I don't quite get Sir Thomas More, by K. M. Grant

One in an occasional series in which History Girls talk about their historical blind spots. Sir Thomas More seems a particularly suitable choice in the month of our interview with Hilary Mantel.

Even before I listened to the whole of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall on a long car journey, I had been suspicious of Thomas More (1478-1535). At my convent school, he was Saint Thomas More, a brave man, an important man, but above 

everything, a man who was, at all times and in all circumstances, right. 

Thomas More was brave: the times demanded bravery and he stepped up to the plate. He was important: he rose to be Lord Chancellor of England. I’m not sure he was, at all times, right. Certainly, he believed in righteousness, but that’s not quite the same thing. In Utopia, he advocated freedom of religion, yet he sent people to be burned when they exercised this freedom. So whilst not decrying his many virtues – he was a keen proponent of free speech – I’m not sure I get the uncritical reverence with which his name is usually uttered.

More was a man of his times, not a man too good for his times. His duties to God and king included extracting confessions, doling out punishments and generally harassing the heretics undermining what he believed to be the one true path to salvation. Even given the fashionable overblown rhetoric, we’ve been far too ready to buy into the adulation expressed by Will Roper, his son-in-law:

FO R A S M VC H, as Syr Thomas More, Knight, sometymes Lord Chancellour of England, a Man of singular Vertue, and of an vnspotted Conscience; & (as witnesseth Erasmus) more pure, and white then snowe: of so Angelicall a Wit (sayth he) that England neuer had the like before, nor euer shall againe:

The mirrour of vertue in worldly greates; or the life of Syr T. More.

However, let’s not get carried away. I've no truck with those who accuse More of misogyny because, when asked why he liked short women, he answered ‘best to choose the lesser of two evils’. It was a joke! A veritable joke! More was a wit. I like that. Yet I can still understand why Simon Slater, the narrator of the Wolf Hall unabridged audio-book, reads More’s words in a snooty drawl. I think More was more the snooty drawler than the mild-mannered charmer depicted by Paul Schofield in Fred Zinneman’s film A Man for All Seasons (a perennial favourite at my convent school). He was a man who knew his own worth and was confident of heavenly approval. I imagine him taking his place at God's right hand without bothering to defer to St. Peter.

In short, though More was without doubt a man of courage and dignity in adversity, he was too human and too much a man of his time to be a saint of unimpeachable sanctity. He may have been one of England's great and glorious, but was he really a great and glorious goody? I’m not saying he was wicked. I'm not saying I wouldn’t have liked him. I just wonder whether any man who scrambled up the greasy pole of Tudor politics, even if eventually falling off it, is quite worthy of the halo that has been plonked so very firmly upon Sir Thomas More's handsome head.

Would Thomas More would have liked my blog, the year of playing the piano? I think he'd have been very gracious, and I'd probably have wanted to wallop him.

Serendipity and the Shivers, by K.M. Grant

Serendipity plays as great a part in a novelist’s life as planned research. I was reminded of this through a contribution to the elegant, provocative and completely independent (no advertisers, no sponsorship) Scottish Review, an on-line newspaper edited by the inimitable Kenneth Roy.

The contributor is Michael Elcock, born in Forres, who made his career in Canada. In the winter of 1986/87, he and his wife, Em, visited Prague and saw a ‘subjugated, fearful people living in a cold, grey city devoid of spirit’ but Em managed to get the last two tickets for the Christmas concert in the Dvorakhalle, the Prague opera house. This is what they witnessed:

‘The magnificent old Bohemian concert hall, with its crystal chandeliers and plush seats, was packed. The concertmaster came onto the stage in a magnificent red jacket, and spoke to the children in the audience. A lady beside us translated. “All the children have brought bells,' she explained. “The concertmaster is telling them that they must not ring their bells until he gives the order. On no account.”
The musicians played magnificently. The choir sang beautifully. The children rang their bells with an attention to the concertmaster's instructions that would have been rare in western Europe; only when the conductor told them to and at no other time. When the concert was finished the concertmaster came to the front of the stage and stood for a moment, looking over the audience. Then he made an announcement in a soft voice. An audible gasp went through the hall. Even though we spoke no Czech we could feel an electricity in the great old hall.
We turned to the lady beside us, our translator. “We are going to sing the Czech national anthem,” she whispered. “We are not allowed to sing it; not since the Russians came, not since the Germans before that. It has been banned for years.”
The orchestra began to play and everyone stood, and we stood with them. The voices rose until the crystal rang in the chandeliers overhead. We did not know the words, but that didn't matter. The music was uplifting and ethereal and as we looked around we could see that there were tears running down all the faces. It was a remarkable thing and we were there.’




I haven’t witnessed anything quite like that. As for many History Girls, my shivery moments have mainly come through seeing or touching something old, thus feeling, rather than seeing, history. I had a major shiver, for example, during a visit to the Parker Library at Corpus Christi, Cambridge, where my older daughter and I were allowed to turn a medieval page or two and see the elephant in Matthew Paris’s Chronica Maiora in the flesh, as it were.  If you see it, you'll see it's very fine.





Music, though, produces shivers in a different league. I wish I’d been present at the first performance of Beethoven’s First Symphony. The dominant to tonic chord sequence, not even in the expected key must have been a real shocker. I like to think I’d have recognised the composer’s genius straight off, but would I? Perhaps I’d have been appalled since I don’t think, despite my best efforts, I’m actually very good at novelty. I’ve only just come round to patent shoes and block colours. Nevertheless, whether I liked Beethoven’s innovation or not, I’d certainly have had that shiver, and been glad I was there. I also wish I’d experienced Queen in one of their early concerts, perhaps in Liverpool in 1979. Missed opportunities make me shiver, too.

Queen, 1979 album cover

But one opportunity was not missed. In March 2000, my husband and I went to an extraordinary performance of Bach’s Goldberg Variations played by Murray Perahia at Glasgow’s Royal Concert Hall. What was it about that concert? I don’t really know. The music was familiar, the pianist too. Yet it was a shivery thing from start to finish. People who went still ask ‘were you there?’. As a result of these shivers, I began to listen to the Variations rather compulsively and, inevitably, to set them into a novel. And even that’s not quite enough. In a dotty way, I now want to master at least the mechanics, an ambition more doomed to failure than the HS2 project. I’m not, of course, expecting to be able to shiver with delight at my playing, nor even to experience a connection with Bach, who would certainly shudder at my awful technique. Just to feel the shape of some of the Variations under the fingers will be enough. My vague and bumpy progress can be found on my blog, and very vague and bumpy it is too. Don’t worry, though, if you happen to be a neighbour or a passer-by: our piano has a silencing facility. I know a shiver of horror when I see one.