Vulgar History - Author Interview： Lucy Jago (A Net for Small Fishes)

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00:00:30.000 Hey, so before we get into today's episode, I wanted to let you know about a podcast that

00:00:35.480 I'm pretty sure you're going to like that is called Bad Women hosted by historian Hallie 0.95

00:00:40.720 Rubenhold. And if you're like, I recognize that name. That's because I recommended her 0.97

00:00:44.660 book a few episodes ago. She wrote a book called The Five that was about five of the

00:00:48.660 women who were killed by Jack the Ripper. And her podcast, Bad Women, expands on the

00:00:53.440 same stuff that she talks about in her book. So on Bad Women, historian Hallie Rubenhold

00:00:58.580 uncovers the real lives of jack the ripper's victims revealing the discrimination that put

00:01:02.480 them in his path the same sort of misogyny women still face today this show challenges established

00:01:08.100 theories about the murders causing many supposed ripper experts to see red find bad women wherever

00:01:14.860 you get your podcasts like where you're listening to this you can find bad women that same place

00:01:28.580 hello and welcome to vulgar history a feminist women's history comedy podcast my name is ann

00:01:42.380 foster and today i have a super special treat for you and for me it is an interview that i did

00:01:49.580 over zoom with the author lucy jago who is the author of the historical fiction book annette

00:01:56.900 for small fishes which just came out you should be able to buy it right away that's why i waited

00:02:02.560 until this week to air this episode to make sure the book was there you know pending supply issues

00:02:09.240 paper shortages and things anyway the book has come out don't worry about it it was printed

00:02:13.200 everything's fine uh so it just came out in north america and it's been out in the uk for a bit

00:02:19.980 longer and that is why i was able to read it several months ago because i wasn't i couldn't

00:02:25.180 wait it can wait for the north american release this book i had to read it right away and why is

00:02:29.660 that because it's a historical fiction book about the one and only tits out francis howard yes it

00:02:37.980 is a francis howard based historical fiction book but as you will learn in this interview

00:02:43.820 and then subsequently when you read the book you'll also notice that it's a book about the

00:02:50.980 main character isn't Frances herself it's Anne Turner who is one of the people who was also

00:02:56.300 arrested eventually for the whole murder of Thomas Overbury scenario but the book is very much about

00:03:01.200 them these two women they're how they came from two different worlds how they became friends

00:03:05.880 and what it was like for them as women living in this pretty intense time period with

00:03:11.800 some pretty awful men all around them anyway I don't want to give too much preamble the interview

00:03:17.580 think super interesting uh the audio quality is like if you were having a zoom call yourself

00:03:24.280 because it's got the trademark lo-fi sound quality that you all love about this podcast

00:03:31.040 so anyway i really hope you enjoy this interview and i'll pop back afterwards to say a bit more

00:03:36.620 stuff okay so i'm here with lucy jago um who's just come back from what was it it was a book

00:03:43.860 event a durham literary festival yeah and how did that go it's so lovely to be in front of real

00:03:50.260 human beings again it was a real actual oh because your book came out in the uk what was it in

00:03:56.900 february and of course that was locked down so all the bookshops were shut but now festivals

00:04:01.880 literary festivals are happening so i've been traveling around quite a bit going to different

00:04:06.380 festivals and meeting people who've read the book and it's just wonderful because up to now

00:04:10.720 you know all the bookshops were shut when it came out oh my goodness yeah because in the UK it was

00:04:15.680 like a serious shutdown like everything was right yeah total total shutdown and then the reason why

00:04:22.580 we're talking especially is because your book is just well this is going to air I think just the

00:04:26.900 day after it comes out in North America so very exciting so Annette for Smell Aspicious is going

00:04:32.820 to be coming across the pond they'll be available all over the place so my first question like I'm

00:04:38.780 so excited to talk to you as you know myself and the listeners of this podcast are fans of Francis

00:04:44.580 Howard that's where we're coming at it from but first could you tell me how you found out about

00:04:50.600 the story of the murder of Thomas Overbury how did how did it get your attention well I was in

00:04:56.940 the London library which is I used to live in London now I live in the countryside but I used

00:05:01.140 to work in there and I was I'd just finished my previous novel and I was literally browsing it's

00:05:06.500 an open shelf amazing old library I was browsing through the shelves came across this book about

00:05:12.780 I can't remember if it's called Wicked Women or some dreadful title like that and I was sort of

00:05:18.280 leafing through it and there was a two-line mention of these women who had poisoned and murdered and

00:05:25.700 were witches and all this sort of thing and I thought gosh that really doesn't sound very likely

00:05:29.180 so I started getting books out on the Overbury affair and honestly during that week I got crosser

00:05:35.260 and crosser that all these historical accounts whether they were 400 years old or 40 years old

00:05:41.780 just took the male point of view in this affair even though it was the women who were absolutely

00:05:47.660 at the center of it they were in all these accounts they were largely peripheral and their

00:05:52.580 motivations were not examined at all and I got so cross about this I just thought right I'm going to

00:05:57.940 find out about these women and I'm going to understand them better than these historical

00:06:01.480 accounts have so far well and that's definitely something like this this podcast vulgar history

00:06:06.340 it's very much every single woman that i've profiled i think has been the main account of

00:06:12.460 their life has been through some man who hated them and so for my for my work it's been a lot

00:06:17.200 of just sort of dissecting okay well what actually happened and trying to get past these biases so

00:06:23.360 you talked about women so the listeners of this podcast know very well about francis howard but

00:06:28.200 who is the other woman you're talking about mistress and turner so she is often dismissed

00:06:34.700 as uh francis's sidekick um and that's about all you ever hear that she's the widow of a doctor

00:06:40.140 and thus she must have had um access to poisons and so on and that's it you don't really hear

00:06:44.960 anymore oh and actually that she some accounts she mentioned that she was um designing costumes for

00:06:50.840 indigo jones for the masks for the queen anna um and there i think maybe one person mentioned about

00:06:58.040 the roughs but in the main historical account she's just dismissed as a sort of sidekick

00:07:02.580 but I was very interested in her okay you mentioned the roughs and we mean we really

00:07:09.180 get into the roughs can you just describe for everybody because I found just in looking up

00:07:13.620 about Anne Turner like this is she was a trailblazer in fashion she really was and I don't

00:07:21.320 know if in Canada this had much impact on you but in England we had a designer called Catherine

00:07:27.280 hamnet she went to meet margaret thatcher wearing a t-shirt emblazoned 58 of the population say no

00:07:34.340 to pershing missiles very very dramatic political bold statements yeah and and this yellow rough

00:07:42.000 was not dissimilar to that so when i started doing all this research i wanted to avoid talking about

00:07:47.640 fashion because i thought it was such a cliche to have two women as my main characters and then to

00:07:52.920 going on about fashion um but as I did more and more research so about year four of the research

00:08:00.060 I began to become really clear to me that fashion was absolutely a real focal point of the book and

00:08:07.380 it was a place where people made points and they made political points they made statements they

00:08:12.480 made statements about fashion and nationality and about sexuality and about power and so these 1.00

00:08:18.920 yellow roughs were considered very very um well dangerous when Antana introduced them into the 1.00

00:08:25.660 court because yellow was associated with um Catholicism because saffron the color comes 0.98

00:08:32.220 from saffron largely or urine I can talk about that later but saffron mainly came from um Catholic

00:08:38.180 countries so Spain and Italy and it was it was imported into England via Ireland also Catholic

00:08:44.220 country at that point large almost entirely at that point and um uh and and a sort of site of

00:08:51.880 rebellion so yellow was associated also with this i think called the irish mantle which was like a

00:08:59.020 shaggy coat that was very practical and people leading the english army wanted to have this

00:09:05.100 coat for the soldiers but the king refused and finally he totally banned it because yellow and

00:09:10.780 this particularly this coat was associated with everybody wore this coat so men and women so it

00:09:17.440 was defying gender boundaries every class wore it from the most aristocratic to the poorest

00:09:22.620 so that was subverting these very strict hierarchies of class and so King James banned

00:09:29.680 these Irish mantles yet they snuck into the court and so fashionable English aristocrats were wearing

00:09:37.020 these a sort of upmarket silk version of these mantles and ann turner introduces this yellow

00:09:43.740 patent starch recipe that's her own patent starch recipe yellow and and it's making a statement it's

00:09:50.660 making a statement about gender and about power and about rebellion so can you explain where the

00:09:57.600 ruffs would be on somebody's ensemble is it like a color ruff or like yes well it could be cuffs

00:10:05.780 cuffs and yeah so the ruff went around the neck and they could be various sizes but the ones in

00:10:11.440 the portrait of frances which your your um listeners probably know uh is a normal a ruff

00:10:17.760 that sticks out you also had these what are called falling bands which is a more um a less starch

00:10:23.540 version of a ruff so it sort of falls down around you more like we would think of as a collar

00:10:28.420 and also the ruffs around the wrists yeah so cuffs and so the ultimate the yellow would be just

00:10:34.760 white so basically the roughs were white and then suddenly she brought in yellow

00:10:38.620 well before yellow apparently what was fashionable was goose turd green which is sort of sludgy green

00:10:46.120 I can imagine it as and before that blue but in most a lot of the paintings you see white and I

00:10:53.780 wonder some of that might be because of color having faded or white was a more puritan color

00:10:59.880 so if your um religious leanings were more protestant you were more likely to wear white

00:11:06.080 is my thinking um uh and and of course yellow was associated as i've said with catholicism

00:11:13.620 and francis howard was a catholic from a catholic family as was mistress turner so and turner so

00:11:20.220 so that the whole overbury scandal there's an awful lot of um religious tension in there as

00:11:25.980 well as political and sexual stuff going on and so the book opens like where you have the two of

00:11:33.080 them meeting Francis and Anne for the first time is because Anne has been brought in to make over

00:11:38.940 Francis basically exactly exactly it's perfectly put yeah so was that from your research is that

00:11:47.180 part of what the relationship was like Anne helped Francis with her clothing supplies or is that an

00:11:53.700 invention of your book it's part invention uh not entirely so it is um there were documents at the

00:12:02.340 time letters written at the time accusing rather than uh applauding but accusing Ann Turner of 0.99

00:12:07.880 having introduced this seditious vain fashion thing this yellow custom ruffs into the courts 0.94

00:12:13.980 and that was at the time so it's pretty likely she did do this um and then I went to the National

00:12:19.860 portrait gallery and there is a picture of Frankie as I know her because that's how her family

00:12:25.020 dressed and I feel I know her so well now I can't help but call her Frankie there she is wearing a

00:12:31.020 yellow ruff in this portrait so it made sense to me that perhaps that is how they met so no one

00:12:37.680 knows for sure how they met but it would make sense that Frankie was known later on as being

00:12:42.940 highly fashionable and is known as having introduced these cuffs and ruffs this yellow

00:12:48.660 to start into the court so it made sense to me that that is how they met but yes that is largely

00:12:54.560 my putting two and two together yeah absolutely makes sense but it's not found it's not fantastic

00:13:00.440 it's not fanciful i mean it's just based on different bits of research that that seems the

00:13:04.980 most likely and of course their families would have known each other they both came from uh the

00:13:09.260 sort of east part of this country and then in those days society was pretty small so they they

00:13:14.860 almost certainly knew each other from quite young. Well that's what my next question is going to be

00:13:19.020 so Frances Howard she's from the Howard family you know which Catherine Howard like related to

00:13:26.560 the Boleyns like the Howard family is one on quantity so Anne Turner what was her sort of

00:13:31.960 class what was her family's background? Well now we might call her middle class I mean they didn't

00:13:38.340 really have a middle class at the time but they had this thing they called the middling sort

00:13:42.520 court so you were of the gentlemanly class or the gentle class so it meant you weren't in theory

00:13:48.500 working for a living so you weren't tilling the fields and you weren't emptying sewers and things

00:13:54.820 like that um they worked in a way because her husband was a doctor but he was a court doctor

00:14:01.780 and Queen Elizabeth herself rated him highly and wrote letters to the College of Physicians at one

00:14:07.160 point it looked like his Catholicism would stop him stop him being elected to a high position in

00:14:11.720 the College of Physicians and Elizabeth wrote a letter commending him and basically saying don't

00:14:16.740 let his Catholicism stop his election so she really she really rated him so he was definitely

00:14:22.900 moving in the court and probably was more on the peripheries of the court wanting in my view 0.86

00:14:29.180 probably wanting to get into the court because that's where she would have a good market for her 1.00

00:14:33.440 her fashionable ideas so she they were sort of lower gentlemanly class they were they were not

00:14:39.220 wealthy and he died in debt very indebted so um as becomes clear in the book a lot of what goes

00:14:49.760 on at the court is a facade people are living in huge amounts of debt looking utterly glamorous

00:14:56.040 dripping in jewels but deeply indebted either to the the bankers of the city or to the king

00:15:01.800 himself which part of the way he controls his court is to keep his court is indebted to him

00:15:06.500 so um yeah so so they are they are on the edges of of that sort of aristocratic life but they

00:15:13.580 themselves are not by any means aristocrats so her her father had been her sorry her grandfather

00:15:19.320 so her mother's father was a sir so he had been knighted but his her mother had lost that title

00:15:26.060 by marrying out of that class and she married a yeoman class so upper middle class we might call

00:15:31.780 it today so quite a well-off farmer with land probably not farming himself but having tenants

00:15:37.620 that did it for him but but not really the gentleman class and so just looking at I was

00:15:45.520 looking at your website and there's you know highlights from various reviews from various

00:15:49.000 people somebody referred to Frankie and Anne as the Thelma and Louise of their time exactly

00:15:55.100 so was that part of you said you were researching and you heard you saw the references to the two

00:16:00.780 of them so were you always thinking in terms of the book you wanted to be like about the two women

00:16:05.740 and their friendship and this murder that they were both involved in yeah to be honest I was not

00:16:11.520 very interested in the murder I really wasn't I wasn't that interested in who sent poison jellies

00:16:16.740 and tarts in what you know I'm not a crime writer I that the trial itself is such an an art of you

00:16:23.400 know a work of fiction that you you would never really be able to get to the bottom of it nowadays

00:16:27.760 we consider it a gross miscarriage of justice I was much more interested in their friendship

00:16:33.360 it's so rare to find well-documented women in the historical record and to find a friendship

00:16:40.140 between them even rarer and that I thought was such an opportunity to to look at something that

00:16:46.640 is so little looked at in history or even in historical fiction friendships between women

00:16:51.520 how that worked and I've always been quite interested in domesticity I mean how was life

00:16:56.160 I'm more interested in the history of experience than the history of power so I wanted to know what

00:17:02.000 it was like to be them and these historical accounts of the actual Overbury affair annoyed

00:17:07.440 me so much by how they dismiss these women as just vain and lustful and that was considered

00:17:13.900 sufficient motivation for them to risk everything Anne is the mother of six children she's not going

00:17:19.460 to go and poison someone willy-nilly out of vanity and lust when she's got six little ones at home 1.00

00:17:25.660 that she's looking after and it's not even for her benefit but for this other woman's benefit

00:17:30.280 so the complexity of their friendship and why Anne got so involved in this affair I'm not saying

00:17:37.200 they didn't try and poison him I'm not trying to whitewash them what I'm trying to do is give them

00:17:41.980 much greater complexity and to do that you have to understand their lives what was stopping them

00:17:47.660 doing what they wanted to do what were all the the sort of nets and and sort of ties on them and

00:17:53.940 the things that stopped them doing what they wanted to do what were those what was going on

00:17:59.120 for them and why did they break out in such a dramatic way how did that happen so I'm much more

00:18:05.460 interested in the how than in the actual overbreed poisoning because I also find the accounts focus

00:18:12.640 on that so much and it's it's to me it's not nearly as interesting as as the backstory well

00:18:19.620 and I feel like interesting too just going through reading your book I was like oh okay like you're

00:18:23.520 going very i was like well it became very clear this is not a book about the murder itself like

00:18:29.940 there is um there's another novel the poison bed by easy freemantle which is very much like sort

00:18:35.840 of a whodunit about the murder itself and yours like the murder i don't know i'm gonna say like

00:18:41.020 it happens two-thirds of the way through like it's not like a book is building up to a murder

00:18:46.400 and then the murder happens it's like that's just a thing that sort of naturally evolves out of the

00:18:51.120 friendship and everything you're saying about their domestic life and well so I mean we can't

00:18:57.040 not talk about the murder but it was Frances was in this terrible marriage that quite yeah I mean

00:19:03.740 she had got divorced before this murder happened and at the time the divorce was as scandalous

00:19:10.440 as a as a murder pretty much I mean it caused absolute uproar in Jacobian society because

00:19:16.540 King Henry VIII had managed to do it but almost no one else got divorced it was harder to get

00:19:22.360 divorced in England than it was in Italy so for a woman to want to divorce a man was seen as

00:19:28.740 absolutely heinous and and her reputation suffered enormously by that because she was

00:19:34.860 considered to be over sex because she wanted to get out of this marriage she was considered to 1.00

00:19:38.900 be disobedient unchaste she was speaking about you know she was considered to basically she broke 0.98

00:19:45.780 all rules of what women were meant to do um and so that so already there was massive scandal around 0.98

00:19:52.920 her even though she was married to a man who was impotent with her he had been unable to

00:19:57.860 consummate the marriage the marriage had not been consummated he hated women um and yet to want to

00:20:05.040 get out of that marriage was seen as um really going against all decency that's so well when

00:20:11.700 you're saying like unchaste or that she's over sex where it's like she's literally chased and

00:20:16.500 like she was part of the trial was like proving her virginity like that i know how outrageous is

00:20:23.080 that because the reason the marriage wasn't working or one of them is that he was he admitted 0.95

00:20:27.480 to being impotent with her so he he slept with prostitutes it is said and he certainly said he

00:20:33.200 was able to do it with other women just not with her so his lack of chastity his his sleeping with

00:20:39.480 whoever was all was all right but for her to have done that would have been considered absolutely

00:20:46.020 terrible so that the hypocrisy in it is mind-blowing and it seemed to me this was so

00:20:51.820 interesting why would you skim over all that just to focus on a murder and to understand the potential

00:20:57.040 whether they had or had not murdered this man to understand the complexity of their motive you have

00:21:02.220 to understand this whole thing around the divorce you have to understand how unhappy and miserable

00:21:07.080 her marriage was and how how imprisoned she was in in what her her family needed her to do so she

00:21:13.560 was married to Essex because her family had had his father beheaded so his father had been beheaded

00:21:19.980 he'd lost his title and his lands because of his father being um committed treason or accused of

00:21:28.960 treason um sorry I've been on this train for so long I'm feeling very articulate um so because he

00:21:35.860 was executed for treason um the the Essex that Frankie marries uh lost everything and he was a

00:21:43.860 very bitter very angry man and so the family get her to marry him in order to try and contain him

00:21:51.380 to stop him being their enemy to try and control him basically by marrying him into their clan

00:21:57.640 so imagine imagine being forced to marry a man whose whose father was beheaded at your family's

00:22:04.060 basically at that due to their influence so it's not a good way to start a marriage

00:22:08.220 and then well I again like I love like the angle you took with the book and just everything you're

00:22:15.920 saying about the research because when I was reading up on it so much of it was just like

00:22:20.000 Francis and this it's not even a love triangle I'm trying to think of how many sides are it's

00:22:24.620 like a love like pentagon of like her car the king overbury George Villiers is involved so it's

00:22:32.940 kind of like it's this love amorphous shape and she's the only woman in it and so I think a lot

00:22:37.900 of things are focusing on what the men were up to yeah but so so she was in this horrible marriage

00:22:45.640 she met Robert Carr can you can you explain about Robert Carr's involvement with the king

00:22:52.740 and how that whole angle of it yes so Robert Carr was the king's favorite

00:23:00.000 and probably lover i mean there is a letter saying um well the letter that's in the book

00:23:07.400 shows how much the king loved him and he the king had had favorites throughout his life male

00:23:15.300 favorites and so there's a there's a lot of historical research into this so of course

00:23:19.740 there's nowhere where he's actually written i am a gay man of course people don't write about

00:23:24.980 their sexuality like that then but most historians agree he was certainly he was bisexual and by this

00:23:30.640 point his wife had moved out they were living in separate palaces and Carr had no bed of his own

00:23:36.620 he slept in the king's bed so that was the situation and Carr had known him since he was

00:23:43.460 very young and when Frankie meets Carr she falls in love I mean she was of the age when she can

00:23:50.860 choose for herself who she wants to fall in love with you know instead of being pushed into an

00:23:54.800 arranged marriage by her family with someone she barely knows she meets car and uh in my view of

00:24:01.100 it is is that that's when they fall in love and that's and she wants him and he he clearly wanted

00:24:08.060 her so um you know the sexuality of car he he was said to be very effeminate and how so people did

00:24:17.760 write about him people very angry that he had this political power because he he came from

00:24:21.900 fairly fairly lowly background he wasn't very educated he spoke with such a strong

00:24:27.300 Scottish accent that no one the English nobles couldn't understand him and this is that this is

00:24:32.840 part of what we have to understand about the English court at this point the English nobles

00:24:38.040 were very angry that here come here is Queen Elizabeth died here's come the Scottish king

00:24:42.860 and he comes down with a large number of his circle who he then gives power and influence to

00:24:49.280 and they all speak with this very broad accent that the English nobles can't understand and

00:24:53.900 they complain about this a great deal. And the king is also giving vast amounts of money and

00:24:58.720 land to his favourites. So Robert Carb shoots up in wealth and in titles. He's given very senior

00:25:06.280 titles. He's the first Scot to sit in the House of Lords. He's given an English peerage. And of

00:25:11.360 course, this creates vast amounts of jealousy. And so Frankie, of course, is a nice easy victim, 0.89

00:25:17.220 someone on whom the english court can focus their ire their jealousy their fury she can become the

00:25:24.880 scapegoat so she she is used in that way and to get back at car at the time but what shocked me 0.84

00:25:31.420 so much is that accounts since still see her as the epitome of female villainy that dreadful

00:25:38.220 stereotype of malicious irrational um vain uh a sort of evil and even even modern accounts haven't

00:25:49.980 really bothered to challenge that to really look into what happened and see whether really were 1.00

00:25:57.100 these was frankie just and was ann were they just these sort of evil vacuous idiots who who sort of 1.00

00:26:04.140 wanted something and didn't look at the consequences and sent in all these poison 0.98

00:26:08.240 jellies really I I felt that was unlikely well and you touched on this a bit so like that he was

00:26:15.220 an effeminate man like the gender roles at the time can you talk about that because you get into

00:26:19.920 that in the book and it's very interesting how the men were very that was let's talk about it

00:26:25.760 so how the men were very fancy the wigs everything right yeah yeah well there were different factions

00:26:31.940 of course of course so it's interesting when you look at frankie so she has two husbands so the

00:26:35.960 first one is the earl of essex so he is a purist well he is a protestant a very strict protestant

00:26:41.220 hates the catholics when he did his tour of uh europe he wouldn't even go to italy and spain

00:26:47.020 because they were catholic countries so he wouldn't even set foot in them he will only wear 0.94

00:26:51.240 english clothes so english cloth english wool mainly brown black and white well because of

00:26:57.520 this creamy color um very door against luxury and so on so that's him but she falls in love with

00:27:04.620 Robert Carr who is the opposite so he's so he's very feminine so Essex is all into martial arts

00:27:10.580 well so sort of practice that doesn't mean kung fu he's practicing swordmanship and being ready

00:27:14.920 for war at any point and he hangs out mainly with his men and with his horses and dogs so that's him

00:27:21.000 so Robert Carr very interested in fashion so to get the king's eye at this point the king was

00:27:27.200 not a very attractive man but he loved to surround himself by beautiful men and his view of beautiful

00:27:33.380 men was very effeminate so there are all these descriptions of them being smooth-faced so men

00:27:39.320 who shaved who who tried to have no stubble on their face that was seen as much very effeminate

00:27:44.520 whereas if you wanted to be masculine you had a big beard so but the king's favorites had smooth

00:27:49.820 faces they curled they'll frizzed as they called it they frizzed their hair they had lovely long

00:27:54.840 curly locks around their faces they wore a lot of jewelry um they wore silks they wore soft

00:28:01.720 outlines they often would have their doublet just slightly open and so on so they it was said at the

00:28:07.940 time they were adopting trying to look like women they were trying to like women and that's what

00:28:12.160 attracted the king and it does seem to have been that way that the king was very attracted to very

00:28:17.080 beautiful feminine looking men and so that's how Robert Carr got power because he was beautiful

00:28:23.260 and the king loved him and and gave him a great deal of power and because he was beautiful so he

00:28:30.180 was well as you said like he and the king shared a bed etc yeah and then robert carr and thomas

00:28:35.900 overbury what was that relationship right so thomas overbury was carr's secretary i mean initially

00:28:41.980 they were just friends they were mates so thomas is a in english he was knighted uh quite soon

00:28:48.380 after he came to the court so he was knighted because of his friendship with carr so he wasn't

00:28:52.540 he wasn't knighted before that but he he was the same sort of class I suppose you might say as as

00:28:57.720 Anne so gentlemanly enough to be allowed into court and he was older than Carr and they had

00:29:04.780 traveled together and they were clearly very good friends initially probably lovers probably uh

00:29:11.200 Thomas Overby was never married he didn't like women uh he he writes a lot of poetry

00:29:17.320 well poetry in inverted commas about women um and he was very jealous of any friendships that

00:29:25.400 car had with other people partly i think because of his love of car but partly also because car

00:29:30.740 was his ticket to power so that was a very close relationship over we claim that he was the he was

00:29:37.160 the intelligence behind car and car was behind the king so basically overbury was very arrogant

00:29:45.460 nobody liked him there isn't a single account of anybody liking him a lot of people absolutely

00:29:50.400 loathed him he was very very very arrogant everybody said immensely arrogant man who

00:29:56.560 basically claimed that he was running the country because he was the intelligence behind car and the

00:30:01.500 king did what car said so he was not a popular man when he was put in prison nobody objected to

00:30:07.840 it even though it wasn't actually legal what happened no no one objected because everybody

00:30:12.380 loathed him i was glad to see the back of him that reminds me of sorry if you i've just been

00:30:17.980 watching a lot of british procedural crime dramas and it always there's always it's like a small

00:30:23.560 village and there's one person and you're like well that's going to be the murder victim because

00:30:27.000 like that person is mean and everyone hates them and then sure enough that's so the fact that

00:30:31.360 thomas overbury ends up being murdered it's like of course he was like who killed him like who

00:30:36.440 wouldn't yeah in terms of novelistic uh sort of process in a way it would have been nicer if I

00:30:42.640 could have created a more complex picture of him really I wanted I wanted us to feel some sense of

00:30:48.400 uh conflict at the fact that you know they were going to plot to kill this man I wanted us to feel

00:30:55.800 oh that's not great but actually I couldn't find a single redeeming feature for him

00:31:01.520 literally nobody says it like that he's literally called arrogant and rude and

00:31:07.340 I mean it's quite rare to find so much documented evidence of how unpleasant someone is yeah just

00:31:14.340 from all directions yeah all directions so I'm afraid Thomas Overy gets uh yeah not a very he's

00:31:20.820 not he's not a very nice man and I don't try and make him so in the book well you have to be

00:31:27.640 faithful to the research you're finding yeah yeah yeah yeah everybody hated him that's that

00:31:32.620 so we've got this sort of um so this francis is in love with car car is the favorite of the king

00:31:38.320 but then he's also so overbury so you mentioned his like quote-unquote poems he wrote so he wrote

00:31:44.800 about francis didn't he like yeah saying she was terrible and stuff well it was thinly veiled and

00:31:50.960 it was about um it's called the wife and what you should seek in a wife honestly if you i mean

00:31:57.180 any of us reading it today so immensely on for anti-feminist sort of makes it can barely read 1.00

00:32:03.760 it sticks in your throat but basically wives should be pure chaste only ever married to one 1.00

00:32:09.160 person um and so on and and there's a line something like um even if you're even if you

00:32:17.420 have a high title that doesn't mean you shouldn't have good morals so he's basically it's aimed at

00:32:23.540 francis saying that he shouldn't marry francis because she's immoral because she divorced essex

00:32:29.360 um and he just hated her and he hated the howards hated the howards so uh yeah he was basically

00:32:36.780 warning car off frankie in a big way and in a public way and and dishonoring her by calling her 0.99

00:32:45.480 um uh what was the word he called i'm trying to think no it wasn't a whore because whore had a 0.88

00:32:51.760 different meaning then to what it has now but he he basically um implied that she was dishonorable 0.77

00:32:58.800 and at the time that was about the worst insult you could offer a woman and there was no there

00:33:03.600 was no coming back from it unless he made a public apology so he he hugely damaged her and she had no

00:33:10.720 way she had no redress you know women that were meant to just keep silent and that's i think what

00:33:18.420 I found just you've obviously done years of research on this and I've done less but just the

00:33:25.140 the fact that that Frances was in this position she was so powerless in so many directions but 0.80

00:33:32.040 then through the murder plot or actually through the divorce first like she just like struck out

00:33:39.260 on her own which was so rare and so and that's what I found so interesting about her like she

00:33:43.260 didn't have power but she found ways to to still do things well that's what I found so interesting 1.00

00:33:51.960 about them both the here were women who really did what they could to change their lives in a way

00:33:59.500 that was appears to have been quite rare or certainly isn't much documented so it was

00:34:05.000 absolutely fascinating because so often we look back at history and the women are portrayed as

00:34:09.540 victims or totally without agency and you know and of course legally that is often the case they

00:34:16.220 have no legal status at this period and so on so they do appear to be very powerless but when you

00:34:21.940 look into the research actually a lot of women were I mean as as makes you know it's common sense

00:34:28.520 that all women were not silent chase and obedient I mean that might be the rule but a bit like

00:34:33.280 driving 70 is the rule doesn't mean we all stick to it and at the time there was so much mortality

00:34:39.520 a lot of men were dying women would take over their businesses and so on so women were actually

00:34:44.800 far more active than is generally considered the case by the public but the historians are

00:34:51.680 getting in there now and really trying to work out how active women were and they're coming up

00:34:56.080 with lots of evidence of women running businesses and so on so they it's just that very few people

00:35:02.080 have written about them and they often don't get into the record but of course they're out there

00:35:06.160 doing things and so the joy of finding anne and frankie's story is here were women who were doing

00:35:11.840 things that have been documented and we can actually see them manipulating their situation

00:35:17.360 as best they can to get the outcomes they actually want and yes so the divorce is very much the case

00:35:23.760 in points um that she managed to align what she wanted which was to marry carl with what would be

00:35:29.520 good for the with for the family so once she had made it absolutely clear there was no going back

00:35:34.800 to Essex they thought okay what do we you know how do we make the best of a bad job here and

00:35:40.160 Carr was the most powerful person at court after the king and so a marriage with him would be

00:35:45.520 advantageous to the Howard family so I'm sure she played on that in order to get them to sue 0.93

00:35:51.680 for divorce because she herself wasn't allowed to because she was a woman so she had to get her

00:35:55.760 father and her great uncle to to do all the legal stuff for her um and you can see you can see what

00:36:03.280 what arguments she could have put to them to get them finally to agree to do this.

00:36:09.920 Well, and that just speaks to, because in the book, like you're, you're taking these,

00:36:14.880 the historical things that happened and imagining, you know, conversations and things, but the fact

00:36:19.220 that she was able to do this really speaks to a force of character, how charismatic she must

00:36:23.960 have been, how intelligent she must have been, just when you see the outcomes of the things that

00:36:29.260 she set about to accomplish exactly exactly and I just think it's great to have some women in

00:36:38.920 the historical record that set out to do things for themselves

00:36:43.120 so speaking of that getting back to Ann Turner so through her relationship with Frances Howard she

00:36:54.400 well and just through her the the the yellow roughs and everything like she was able to 0.99

00:37:00.020 to get in with more and more the wealthier classes to sort of step herself up through her 0.99

00:37:05.840 entrepreneurship really can you speak about sort of what her how she was able to manipulate her

00:37:12.620 circumstances yeah I mean obviously all of this is my interpretation of historical facts um so a 0.95

00:37:21.720 lot of this is for the research when you're looking at women who are not aristocratic even

00:37:26.060 most aristocratic women there's so little actual documented fact you have to go out you have to go

00:37:30.660 out sideways and look and create the world in which they were able to move around so um but

00:37:36.880 Anne I think is a truly extraordinary character more so really for me than Frankie I I love the 0.75

00:37:42.740 fact she's not of the aristocratic class so she can move between worlds so she can move in the

00:37:47.540 court but she also moves in the back streets amongst the apothecaries and so on and i i feel

00:37:53.240 this introduction of the yellow rough was really quite revolutionary and very political i think for

00:37:58.920 a bit like vivian westwood you know this idea of being political very different quite daring she

00:38:04.680 had a lover the love is mentioned in her husband's will um this was fairly well known hence it comes

00:38:11.440 out in the trial records but i went to see the will itself in the archive and oh wow yeah and

00:38:16.800 there it is written you know there's 10 10 pounds put aside in the will for for arthur who was the

00:38:23.880 lover to um to have a golden ring inscribed may fate unite the lovers i mean that is actually in

00:38:30.760 the will i did that isn't something i've made up so she was a woman who was living um clearly living

00:38:39.280 according to to what she wanted to do as much as she possibly could and again this is fascinating

00:38:45.440 to me that this was this was going on so yes so um I mean a lot of what I say in terms of her 0.84

00:38:53.140 moving around the court is is my assumption but like for example whether she was a dresser to the

00:38:59.280 to the queen or not that people have suggested that there were there were comments quite soon

00:39:03.420 after her death that she was uh in the court dressing the queen and doing doing the the mask

00:39:09.900 costumes um certainly if you look at the portraits of the queen the early portraits of the queen

00:39:14.040 she's covered in pink bows and trying to look very girly although she has a wonderfully strong face

00:39:20.200 and her later portrait she is in yellow ruffs and cuffs and all the bows and all the fancy sort of

00:39:25.960 rather girly stuff has gone and she's looking far more authoritative and regal and this is the time

00:39:32.680 when she was trying to claw back power because the king was giving so much power to the favorite so

00:39:38.280 Robert Carr was the first favorite he gave political power to so it was the first time the

00:39:41.880 queen had really had her nose put out of joints so you could see why she would want to use Anne or

00:39:48.040 a dresser anyway to give her greater authority because clothing and how you presented yourself

00:39:52.360 was so important then much more important than today even it was crucial how you appeared and

00:39:57.800 what you wore so for me that all made that all made sense well and then I'm just thinking too

00:40:05.720 everything you've said about how Anne and Francis were how they're villainized well I mean not just

00:40:13.380 the murder but also with the divorce and everything like as though everybody else was so pure and

00:40:18.880 perfect where it's like it was I think this also comes across in your book but like the court was

00:40:23.180 not full of like people living by the stated morals that they judged other people by like

00:40:28.260 everybody like there was people having lovers like the stuff that they did was not out of sync

00:40:34.880 with what all of the rest of everybody was doing exactly they were scapegoats so they were used

00:40:41.200 as scapegoats anne and frankie because they weren't doing i mean maybe the poisoning uh if

00:40:46.660 they even did that and there's huge doubt over that but they weren't doing anything unusual that

00:40:52.280 other people weren't doing except in some ways frankie was being more moral so she could have

00:40:57.140 just taken a lover as as at least so so there's a famous um historian called laurence stone who's

00:41:03.000 estimated that about a third of the aristocracy were living apart from their husbands because of

00:41:08.560 course often these people having arranged marriages very young they didn't tend to get on so they

00:41:13.800 separated from bed and board but they didn't divorce but they would have lovers and it was a

00:41:18.540 known bed swerving was a sort of a wonderful word and this is what happened so if Frankie's own

00:41:23.480 mother-in-law was also the lover of Lord Cecil and this is very well known so uh yeah the only

00:41:30.640 difference really was that Frankie wanted to be um to make her the man she loved make him her

00:41:37.180 husband so you know bring him into a proper so they would be in a proper marriage which in a way

00:41:44.700 you could argue is more moral than than just keeping him as a lover and lying to the the husband 0.99

00:41:50.320 um so yeah but but because she was uh she did try and do this and she was breaking the sort 1.00

00:41:57.780 of rules of femininity uh it brought down huge opprobrium on her head so yes the court there's 1.00

00:42:04.820 plenty and there's also vast amounts of alcoholism and yeah lots of sexual shenanigans between

00:42:10.860 the same sex different sex all sorts of things so yeah it had a very it was considered quite

00:42:16.460 an immoral place well and then just when you say the scapegoat so when the the murder plot

00:42:25.040 when the conspirators were all brought to trial um francis was not executed but spoiler and what

00:42:34.560 okay that is a big spoiler i suppose yes your your readers uh your sorry listeners know about

00:42:42.700 the overbury scandal so they probably know that ann was hanged yeah well that's why this book's

00:42:47.600 a net for small fishes so in the trial records um richard weston who was ann's uh he was her

00:42:55.440 husband's bailiff and then he becomes her sort of protector her male protector um he is hanged

00:43:01.680 because he was um complicit in the attempt to poison uh and he said that the king's justice

00:43:09.840 was a net for small fishes so the big ones could swim away so the the big aristocrats so in

00:43:15.520 particular Frankie's great uncle Lord Northampton who I feel was much more involved than came out

00:43:21.760 because he died just before the trial so he got away with with it really um but yeah so the the 0.99

00:43:28.140 king's justice is a net for small fishers so that the the lower class people Western and uh they

00:43:34.540 suffered for it but Frankie and Carr weren't hanged but that doesn't mean they didn't suffer

00:43:41.020 so they did actually I mean they did suffer because Frankie said she was dead while living

00:43:46.300 after Anne died so they didn't die they weren't hanged but they certainly it certainly marred

00:43:54.020 their their life less so Robert Carr he managed to sort of he wasn't ever allowed back into court

00:43:58.760 but he was able to secure a very good marriage for his daughter for their daughter so he was

00:44:04.260 still moving in aristocratic circles well it's sort of you can sort of see the trickle down

00:44:08.740 effect of that like the person that came off like the best was the man and the next is like

00:44:14.000 the noble woman and then it's yeah well the poor people but especially the women so yeah yeah yeah

00:44:21.680 so easy to victimize the women I mean there was at that time there was this sort of stereotype

00:44:26.340 of villainous woman that hasn't changed that much today and women were considered they were

00:44:32.240 the daughters of Eve so they were born with sin and their whole lives were meant to be about

00:44:38.320 eradicating the sin with which they were born so they had to behave absolutely perfectly throughout

00:44:45.060 life and there was this notion of sort of what we might call a sort of gateway sin so even a very

00:44:50.320 small sin like liking to wear makeup or yellow ruffs or whatever once you'd shown yourself

00:44:55.520 capable of say vanity you were therefore also capable of murder so if you were capable of any

00:45:02.780 sin yeah such as wearing mascara then you would also be capable of murder because once you let 0.92

00:45:08.480 the devil in you could let any devil in because women was were of course much more um irrational 0.90

00:45:14.960 much more um much more prone to the to the devils being able to enter them because they were so 0.62

00:45:21.200 emotional and so on and so forth so there are all these sort of ideas around what women were and how

00:45:26.080 they were much more um likely to make pacts with the devil and be over sexed and all this all this 0.90

00:45:33.420 dreadful stereotypical stuff so so it was rather perfect though it was very easy in a way for the

00:45:38.420 trial judge to make a case against them because there were so many already sort of stereotyped

00:45:42.820 ideas around women that these women could be very easily pushed into those stereotypes very easily

00:45:48.520 so well i guess it's a funny thing to be talking to you about a book that's based um i mean it's

00:45:53.260 obviously a fiction book but like you're telling real facts so it's you know what what is a spoiler

00:45:58.100 or not but the trial itself so what was the it was sort of like in your research why do you think

00:46:07.320 this how did the story come out and who did it benefit to put these people on trial it came out

00:46:14.280 because the king got tired of Robert Carr because he met Villiers who was even more beautiful

00:46:20.780 more his cup of tea wanted to get rid of car car was very difficult about it didn't want to be

00:46:27.420 got rid of and so um it came out because um the guy who was keeping the keeper of the tower he

00:46:36.980 was called wanted wanted a job um and uh he confessed to someone that he would be good for

00:46:44.600 the job because he was very honorable because when someone had taken some poison into the tower

00:46:49.680 he hadn't let the prisoner have the poison and that showed that he was honorable so of course

00:46:55.600 uh the person who heard about this knew that that would be a very good way to get favor from the

00:47:01.880 king because this would be it was because he confessed that it was it was frankie and anne

00:47:06.700 who were trying to poison overbury and frankie by this point was married to car and so this this

00:47:13.180 man realized gosh this is a this is political dynamite and this is going to be a good way of

00:47:17.660 getting rid of car and then the king can have what he wants and that will benefit me so it's

00:47:22.780 all very persecutors but at the time of course the king was the font of all preferment he was

00:47:29.460 the one who had the money he was the one who could give out the powerful positions so you had to get

00:47:34.680 into the king's favor it was sort of it was despotic in that way um so anyway you could get

00:47:40.720 into king's favor people would do so this was a good way and the king of course did want to get

00:47:46.140 rid of the car at this point so he leapt on it too and had it had this come to light a couple

00:47:53.520 of years earlier it would have just been squashed because at that point car was in the ascendancy

00:47:58.360 and no one would have wanted to move about against him but the minute it looks like cars

00:48:03.040 in a in a rockier position then literally the wolves were just ready to descend because he was

00:48:10.020 he was unpopular with a lot of people because he he you know worked his way into the king's heart

00:48:15.620 had too much power, he had too much influence, too much money, they were glad to see the back of him.

00:48:21.940 So again she was the scapegoat, Frankie was the scapegoat. For a plot that was ultimately

00:48:27.620 yeah against Carr and pro Villiers and yeah. Well their downfall anyway certainly, so the plot to

00:48:35.060 kill Overbury was in order for her to marry Carr though whether she kills him or not again as I

00:48:42.180 i say is very um in doubt but that their downfall was because car was unable to play the game so

00:48:50.080 plenty of other royal favorites had just quietly gone into retirement in fact been delighted

00:48:54.520 that they could get away from the king and uh just go and live their lives with all these wonderful

00:49:00.420 estates and all this money that they've been given and that's what had happened with previous

00:49:03.660 royal favorites they just slightly faded into the background and they hadn't they they still

00:49:08.160 had power they were still at court and so on but they just weren't the favorite but Robert Carr

00:49:12.780 refused to do that he had these huge tantrums again documented in letters and so on I would

00:49:18.240 wake the king up in the middle of the night to shout at him and as I you know make it clear in

00:49:22.940 my book um he he'd known the king since he was a baby because his own father had died and the king

00:49:28.620 had sort of brought him up in different ways he'd always been put forward as the as his sort of

00:49:34.800 paternal uh figure so suddenly here's the king who has has put you above all others wanting someone

00:49:43.920 else it's a bit like wanting a second wife or something i mean it's very it's quite difficult

00:49:47.600 psychologically to deal with that and car was not able to do that and he he was became very very

00:49:54.540 um angry with the king and after a while the king just got fed up so there was a period of

00:49:59.560 court where the two favorites were vying for favor and Villiers was actually very very graceful

00:50:04.880 towards Robert Carr wanted his patronage was prepared to prepare to be his sort of vassal

00:50:11.380 but Carr just wasn't having any of it and really just had massive tantrums and in the end the king

00:50:16.980 got tired of it it's so and this is where I think so I mean you've done obviously you've been able

00:50:24.700 to do so much research to get you know seeing letters and wills and things but then where I

00:50:30.420 find a book like yours is so important is to be able to to make those connections like the

00:50:36.940 your psychological understanding of the characters like how what and you know making the connections

00:50:43.560 between well the queen was wearing this yellow ruff in this thing and and made the yellow ruff

00:50:48.220 so like clearly there's some connection there so just making it into a narrative but that really

00:50:53.300 gives the understanding of why people did what they did because so much of the historical record

00:50:58.120 is either a list of names and dates or it's these wildly you know what Thomas Overbury wrote like

00:51:04.040 the very biased like these demon women these horrible women yeah so you're kind of filling

00:51:09.500 in the gaps there I think. I guess that's the beauty of writing a novel rather than a so-called

00:51:15.940 historical event because I mean a lot of fact when I read the previous accounts that I wouldn't say

00:51:21.580 any more fanciful than mine frankly they've just taken a very different perspective and have made

00:51:26.220 all sorts of assumptions of their own um i think in some way mine is more honest i mean i could

00:51:31.740 make it clear it is a it is a novel but i i have also made it clear i'm taking the perspective of

00:51:36.940 the women and trying to understand their their experience and and trying to flesh out their um

00:51:43.980 their motives to be much more what i would say authentic authentic to to life and and it's and

00:51:51.680 in many ways i would say more more in tune with the with you know with the facts that are known

00:51:56.640 which are very few really um and and um you know being more honest about that because we we have

00:52:05.940 no way of knowing whether they actually poison them or not and even at the trial it did they

00:52:09.880 did say you know we can't prove poisoning and therefore we we do away with proof uh which is

00:52:15.240 quite extraordinary um so I think uh yeah the joy of being able to write novels is that you can

00:52:21.920 you can flesh it out as you feel fit and that was because you've written non-fiction before

00:52:28.300 but did you immediately know your approach this was going to be fiction versus non-fiction

00:52:33.120 yes yes I did um yeah because I I guess because I really wanted to understand their world and to do

00:52:43.720 that a lot of my research had to be more tangential so looking into so I could take you on a guided

00:52:50.100 tour and uh Jacobean London if you wanted I've looked so much at maps and streets and how thin

00:52:55.880 they were and there's this wonderful book called Stowe's History of London and he walks around

00:53:00.260 and he tells you so Anne's house the way I describe it I get that straight from Stowe who

00:53:05.980 wrote this at the time that she was living in that house so and you can on the maps you can see

00:53:11.060 you can see the street Peyton Oster Road you can see where it is in relation to this gate and that

00:53:16.280 gate and so you there is an awful lot of fantastic historical research that is peripheral to this

00:53:23.180 affair so the affair itself I haven't found well the accounts are very interested in some respects

00:53:30.760 but not really about the women but there are there's other historical research more recent

00:53:35.360 historical research which is absolutely brilliant so hence you can find out about the shopping

00:53:39.620 center that was built in 1609 and that if the if the apprentices peed in the top floor then it

00:53:45.400 would go down to the shops below so they mustn't do that and they mustn't kill dogs on the site and

00:53:50.220 you can find out such rich historical detail the brothel that they go and see

00:53:55.420 there's a lot there's a wonderful accounts of this brothel so I found I didn't have to make

00:54:01.040 up very much I really could find out so much about their world that then moving them around 1.00

00:54:07.940 in this world became uh quite natural and there were things women could and couldn't do and their 1.00

00:54:14.580 accounts of you know the English women are so brazen because they go to pubs and they go to 1.00

00:54:18.820 theaters and so you can find out the sort of landscape of possibility for them and so really 0.99

00:54:26.260 most of the scenes that I have them in there there is some sort of documented evidence and that's why

00:54:31.720 I have them in those scenes I don't I haven't just magic things out of the air that it comes from a

00:54:36.600 lot of research but yes of course dialogue and so on and did they really feel this and were they

00:54:41.600 really in love with this person well you make suppositions based on on accounts and on what

00:54:47.740 you feel would be humanly likely but it is a novel it's a novel well and i'm just thinking

00:54:55.540 compared to letters and things obviously like that's direct first person information but other

00:55:01.580 like the accounts written at the time were effectively novels too because those are people

00:55:05.860 explaining the pamphlets and things i mean yes you know where people are like here's what happened

00:55:10.440 where it's like well no like obviously yeah so even you have to be somewhat skeptical looking at

00:55:15.420 things from that era massively massively and the accounts at the time of course are massively

00:55:20.360 biased against women so all of it you have to sift through like a sort of archaeologist meets

00:55:27.320 a detective because you're having to having to get rid of layers and layers of misogyny

00:55:31.160 to then try and work out what might have happened so with your book coming out so it's been out in

00:55:39.080 the UK now for a while and then it's just coming out in North America so so much historical fiction

00:55:47.060 is like Henry VIII and his wife you know even even like in Saskatchewan it's like that's just

00:55:52.820 a thing people know you're looking at something that to me and the listeners it's like oh yeah

00:55:57.880 Francis Howard this is great but how how much do people know about this in the UK like when you

00:56:04.560 were just at this is this a story people there know or it's also pretty no largely not no i mean

00:56:10.240 the overbury affair if you studied that period of history i mean it is it is the biggest

00:56:15.180 political royal sexual scandal certainly the jacobean era era probably the whole of the

00:56:21.760 17th century some historians have claimed of all time you know it was a massive massive scandal

00:56:28.160 and it caused a lot of soul-searching at the time and has been looked into since.

00:56:34.400 So it is huge, but yes, largely, interestingly in this country, that period isn't much taught in schools.

00:56:42.800 I think probably he's a difficult king for a slightly old-fashioned education system to get a handle on.

00:56:52.560 Much easier to talk about Elizabeth and Henry than to talk about James.

00:56:56.520 easier to talk about the civil war even than than james so he hasn't isn't much taught so he it's

00:57:02.700 not a very well-known scandal and the howards yes the henry the eighth's wife that you know that

00:57:07.560 that bit's known and boleyn but really the tudors are such an object of fascination in this country

00:57:13.240 that other than that you know you'd be hard pressed to find someone who who knew a lot about

00:57:19.380 it and i was very keen to write but that's why i didn't focus on frankie or francis howard because

00:57:25.620 as you say Henry VIII's wives are talked about various queens are sometimes written about

00:57:32.220 and duchesses but more what you might call ordinary people women are not the subject

00:57:39.740 of historical fiction very very rarely so I very much wanted her and to be the focus of the book

00:57:46.760 because we don't talk enough about life outside the court so in fact although we've talked quite

00:57:54.000 or I have talked quite a lot about the court a lot of the book is not set in the court it's set

00:57:57.700 in the in in the city it's set in back streets it's set in in London it's not it's not a court

00:58:04.700 book it's very much Anne's perspective no and I I'm interested to know well I'm just I was

00:58:14.240 interested to know what people in the UK would know about this period but that's the impression

00:58:18.020 I get just from what we see over here you know which documentaries or movies it's always it's

00:58:23.920 always the same it's like Henry V or it's the Tudors or it's Queen Victoria and that's kind of

00:58:31.620 it so like yeah a bit of civil war bit of civil war that comes in a little bit but yeah no you're

00:58:37.320 so right Jacobean I mean you get a bit of uh you know Shakespeare obviously goes into the into this

00:58:42.940 period I don't mention him in my book because I just feel that that to mention Shakespeare in your

00:58:47.880 book you immediately summon up all sorts of images that I didn't I was deliberately trying not to

00:58:53.280 summon up yeah so yes people will know a little bit perhaps there is some jacobin drama they might

00:58:58.480 know about but um yeah generally it's not a particularly well-known period which excited

00:59:05.540 me I was glad to be able to bring this slightly you know to move on from the Tudors for a bit I

00:59:10.260 think is a good is a good thing well that's what I was wondering too like in terms of writing this

00:59:14.560 um I was reading it as a person who's familiar with well not with Ann Turner not with as you

00:59:20.420 were saying outside of court what life was like but in general the main players so what was your

00:59:27.100 thought process to sort of explain to people who might be coming to this from scratch like people

00:59:30.940 who don't know a thing about Jacobian England what was my thought process yeah just to explain

00:59:38.520 it to people who are coming into this and might need to be have their hand held a little bit

00:59:42.760 I suppose what I wanted to do was write a sort of very grabbing a book um I didn't want to give

00:59:53.400 a history lesson because what really interested me was this friendship the fact it happened to

00:59:59.300 be true or was based on real historical events and the fact it happened to be set nearly 400

01:00:05.700 years ago was was sort of peripheral I mean obviously it was interesting and exciting for

01:00:10.860 me that that was the case but it was it is definitely not a history lesson and although

01:00:15.760 I have done vast amounts of research one of the things I'm most proud about with the reviews is

01:00:20.740 that it people say the research is very lightly worn it's not heavy I'm not at any point explaining

01:00:27.100 oh so he was this and he was the chancellor because that's not how you would write a

01:00:32.680 contemporary novel you wouldn't sort of do that you wouldn't bore people for half a page because

01:00:37.120 you feel they ought to know something so i suppose what i've done is if i feel something needs to be

01:00:42.220 known then it has to be worked into the story in a way that's fascinating i'm not going to give

01:00:46.720 history lessons at any point and of course with google around if you do want to know more about

01:00:51.840 any characters you you can i mean you have to do it with caution wikipedia's entry on

01:00:56.960 ann and frankie i i don't agree with all of it that's on there but um yeah it's definitely not

01:01:03.840 a history lesson and I feel everything people need to know is in there but it's much more what

01:01:10.580 they need to know about them as characters and how they develop as characters rather than you know

01:01:16.080 exactly what laws James passed when yeah no and I as a reader I appreciate it I tend to skim over

01:01:22.900 those parts in books anyway it's just like pages and pages of like and so this person's grandfather

01:01:27.800 was so and so I'm like where's the character it's terrible that is not good writing in my book

01:01:32.680 i mean i don't think that's good writing so i don't i mean i hope there's none of that in this

01:01:38.540 book well no i found i mean as a reader like you jump right in the characters are there and i think

01:01:43.880 as you explained it yeah you intentionally didn't put in these long paragraphs yeah and exactly it's

01:01:50.040 the same way as if it's a book i don't know lord of the rings or something you're like well you

01:01:53.460 know here's this is the shire and the people live there you're like okay it's called the shire

01:01:57.180 they're short I got it like yeah hairy feet yeah exactly you have to create a believable world

01:02:03.460 um and that's and I enjoy doing that so much and because and I mean I think that is a huge

01:02:09.200 advantage of taking eight years because the first year or two you get terribly overexcited about all

01:02:15.120 these rafts and the carriages and the lovely little wooden houses and all this stuff and by

01:02:20.260 year four or five you're more of a resident you've lived there now you've been back and forth for

01:02:25.300 many years so so the things that you notice are the things that I would notice when I if I met

01:02:29.660 you I wouldn't be thinking oh she lives in a house made of brick and look they've got asphalt on the

01:02:34.800 floor and she drives a car because you realize that's just you know you that that is not what

01:02:39.980 we notice and if you're going to put in historical detail it has to work very hard it can't just be

01:02:45.900 to set the scene it has to say something about the character so you can't just say oh she's wearing

01:02:49.700 a rough the rough has to mean something it has to have an importance way beyond just description

01:02:56.220 so um I mean I learned a lot writing this book because I did many drafts and I would sit and

01:03:02.240 read the drafts and I'd start yawning at the bits with long descriptions of the fashion or the

01:03:06.540 history you know all that stuff is is dull if it's given in a big dollop yeah it has to it has

01:03:12.200 to work very hard and and you have to take out anything that sounds like you're preaching at

01:03:17.000 audience or teaching you know that is not the point of a good book when I would I would say

01:03:24.280 just from what you're saying in my experience reading it too like the heart of it is like you

01:03:28.040 said it's a contemporary book about a friendship between two women and then it happens to be set

01:03:33.040 in this place and that's to the listeners listening to this who have not yet read it that's what I

01:03:37.440 would say is that it's very much um the story of especially of Ann Turner but her friendship with

01:03:42.140 Frankie and yeah just what life was like for women which is my interest in history in general

01:03:49.080 just trying to fill in these gaps of what was the actual lived experience like not what was

01:03:54.440 written down saying you know everyone attended the mask and so and so was there like I don't

01:03:59.500 yeah yeah yeah I just have one more question um so just it was from the Wikipedia page because

01:04:07.120 I was like who is Ann Turner so I was just sort of like trying to get what basically I'm just like

01:04:12.000 is this unreal um but it mentions that there's an ann turner character in a couple of dramas

01:04:18.880 like of jacobian dramas so i think where she's just sort of like an evil witch who shows up

01:04:25.580 or something did you encounter any of that in your research well i have to confess no i mean

01:04:31.220 i came across her in lots of accounts and broadsheets and woodcuts and all this sort of

01:04:36.620 thing but these dramas they're talking about they are they are not jacobean i think i think

01:04:40.700 later it must have been newer yeah I think so um so no I those are not things I thought what you

01:04:46.640 were going to mention was the fact she was hanged in her yellow roughs and colors oh well I wasn't

01:04:51.440 sure if that was a spoiler but I love that detail is that true no oh absolutely no it is not true

01:04:57.480 um for well from what is at the time there were many accounts written at the time and no one

01:05:04.060 mentioned that no one and it would have been such a good detail that had she been um hanged in those

01:05:09.640 and I think she deliberately wasn't because she very much portrayed herself as a repentant

01:05:15.940 um as a repentant woman who would turn to protestantism so she would not she would not

01:05:21.820 have gone with her roughs and cuffs so I think that was very inaccurate in the wikipedia page

01:05:25.900 with with a few other things I think a bit inaccurate so in the book there's an act that

01:05:29.580 well I don't want to you will see what happens to the roughs and cuffs in the book um because

01:05:35.080 there is a scene around that but no she almost certainly didn't get hanged in them okay so yes

01:05:42.140 I thought that's what you were going to mention then not these other plays I'm just looking at

01:05:47.020 it now again maybe I just skimmed it poorly but yeah it's what it is is there were novels there's

01:05:52.040 like a 1930 novel there's a 1964 novel but they're mostly yes murder those I have read those I have

01:05:57.880 read and they are again they take they're very interested in the murder and they are unquestioning

01:06:02.680 about the villainy of these two women and again they don't go into their motivation at all i mean

01:06:08.400 to such a to such an extent i just find it extraordinary that they just assumed well

01:06:13.520 they were just evil women of course they would do that yeah so yeah really the only person who

01:06:20.080 really questions it is a is an english academic called professor linley david linley so he's 0.99

01:06:25.780 looking at the literature of the time in a fascinating book about the trials in fact anyone

01:06:30.100 who is interested in this period and wants to know more about it I think this the book the

01:06:35.760 Charles of Francis Howard by David Lindley is a much better source because he looks at all the

01:06:41.540 literature at the time all the stereotypes around women and so on and how how easy it is to push

01:06:46.760 Frankie and Anne into those stereotypes and how unfair based on what is the actual facts

01:06:53.280 there's no sort of justice in that so uh yeah but most other people just accept it unquestioningly

01:07:00.460 oh you know that just makes me think I mentioned at the beginning there was that

01:07:04.260 the quote on your website where somebody described the book as the Thelma and Louise

01:07:07.920 and I'm just thinking like my first thought was Thelma and Louise like oh yeah two women doing

01:07:12.840 crimes but it's like no that's a movie about two women who are like victimized and pushed into the

01:07:17.920 situation where it's like oh actually the way you're talking about it as well it's not

01:07:21.860 it's not a crime spree it's two women who just like were put into this kind of terrible position

01:07:29.340 and kind of did what they could and that's exactly what the characters in your book are doing yeah

01:07:34.100 and they they are defying toxic masculinity in a big way I mean that wonderful scene where there's

01:07:39.520 a horrible tanker driver who's so sexually aggressive towards them on the road and then 0.99

01:07:45.200 they blow up his tanker I mean in a way that's what these women were doing who were blowing up

01:07:49.380 the tanker the middle of James's court yeah um and I think that's just the most wonderful I was 0.90

01:07:55.820 very happy when when um Lawrence Norfolk said that about them because it is very much in that spirit

01:08:01.920 here here are these women defying uh the impositions of on them of a patriarchy

01:08:08.820 um whenever I read a story like this um I mean your novel but also just the experience of the 1.00

01:08:14.860 women I think oh wow look at these women like bucking convention like you know breaking this 1.00

01:08:18.500 glass ceiling or whatever and then it's like oh but nothing changed you know it's like you read 0.99

01:08:22.860 about people where it must have felt like oh this is even like you were saying with the the yellow

01:08:26.780 coat men are wearing it women are wearing it all different classes it's like in another reality

01:08:31.460 that could have led to some societal change but it didn't you know there's so many moments where

01:08:35.900 I feel like look at these women doing this great thing and whatever the year 900 and then it's like

01:08:41.640 well yeah here we are still doing it didn't really pay off did it so I love seeing this moment of

01:08:48.380 feminism I guess for lack of a better word where they wouldn't have known where it would lead but 0.71

01:08:55.260 it could have led to a greater societal change it just didn't happen to so it's not just women

01:09:00.580 weren't sitting around being good wives throughout all of history quite beautifully put I love the

01:09:06.240 where you put that i think that i think this um the the overbury affair and the scandal around

01:09:11.080 the divorce actually did lead to some change it did lead to a discussion about arranged marriages

01:09:16.560 uh there was already some discussion going on but that but francis howard's divorce from essex was

01:09:22.000 such a coarse celeb that it did lead to a lot of soul searching around arranged marriages and

01:09:26.920 whether it was a good idea or not so i think i think that did actually lead to some change

01:09:32.240 and to the to the to the um understanding that really you shouldn't really use your children

01:09:37.660 as pawns in a marriage game you should at least have give them some chance to decide if they like

01:09:43.600 that person or not so this was a period when that did change and they and that that's uh those events

01:09:50.640 were partially responsible for that so that's i like the fact that i feel that they did actually

01:09:56.780 have some impact on they just have some impact on history

01:09:59.820 so um just to sort of uh so the book a net for small fishes at the time that people are listening

01:10:07.860 to this it's out it's available in north america now as well as in the uk um i guess ultimately

01:10:15.200 this is i don't know if this is a good wrap-up question it might be a huge question what do you

01:10:19.300 want people to take away from this book what was your intent like what are you hoping people get

01:10:24.980 out of it well I suppose well I want them to enjoy themselves I want that I like a book that

01:10:31.740 I actually enjoy reading and I feel nourished at the end of it because I feel I've really

01:10:36.060 learned something I didn't know but I've been made to think and feel and so on but I suppose

01:10:42.500 what I really feel is that we need to know our history because our history is very important

01:10:47.000 to how we make our present so how we see women in history is terribly important to how what we

01:10:55.860 what we fight for what we want to protect what we care about and how we see ourselves

01:11:01.020 so I think the more accounts we can have the the more we can understand our history not just from

01:11:08.760 a white male perspective the better that is well said thank you thank you so much for joining us

01:11:17.560 on this podcast I I was so excited to talk to you firstly I was just like I was excited to read the

01:11:23.380 book and I was like I need I'm I'm just excited to talk to someone else who knows about Frances

01:11:27.280 Howard well she's fantastic I mean if you could have someone at a dinner party who I definitely

01:11:35.660 want her and Anne I'd love to actually meet them yeah well and I think that's well like you were

01:11:41.040 saying you have to call her Frankie like you've spent so much time with her yeah you feel like

01:11:44.560 you know her and I think through the book like you really get a sense of who she is as a character

01:11:48.140 which is great beyond here's her portrait and here's kind of a couple paragraphs about who

01:11:53.980 she was it's like well no like as a person so I really appreciate it the characterization of

01:11:59.720 the book like it's very much a character driven book yeah yeah well thank you I've really enjoyed

01:12:06.120 being on your podcast thank you so much it's so nice to meet a fellow

01:12:10.600 person who's interested in Francis Howard

01:12:13.200 thank you so much well thank you

01:12:17.800 so that was my interview with Lucy Jago author of Annette for Small Fishes now available all over

01:12:25.460 the place I recommend this book super highly you can pick it up I mean wherever you get your books

01:12:30.580 from your local independent bookstore your favorite online book ordering service which

01:12:36.060 maybe is that same local independent bookstore if you're more of a library user borrow it from

01:12:40.880 your library if your library doesn't have it like basically every library has a form or something

01:12:45.560 you can fill in to suggest a book so you can like suggest your library buy it did you know libraries

01:12:49.840 also have audiobooks and ebooks you could suggest they get it for those services as well just whatever

01:12:54.480 you need to do i i mean i can't imagine anyone who's got disappointed in this podcast and doesn't

01:13:00.200 want to read this book so read the book and enjoy so yeah so inspired by this discussion with lucy

01:13:08.960 and everything we all just learned today about yellow roughs and what that has to do with living 0.73

01:13:15.720 a tits out lifestyle um i've added there's a bunch of new stuff in the vulgar history merch store so 0.73

01:13:22.040 if you go to vulgarhistory.store, vulgarhistory.store, you'll find we've got our holiday 0.97

01:13:28.000 stuff there. We've got tits this season. We've got tits out for the holiday. There's a Hanukkah 0.97

01:13:34.380 themed product or product shirt and I think a mug that says Candalicious, like Scandalicious, 0.82

01:13:42.460 but Hanukkah style. And then in honor of Francis Howard, I've added or re-added back in some

01:13:50.320 tits out francis howard merchandise that's all yellow just because that's her color now i mean

01:13:57.740 i i will post on instagram and by the time you listen to this hopefully you'll see it there

01:14:03.160 the picture that we all know and love of francis howard like i i've looked at it a million times

01:14:08.360 and i never noticed her rough is yellow yellow roughs like so like tits out roughs are yellow

01:14:15.180 like this is i don't know i'm gonna have to work that into our catchphrase apparently oh and also

01:14:20.160 So when you're on the store, remember, you can use code TITSOUT for free shipping in the US or TITSOUT10, T-I-T-S-O-U-T-1-0 for 10% off.

01:14:30.880 And you can also support this podcast.

01:14:33.380 I have a Patreon, which is patreon.com slash Anne Foster Writer.

01:14:37.300 And that's where you get early access to episodes of Vulgar History.

01:14:41.840 There's polls and things you can help me choose what to talk about on the podcast. 0.83

01:14:45.340 and notably for this um so i also have bonus episodes on there called so this asshole where

01:14:50.920 i talk about various men who annoy me from history and two of the people mentioned in

01:14:55.200 today's episode i've done so this asshole episodes about james the first the king and

01:14:59.960 also george villiers the man who replaced um robert carr as the king's favorite so you know

01:15:07.180 you can get like a whole a whole experience of who all these people are etc so patreon.com

01:15:12.860 slash ann foster writer uh most of my communication about the show is done on instagram lately so you

01:15:18.920 can find us there at vulgar history pod make sure to check the stories that's where i leave updates

01:15:24.460 and stuff often and then also i do my best to keep up on twitter too and that's twitter at

01:15:30.800 vulgar history so i hope you really enjoyed the show i really hope that you enjoy this book i

01:15:36.360 think this book would be a great gift to give if you're giving gifts this holiday season what

01:15:41.900 better than a book about the Thelma and Louise of the Jacobian era. So keep your mask on,

01:15:48.820 keep your tits out, and I'll talk to you again soon. 0.99

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01:17:40.240 They walk among you, shoulder to shoulder, in the dark.

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Vulgar History - November 17, 2021

Author Interview： Lucy Jago (A Net for Small Fishes)

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Transcript