She saw Queen Katherine initially treated with tremendous respect. It was Anne who set the pace against Katherine. I don’t think anyone would have dreamed that a queen could be beheaded. And also, what could Anne do? After her final miscarriage Henry simply turned against her. She could have been blind, she could have been thoroughly conscious, there was nothing she could do to save herself. And everything she could do—in terms of agreeing to a divorce and agreeing to exile—she did do.
What are some of the purely fabricated parts of The Other Boleyn Girl that you can reveal to us?
Everything which deals with feelings and motivations are creative work rather than research work, of course. The councils of the Boleyn/Howard family undoubtedly took place, but I have invented them and their increasing ambition. Some court events like the winter fair where Jane Seymour is so symbolically pushed around towards the King on her whalebone skates are invented, but there was a particularly hard winter that year. The courtship of William and Mary is invented, but we know that he was a man in her uncle’s train and that they married for love because she wrote a most passionate letter in defense of her choice of him. The witchcraft is all invented, but I think it would have been tempting to take advice.
Why do you enjoy writing historical fiction?
I love history, and I love the sense of recapturing the past. I like the great spread of it, and having so much material to work with. And I am very pleased when I can tell a slightly different story from the conventional one, especially if it makes readers see the more usual story in a different light. I like to give people a sense of a different sort of past. I like to challenge the conventional views.
Why do you think people are so drawn to historical fiction?
It’s such an interesting question now that historical fiction is so popular again. First I think that contemporary fiction has become fractured into many different styles and people don’t find it satisfying. Slim literary novels, unreadable literary experiments, incredibly dull self-analysis novels, horrendous childhood abuse novels. All these different forms fail readers who want to enjoy an absorbing story which will create a fictional world. Why history? I think people want to know where they came from and where they are going, and stories about the past satisfy that. I think this is such a fundamental desire that it is not surprising that people choose to read historical fiction. The other great ingredient is that historical fiction has become a lot better written, better researched, and more interesting in the last few years. Very fine writers like Antonia Byatt, Rose Tremaine, and Margaret Atwood have written novels which have raised the standard of writing. Other writers, me among them, have raised the standards of research. I think the historical novel has got better, and now it is attracting more readers.
What do you want people to take away from The Other Boleyn Girl?
First I’d like them to take away a terrific reading experience which has absorbed them and moved them and excited them. I’d like them to have a new vision of the Tudor period and some interesting information about the role of women and the inequality of English society. I hope they understand that while the Tudor court was glamorous there was deep poverty and that was a normal way of life. I hope they get a sense of the Tudor landscape, the courts and the city of London, and the countryside. And I hope they get an insight into the psychology of the characters.
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