where to end that
00:35:25.040book i'm just curious well the second marriage that she had because of course um i still have
00:35:30.780to tell other people who don't know is that her first husband died on a pilgrimage to uh jerusalem
00:35:38.460and she didn't learn of his death for two years
00:35:42.880because it was after he'd been in jail
00:35:45.920and he was trying to make amends with God
00:35:49.740and he even failed to do that poor thing
00:35:52.320because he died the day after he arrived in Jerusalem
00:35:55.580and he never really got to the place where he wanted to go
00:36:00.260to say sorry to God and Jesus and everybody else
00:36:05.200that he had made a mess at the end of his life.
00:39:35.300Well, that's where I find, like having read these two books
00:39:38.080and just knowing about your other books,
00:39:39.520You're really kind of colouring in lesser discussed little corners of this Tudor saga that a lot of, you know, historical fiction fans would already know about.
00:39:49.040So if people want to read about Anne Boleyn, there's many, many other books.
00:39:55.380Yes. Whereas there are not plenty of books to read about Joan Bork's Guildford Poynes.
00:40:02.180exactly exactly so again like the so the paperback has just come out of the queen's lady which is
00:40:10.300the second book in this duology and that i called her that i mean there was a lot of discussion
00:40:16.300between my editor and and and uh other people in in in the business of publicating publishing this
00:40:23.760book about what we should call it and having decided to call it the queen's lady we then
00:40:29.140had an argument about where the the apostrophe should go which is really and i think it's in
00:40:36.740completely the wrong place but it's it that's where it is and uh you know that's what publishers
00:40:42.380do um they say that's that's how it'll be and so that's how it'll be true because she was the lady
00:40:49.680of more than one queen four at the time yes and i i thought that it should be it should have been
00:40:56.200after the S and not before the S but then I mean it doesn't really matter yeah everybody knows what
00:41:04.020it says I know we need to wrap things up pretty quickly but if you could just well I guess in as
00:41:10.260much time as you want to take explain what it was like writing this book during quarantine lockdown
00:41:15.000yes it uh it was good actually um I think the quote I think the lockdown was quite good for
00:41:22.720writers in general unless unless they they got sort of sick or something but um I didn't I didn't
00:41:29.600I did manage to escape all that so I'm what's called a Covid virgin I think you know I I found
00:41:36.200it quite good to be able to uh use the time and I must say um now that we're all out and about
00:41:44.760again and doing a lot of things um that we used to do before at Covid I'm finding it very difficult
00:41:50.760because now I'm writing another series of books, another two, about the Seymours.
00:41:57.380And, you know, I'm finding it much more difficult to actually get that down on the computer
00:42:46.200So, you know, when we got the first book out, the sales were good.
00:42:50.020because that was the beginning of lockdown and right yeah and everybody was reading
00:42:55.120so that was nice yeah I would say that it didn't really do me any harm no that's fair enough and
00:43:03.180it just does put me in the mind of I don't think this is a major plot point in these books but
00:43:08.380historically the various pandemics and plagues that happened I think a lot of people you know
00:43:13.480Shakespeare and people would just sort of lock them it's like what can I do but just write
00:43:17.320it's it kind of puts me in the mind of of writers from 400 years ago to just well i guess i'll just
00:43:23.280write some books because everybody's staying at home that's exactly it yes i mean there were there
00:43:28.480were obviously the the sweat was the the big thing in the in the tudor reign and um i didn't actually
00:43:35.580cover that because it didn't actually affect joan um but it it was pretty important but it
00:43:43.560And it was only towards the end of my books that I would have used it at all, because it didn't exist before that. And some people said, oh, it must have been what killed Prince Arthur. But it wasn't, because it wasn't there yet. It hadn't arrived. So, you know, we're still, that's still a mystery as to what he died of.
00:44:02.560well and that's just it kind of speaks to the amount of things that were going on when Joan
00:44:09.540Vox was there so much happened during her life that you could just pick and choose
00:44:15.620which things to include in your book which I think is again really a gift as a writer
00:44:19.920it definitely is yes I mean you know my timeline was was easy um and I always do a timeline you
00:44:27.060you know, before I start, really, to see what happened around in the world
00:46:37.180If everyone has the same name, you have to.
00:46:39.280I will just let the listeners know as well, at the beginning, at least in the edition I read of your book, there is a list of cast of characters.
00:46:45.580Well, thank you so much for taking the time out to talk to me.