Tudor England is a great setting for an historical novel. I've asked Elizabeth Fremantle, bestselling author of three intriguing novels set in that era, a few questions to discover more of its allure.
WATCH THE LADY is set
in the Elizabethan Age. What is the allure of Tudor England on modern readers?
It’s hard to say why the Tudor period has captivated modern
readers so much more than other periods. I am personally fascinated by the
state of political and cultural flux that came with the Reformation and the
exploration of the New World, which coincided with an unprecedented
half-century of female rule. England was late to the renaissance but in the
late sixteenth century with writers such as Spenser, Sidney and Shakespeare
there was a great literary flourishing that continues to have relevance today.
What is the most
intriguing aspect of that age to you,
instead, both as a historical
researcher/writer and a reader?
My particular interest lies with women writers and this was
the time when they began to take up their pens. My first book QUEEN’S GAMBIT is
about Katherine Parr, the last wife of Henry VIII, who few know was one of the
first women to publish an original work in the English language. The period is
filled with intriguing and powerful women whose stories continue to captivate
modern readers, some of which, like Penelope Devereux’s in WATCH THE LADY, have
been forgotten by history and merit re-expooration.
Writing historical
fiction must be challenging. How much do you work on research and how important
is historical accuracy to you?
In my novels I like to remain faithful to the historical
record but I am not under the illusion that it is possible to achieve absolute
accuracy when dealing with the distant past.
Often history contradicts itself, in differing points of view, and the
truth remains elusive but there is usually a framework of known fact that I
will work to.