Windsor Castle - part one - a brief history of the Castle in Mediaeval and Renaissance times.

Throughout its millennium plus history, Windsor Castle has always been a 'work in progress'. Four monarchs of England have made the most impression on it: William I, known more often as William the Conqueror, chose the location, founded the castle and established its rough outline and plan; Edward III rebuilt much of it in a Gothic style and established the royal apartments; Charles II transformed it into a Baroque Palace and lastly George IV, who restored a considerable amount of the exterior, altering it to conform with the then modern desire for a romantic castle ideal.

The two eras of history I will be concentrating on in this article are the ones within the time frame of the Mediaeval and Renaissance eras of English history. 

William I began building at Windsor around 1070 and his work was finished by 1086. The castle is one of a chain of fortifications around London and is situated in the only naturally occurring defensive position in this part of the Thames river valley, being 30 metres -  (almost 100 feet) - above the water. Windsor is the only one of this ring of castles to survive the assault of time.

Slightly later than our time frame, this is a model of defensive fortifications and lines of communication around London in the English Civil War.

Norman castles were built to a standard plan. An artificial earth mound supported a keep (motte),

the entrance of which was protected by a fenced yard (bailey). At Windsor, unusually, there were two baileys, an upper and a lower one, known today as the Upper and Lower Wards, one either side of the motte. The outer walls of the castle were surrounded by a ditch which only partially survives.

The moat as it is today

Although the castle was built to keep secure the western route to London, the proximity to a royal hunting forest and to London, made it an ideal residence. As early as 110, Henry I had living quarters there and his grandson, Henry II, built two sets of apartments, a state residence in the lower Ward and a small family lodging in the Upper Ward.

Fine examples of the Bagshot Heath Stone and yellow Bath stone in situ.

When first built, the castle was made from timber but Henry II began to replace the timber with durable stone. Much of it is built of Bagshot Heath stone and the Gothic details in yellow Bath stone. The interior is mostly finished with Bedfordshire stone.

The outer walls are punctuated by towers. Those ordered by Henry II are square whilst those from Henry III are D shaped.

Henry II towers 

The 'Warrior King,' Edward III spent £50,000 transforming the castle from a place of fortification to a Gothic Palace, reflecting his ideal of a chivalric, Christian monarchy. The Lower Ward was transformed by buildings for the College of St. George, founded in 1348. The Chapel that had been built there a century earlier had been dedicated to St Edward the Confessor, but it was Edward who first associated the Castle and the College with St. George, who was the patron saint of the new Order of the Garter.
(I will be writing about St George very soon) 

Part of the Quadrangle as it is in September 2017

William Wykeham, Bishop of Winchester directed the extensive building works taking it to a level that was way and above that necessary for a purely defensive edifice. One particularly impressive example of this is the Great Range, overlooking the Quadrangle, accommodating the King's Great Chamber, St George's Hall and the Royal Chapel. This was lit by 17 tall arched windows and matching fortified entrance towers. This was intended to form a magnificent back drop for the spectacular tournaments and jousts held within the Quadrangle and also functioned as the castle's tilt-yard.

Moving on to the time of Henry VIII, at the time of his death, the king owned over 60 houses and palaces, travelling between his many residences. It was here at Windsor in 1522 that he received the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, to conclude an alliance against France. The only really significant addition to the fabric of the castle ws his addition of a gate that bears his name at the bottom of the Lower Ward, through which visitors leave. 

A gate wide enough for King Henry VIII

Henry is buried in St. George's Chapel together with his favourite wife, Jane Seymour. It was a strange sensation to be standing at the grave of the king... I had very damp eyes 
often in that chapel.

Probably wise, but I would so much have
liked a photograph of my own.

Photo from 'Find a Grave'

Edward VI did not like Windsor and probably would have gone on to bring galleries and gardens to it had he lived long enough, but Mary I refaced many of the of the houses for the Military Knights in the Lower Ward  and her arms, together with the arms of her Spanish husband Philip, can be found hanging on the old belfry tower, known today as the Mary Tudor Tower, the residence of the Governor of the Military Knights.

By the time the first Elizabeth came to the throne, many parts of the castle were in drastic need of repair and a major building campaign was started in the 1570s. Henry VIII's terrace walkway was described as a 'verie great ruyn' and the Western end of the chapel was 'verie ould ruinous and far oute of order redie to fale down, ' (we all have days like that :-) ) The terrace walkway was completely renewed in stone with a very elaborate ornamented balustrade and the Royal Chapel was remodelled and fitted with stalls, a gallery and a panelled ceiling.

Elizabeth also added a long gallery in which to walk and admire the far off view to the north during poor weather  as she loved to be out in the air but hated to be 'russled by the wind'.

I will now conclude with some random shots of the castle....

Enjoy! 

Unless otherwise attributed, all photos in the blog together with the blog itself are by Diana Milne September 2017 © 
Image of Edward III from English Monarchs

Mary Arden - Shakespeare's Mother

Mary Arden – a Tudor woman.

Mary Arden's son William

 

This is the story of a peasant’s daughter who rose to wealth and status, who buried three of her children and lived through four changes of her country’s religion, who survived the plague and gave birth to one of the world’s best known playwrights and poets. This is the story of Mary Arden, William Shakespeare’s mother.

Mary Arden was born into a time of change and turmoil, a time of radical transformation in both history and society. It was a time of war and violence, of class conflict and the tumult of the reformation overturning a thousand years of religious history and English Christianity in just twenty years.
 

What could it have been like to live through those times for any one, let alone a woman?

Mary Arden was one of eight daughters born to an old farming family in the heart of Warwickshire but Mary married out of life on the land for the challenges of the new world of the Tudor middle class.

Her children would become haberdashers and glovers, two even made names for themselves in the entertainment industry in London! and so Mary Arden’s own story can be likened to a mirror reflecting the changing times of the Tudor era.

Tudor England was a small country with only two and a half million people, ninety percent of whom worked on the land. Life expectancy was just 38! and a third of all children died before their tenth birthday. Mary’s father farmed in Wilmcote, just outside Stratford on Avon in the parish of Aston Cantlow.

The Farm

The Forest of Arden is still a name on the map and it was this place that gave Mary’s family her name. Although Mary’s father Robert was just a husbandman - a well to do peasant - her family could be traced back to before the Norman Conquest. Robert was born around 1480 effectively making him a man from the old world, whose daughters and descendants would welcome the new. Robert built his house in Wilmcote in 1515 and amazingly, under the skin of modernity, it is still surprisingly intact. Originally it was a traditional farming house, open to the ceiling, but the need for space, necessitated it being divided into an up and down stairs.




Mary Arden's House

 Robert and Mary’s mother, whose name is lost to history, were married in 1517 or 18 and the children started to appear very soon. Mary was the youngest of eight children: Agnes, Joan, Katherine, Margaret, Joyce, Elizabeth, Alice and then Mary, in about 1535 (some sources say as late as 1537) and was baptised in Aston Cantlow.  Although religiously it was a country in flux, England was still a Catholic country then and Mary could have been named after the Virgin Mary. The West Midlands is and was a deeply conservative area and religious change came slower there than to many places but after 1540 all this changed. In Aston Cantlow, the local guild was stripped of its silver plate and land. When the monasteries were dissolved all treasures and artefacts were confiscated to raise revenue for the king and realm. The change was also secular as the dissolution flooded the country with land and money, allowing the rise of a new middle class.

By a huge stroke of fortune a list of contents of Mary’s family house in Wilmcote survived, giving us a picture of her life at home. Animals, crops, 8 oxen, 2 bullocks, 7 cows, feather beds and mattresses, cushions, eleven painted cloths for the walls, miscellaneous chattels, total valuation £77 11 10

Mary grew up, as all girls did, multi skilling and was taught to do  essential tasks around the house hold, looking after children, cattle, swine, hens and sheep, then baking, brewing, making cheese, malting and all aspect of housekeeping.  Women and girls were also required to do harder labour, like helping with shearing, ploughing, gathering and threshing corn.

At meals, Mary and her sisters would sit on benches/forms as chairs were a sign of status. Robert, however, had three - one for him, one for his wife and one for an honoured guest. Her aesthetic sense would have been stimulated by the murals in the church, depicting religious scenes and almost three-d representations of ‘what would happen if you were bad’. These were whitewashed over when she was in her twenties, but revealed, still bright, in 1804. A favourite mural was also a pageant often enacted by the guilds at Stratford and that was St George and the Dragon and most people saw this at least once in their lifetime. In 1517 Robert joined the guild.

In 1547 King Henry VIII died and was followed by his pious but cold hearted son, Edward VI, who was surrounded by Protestant fundamentalists who would change the world forever. It was the beginning of the 'commotion time'. When Mary was in her teens, Mass was abolished and all the old rites and festivities were abolished.  The Ardens remained quietly loyal to the old faith. When Mary was about 12, Mary’s mother died and Robert remarried a younger widow, Agnes Hill, who brought he own brood of four children to live at Wilmcote. Joyce and Alice and Mary were still living at home . Living space was cramped and tensions ran high, so Robert drew up 'leases' to ensure his own daughters to ensure if he died they would still inherit.

In 1553, when Mary was about 18, Edward suddenly died and Mary Tudor came to the throne; she was a Catholic who was determined to turn the clock back!

In 1556 Mary’s father fell ill with what may be a fatal flu. He assembles his will. He invokes Virgin Mary and leaves his wordly good, surprisingly provides Mary with land and money - £6 13 4 ( a bit more than a skilled carpenter would earn in a year – roughly equating to £30,000 today.) Even more surprisingly  as she is the youngest, she is named as one of his executors, together with Alice, showing respect and trust and by implication, an acknowledgement that Mary is intelligent and honest. 

Amongst other items showing his generous and thoughtful nature, he leaves 4d to everyone in Aston Cantlow  who didn’t have a team of oxen

As legal executrix  she almost certainly had basic reading skills, but could she write? On later legal documents  she makes her signature with a beautiful calligraphy M. Her wax  seal has her personal emblem , a horse (some say a running horse.) The evidence suggests that she may have known how to write.  She would have been an attractive marriage proposition. There may have been a match already in mind with the son of one of her father’s tenants, John Shakespeare. John had moved from Snitterfield to Stratford  in the early 50s. He had done a 7 year  apprenticeship with a master glover Tom Dixon. He was a young man with prospects and would be an ideal catch. In Oct 1556 he buys 2 freehold properties in town.

Within weeks of his purchase he married Mary Arden in 1557. He was in his late 20s, she was about 22. Stratford then was a small market town with maybe 1200 people and a growing middle class serviced by tailors, and hatters and glovers. 'Home' at that point was just beginning to be a venue for social display and ambition... (i.e. beginning the keep up with the Joneses)  and he needed house to fit status.

They presumably wanted to start a family, but sadly Mary’s first two children died - little Joan aged just 2 months  and Margaret aged 1.

It may have been a comfort, who can tell how she would feel after the death of her babies? but at least her husband was doing well. His freehold in Henley Street entitled him join the corporation. Corporations had replaced the guilds in 1547 and they ran the town. His civic duties ranged from constable to ale taster and charity hand out to the poor. He was a man of credit. Someone they could trust.

In 1558 Mary Tudor died and Elizabeth came to throne, but she was Church of England and so the fourth change of religion in 20 years began. Soon there were risings against her religious policies and the government responded by removing all trappings of Catholicism. In 1563 Stratford council had to do the government bidding and in winter 2/- was paid for defacing images in the chapel so no memory of them remained and the chamberlain, John Shakespeare had to sign off the job.

In April 1564 William was born. On 28^th May, Mary was purified at church, but when he was 3 months old the plague came to Stratford. Soon the town was living in fear. At the end of August the corporation held their meeting in the open air, but by then the situation was desperate.  With baby William it was best to get out if she could and Mary rode out to her sister in Wilmcote, 5 miles away where there were no deaths. Luckily William and his parents survived.  

After William, other babies born  and remained healthy; Joan, Anne, Gilbert and Richard and Mary spent time teaching them their ABC and reading prior to them going to school and telling them stories. Years later William would remember  tales of their legendry ancestor, Guy of Warwick. There is also a strong possibility that William would have seen the mystery plays that were still held.

John continued his rise in the council and in 1568 he was elected as mayor, making Mary was the wife of Alderman and High Bailiff, Mr. John Shakespeare.

Now they set out to use John’s position to make real money, investing in wool. It was the mainstay of the economy and was government controlled to prevent illegal dealers undercutting the market – and that is just what John was doing.

John’s web of contacts spread from the Cotswolds to Nottingham and down to Wiltshire. Mary would have dealt with business contacts in an informal capacity. It worked because of trust. But trust was a big issue in Elizabethan England and Elizabeth’s network of spies recorded John’s activities in the Exchequer Memoranda Roll 1572. A government informer, James Langrake, informed on John. This was not the first  time that  Langrake informed on John. The first time he informed about his illegal money lending and then in 1571 he reported him for a wool scam to the value of £210. When you  bear in mind that a waged labourer earned maybe £10 per annum and a house could be bought for £30, it shows just what an enormous sum of money is involved. This time John was able to pay off the informaer and got off with it.

Meanwhile as an alderman John was able to send his son to the Grammar school, the gateway of to university. In late 1570s the government suddenly turned on the illegal wool dealers with the whole force of the law and John’s whole informal network collapsed. Suddenly he had a network of debt everywhere with no network of income!

As the financial difficulties piled up, in 1570 their 7 yr old Anne died. The corporation book has an insight into the tragedy: 'for the bell and pall for Mr Shakespeare’s daughter for her funeral, 8d (pence)'.

Desperate to save money William was taken out of school to help John, losing him the opportunity of University.

Soon they were trying to raise money any way they could. They borrowed from friends and neighbours, inlaws and relatives. Then they start selling off land, including Mary’s 30 or 40 acre and cottage inheritance. John even divided the house up and leased half of it to neighbours who open a pub! Using the house called Asbie’s as security Mary raises £40 from her brother in law, but could not pay it back regrettably she had to forfeit the property.

Four months after Anne’s death she got pregnant again  and although by then in her mid forties, gave birth to Edmund. A couple of years later the teenage William got a 26 year old girl, Anne Hathaway, pregnant first with a daughter and then twins. The family was then squeezed into a third of their old house with William’s new wife and four new children to feed.
 

Worse was to follow 1583 the government discovered a plot to assassinate Elizabeth, the instigator being Edward Arden, a relative of Mary. Edward was head of the most important Catholic family in Warwickshire and after his arrest was put into the chamber called ‘The little Ease’ where you could neither stand up nor lie down and then all the men were tortured on the rack and condemned to death.

Around Stratford the secret police interrogated suspected Catholics and as Mary was an Arden and married to an ex mayor her household was almost certainly one of them. In 1586, having been protected by his fellow councillors for 10 years, John was struck off for non attendance. Mary’s family was now ruined

But there is a twist to the plot. William went to London to try to make it in the theatre. How he did it, we do not know, but in autumn, 1592 a famous metropolitan critic Robert Green poured scorn on the country boy taking the stage by storm. There is no such thing as bad publicity and suddenly William had made it and his box office earnings restored the family fortunes. In 1596 he bought a coat of arms for his father to make him a gentlemen, with (of course) a few rewrites of history, saying of Mary that she had been the daughter and heiress of Robert Arden Esq. and gentleman.

The family could hold their heads high again. William bought the big house near the chapel and John and Mary lived out their days in Henley street with their daughter Joan and her children. Mary had lived from Henry VIIIs reign, through Edward’s, Mary’s, Lady Jane Gray’s, Elizabeth’s and on into James’. She had known grief and disappointment but had held her family together during the commotion time. John died in 1601

John's death recorded in the Parish record

and Mary followed him in 1608, in her early 70s and was buried in the churchyard in Stratford.

*

Shortly after her death William finally published poems he had worked on for most of his life. The poems are imbued with a sense of the destructive power of time and the redeeming power of love. It is tempting to think that it was his mother who taught him how to feel the emotions contained within.

*

This biography of Mary Arden was written from copious notes taken whilst watching a fascinating documentary about Mary Arden, presented by Michael Wood.

Photographs from: 

Biography. com

Stratford.co.uk Attractions 

Shakespeare's Birthplace trust 

© Diana Milne August 2017

A Different View: JANE THE QUENE by Janet Wertman ~ A review by Linda Root

The author has very kindly offered a reader's choice giveaway with this book; the winner gets to choose between an e-book copy or a paperback. Simply leave a comment on this post, or on our Facebook Page, to be in with a chance of winning. Good luck!
The winner will be drawn on Thursday 29th June

From early childhood, I was committed to Elizabeth, Queen of England, not the current one, but the one who brought England it's Golden Age.  To know Elizabeth as, in my youth, I endeavored to do, required me to take a brief look at each of her serial step-mothers.  My adolescent view of research went little farther than the cinematic version Young Bess, which, as I recall, begins with Thomas Seymour crashing into teenage Elizabeth Tudor's bedchamber to announce Katherine Howard's ascension to the throne. Even Young Bess left Tom's sister Jane on the cutting room floor, along with Anne of Cleves.  As I passed into young adulthood, my obsession grew, but by then I was capable of scholarly research, and it was in that phase that I met Quene Jane. I was a feminist before there was such a thing, a mental transvestite, so to speak, the result of having grown up in a neighborhood of Roman Catholics who through prayers and incantations gave birth to only boys. The historical Jane Seymour was far too insipid for my taste.  Even Joely Richardson's portrayal of her in the Tudors did not elevate Henry Tudor's third wife to the list of someone I might have liked had I known her.  And then, comes Janet Wertman to the rescue in her captivating novel, Jane the Quene, and I took a second look.

Janet Wertman's Jane enters the Tudor drama in 1525 as an eighteen-year-old girl making her first appearance at the court of Catherine of Aragon.  The Queen extends a gracious welcome, but soon places Jane's indoctrination in the care of two others of the queen's maids-of-honor, Jane's distant cousins Mary and Anne Boleyn.  The Boleyn Girls are obviously less than impressed to assume the burden of her care. On her part, Jane finds them frivolous, intimidating, and of uncertain virtue. During Jane's girlhood, her parents often measured her against the Boleyn girls and consistently found her wanting. Even her own brothers expected her arrival at court to be overlooked by the eligible men. Left to her own faltering devices, she would not have chosen her extroverted cousins as her mentors, but she was determined to make the best of things.The alternative was the much-dreaded spinsterhood her parents had predicted.

In the nine years from the end of the prologue to the commencement of Chapter One, Jane has fulfilled her family's expectations and become a lackluster presence at a court no longer graced by Catherine of Aragon. Jane's flamboyant cousin, Anne Boleyn, has become Henry's consort. For her part, Jane failed to attract a suitable husband, and her devotion to the displaced and ailing Catherine of Aragon has hardly endeared her to King Henry's unpopular new queen. The affections of the king for his much-pursued ladylove Anne Boleyn have cooled.  Like the wife she had displaced, Anne, too, failed to deliver the anticipated son. Although Henry and Anne maintain appearances in public, King Henry's eyes were wandering, and his queen was growing shrewish.

The family threatens to remove Jane from the court and replace her with her much younger sister Dorothy, whom they considered a more promising player in the game of sexual politics commonly played at the English court. When her brother Edward announced the decision as if it were a fait accompli, Jane startles everyone present by refusing to go willingly into obscurity.  Sweet-natured, shy Jane Seymour has learned to say no to her brother Edward. However, situations arise prompting Jane to negotiate a compromise. When the Royals announce plans to include the Seymour home at Wolf Hall in their summer progress, Jane's home in the county suddenly becomes her residence of choice. Her mother lacks the talent and stamina to play hostess to a royal hunting party. Jane is suited to the task. Armed with something she can barter, she returns to the country home in exchange for her brother Edward's promise to find her a proper suitor when she returns to court in September.

From the time of his arrival at Wolf Hall for a five-day hunt, the king is a different Henry.  He is captured by the pastoral setting and the manners of the young woman who oversees it. While theirs is not a love story for the ages in the classic sense, it is indeed history with a romantic flair.  Wertman's Henry Tudor is likable, and Jane Seymour is not the insipid creature of her brothers' construct.  Try as I might, I cannot dispose of Wertman's Jane as unlikely. The author paints her as a very different woman from Anne Boleyn, but not a mouse. While she is not the flirtatious but unyielding Anne Boleyn or the devoutly religious and adoring wife, Queen Catherine, she is not a pawn.  When her brother Edward and his friend Sir Nicholas Carey trained her as Anne's replacement, she was an apt and eager pupil.

The prospective Quene Jane, who emerges in Part Two: Schemer, is not a courtesan. She has no aspiration to play the part of a Mary Boleyn. It did not take Jane to dispose of Anne Boleyn. That honor goes to Cromwell and the English people. But Jane is not the innocent, although she assumes the role.At one point, she reflects upon her part in Anne's demise. At first, her objective was to unseat the queen the way Anne had unseated Catherine. But what was planned for Anne Boleyn was not banishment to a continental nunnery. For  Anne  Boleyn, there is a talk of a burning or beheading. I prayed for this, but not like this, Jane lamented. She had anticipated a more humane end for her cousin and suffers bouts of guilt. But by the time Anne climbs the scaffold, Jane has learned to rationalize.

Other members of the Seymour family grace the pages of the book. Edward is a perfect image of the historical Hertford , who so ruthlessly pursued the Scots.  Thomas is the likable opportunist who lost his head to an axe man for the crime of overreaching. Wertman's portrayal of  Edward 's wife Anne Stanhope is almost empathetic, a refreshing change from the way she is usually hammered by historical novelists, myself included. Wertman's Cromwell is versatile and compelling. Her judicious selection of a limited number of minor characters avoids over-populating the story.  Some verbal exchanges have a forgivable but apparent contemporary flavor, but the settings and time frame are well researched. The result is a well-paced page turner likely to appeal to a divers readership, including young adults. Janet Wertman meets the challenge of writing a story with a pre-determined end, yet maintaining a hold on her audience until the last page is turned.

 I am also saving space on my bookshelf for the remaining books in the Seymour trilogy.

                                                             Linda Root

About the Author:

By day,  Janet Wertman is a freelance grant writer for great non-profits. By night, she writes historical fiction.  She has harbored a passion for the Tudor era since she was eight years old and her parents let her stay up late to watch The Six Wives of Henry VIII, and Elizabeth R. Janet lives in Pacific Palisades, California with one husband, two dogs, and three children. Jane the Quene can be found on Amazon. Her website can be found here.
Janet has generously offered those who leave a comment below or on the Facebook page a chance to win either an ebook of a paperback of Jane the Quene, winner's choice.








Linda Root is the author of six novels set in Mary Stuart's Scotland and early in the reign of James I of England, as well as a Scottish Fantasy, the Green Woman, written under the pseudonym J.D.Root. Root is a former prosecutor who lives in the hi desert near Joshua Tree National Park. Her books are available from Amazon.

Anna Reviews: The Light in the Labyrinth

The Light in the Labyrinth
by Wendy J Dunn

If there is one period in English history that has been depicted, over and over again, it is Tudor England. There seems to be something utterly irresistible about Henry VIII and his glorious daughter Elizabeth I, some sort of fascination that attracts readers like flies to a honeypot. Personally, I am not a Tudor fan – I feel a certain fatigue when yet another book detailing the intrigues at the royal court makes an appearance. Don’t get me wrong; I enjoy books set in the period – but I’ve had my fill, I think, of Henry and his hapless wives.

This is not to say that the sad end to the passionate affair between Henry and Anne Boleyn leaves me cold – beyond a doubt, this is one of the more scorching love stories in history – but it is a story where fiery passion turns to bitter ash, a spiteful, ageing king wreaking his revenge on his proud and wilful wife. Still: it is a tale all of us have heard, in one way or the other, so is it at all possible to set these sad events to a new, entrancing tune?

When The Light in the Labyrinth landed on my desk, I was therefore somewhat hesitant. Yet another book about Anne Boleyn, this enigmatic lady who so enthralled the king that he broke with the Holy Church for her sake – what new insights could possibly be offered? One chapter into the book, I no longer cared about new insights. I cared about prickly, confused Kate, Anne Boleyn’s fourteen-year-old niece.

Katherine Carey is a resentful, angry young girl. She considers her mother a fool for marrying beneath her, she is jealous of her new half siblings, condescending of her commoner stepfather and the only thing little Kate wants is to go to court and serve her adored aunt, Queen Anne. In Kate’s book, Anne is everything her own mother is not: fashionable, witty, powerful – and of course, extraordinarily happy, now that she has achieved her ambitions and become queen.

Kate’s mother, Mary, does not want her to go to court, but at long last she relents, even if her demeanour clearly shows Kate just how much her mother hates letting her go – or is it fear that causes her mother’s face to pale? Kate doesn’t care. She is going to London to live with the queen and to finally see her brother, Harry, who for the last few years has lived at court, despite being younger than Kate. She vaguely recalls her mother’s distress when Harry was taken from her – several years ago – to be brought up elsewhere, and she doesn’t quite understand why her brother was so brutally separated from his family, but conveniently blames her mother for it. In Kate’s opinion, everything is her mother’s fault – a typical adolescent reaction.

It is rather fitting that Kate enters London via London Bridge, having to ride below the garish display of the rotting heads of the king’s executed enemies. She is entering a dark world, a labyrinth of conspiracies and undercurrents, and very soon Kate’s entire universe will be severely rocked as she uncovers secrets about herself – and about the court. Even worse, it does not take Kate long to understand that her beloved aunt is far from happy. In fact, Queen Anne is distraught, living her days on a knife-edge of fear and hope – hope that she might yet give the king a son, fear of what he’ll do if she doesn’t.

While it is Anne Boleyn’s subsequent fall from grace that is the main theme of the book, this is really the story of how Kate grows from a truculent difficult child to a very young woman of integrity and courage – brave enough to confront the king, mature enough to see in him a confused and angry man who no longer knows who to trust.

In Kate, Ms. Dunn gives us a complex and credible character, one it is easy to love and care for, despite her initial despicable behaviour towards her mother and stepfather. Forced by circumstances to take on far more responsibility than she is ready for, Kate more than rises to the challenge, even in those moments when all she experiences is suffocating fear. The story is told in third person, consistently from Kate’s perspective, but here and there the author has inserted Kate’s own thoughts, taken from her secret journal, and these first-person passages add depth to Kate’s personality.

Had The Light in the Labyrinth only dealt with Queen Anne’s unhappy end, it would have made for quite the dreary read, no matter how much life Ms. Dunn blows into her cast of characters. Fortunately, she has added a sweet and innocent romance between Kate and her future husband Francis. All that teenager angst that goes in hand in hand with first love is excellently depicted – and quite, quite timeless, causing this reader to smile in recognition.

Ms. Dunn has obviously expended a lot of effort on her research. It shines through every casual description of rooms and gardens, clothes and pastimes. A myriad of characters populate these pages, but Ms. Dunn does a good job of only properly introducing the truly important, while the rest blend into the colourful background of scheming courtiers and invisible servants. Even more important – and especially in a book aimed at a young adult audience – all this information is expertly woven into the fabric of the tale, thereby avoiding any heavy-handed “info-dumps”.

All in all, The Light in the Labyrinth is quite the read – no matter the age of the reader. And yes, thanks to Kate, a new voice has been added to the well-known haunting melody – a voice that mellows and matures as the story evolves and yet retains a touch of bittersweet innocence right to the bloody, inevitable end. It is with regret I close the covers on Kate’s story, and I can but doff my cap and applaud Ms. Dunn for a work most well done!

About the author 
Wendy J. Dunn is an Australian author quite obsessed with all things Tudor, as evidenced by her previous novel Dear Heart, How Like You This, which is about Sir Thomas Wyatt, a close confidante to Anne Boleyn. Recently, she has uncovered facts that give an indirect explanation to her fascination with the Wyatt and Boleyn families – it seems Ms. Dunn’s ancestors had business dealings with these two families and may well have known both Anne and Thomas. Somewhat creepy, but quite intriguing…

Ms. Dunn can be found on her website, and The Light of the Labyrinth is available both on Amazon and Amazon UK.

Anna Belfrage is the author of six published books, all part of The Graham Saga. Set in the 17th century, the books tell the story of Matthew Graham and his time-travelling wife, Alex Lind. Anna can be found on Amazon, Twitter, Facebook and her website. If you would like Anna to review your book, please see our submissions tab above.

Sunday Wrap Up: Week ending May 4, 2014

Please note there are two giveaways this week, so be sure to follow the links to comment and get your name in the hat!

This week The Review wanted to travel all over the map and so we have some chat and some review; Elizabethan England and barely into a new millennium; scholarly study and young adult. In short, there's something for everyone! "Fresh and engaging," as one of the reviewers put it, perfectly matched to this time of the year when daylight has arrived and we shake the dust off ourselves and savor in the freshness and sweetness of the summer sun--indeed, the very air. 

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Lisl gets us started with her review of Simon Stirling's Who Killed William Shakespeare? The Murderer, The Means, The Motive. "Opening with reference to the disappearance of the real Shakespeare to be replaced by a mythical figure, Stirling shifts to the personal Shakespeare and various interpretations of his life and legacy. Specifically he challenges the notion that nothing is known about the playwright and commences the laying out of his research, which over the course of the book shows how history was in the process of being re-written when he still lived, in the 18^th century and even today when Shakespeare continues to be celebrated as what the author refers to as a “trademark.”

But why would anyone need to re-invent who Shakespeare was? What needed to be covered up? Why would anyone murder him? And how could they get away with it? While part of the mystery rests within the who, readers shall not be let down when within the first section a suspect is revealed—in fact, the book’s blurb provides this information:

He was (indeed) honest, and of an open and free nature: had an excellent Phantsie; brave notions, and gentle expressions: wherein he flowed with that facility, that sometime it was necessary he should be stopped. . .

Like an investigator, Stirling turns to the method of collecting evidence to prove the means, motive and opportunity; without such, “knowing” is insufficient to support a successful criminal proceeding. Other elements are required, however: the presence of reasonable doubt as to the suspect’s guilt might wash away the strength of those three aspects. In three sections, titled after these elements, the author explores in great detail avenues of the crime, including what led to it and subsequent events."

To learn more about the Shakespeare you think you may know, and to comment for chance at a free, signed copy of this spectacular book, click on!

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Jayne waves us over to her corner again, this week to share with us a fab interview with author Amy Licence who  discusses, amongst other topics, stealth writing (borrowed that phrase from a FB commenter!), kitchen table research and what the future may bring. Take it away, Jayne!

"I have been lucky enough to interview one of my favorite non-fiction writers, Amy Licence. She very kindly agreed to answer some of my questions and I thought I would share them with you.

You have so far chosen to mostly write about women from the 15th century, so what made you choose them ?

There are two answers to this: one about women but also specifically about the 15th century. I can’t help but feel drawn to that period in time, although I started out being interested in the Tudors and gravitated to the Wars of the Roses. Something about that century fascinates me and I can’t really offer a satisfactory explanation of why. I can say that I find the people and events fascinating, but I expect enthusiasts of any era would make the same assertion. The closest I can come to it, is to say that I feel most at home there. Regarding the women aspect, I’ve always been interested in women’s lives, in their experiences within a patriarchal framework and just how far they were able to exercise any influence or control at all, from queenship to motherhood. The women of the 15th century particularly fascinate me because so many of them remain an enigma to us, although they must have been key players in the dynastic power struggles of the day. I don’t accept the theory that they were just there to reproduce. They may not have sat in council chambers or fought on battlefields, but as wives, mothers and daughters, I’ll bet they had a lot to say.

Do you have a favourite out the three women, Anne Neville, Elizabeth of York or Cecily Neville?

They’re all very interesting to me and as I researched each, I learned just how remarkable their lives really were. I think there is a lot we will never know about Elizabeth’s history and marriage and I am endlessly fascinated by the question of what exactly Anne Neville did or didn’t know. But I have to say that Cecily’s role probably interests me the most. As the wife of the Duke of York, and the mother of Edward, George and Richard, she was in a unique position at the heart of that family and occupied a place in their lives. There is also a degree of controversy about some of Cecily’s decisions, such as her support of George’s rebellion against Edward and her role in the allegations about her own fidelity. Perhaps more than the other two, she shaped contemporary events, which is all the more ironic, as she was the only one of the three who did not become queen."

Since we are quite certain you'll be intrigued by stealth writing and the other goodies mentioned above, click here to read the rest of this intriguing interview!

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"Shield Maiden is simply a terrific read. Written by Richard Denning for young readers, there is plenty to intrigue and draw in the older reader as well.

The opening premise of the story is as old as time: a daughter, Anna, yearns to be a warrior woman in an Anglo Saxon community, against all convention and expressly against the expectations of her father.  The time (around 600 AD) and location make this story fresh, engaging, and, as the story unfolds, unexpected.  Memorable characters are integral to this story: Anna’s circle of young friends; a tinker, Raedann who may be more than he seems; Gurthrunn the dweorg (dwarf) who holds the key to the core mystery and adventure of this book. 

While exploring a ruined Roman villa, Anna and her friends find a gold horn.  Passed from hand to hand, no one can blow sound out of the horn until it comes to Anna.  The horn responds to her and thus she is ‘chosen’ by the instrument whose trill opens the doors between worlds and unleashes the struggle between the gods in Anna’s village and its environs.  The horn recognizes Anna’s strength and potential for leadership, her gender notwithstanding."



Since there are three free copies of this book up for grabs, it's pretty sure you'll not want to miss clicking that link!

Missed last week's Wrap Up? Not to worry, gentle readers, here it is!