QUEEN'S GAMBIT
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UK hardback, available now:
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About Queen's Gambit:
A tale of female friendship and betrayal, passion and deadly intrigue, Queen's Gambit tells the story of Henry VIII's sixth wife Katherine Parr. She was no dull nursemaid, as history would have us believe, but was a dynamic and intelligent woman who negotiated the danger of Henry's Tudor court with skill and discretion – a true survivor. Her story is also deeply romantic and the novel depicts a women who must quash her feelings for another man in order to obey her monarch... but does the call of duty prove too much?
'Queen's gambit accepted,' says the King, taking her white pawn, rolling it between fat fingers.
He looks at her, sunken eyes flashing, his breath wheezing as if there is no space for air in him.
'I could make you Queen,' he declares.
Droplets of spit land next to her ear.
'You tease, Your Majesty,' she says.
'Perhaps,' he growls. 'Perhaps not.'
'Superbly written... what Hilary Mantel fans should read while they wait for the final part of her trilogy.' The Bookseller
Katherine Parr – National Portrait Gallery
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Thomas Seymour – Holbien
Mary I as a young woman
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Henry VIII in later years
Elizabeth I as a girl
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Katherine Parr
Snape Castle, yorkshire – where Katherine lived as Lady Latymer
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Hampton Court – where Katherine Married Henry Tudor
Edward VI
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Book trailer:
Characters
KATHERINE PARR
Known for being the wife that 'survived' Katherine Parr has been mis-represented by history in that she is remembered as the dull nursemaid who saw an irascible king through his dotage. She was far from this, and hopefully my fictional representation of her goes someway to show what a dynamic, and politically savvy woman she was. She was the author of two books in a time when the very idea of a woman publishing anything was considered akin to a monkey with a quill and could seriously compromise her virtue. She vehemently supported religious reform at great personal risk, and survived a Catholic plot to bring her down by out witting her powerful adversaries. One of the triumphs of her time as Queen was that she was instrumental in bringing the disparate royal family back together and persuaded Henry to reinstate Mary and Elizabeth Tudor in the succession. But what intrigued me most, as a writer of fiction, about Katherine, was the essential contradiction at her core: that she, an intelligent and shrewd woman, was capable of falling blindly for a man who was far from worthy of her heart. For me it is this flaw that takes her out of the pages of the history books and invests her with humanity, allowing us to identify with her down the centuries.
Further reading, with links:
Katherine the Queen: The Remarkable Life of Katherine Parr by Linda Porter
Catherine Parr: Henry VIII's Last Love by Susan James
Catherine Parr: Wife, widow, mother, survivor, the story of the last queen of Henry VIII by Elizabeth Norton
HENRY VIII
We are all familiar with Henry Tudor, the despotic king who married six times and beheaded two of his young wives, but in Queen's Gambit I wanted to create a more complex portrait of the man, showing him as someone who was at the mercy of his own monstrous temper and was deeply manipulative but was also capable of compassion, and had too, an awareness of his failings. At the time he was married to Katherine Parr Henry had broken with the Pope, which meant that the whole of Catholic Europe was on a mission to destroy him in the name of their faith, and the dangerously polarised factions within his own court reflected this. I wanted to convey the sense that he had grown so used to maintaining his terrifying front in the face of all this, and beset by debilitating and painful illness, that he had lost sight of his humanity.
DOT FOWNTEN
Dot is a character largely of my imagination, though there was a Dorothy Fountain who served as maid to Margaret Neville at Snape and remained with the family serving Katherine Parr when she was Queen. This Dorothy also married a minor courtier named William Savage. I have certainly made Dot lower born than she was likely to have been as I wanted to offer a different perspective on the court – a 'below stairs' view – and was keen to explore the kind of life an ordinary women like Dot might have had in the period and though, in the novel, she is visited by exceptional circumstances and comes to move in an elevated world, her experience of it is different to those born into the nobility. Low born women were not expected to make dynastic marriages and consequently married later than their noble sisters and more often had the opportunity to choose their husbands, or at least have had some kind of prior relationship. Literacy and education was something entirely beyond their reach and in Dot I wanted to imagine a woman with an intellectual curiosity, striving to educate herself against the expectations of her age – as an adjunct to this I touch on the possibilities for social mobility that were beginning to open up (it must be said mostly for men) in the renaissance period.
HUICKE
Dr Robert Huicke, like Dot, is largely a fictional character in QUEEN'S GAMBIT. He was however physician to Henry VIII, becoming Katherine Parr's personal physician on her marriage to the King and later served Edward VI in the same capacity. He also witnessed Katherine's will. It is not documented that he was involved in the relaying of news to Katherine of the warrant for her arrest – it was thought to have one of the royal doctors and it is tempting to imagine it was he, given he primarily served the Queen. There is no evidence of his homosexuality – he was married and his wife sued him for divorce citing cruelty and deception – and indeed no evidence that he was close to Nicholas Udall (though with Udall there is the suggestion he has a penchant for boys). With Huicke's sexuality, in the novel, I wanted to explore the idea of a friendship for Katherine that was not coloured by sexual interest on either part. Their friendship is one of great purity and loyalty and in my mind (sexuality aside) Huicke was the perfect man for Katherine. I find too that many historical fictions ignore the possibility of non-conformist sexual behaviour, probably because it was sufficiently taboo as to go unmentioned in the texts upon which we base our knowledge of the past. So I was keen to try and show the possibility of a world where such things were, though not outwardly acknowledged, simply part of the general scheme. Huicke also offers an opportunity to explore a different kind of relationship – his union with Udall is not ideal at first glance but Huicke does not focus on the usual expectations of fidelity and seems content to accept his lover's infidelities as little more than an inconvenience. I became rather attached to Huicke as I was writing and his role in the novel expanded with each new draft.
Known for being the wife that 'survived' Katherine Parr has been mis-represented by history in that she is remembered as the dull nursemaid who saw an irascible king through his dotage. She was far from this, and hopefully my fictional representation of her goes someway to show what a dynamic, and politically savvy woman she was. She was the author of two books in a time when the very idea of a woman publishing anything was considered akin to a monkey with a quill and could seriously compromise her virtue. She vehemently supported religious reform at great personal risk, and survived a Catholic plot to bring her down by out witting her powerful adversaries. One of the triumphs of her time as Queen was that she was instrumental in bringing the disparate royal family back together and persuaded Henry to reinstate Mary and Elizabeth Tudor in the succession. But what intrigued me most, as a writer of fiction, about Katherine, was the essential contradiction at her core: that she, an intelligent and shrewd woman, was capable of falling blindly for a man who was far from worthy of her heart. For me it is this flaw that takes her out of the pages of the history books and invests her with humanity, allowing us to identify with her down the centuries.
Further reading, with links:
Katherine the Queen: The Remarkable Life of Katherine Parr by Linda Porter
Catherine Parr: Henry VIII's Last Love by Susan James
Catherine Parr: Wife, widow, mother, survivor, the story of the last queen of Henry VIII by Elizabeth Norton
HENRY VIII
We are all familiar with Henry Tudor, the despotic king who married six times and beheaded two of his young wives, but in Queen's Gambit I wanted to create a more complex portrait of the man, showing him as someone who was at the mercy of his own monstrous temper and was deeply manipulative but was also capable of compassion, and had too, an awareness of his failings. At the time he was married to Katherine Parr Henry had broken with the Pope, which meant that the whole of Catholic Europe was on a mission to destroy him in the name of their faith, and the dangerously polarised factions within his own court reflected this. I wanted to convey the sense that he had grown so used to maintaining his terrifying front in the face of all this, and beset by debilitating and painful illness, that he had lost sight of his humanity.
DOT FOWNTEN
Dot is a character largely of my imagination, though there was a Dorothy Fountain who served as maid to Margaret Neville at Snape and remained with the family serving Katherine Parr when she was Queen. This Dorothy also married a minor courtier named William Savage. I have certainly made Dot lower born than she was likely to have been as I wanted to offer a different perspective on the court – a 'below stairs' view – and was keen to explore the kind of life an ordinary women like Dot might have had in the period and though, in the novel, she is visited by exceptional circumstances and comes to move in an elevated world, her experience of it is different to those born into the nobility. Low born women were not expected to make dynastic marriages and consequently married later than their noble sisters and more often had the opportunity to choose their husbands, or at least have had some kind of prior relationship. Literacy and education was something entirely beyond their reach and in Dot I wanted to imagine a woman with an intellectual curiosity, striving to educate herself against the expectations of her age – as an adjunct to this I touch on the possibilities for social mobility that were beginning to open up (it must be said mostly for men) in the renaissance period.
HUICKE
Dr Robert Huicke, like Dot, is largely a fictional character in QUEEN'S GAMBIT. He was however physician to Henry VIII, becoming Katherine Parr's personal physician on her marriage to the King and later served Edward VI in the same capacity. He also witnessed Katherine's will. It is not documented that he was involved in the relaying of news to Katherine of the warrant for her arrest – it was thought to have one of the royal doctors and it is tempting to imagine it was he, given he primarily served the Queen. There is no evidence of his homosexuality – he was married and his wife sued him for divorce citing cruelty and deception – and indeed no evidence that he was close to Nicholas Udall (though with Udall there is the suggestion he has a penchant for boys). With Huicke's sexuality, in the novel, I wanted to explore the idea of a friendship for Katherine that was not coloured by sexual interest on either part. Their friendship is one of great purity and loyalty and in my mind (sexuality aside) Huicke was the perfect man for Katherine. I find too that many historical fictions ignore the possibility of non-conformist sexual behaviour, probably because it was sufficiently taboo as to go unmentioned in the texts upon which we base our knowledge of the past. So I was keen to try and show the possibility of a world where such things were, though not outwardly acknowledged, simply part of the general scheme. Huicke also offers an opportunity to explore a different kind of relationship – his union with Udall is not ideal at first glance but Huicke does not focus on the usual expectations of fidelity and seems content to accept his lover's infidelities as little more than an inconvenience. I became rather attached to Huicke as I was writing and his role in the novel expanded with each new draft.
