In which I discover that I have double standards ...

Australian jungle vine thicket - Wiki commons/Ethel Aardvark

I found myself watching I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here the other night. I was, probably in equal measure, appalled and interested.

My husband muttered something about the series originally being a social experiment. I don't think it is now. I think the whole thing is designed for maximum 'entertainment value'. One of the contestants wanted to get 'back to my own life, where I'm in control'. 

And I thought of one word : Manipulation. 

These people are being manipulated, told what to do, at the mercy of others who decide whether or not they eat that day. And I think this is what would get to me if I went out there - not the bugs, not the hunger, but the relinquishment of control, of being manipulated.

But are we all being manipulated by those in charge of TV?

I don’t want to see ordinary people on my telly - I want drama, comedy, fantasy, fiction, proper documentary telling me stuff I don’t already know. When I put the telly on, I want to be taken away from real life.

Just as we are being asked to do our own supermarket checkout, we are now being asked to make our own telly. If I wanted to hear what’s being said down the pub, I’d go down the pub. These people surely don’t have equity cards - I wonder what their payment rates are like. It’s cheap telly and we’re all falling for a massive con.
But then I find myself transfixed by Gogglebox and I understand why the TV companies put on so many programmes like this. We have been persuaded that we enjoy it. We have been manipulated. 

Puppet & crowd manipulation Wiki commons/John Puddephatt

I know that many people love and enjoy using Apple products but sometimes, when I see the new versions of expensive items released so quickly after the latest model, I wonder whether these new updates haven't been deliberately withheld in a cynical ploy to make more money out of the consumer. Aren't we, again, being manipulated?

But, as I said, Apple users love their products. Most of my own family are Mac and i-phone users and they tell me their equipment is the best. So, is manipulation all right if we are acquiescent? 

Hmmm ...

Isn't that what authors do - manipulate their readers' emotions? Now, in this instance, my immediate answer would be: I do hope so! 

There it is. I'm culpable. Or I aspire to be. And I do hope my readers go as willingly into the pages of my book and, further, into the time I'm writing about, just as willingly as those celebrities go into the jungle.

The dictionary definition of manipulation is 'to manage or influence skilfully.' 

I'd like to be guilty of that, please!

Other ramblings and insightful interviewees

# Lucky Seven - excerpt

I was nominated to publish 7 lines from my WIP (Work in progress). The idea is that you take a page ending in 7, then go to line 7 and post the next 7 lines.

Well, I've taken a couple of liberties: firstly, this is not strictly my WIP, but a completed Ms to be released in the new year.
Secondly, it is not an excerpt which began on the 7th line, nor is is 7 lines. But it IS from a page ending in 7 and it happens to be exactly 7 sentences, so I think it will count.

Alfreda sang quietly while she worked with the batches of wool. The rhythmic movement of the carding combs moving back and forth in her hands was familiar from childhood and now, as then, she was soothed by the pulsing regularity of the action. She sat slightly apart from the other women. She was still unsure how much they knew or guessed and she wished neither to insult them by pretending, nor to reveal the truth if they were not already aware. Thus rendered dumb, she worked alone, speaking only when she needed some more wool to work on. She had almost finished the latest lot when she heard the shouting. She was always frightened by the yelling, but now her hand went quickly to her belly in an instinctively protective gesture.

Update April 2024: Blogger is telling me that more than a few people have read this post recently, which is fabulous, but I feel I should now update it to say that this excerpt was taken from my second novel, Alvar the Kingmaker, which you can buy HERE if you wish to read more 😊

And for a little more info, you can read the blog page HERE

Digging for Stories

Where do stories come from?

"An English civil war flag, captured by royalist Bernard Brocas to prove that his love for the daughter of parliamentarian Lord Sandys had not altered his loyalty to the king, is to be auctioned in April (2005). Taunted by the loyalist faction, Brocas swore an oath that he would give proof of his allegiance by winning a standard in the field. His chance came at the first battle of Newbury in September 1643. He captured a green silk damask banner with the motto "Constanter et Fiderliter" (Steadily and faithfully), but was later found dead beside the banner. Bonhams, which is handling the sale on behalf of a family descendant, expects the flag to fetch up to £5,000."

image - the telegraph

Well, there was a story waiting to be written - a tragic love story set against the backdrop of the civil war. I kept the cutting, intending to write the book, but I got distracted by other tales, other characters who clamoured for my attention.

Years ago, as an undergraduate with more summer holiday than ideas to occupy my time, I watched a documentary about the Ashburnham estate in Sussex. It wasn't a particularly inspiring story and I can't remember the main thread of the examination, but when the narrator told how one of the family commissioned the family crypt to be built, and that the last of the family line took the last available space in that crypt, my interested was ignited. I scribbled notes, I was going to write a book ...

A drawing by John Preston Neale of Ashburnham Place in 1828 showing the lake in front

... I didn't. I got a job, got married, had three children and changed career path.

But then one day I found the time to write. And it was another one-liner that came back to me. My wonderful tutor, Ann Williams, was talking about the background to the module for that term, which was 10th century Wessex. She talked about the preceding years, explaining what had led to the supremacy of Wessex and she spoke about Ethelred of Mercia. "No-one knows where he came from," she said. And I was captivated. I was going to write a book ...

... And I did. Although it turned out to be not the story of Ethelred so much as that of his wife, Aethelflaed, Lady of the Mercians.

Still I can't resist filing away little snippets; press cuttings, single sentences, anything that might one day make a fine story or novel.

Recently I was reading a book about myths and legends, and all things ghostly, and discovered that in 1820 the skeletal remains of a lady were found bricked up within one of the walls of the Captain's Tower of Carlisle Castle. "Three valuable rings remained on her fingers and she was still partially clothed in scraps of a tartan dress. It is unknown who she is, but evidence indicated that when she was walled up, she was still alive."

Even a friend of a friend's facebook lament:

"I apologise for last night. The lady you spoke to had one too many Calpols and was feeling ill at ease. I would text you but she felt the need to delete everything on my phone." Although in this case, I wonder if we don't already have the story in those 36 words. 

Sometimes novels start with a plot, a situation, a story to be told. At other times, they begin with a brief revelation, a tiny snapshot of another life that draws the novelist, particularly the historical novelist, down a path of discovery, collecting more and more pictures and vignettes until the whole album is ready to be laid open for other people to look at.

I'd love to hear from people who've been similarly pricked, provoked, or persuaded to write, from a single episode, sentence or fact. Please leave comments below:

Every Picture Tells a Story - Part II

I blogged recently about the stories behind the pictures HERE 

My continuing research recently found me in my car, with a friend, and with my back seat loaded up with the contents of my daughter's uni house. (This is how I spend most summers, driving around like a demented motorised snail, with someone else's house at my back, rather than on it. (Unless I brake sharply, of course). Halfway along the skinniest road imaginable, my little long-suffering car started making strange graunching noises and by the time we parked up, I was less concerned with pictorial research than with ensuring I had enough mobile phone signal to contact Green Flag. First stop, the visitors' centre. What this picture, of the wonderful aisled barn, 

doesn't tell you, is that there was a little glass pod at one end of the barn, in which were encased a farmer, complete with flat cap and Northern accent so fruity you could pour gin on it and make punch, and his whippet. Of course with his whippet. The farmer was on the phone, shouting seven shades of nasty to a hapless supplier who'd failed to send the correct invoice. We obeyed the notice which said, "Visitors please enter" only to be greeted with "No, shut t'door, the dog'll be off and I'll not catch 'im. What d'you want? Leaflets? Tek that one there and shut t'door behind you."

Scarecrows in the aisled barn

After that less than cordial encounter, we went snooping around the ruins of the old manor house which offered countless photographic opportunities. And what the picture below does not tell you is how long I waited to click the shutter, while the only other people in the valley that day chose that moment to walk past this window. And stop. And walk back. And then wait for their friends. And their small child. And the dog.

My friend and I climbed a hill. Just a small one. If you've clicked on the link to my previous exploits, you'll understand that big hills and I don't really get along. And so I was able to take this picture of a very old pack horse bridge. And position myself so that the afore-mentioned children, clad that day in Barbie-pink jackets, and sitting at the far end of the bridge, could not be seen.

The bridges in this village are very old and very famous. And my friend was enraptured as she walked across this one below. I was not so pleased, however, because I was trying to take another picture. And so it was that she crouched behind the tree that you can see to the right of the photo and obligingly waited until I had my shot. This day, she was wearing turquoise. Does nobody wear brown or grey any more?!

We climbed out of the valley and scaled a larger hill where we sat for a while in this, the panopticon.

And a man came with a big telephoto lens. Ever-conscious of the photographer's need for unobstructed views, I asked him, "Are we in your way? Would you like us to move?"
"No," he said, "You're not. But that is."
At least I only want people to get out my way. Asking concrete structures to shimmy to the left is a little more tricky ...

If you want to know where I was and what I was really up to, pop over to HERE where I talk about The Ruination of Wycoller

Televising the past - truth or fairy tales?

How much does the 'story' part of history matter?


If you are going to teach history you need to teach the facts, right? Films and TV dramas that mess with those facts are irresponsible, misleading and wrong. Right?  That 'awful film' Braveheart that got the Battle of Stirling Bridge so badly wrong - removing the bridge from the retelling - and that terrible series The Tudors which didn't even bother to slap a ginger beard on Jonathan Rhys Meyers. Tut tut. This will never do.

image - picturespider.com

Except ...

Well, how about going back to the beginning - and no, I don't mean pre-history - to take a look at how history should or shouldn't be taught in schools.

Richard Kennett, teacher and contributor to BBC Radio 4's Making History wrote insightfully in History Today magazine: "Narrative at school is often a dirty word ... as teachers we scrawl ... 'stop telling the story' in the margins of essays as if this was an insult to history." He went on to say, "Children love a story and what makes history great is that these are stories that actually happened. Tell your students about the murder of Thomas Becket in 1170. Four knights entering Canterbury Cathedral and lopping off the head of an archbishop. What more could you ask for to grab the attention of a class?"

image - guardian.com

So, does it matter if that story deviates a little from the truth?

The strange thing about story-telling, when it comes through the medium of film or TV, is that by masking the facts one can sometimes interest viewers sufficiently to lead them to discover the truth:

Let's go back to that terrible series The Tudors. Perhaps I'm an equally terrible parent but I allowed my youngest child, then aged about 12 or 13, to watch it. She loved it; initially, I suspect, because she was rather taken with the aforementioned Mr Rhys Meyers, and possibly the equally fine Henry Cavill as Suffolk. When we took a family holiday to Ireland she was keen to see some of the locations used for filming, such as Kilruddery House, pictured below

blogger's own photo

but she was equally interested when we visited places which were associated with historical characters

blogger's own photo

such as Ormonde Castle and Manor House, above. Here, she learned how Francis Bryan, 'the one with the eye patch', married Lady Joan Fitzgerald, widow of the 9th Earl. Okay, so apparently the dating of his arrival at court and the appearance of the eye patch were a little wonky (pun intended), but hey, she knew who he was. The series brought my daughter to explore the history and associations with the houses we saw in Ireland. When I then quietly explained that Henry didn't look like that, and that he had two sisters, not one - she accepted it, and amended her 'knowledge' accordingly.

So what about Braveheart? It's all wrong, wrong wrong. The battle was on a bridge, not in a great big field. He's depicted having an affair with a princess who was actually only about ten when he was executed. He was a lowlander, not a highlander, so he wouldn't have worn the plaid etcetera etcetera.

image - thedennisjonestumblr.com

BUT - if you get that Edward I was trying to smash the Scots, if you get that Wallace 'succeeded at Stirling, failed at Falkirk', should we get too hung up? I happen to think that the film offered a realistic view of how the world looked at that time, how bloody and thunderingly loud the battles were and how chaotic the business was of the Scottish succession in this period. Such images surely serve to give people a better idea of history than none at all? 

Ian Mortimer, author and historian, makes the argument that academic debates are but a small part of history and that "The vast bulk of history lies elsewhere ... in the biographies and general history books. It lies in the television programmes that bring key themes to the attention of millions overnight."

The Braveheart film spawned many serious documentaries detailing what is known about Wallace's life, which surely reached a larger audience than they would have done had the film not been made.


But how far can you go to make it a good story before it deviates and stops being history? I'm thinking immediately of the film A Knight's Tale - but, if it gets people interested in Chaucer by thinking he looked like Paul Bettany...

My A levels studies of Bismarck and the unification of Germany were much enhanced by my notion that Bismarck looked like Oliver Reed, who played him in the Flashman film.  (And I can't help wondering how more recent students will have enjoyed studying the Napoleonic era now that they can picture Richard Sharpe charging around capturing Eagles). Sharpe was fictional, but boy can we all now picture what the battles of the Peninsular War looked like...

Probably one of the most earnest historical films was Mary Queen of Scots which was made in 1971 and starred two of the most talented and respected actresses of their generation: Glenda Jackson and Vanessa Redgrave. Yet even here, there was an erroneous scene depicting the two queens meeting, which has never been proven to have happened. Did it spoil my learning or understanding? Nope.

Some years ago I visited Dover castle at the beginning of a project to redecorate some of the rooms in the Great Tower. Now it's finished, and they depict how these rooms would have looked at the time of Henry II. 

image - English Heritage

Better, perhaps, to reconstruct, to avoid the lament which my own children chanted regularly when we were on holiday: "Not another castle, please, Mummy." I still recall their glee when we went to one that "Actually has a roof on it!" How much better it is for children to 'see' what the past might have looked like.

When I was a child, a joke, (admittedly a bad one) had a mother lemming asking her child, "If your friends asked you to jump off a cliff, would you?" Now we know that lemmings don't have suicidal tendencies, but it's a bit mealy-mouthed to point it out and spoil the joke. Sometimes we have to go with the accepted 'truth', the one that engages people, gets them interested.

Susannah Lipscomb, Convenor for History and Senior Lecturer in Early Modern History at the New College of the Humanities, London recently remarked : "As a Tudor historian I am bothered slightly less by the fact that the TV drama The Tudors had a tendency to conflate characters, rearrange historical events and compress time than by the underlying conviction that, if you can strip away all the guff about faith and politics and honour, you will discover that Henry VIII, his six wives and his ministers were really secularists with modern ideas about sexuality."

She went on to say: "But all these forms of history as entertainment share an ability to dust the discipline down: to stimulate viewers to a sense that the past was as vivid, vibrant and dynamic a place to live in as that depicted on our screens and that the issues our ancestors grappled with were as urgent to them as our social, political, spiritual and romantic lives are to us today. If they achieve this, we need not be snooty."

I think she's right.  As an educator, I am thrilled if my small charges take an interest in a new topic. If they get it a bit 'wrong', we don't criticise; we applaud their enthusiasm. If a partly inaccurate film or TV series gets it a bit 'wrong' but sparks an interest and sets off a pursuit of learning, I think that's probably okay too.

"Word Hoard" - the struggle for dialogue authenticity

Today my piece on dialogue authenticity, where I talk about words derived from Old English (with the help of Jim Sinclair, an OE expert) is on the EHFA blog and can be found here: English Historical Fiction Authors
Please pop over and have a read!

Why Not the Anglo-Saxons?

I was privileged to attend a lunch a couple of years ago with, amongst others, Sarah Waters and Fay Weldon. They were kind enough to ask me about my writing and when I told them that my first three novels were set in Anglo-Saxon England, Sarah Waters said she knew little about the period and Fay Weldon commented that their costumes "Weren't very sexy."

A dear friend of mine concurred, adding that the Anglo-Saxons all wore brown sacks instead of dresses. She said that when she reads a novel set in Tudor England, she can envisage the scenery and the costumes.

In 2013, the author Sebastian Faulks was publicising the Chalke Valley/Penguin History prize for secondary school children. Youngsters were encouraged to write stories set in the following 'Periods of importance' : Norman Conquest to Wars of Roses (1066-1485) The English Civil War and the Restoration (1642-1685) The Napoleonic Wars (1798-1815) The British Empire (1759-1947) and the Cold War (1945-1991)

Now, I'm not going to argue that these periods were not important, but why narrow the field? Taken in isolation, these periods of history mean little. Can one really understand the significance of the Napoleonic period without first studying the preceding years, including the circumstances which led to the French Revolution? Periods of history are only important if you set them in context, if you know what's gone before.

1066? How can you realise its significance and the changes it wrought unless you know what England was like pre-conquest?

Is it true; does it simply boil down to the fact that it wasn't 'sexy' enough, that it can't easily be envisaged?

There are stories from the 'Dark Ages' that equal anything of later periods: the mighty Godwin family, the frankly feckless Aethelred the Unready and his struggles against the vastly superior Cnut. What about Alfred the Great, and his children, Edward the Elder and my favourite, his daughter, Aethelflaed, subject of my novel To Be a Queen? She ruled a kingdom and fought against the Vikings.

Did she not have a pretty enough dress? 

Is it just a case of bad press? Ultimately, the English lost out to the Normans. Does history favour the victor? In which case, why does the story of Arthur still resonate, with fiction and non-fiction books published year upon year. Is that down to the seemingly unsolvable riddle of whether or not he existed?

And why, if we don't care too much about losers, has such a cult grown up around William Wallace? Wasn't he just a defeated nationalist, like Harold Godwinson? Maybe being hung drawn and quartered is a more interesting way to be the ultimate loser than just attempting to get too close a look at the quality of workmanship that went into the making of a Norman arrow?

image twbrit.com

The Chalke Valley competition is a good thing - anything which promotes history must be welcomed. Faulks said that "History needs to regain its central place in schools."

I remember when my own children were choosing their GCSE options, that the school produced a list of subjects, and gave the teachers the chance to 'sell' their subject. Each was entitled "What can this subject give me?" Other subjects talked specifics, but history "Gives you everything you need for future study: analysis, argument, memory, understanding." I can't argue with that, but within the discipline itself, why are some periods deemed more important, or interesting, than others? 

So, why do the poor old Anglo-Saxons not come through history to us as sexy and interesting? As it says in 1066 And All That (W.C Sellar and R.J. Yeatman) the period suffered from a "Wave of Egg-Kings - Eggberd, Eggbreth, Eggfroth etc. None of them, however succeeded in becoming memorable, except in so far as it is difficult to forget such names as Eggbirth, Eggbred, Eggbeard, Eggfish etc."

At least he had a pronounceable name!!!

As I found when writing To Be a Queen, the names are tricky - to spell, pronounce, and identify. Those that survived became old-fashioned, for example, Ethel, Edith, Alfred, Edmund, Mildred, Audrey. They were not associated with the upper echelons of society, and that's also true of a lot of Old English words. Many of the words for everyday objects came to signify lowly things: a stool became something less than a chair. This idea of being the down-trodden vanquished persists so that today the period remains somewhat drear, uninteresting. 

But it is precisely because of that we need to look back and find out what was lost.

The Norman language, despite the lordly overtones, did not take hold; we do not speak a version of French. Nor, according to recent BBC research, did the Norman bloodline. Is is important to know about the Government of the Anglo-Saxons, their administrative systems, their laws and justice? I think so. When university undergraduates debate whether or not the Normans introduced the Feudal system at all, then there is an argument for saying that we should understand what it was that they were trying to replace, subdue, change. It's worth noting that whilst many people accept the 'truth' that in the middle ages, wives were legally beaten by their husbands and treated as his property, the Anglo-Saxon women were not.

So why don't we know more? Why aren't we taught more about it? Is it all just too far in the past?

But if that's true, why is the Roman period so popular?

Well, it is and it isn't. It's popular in the sense that there are many books, fiction and non-fiction, and telly programmes (Thanks, Professor Mary Beard!). But it's still not routinely taught in schools. The Tudors and the Egyptians are. So is the second World War. Diverse topics, spanning great distances in terms of years. 

So maybe it really does, as Fay Weldon said, come down to the costumes. In my Ladybird book, The Story of Clothes and Costume, the illustrations lump the Saxons and Normans together. There is nothing between this: (500BC)

and this:

apart from the Romans!

And the cover picture (of later editions) ? Yes, you guessed it - those wonderfully 'gussied up' Tudors ...

Maybe those Anglo-Saxons should have designed the bodice - then they could have them ripped!!

Culture, Language and amateurish Romans ! Old English Specialist and Author Stephen Pollington casts some light ...

Today I have the enormous pleasure and honour of speaking to Stephen Pollington:

I asked him -

You grew up in what was then countryside - was it idyllic, and how old were you when you were first aware of 'history'?

The presence of the past was part of the backdrop to everyday life from a very early age. Saturday mornings were spent with friends in the local cinema (which was still painted with WWII camouflage!) followed by the mandatory trip to the nearby site of a motte-and-bailey castle where we acted out the key events from the films we had just seen - most often westerns, wartime thrillers or historical dramas.

My strongest recollection is of being impressed by the age and size of a church tower that stood on the hilltop above my grandparents' home - compared to the humble dimensions of my house it seemed immensely tall and sturdy, and being made from stone - in Essex, where the soil is mostly clay - it struck me a s a strange structure, a relic of a time when all the effort and resources it took to build it could be concentrated on such a project.

image by oneblackline

What were history lessons like at school - did they nurture or stifle your interest? (People's experiences of school history lessons vary so widely and I wonder what periods you were taught about and whether it fired your interest)

History was taught as a narrative back then - it was a LONG time ago - with a focus on key events and personalities, and an unspoken theme of human progress as the underlying assumption. This was in the days of the 'Space Race' in the 1960s when the nation was encouraged to look to the future and ignore the past - Thunderbirds and Dr Who were the key items of children's TV viewing. History in school was used as a means of explaining how we got to where we are now, with the assumption that the future would be better, cleaner, healthier and more affluent. I am still waiting for my jet-powered skates and three-course meal in tablet form.

I always enjoyed formal lessons with a specific theme and I think they awoke in me an urge to share my own (flawed) understandings with others.

Image from blastr.com

You obviously have an abiding love for the Anglo-Saxon period. It's perceived though as not 'popular' - do you think we English have a problem connecting with our past? (The Irish, Scots and Welsh don't feel the same - have we lost sight of our own heritage somehow?)

The Anglo-Saxon period gave rise to the modern nations: there was no 'king of all the English' before Athelstan in the mid 10th century. But you are right - it is no longer popular perhaps because the height of its popularity coincided with the period of Victoria and Albert. After the First World War, opinions of things 'German' nosedived, and after the Second World War the situation got a whole lot worse. The extent to which the historical 'Saxons' have anything to do with the more recent German political unit of the same name is usually ignored.

Palgrave's book was first published in 1831

I think we have been encouraged to downplay English history in favour of the inclusive term 'British' while simultaneously celebrating the Irish, Scots and Welsh. This leaves people confused at to where the English fit into this picture. Even the name 'Anglo-Saxon' creates the impression that these were a foreign people, not really 'English' at all.

You are fluent in Old English. How easy was it for you to find the resources you needed to study the language?

As a young man it was very difficult to find the resources, especially in a small market town. But I was always a bit of a language-nerd and haunter of the public library. I studied not just individual languages but began to see the relationships between them - in the way that even a basic knowledge of French can help you recognise words in Italian or Spanish, poulet and pollo for example.

In my early teens I acquired a second-hand book on Old Norse and began to study that language with great enthusiasm. Further purchases provided an insight into Old English. I bought a worn copy of Beowulf which someone had heavily annotated in pencil, and that set me off on a voyage of discovery from which I have never ceased.

How important do you think it is to keep the language 'alive'? Is it a difficult language to learn, in comparison, say, to learning Modern English as a foreign language?

It rather depends where you start from. If you are a native speaker of English, Dutch or German a lot of it is very familiar and things that are puzzling in modern English start to fall into place - the relationship between 'old' and 'elder', 'slow' and 'sloth' or 'steal' and 'stealth', for example. Most of the basics of Old English are still present in the modern language, despite the vast influx of Greek, Latin and French vocabulary. When Neil Armstrong stepped out onto the surface of the moon, his immortal words, 'One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind' are all taken directly from the language that King Alfred used in the 9th century.

Without a detailed understanding of its history, a full appreciation of the modern language is not possible. This applies as much to words introduced in relatively recent times as to those with roots stretching back millennia.

A few talented people who may have no formal training instinctively know which words fit together - we call them 'poets'.

This blogger used Sweet's when she was a student!

Are there any common misconceptions about the Anglo-Saxons which you'd like to take the opportunity to correct?

If you watch TV dramas, Hollywood films or other superficial forms of entertainment, you quickly find two standard stereotypes for the Anglo-Saxons. The first is of marauding warriors with no organisation or loyalty whose sole aim is to despoil and destroy. 

The second group are the downtrodden serfs who lost the battle of Hastings and are forever destined to be cannon-fodder for their social superiors. These 'Saxons' all wore brown sacks for clothing, lived in mud huts and were covered in soot, soil and sticky stuff and had only a rudimentary grasp of any skills or crafts.

Image from luckinlove.com

Both these portrayals leave me exasperated because they are the inventions of lazy media people who are too self-obsessed to do any actual research - you know, reading a book or looking at some artefacts, or just asking someone who might know a little about the period.

Anyone who has seen even photographs of the best-known material - such as the finds from Sutton Hoo, the Staffordshire Hoard, the Lindisfarne Gospels, the Alfred Jewel, the Franks Casket - cannot fail to be impressed by the quality of the workmanship and the skilful combination of a variety of materials into a unified and beautiful object. Then look at the range of books the Anglo-Saxons produced in their own language - everything from detailed laws and land charters to translations of Roman and Greek religious texts, chronicles, medical books, poetry, legends and rude jokes - they are all there.

Look at the garnet and gold wargear from the Staffordshire Hoard and explain to me in what sense this was 'the Dark Ages' - it was a Golden Age when some of the finest decorative items produced north of the Alps were put together. Bear in mind that Anglo-Saxon goldwork could not be replicated to anything like the same quality as the originals until the 19th century. No doubt I will get into trouble for saying this, but a lot of the allegedly superior Roman and medieval material looks pretty amateurish by comparison.

The Sutton Hoo Gold belt buckle - image from the British Museum

Are there important lessons to be learned from studying the Anglo-Saxon period?

All history is important and should be instructive. The Anglo-Saxon period laid the foundations of our social structure, our language, our political organisations and to a large extent our identities. As with the language mentioned above, if you don't understand how modern counties came into being and what they replaced, you will never fully understand modern British political geography. A knowledge of the effects of the Norman invasion is no bad thing either, if you are interested in social structures and elitism.

Can you sum up why you love the Anglo-Saxon history, culture and language so much?

It is the beginning of so much that we take for granted: many of our warmest and most powerful words, our ideas about family and society, our regional identities, the framework by which our lives are lived. To me, that is endlessly fascinating.

Thanks to Stephen for his insights. To discover more about him and his work:

www.stevepollington.com

Wordcraft ~ The English Warrior ~ First Steps in Old English ~ Meadhall - Feasting Tradition in Anglo-Saxon England ~ Leechcraft - Early English Charms, Plantlore and Healing ~ Rudiments of Runelore ~ Anglo-Saxon Burial Mounds ~ Anglo-Saxon FAQs ~ Wayland's Work – Elder Gods – The Sutton Hoo Stone

Today I have the honour of being the guest on this wonderful blog by author Maria Grace.

Writing Superheroes: Annie Whitehead

BAC, Guest interviews

by Maria Grace

Meet ‘The Eavesdropper’! Read on and find out more…

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Excerpt from "To Be a Queen"

She slept, but only in short bursts. She would turn, and wake, remember that Wulfnoth stood guard outside her tent, and lie down on her right side to drift off for a while, only to wriggle onto her left and wake up again. The noise from the walls was ever present, like bird song. For weeks she had lived with the shouting, hammering, scraping and banging. Shouts to muster were common-place, as were the yelled curses in the foreign tongue from within the walls. As with the dawn chorus, it would wake her once in a while, she would acknowledge it for what it was, and sleep on again through the disturbance. She had lain on top of the bed, too hot to sink under the covers, and now, having slept for a while, she woke up feeling chilly. Grabbing at a blanket, she settled down again, not yet refreshed enough to consider rising. She lay down and closed her eyes once more. Then it came to her. There was no battle noise, no sound of machinery. Trundling cart wheels, digging spades and thudding boulders; all had stopped moving. 

She sat up, pulled on her boots and left the tent. Wulfnoth had disappeared. She was not concerned; he would not have left her unless he knew it was safe to do so. With a growing sense of hope, she walked through a camp which was now near deserted. Dear God, they must have breached the walls, or the gates, or both. Coming to the edge of the encampment she saw the gates of the town hanging open, one almost off its great hinges. Beyond the open gateway, the Danes, surrendered and surrounded, had been herded together. A Mercian banner fluttered from the watchtower. A thegn on the tower pointed his sword at her and began a victory chant. It was taken up by those below, who all joined in, shouting their triumph in the name of their lady. But Æthelflæd was looking at Frith, who walked towards her with his sword still in his hand, hanging low, dragging. He had blood on his face and his long hair was matted. He had his mail-coat on and she gave thanks for his innate tendency to be sensible at such times. But he walked like a wounded man, though she could see that he was whole. 

He bowed on one knee before her. “Lady, Derby is yours.” 

She put a hand on his shoulder. “Tell me. Who do we mourn?”

His blond brows came together to form a single line above his eyes. Beneath those blue-grey eyes, dark shadows of exhaustion robbed him of his beauty. Careworn, fatigued, speaking carefully through a cut lip, he could give her no more than a list of names. “Helmstan, Ælfric, Eadwine, Wulfwine.” 

The rest of her personal guard. 

“Eadric.” 

She opened her mouth but stood, gaping. What did she think to say? No? You are wrong? I misheard you? Of course he was not wrong; he would not break his own heart with lies. 

He struggled to his feet and she squeezed his arm. Nodding towards the inner courtyard she said, “Do what needs to be done here. I will speak to Elfwen.” 

She found her daughter in her tent. She wished that she could be like Frith, and give Elfwen a moment more of the world when it was right, before she plunged her into a deep lake where there was no light, only despair. But she knew that her face told Elfwen all that she needed to know. “Daughter, the town is ours. But many men died in the taking of it. Among them was Eadric.” 

Elfwen gasped but shook her head, believing as her mother had not, that the news was false. “No, that cannot be.” But as she spoke, the words, having hit her ears as lies, must have come into her mind as truth, and she fell face down onto her bed and wept. 

Æthelflæd stood still and let her cry out the initial pain, knowing that there would be more, for days, weeks, mayhap even months to come. 

When the first waves had left her body and the sobbing subsided, Elfwen sat up. 

“How can you stand there like that? Do you not care?” 

Æthelflæd flinched. She thinks I do not care because I do not weep. Once, many years ago, I would have thought the same thing. Oh, Dear Lord, I have loved and lost so often that I have forgot what the first time feels like. She took a step forward. 

Elfwen put out her hand. “No. Do not come near me. You are heartless.” 

Æthelflæd lifted her chin and let her head fall back. Her mouth opened and a strange animal cry came forth from her. It rose from within her core, and shocked her with its force. She looked her daughter in the eye and said, “Oh God, if I had opened my heart upon every death and let out the part of me that died with them, it would not have the strength left to carry on beating.” 

She left Elfwen alone with her tears. The girl would have to learn the hard way. There was no other.