A hundred years of war and peace by Mary Hoffman

The 14th Century ends quite neatly with the usurpation of the English throne by Henry Bolingbroke, after forcing his cousin, Richard l to abdicate. It begins quite raggedly, with Edward l hammering the Scots and his son Edward ll inheriting the crown. In between came some of the most noteworthy events and personalities of the Middle Ages.

Tackling this huge sweep of history is Helen Carr’s new book Sceptred Isle. Her first – The Red Prince: John of Gaunt – was an instant bestseller. He was one of those larger-than-life characters, the richest person after the king, the hated trigger for the people’s revolt, the effortlessly fertile magnate who married his mistress and legitimated their four children, from whom many kings of England are descended. 

 

But Gaunt belongs to the second half of the century. The first part is still dominated by the conflict with the Scots. That ongoing war and the relations with the other enemy, France, have to play a part in any book about the fourteenth century, but this is essentially a history of a hundred years in England.

This is the century of The Wife of Bath and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the Black Death and the Great Famine; The Fair Maid of Kent and the Black Prince; the Order of the Garter and the People’s Revolt; the creation of dukes; the Wilton Diptych and the first Speaker of the House of Commons; two minority monarchs, two depositions; tournaments and single combat duels; magnates and favourites; retinues and livery - not to mention two rival Popes! Helen Carr had her work cut out. 

Edward l

 

Edward I was born in the middle of the previous century and became king in 1272 in his prime. Nicknamed “Longshanks” for his unusual height (6’ 2” was way above average for a medieval man), he conquered Wales, got to work building defensive castles on the Welsh/English border and aspired to quell the Scots.

In this he was less successful, when finally he came up against Robert Bruce and his own mortality. Carr characterises the transition to his son’s rule: “When Edward l cast himself in the image of the legendary King Arthur, who united the Britons, Edward ll was destined to do the opposite.”

The stage is set for a complete change of culture. The first Edward wanted his son to continue warring with Scotland but the new king was more interested in making friends with male contemporaries, prime among them Piers Gaveston, the son of a Gascon knight. The young handsome king had no full brothers, only two much younger half-brothers by his father’s second marriage, no close cousins and a need for men to play sports with. He wasn’t fussy about their social class.

Gaveston, also young and handsome, was clearly a bit of a lout, inventing insulting nicknames for the nobles at court and given free rein by the indulgent king. He was exiled three times, first by Edward I, who disapproved of his influence over his son and again in 1308 and 1311 at the wish of the nobles he had insulted. But Edward ii had him recalled and the relationship resumed.

Helen Carr discusses this relationship in some depth, concluding, in disagreement with most modern historians (apart from Pierre Chaplais whose book on Gaveston, is not acknowledged), it might not have been homosexual but a “ritual brotherhood.” King Edward was married and sired children within and outside of marriage but that is neither here nor there where same-sex relations are concerned. (Gaveston had a wife and daughter too). 

Edward ll

 

This “friendship” certainly enraged the nobles, as much because of Gaveston’s rebarbative nature as his sexual preferences. Edward revoked all of his favourite’s banishments and had previously made him Earl of Cornwall, an equal to the nobles who accused him of treason. The Earls drew up a list of grievances, saying that the king listened to “evil counsel” and did as he liked, which was not in accordance with Magna Carta. (Helen Carr reminds us that it had been re-issued in 1300).

The end was inevitable. Gaveston was captured by the earls and was first in the custody of the Earl of Pembroke. But Pembroke returned home that night to his wife and the much harsher Earl of Warwick took the prisoner over. He was marched to Blacklow Hill and run through and beheaded.

The devastated king regarded this as murder and vowed vengeance on the earls. It was some consolation to him that Queen Isabella presented him with a son and heir – the future Edward lll. This is such a fascinating part of the 14th century that Helen Carr might have written a whole book about it and perhaps will. But, to jump to the catastrophic end of Edward’s reign, she writes about the continued enmity with the Scots, the Battle of Bannockburn, the new “favourite,” High Despenser the younger, the estrangement of the royal couple in spite of three more children and Isabella’s affair with Roger Mortimer.

Edward felt threatened not just by the adultery but by the political implications of their liaison. Isabella and Mortimer had been in France for over a year, with young Edward, when they raised an army to invade England and get rid of Hugh Despenser. They landed in September 1326 and, so hated was Despenser and so popular the queen, that London was soon in the hands of the invaders.

It didn’t take them long to track down the king and his favourite. The latter was given a full traitor’s horrible death and the king was kept a prisoner in Berkeley Castle. But, as Carr puts it, “The former king, though incarcerated, cast an uncomfortable shadow over Westminster and it was whispered that something had to be done to be rid of it.”

Within weeks the fourteen-year-old Prince of Wales was crowned king in his father’s place, with Isabella effectively his Regent. Carr makes it clear that death of Edward ll by means of a red hot poker thrust into his bowels is a myth. It was likely that he was suffocated, thus having no mark of injury on his body as it was widely displayed after his death. For die he did, a year after his estranged wife’s invasion.

Mortimer, who took the title Earl of March, was now free to rule with Isabella as mistress and consort, even though he had no claim to the throne. But it was soon clear that the young king was a mere puppet and England had left the frying-pan only to fall into the fire. 

Edward lll

 

But young Edward lll was a stronger character than his father and soon found his mother’s hold over him irksome. By 1330 he had secretly written to the pope to support his freeing himself from Isabella and Mortimer’s coercion. Edward and a group of his young knights staged a coup while Mortimer and Isabella were together in Nottingham Castle together. The king let the armed conspirators in and Mortimer was taken. He was hanged naked like a common thief. Queen Isabella was held under house arrest, in very comfortable conditions for the rest of her life.

But we have reached only 116 pages of the main text’s 278 and there are seventy eventful years of the century left!

Edward lll ruled for forty years, he married Philippa of Hainault and they had twelve children, with five males living to adulthood, including the Black Prince and John of Gaunt. He was one of England’s most successful monarchs, in spite of the shaky beginning of his reign.

This review is in danger of being as long as Helen Carr’s comprehensive book, so I’ll just concentrate on the events that led to the second deposition of the fourteenth century. Edward iii’s older son is referred to throughout the book as the Black Prince, though this usage isn’t attested till over a hundred years later. He was first Edward of Woodstock, then Prince of Wales and was fully expected to be King Edward lV. And he had two sons, Edward and Richard. 

Joan, the Fair Maid of Kent

 

But things started to unravel when the Prince of Wales sickened with dysentery in Aquitaine. Then his older son died and he was left with the “spare.” He returned to England with his wife Joan (the Fair Maid of Kent) and his younger son but his health never recovered. He died before his father the old king, leaving Richard of Bordeaux as the nine-year-old heir to the throne.

Edward lll, widowed and miserably treated by his mistress Alice Perrers, was a broken man and outlived his son by less than a year. So began the second minority rule of the century, with ten-year-old Richard ll on the throne. Like his grandfather, who had been a few years older, Richard had no official Regent, but John of Gaunt was his senior uncle and expected to advise him. It was the best Gaunt could hope for, as he was hated by the populace for his great wealth and the unwarranted belief that he wanted the throne for himself.

As Helen Carr says, “Richard was a child on his succession, and his boyish appearance, lack of an heir and impulsive behaviour kept him locked in a state of eternal youth.” This did not apply to his first cousin, John of Gaunt’s son, Henry Bolingbroke. Born within months of each other and married only a few years apart, the two men couldn’t have been more different.

Henry was a champion jouster and soldier, Richard an effete lover of luxury; Henry sired four sons in as many years, Richard had no children. Henry had every quality to make a good king, except for one: he was not the heir. Richard had virtually none of such qualities – but he was the legitimate heir. As they grew older the two men kept out of each other’s way. But they had one tragic thing in common: they lost their wives in the same year, 1394.

Mary de Bohun had borne Henry two daughters after their four sons, dying in her last childbed. A week or so later Queen Anne died of the plague, having never even been pregnant. Both widowers were distraught. Though Henry’s loss is not mentioned in Helen Carr’s book; Mary doesn’t even get an entry in the index. Richard had the palace of Sheen, where his wife died, pulled down and Henry became even more restless than before; with the loss of his wife he had no permanent home. 

Henry Bolingbroke, lter Henry lV

 
The reign of Richard ll lasted twenty-two years but is hastily covered by Helen Carr, in comparison with her treatment of his greatgrandfather, Edward ll. It is difficult for the modern reader not to see these kings’ reigns and depositions through the prism of two great plays by Elizabethan playwrights, Marlowe and Shakespeare. Indeed, the book’s title is taken from the speech Shakespeare gives John of Gaunt in The Tragedy of Richard the Second.

Helen Carr suggests that Richard might have been suffering from “borderline personality disorder”: “the last Plantagenet king [sic] was a despot; when he could not command respect, he ruled with fear.”

There are a few strange statements in this ambitious book. For example, the author says that John of Gaunt was so distraught at the duel his son was to fight with Thomas Mowbray at Coventry in 1398, that he “stayed away.” She gives no source for this and Anthony Goodman, Gaunt’s biographer, states that he was in attendance. Helen Castor, thanked by Carr in the acknowledgements for her input, says he was seated next to the king; Carr herself in her earlier book writes “John of Gaunt was also present.”

Of course the new version may be correct but if you are going to contradict earlier accounts, including your own, you should surely cite some evidence?

The book is handsomely produced, with some elegant endpapers and comes with an index, which was lacking in the Gaunt biography. There is also an extensive bibliography, which readers will want to consult, to balance out some of Carr’s assertions.

Clothes Maketh the Man/Woman Even in 14th Century Ireland by Kristin Gleeson

Irish Gael 14th century dress

You have probably heard phrases like “dress for success”, a phrase that hints of the older saying “clothes maketh the man”. Both phrases clearly indicate that clothes certainly form a part of the judgement one person makes about another, whether it’s conscious or not. It’s not a new concept. In the past, for example, in parts of Europe during Medieval and Renaissance times, nobles enacted sumptuary laws that prevented the rising middle classes from wearing certain items and fabrics in case those middle classes might be mistaken for nobles.

The history of fashion in a social history context has fascinated me for a long time, back to my teen years when I would pore over the two enclopedias of fashion history that I bought with my hard earned babysitting money. So, recently, when I was researching 14th century Ireland for a book I was writing, I came across a fashion rabbit hole about the clothes of that time period and gleefully travelled down it.

The first half of the 14th century was a time of great change and stress in Ireland. After 150 years or so dealing with the results of the Norman English encroachment in Irish land, the descendants of these invaders held sway over a significant portion of the country. The English king counted Ireland as its vassal by and large and, in an effort to establish greater control over the land created loosely drawn lordships or earldoms over the four Irish provinces whose boundaries were fluid. These earldoms were headed by descendants of the invaders and their Irish wives, as were their retainers, creating an Anglo Irish population (known as Galls).The earls, in an effort to expand the regions under their control fought each other and Irish chieftains constantly. The Irish Gaels formed alliances with each other or an earl, whichever achieved their struggle to maintain or expand their own holdings

Such conflicts often caused bouts of famine from neglected, plundered or unplanted fields. In addition to those challenges there were long stretches of bad weather which also contributed to sickness and high death rates. The arrival of the plague in 1348 made matters worse. The death rate from plague was higher among the Anglo Irish than the Irish Gaels for complex reasons of settlement, trade and social patterns (at least that’s what the sparse evidence suggests).

In such tumultuous times, when interaction with members of the other culture could be dangerous, assessing and correctly concluding a stranger’s identity when encountering them could be critical. The style of dress was part of that assessment, because there were distinct differences between the Anglo Irish manner of dress and the Irish Gael manner of dress. Many of the clothes that the Gaelic Irish wore were suited to the particular climate and others revealed a particular Gaelic sense of flamboyant, unlike the Anglo Irish who adopted the fashions most prevalent in England or places on the continent with which they traded.

One distinctive clothes item the Gaelic Irish wore was the cloak/mantle or brat. The brat was a rectangular shape garment and was sometimes large enough to wrap around the body five times. It could be brightly coloured with ornate decorative borders fringed and plaited or tablet woven. It was made of frieze (loosely woven wool) with tufts of wool tucked into the weave to keep out the rain. The brat was secured at the breast often with a bronze, silver or iron brooch or pin, depending on the wearer’s social status. Under the brat, they wore a long shirt /tunic(léine), an ankle length sleeveless garment worn next to the skin and made of either white or gel (bright) linen. It was secured at the waist by a belt with which it could be hitched up to allow greater freedom of movement. The footwear among those of higher status would be leather boots or shoes, but for those of lesser status it was more practical and cheaper to go barefoot in a country whose climate was wet with winters that were relatively mild.

Irish Gael dress 

If riding, or engaged in vigorous outdoor activity, a male Irish Gael often wore truibhas (trousers). It’s difficult to know with certainty the range of clothing women wore specifically because of the scarcity of images. The few images that do exist show them each wearing a brat and a léine, like the men, but their heads are covered with a veil or headdress and occasionally, like the men, they would wear an ionar, a form of short tunic. Other parts of the Irish Gaelic clothing range included a short-hooded cloak called a cochall and a poncho-type cloak of coloured and patterned cloth called a fallaing and interestingly, a kind of woollen truibhas (trousers) with feet and soles.

In contrast, as previously mentioned, the Anglo Irish wore more sober coloured clothes that were closer to that of the style found in England and parts of the continent. They wore tunics of mid to lower calf length with Magyar style sleeves belted at the waist, with a white sash from which a scabbard was suspended. On top of that, if needed they wore a traditional mantle or cloak. In the mid-14th century a closer fitting outfit emerged for Anglo Irish men, consisting of a knee length garment called a gipon, a forerunner of the doublet, which was worn with hose. Unlike the Gaelic Irish men, the Anglo Irish tended to be clean shaven. Anglo Irish men and women also wore an underdress, or kirtle, and an overgown, or surcoat. The surcoat could be sleeved or sleeveless, with deep armholes and vertical slits called fitchets that provided access to objects suspended from the girdle. Both male and female versions of the surcoats had a slit at the neck. In winter a mantle, or fur-lined cape was also worn. Later, the Gaelic Irish mantle was adapted and became and important trade item. Among the Anglo Irish, by the early part of the 14th century, along with the mantle, some of the men apparently adapted the Irish Gaelic truibhas as indicated in statutes that were enacted that sought to discourage Anglo Irish from adopting Irish Gaelic modes of dress.

English Medieval dress

Fashion and clothes styles for any one time period in the past can tell much about the peoples and the time in which they live. The style and composition of the clothes of the Irish Gaels show them to be aware of the need to be out in a wet climate and the need for a flexible type of clothing for active outdoors, for example. The Anglo Irish clothes reflect their close connection to their English overlord and the importance and profitability of showing their links to their trade partners in England and on the continent.

The distinct differences in fashion between the Anglo Irish and the Gaelic Irish meant that when encountering a stranger or a group of strangers, each could use the information about their appearance to judge whether they might be a potential enemy, or even a person who would more likely been exposed to the plague. And those clothes certainly might “maketh the enemy” or the friend.

 

 

Fallen Women or Vulnerable Girls? by Janet Few

 

In the second half of the nineteenth century, a proliferation of homes, or ‘refuges’ for fallen women were set up across Britain to reform those who had not adhered to the moral code of the time. As well as government founded refuges, there were also charitable bodies who established institutions with the aim of rehabilitating ‘fallen women’; the most notorious of which were the Magdalen Laundries, run under the auspices of the Catholic Church. The various regional branches of the Discharged Prisoners’ Aid Society were a major provider, funding homes from public subscriptions and donations, supplemented by what the institutions could generate from offering laundry or needlework services.

What was the purpose of these refuges and who exactly were these ‘fallen women’, some of whom were as young as twelve? Our twenty-first century minds, might expect that fallen women would have been prostitutes and it is true than many of the inhabitants of such institutions had been before the courts for soliciting, prostitution, or brothel keeping. The aim of a woman’s refuge was to rehabilitate and reform; transforming the fallen into respectable women who could play a meaningful part in society. Thus, only women who were regarded as capable of redemption were accepted, leaving those who were labelled as the most dissolute and depraved without refuge.

Some of the inmates of these homes were society’s casualties, rather than ‘sinners’. To the Victorians, a ‘fallen woman’ was rather more than just someone who sold, or attempted to sell, sexual favours. The term was applied to anyone who had fallen from virtue, whether they were willing participants in that fall or not. Victims of rape and incest, those with learning difficulties and girls whose home life might put them in moral danger, were institutionalised alongside the criminals and prostitutes. The term ‘prostitute’ is also an elastic one and in the nineteenth century, was not confined to women who provided services of a sexual nature in return for money, or recompense in kind. ‘Prostitute’ might be used to encompass a woman who had had an illegitimate child, or who was living with a man as if she was his wife, without the benefits of a marriage ceremony.

Although Victorian women made up only 20-25% of those indicted for criminal offences, women were more likely than men to be repeat offenders, raising concerns about the need for rehabilitation. Women were also potentially mothers, with an influence over the moral well-being of subsequent generations, so attitudes towards women who transgressed against the legal or moral codes were very different to those towards male wrongdoers.

Time spent in a home for fallen women might be part of the punishment meted out by the courts, with women being transferred from prisons to spend periods of six to twelve months in a refuge. As well as religious instruction, they would be taught domestic skills, designed to fit them for employment. ‘Refuge’ is a word that has benign connotations, a place of safety for those in physical, mental or moral danger. In the nineteenth century, although the motives for setting up these homes might be seen as philanthropic, for the most part, refuges were far from being a place of safety; conditions were harsh and inmates were unlikely to be there voluntarily. 

Many ‘fallen women’ were victims of societal attitudes or circumstances. Some who turned to prostitution were driven by poverty, others were coerced. Women who were persuaded or forced to embark on a sexual relationship and were subsequently abandoned by their partner were regarded as ‘fallen’ but might, in a more compassionate time, be regarded as vulnerable girls, who had been taken advantage of by men. The stigma attached to a fall from virtue, whatever the cause, cannot be underestimated. Condemnation sprung from the contravention of religious, moral and sometimes legal codes. Researching the lives of women who spent time in refuges, often reveals the circumstances that led to their incarceration and helps to explain the life choices that they made, if indeed they had a choice. There is a very fine line between a vulnerable girl and a fallen woman and they were judged by the standards of their time.

Hogarth's A Harlot's Progress 

Image used under Creative Commons - in the public domain

Realism and Romance – one hundred years of the Chalet School by Sheena Wilkinson

1925 saw the publication of some remarkable, enduring classic novels – The Great Gatsby, Mrs Dalloway – and The School at the Chalet. My own forthcoming eleventh novel is set in 1925, and one of my favourite bits of the story was when one of the characters is given The School at the Chalet. I thought a History Girls post on one hundred years of the series would be very timely. 

The Fernside girls read The School at the Chalet

But surely The History Girls is meant to be more … erudite? More serious? Not the place to celebrate an essentially trivial genre. 

Well, here’s what happens in one of the books. Judge for yourselves if you think it's trivial. 

A benign community of women and girls, which has existed peacefully for some years, is threatened when the country is annexed by a neighbouring fascist state. The girls incur the authorities’ wrath and have to flee for their lives. Their community is destroyed but rises again, smaller but undaunted, in another country, and they pledge themselves to peace and internationalism, though their individual countries are now at war. And nobody knows yet that the safe island they have chosen for sanctuary is about to be invaded…

When the story is published, the book’s cover is so controversial that it is withdrawn and a new, less offensive version substituted.

Sounds like a modern dystopia?

The original cover 

In fact, this is the plot of The Chalet School In Exile (1940), the fourteenth in the series of 59 books published between 1925 and 1970. Not all the books are so dramatic; not all keep such faith with the harsh realities of the real world in which they were written, but the series as a whole is a remarkable achievement. It’s not a packaged series, such as Nancy Drew – all the books are the work of one author, Elinor M. Brent-Dyer.

replacement cover -- adventurous, but the Nazis are 
no longer in the drawing room

The imaginative space of the Chalet School occupies a huge place in my reading life. The locations – Austria, Guernsey, the English/Welsh borders, a Welsh island and eventually Switzerland – are lush, and the characters, girls and teachers, are allowed to develop in a way that a shorter series can’t allow for. The books are romantic, but have their own realism too – a girl can be picking Edelweiss and ragging her chums in one book, and grieving for her father, killed in a Nazi concentration camp, in the next.

my Chalet collection 

 

In the 1980s, when I discovered them, the series was still in print in paperback, though the whole series was never available at one time. I read what I could find in the library and local bookshops, ridiculously out of sequence, so that in one book the character Jo is a twelve-year-old schoolgirl, in the next she is the mother of eleven children, in the next she is back at school and Head Girl. Confusing for ten-year-old me, but also very exciting, because, unlike the Malory Towers or St Clare’s books, which each contained six books and followed one or two main characters, the Chalet School is itself the central character of this saga. I had the vague sense – especially when I found some old 1920s hardbacks – that this was a big, big world, and that there was much more to discover.                     

And I kept on discovering. Unlike many readers, I never felt embarrassed by the fact that I was still reading school stories in my teens. I remember, at university in Durham, finding two early hardbacks in a charity shop and happily buying them despite my boyfriend’s incredulity. (The books lasted longer than the boyfriend.) When I did a PhD on girls’ schools and colleges in modern fiction, I had the perfect excuse to keep on reading them and call it research.

My PhD book 

As you would expect in any series lasting for 45 years and 59 books, the quality is patchy, and some of the later books are formulaic and repetitive. And from the fifties onwards, the books don’t really keep pace with the changes in society. That is, there is mention of space travel and Beatniks but the prevailing attitudes are essentially conservative and old-fashioned. One imagines the writer growing increasingly out of step with the modern world and perhaps herself seeking refuge in the more-or-less unchanging values of her fictional school. When I first read the books, I probably rather sneered at this: surely it was her duty to reflect the world around her? Now in my fifties myself, and feeling much more at home writing historical fiction than trying to make sense of 2025, I have rather more sympathy. 

Elinor M. Brent-Dyer

Will the Chalet School survive another hundred years? The books are kept in print by Girls Gone By, a small press which reissues titles regularly, and there are two flourishing fan clubs, The New Chalet Club and Friends of the Chalet School but it would be fair to say that these are not sisterhoods of the young. The books are old-fashioned now, and yet at their heart is a celebration of friendship, female space, and tolerance which doesn’t grow old. 

 

 

 

 

 

Miscellany - Joan Lennon

Historical research makes use of venerable sources and texts held in reputable libraries and unimpeachable online sites, methodically uncovered and assessed - essential ingredients for writing historical fiction and non-fiction alike. But sometimes, we stumble across books that might not even have anything to do with the work in hand but which, months or years later, become our go-to place of inspiration and those precious tiny telling details that give our writing savour and life.

Today I'm celebrating a miscellany of books like that - just a few - there are many more! - acquired from charity shops, unexpectedly come upon in second- and first-hand bookshops, or at the bottom of boxes inherited from the clear-outs of family homes.

For example, during a visit to the Natural History Museum in London donkeys years ago, I bought Alfred Waterhouse and the Natural History Museum by Mark Girouard - the visit and the book planted the seeds of four Victorian mystery novels about Slightly Jones. Afterlives by Ruth Johnston gave me more wonderfully ghoulish material than I was able to use (but then, you shouldn't force everything you know into a book anyway!). Manners for Women and Manners for Men by Mrs Humphry (which I blogged about on History Girls many years ago here and here) were separate charity shop finds, and helped me enormously with the Slightly Jones series. Linda Cracknell's The Beat of the Heart Stones fed into the historical narrative poems of Never Still Nivver Still. Culpepper's English Physician and Complete Herbal came into my hands from my mother-in-law's bookshelves and provided depth and texture to the medieval series The Wickit Chronicles. Mary Kingsley's Travels in West Africa and Albert Robida's The Twentieth Century contributed to the non-fiction books Talking History and Great Minds, and also Revolution! (due out in 2026 from Templar Press).

If you come across any of these sometime, somewhere, make sure you give them a second glance - you are in for a treat! What books have you stumbled upon in unexpected places, maybe at times when you were thinking about something else entirely, that have helped bring your historical research to life? Serendipity is the writer's friend...

Joan Lennon website.

Joan Lennon Instagram.

ETTEILLA: THE 18TH-CENTURY TAROT MASTER … by Susan Stokes-Chapman

In the late 18th century, tarot reading underwent a transformation that would influence the art of divination for centuries to come. One of the most important figures in this transformation was Jean-Baptiste Alliette, better known as Etteilla (his surname spelled backward). As a professional fortune teller, occultist, and tarot innovator, Etteilla reshaped tarot into a structured system of mystical knowledge. He was not only the first person to publish a tarot deck specifically designed for divination but also a key figure in the esoteric revival of the time.

Etteilla’s Journey into Tarot

Born in 1738 in Paris, Jean-Baptiste Alliette initially worked as a seedsman and engraver, but he soon turned his attention to the mystical world of fortune-telling. By the 1770s, he was studying astrology, alchemy, and the Tarot de Marseille, the standard tarot deck used in France at the time. Inspired by the growing fascination with the Egyptian origins of Western esoteric traditions, he developed his own unique system of tarot divination.

In 1783, Etteilla published Etteilla, ou manière de se récréer avec un jeu de cartes (Etteilla, or the Way to Entertain Oneself with a Deck of Cards), one of the first printed guides to tarot reading. Unlike earlier traditions that saw tarot primarily as a game or as an obscure symbolic tool, Etteilla emphasized its role as a serious divinatory system with ancient roots.

The Livre de Thot: The First Purpose-Built Tarot Deck

By 1789, Etteilla had designed and published his own tarot deck, which he called the “Livre de Thot” (Book of Thoth). This was the first tarot deck ever created specifically for divination, marking a significant departure from earlier tarot designs, which were initially used for card games.

Etteilla claimed that his tarot deck was a rediscovered fragment of the ancient Egyptian “Book of Thoth”, a mythical text attributed to the Egyptian god of wisdom and writing. This idea was influenced by the work of Antoine Court de Gébelin, a French scholar who, in his 1781 work Le Monde Primitif, argued that tarot cards contained the lost wisdom of Egyptian priests.

Key Features of the Livre de Thot Deck

1. Egyptian Aesthetics – Unlike the Tarot de Marseille, which had a medieval European style, Etteilla’s deck incorporated Egyptian imagery to support his theory of tarot’s ancient origins.
2. Reordered Major Arcana – He changed the numbering and sequence of the traditional 22 Major Arcana cards to fit his unique system of meanings.
3. New Symbolism and Keywords – Each card included upright and reversed meanings, making his deck one of the first to explicitly incorporate reversals into tarot reading.
4. Four Elements and Astrology – His interpretations heavily relied on the classical four elements (earth, air, fire, water) and astrological correspondences, reinforcing the deck’s mystical framework.

Etteilla’s deck was highly structured and systematic, offering a more organized approach to tarot reading than earlier methods. His system became the foundation for many later occult tarot traditions, including the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in the 19th century.

Nouvelle École de Magie: Etteilla’s School of Magic (1790)

Etteilla was more than just a tarot reader - he was a teacher and leader in the esoteric community. In 1790, he established the Nouvelle École de Magie (New School of Magic) in Paris. This school aimed to educate students in the mystical arts, particularly tarot divination, astrology, and alchemy.

Goals of the Nouvelle École de Magie

• Restoring Ancient Wisdom – Etteilla believed that tarot preserved fragments of ancient Egyptian knowledge and sought to reconstruct this lost wisdom.
• Training Professional Diviners – His school formalized tarot reading as a legitimate mystical practice, setting the stage for modern professional tarot readers.
• Combining Multiple Esoteric Disciplines – Unlike earlier tarot traditions, which focused on symbolism, Etteilla’s school integrated astrology, numerology, and alchemy into tarot interpretation.

The Nouvelle École de Magie attracted a small but devoted following, influencing later occult movements in France. Though the school itself did not last long after Etteilla’s death in 1791, his teachings laid the groundwork for 19th-century magical orders, including Eliphas Lévi’s occult revival and the Golden Dawn’s tarot system.

Etteilla’s Influence on Tarot Today

Although his theories about the Egyptian origins of tarot have been widely debunked, Etteilla’s contributions remain essential to tarot history. He was the first person to create a tarot deck specifically for divination, and his structured approach to card meanings, reversals, and esoteric symbolism influenced later tarot traditions, including the Rider-Waite-Smith deck (1909) and Aleister Crowley’s Thoth Tarot (1944).

Even today, tarot readers continue to use astrological and elemental correspondences, practices that can be traced back to Etteilla’s innovations. His emphasis on structured interpretations also paved the way for modern tarot guidebooks and courses, making tarot more accessible to wider audiences.

Etteilla’s Lasting Legacy

Etteilla was a true pioneer, transforming tarot from a simple card game into a sophisticated system of divination and esoteric study. His Livre de Thot deck and Nouvelle École de Magie shaped the way tarot was understood in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, leaving an enduring legacy in the world of Western occultism.

While his school may no longer exist, his influence can still be felt in every tarot reading, every mystical interpretation, and every deck designed for divination. As one of the first professional tarot readers, he helped elevate tarot from a curiosity to a powerful tool for self-discovery and mystical insight—an impact that continues to shape tarot practices today.

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My tarot-short story 'A Midnight Visitor' (set in the Georgian period) featuring a troubled medium, can be found within The Witching Hour, published in hardback October 2025. You can pre-order a copy by clicking the image below:

www.susanstokeschapman.com
Instagram: @SStokesChapman

Paths of history: stories we choose to tell, by Gillian Polack

This July I'm considering the different ways we can research for our fiction. I know I've done this before and I know I will do this again. It's not my fiction-writing side that pushes me to find more explanations and better explanations. It's my academic side. I’ve been examining how Germans view their Jewish past pre-1700, and comparing that with the fiction we read and wondering how we can beat our own biases. I explored one approach in person, imagining a town as a museum and discovering the stories it told and what the stories missed.

The town is called Eden, and I’m writing from an apartment near Aslings Beach. Eden was named after the first Earl of Auckland and. It has a twofold bay, where the waves argue with each other. One set of waves dominates and roars, the other growls. If you listen closely, the soundscape is as complex as the history the people remember and much simpler than Eden’s real history.

Eden almost became the capital of Australia. Before the Europeans arrived, it was the land of the Yuin people, who are still here. How do I know they are still here? A family of them caught the bus with me the day before yesterday. A young family, with possibly the cutest child in existence. I was going to the Killer Whale Museum. That bus trip and that museum reminded me that towns can be a lot more complicated and interesting than the books written about them. Whether this is a story of the family I saw on the bus, Old Tom, a killer whale who bossed a whaling fleet, a Jewish whaler, or the white Christian men the town celebrates (the Imlays, Mr Boyd, Mr Logan, the Davidsons) depends on how you walk down the street, how you interpret the museum, and whether our own biases can be used to redress those in the sources we use for our research.

The Yuin were in what is now Eden long before Cicero wrote about the Antipodes in the Somnium Scipionis. They’ve never left. The Yuin people have an excellent council, and I need to look at what that Council does and maybe ask some questions to delve further into their history before I can understand who they are and what they have done since the first arrival of Europeans here in the 19th century. Why do I say carefully "I need to delve"? Yuin folks are depicted in the Killer Whale Museum and in the street heritage notices as a secondary part of the town’s history. This is a shabby description of ancient history. If you walk the heritage trails, there is better treatment. It’s like Twofold Bay – stand in one place and you will hear something quite different to standing just a kilometre away.

This stranded history where the strands don’t always touch, it hides stuff. Only one man died from whaling in all the decades Eden was a whaling centre. The low death rate looks as if it may well be due to locals sharing their expertise with Imlays and the Davidsons. But was the expertise shared as between equals, or even willingly? This knowledge can’t be gleaned from looking at how history is presented publicly.

Except… when it is. The Yuin are in the museum in photographs of boats in Twofold Bay, but school history, food history, council affairs (except the specific council for Indigenous locals), the management of the town and the life of locals is depicted as white. Even the Jewish residents (not quite white, in Australian tradition) shadow white male history, which is curious, because there are Jewish graves in the local cemetery, an important early shop was set up by someone Jewish, and Solomon Solomons, of a particularly important regional family, was a Jewish whaler.
Now I wonder how many Jewish whalers there are, and whether it's simply that no-one talks about them. There were Jewish pirates and Jewish politicians – why should there be no Jewish whalers? And why do so many fiction writers assume we are all involved in matters financial? Mr Solomons was a vast local importance and his family was of regional importance, so his absence from the Killer Whale Museum is curious. More curious, however, is the absence of most Yuin people in the main history of the region. They have history, and it’s shown, but separately, as if the European-origin culture cannot talk to the Indigenous. The depiction of women in the museum too, makes them secondary to the Really Important People. This is modern Australia in miniature. We set up the history we want to live with and create a past that echoes ourselves. When historical fiction writers use this as a base for writing, the circle is complete.
How to move out of this closed circle? One of the bus drivers of Eden solved this as he explained what happened to the Greenseas Tuna Factory. “You need to ask the right people the right questions,” he said. Why is this not so easy in Eden? The current population of Eden is mostly older people who migrated from elsewhere. They wanted to retire to a lovely town on the coast and they have no knowledge of what came before. The desk person at the Killer Whale Museum demonstrated beautifully how new knowledge is acquired in the region: she is passionate about the Mr Logan who built Edrom Lodge. She is determined to make him visible, because she sees him as unseen. My clever bus driver and the schoolteacher on a stall at the community market both knew her and her passion. It’s a small town: everyone knows those with passion. And so the fascination with one person is reinforced and the wider story of the townsfolk says different things depending on where the story is focused. I have a list of names of people who will know more: I will return sometime and ask them my questions. Time and work break down that circle, and the clever asking of questions.
We seek stories of people like us, for the most part. When I asked about the local inhabitants and their work with killer whales, no-one I spoke to could answer my questions beyond the answers the museum gave. Each of them was focused on what they knew, and on people they thought were like themselves. Sometimes, however, the answers are in sight. I will need to speak to the local Land Council, for example, and the Jewish Historical Society.
I can (and did) also ask different questions. I can look for people who are not quite like others.
In the case of Eden, the most obvious person is Old Tom, a killer whale of great significance. The Killer Whale Museum chronicles his life and his personality and why he was named. His stories show that the real cultural force in the whole whaling industry was not those who sold whale products and made much money: it was the Indigenous whalers who worked alongside the Killer Whales. We know how Old Tom handled his team of orcas to bring whales in for the kill. We know how he let the whalers know they needed to get in their boats and do their bit. We know how he mocked whalers who would not do their share of the work or did not leave Tom and his folks their part of the kill. We even know how he was patted. We also know, mainly from the pictures at the museum, that it was not the white Australians who worked with Old Tom. They were exceptionally skilled people. There was a great deal that was different in Eden to whaling elsewhere, from the number of whales killed (maintaining a population) to the collaboration between human and killer whales and the number of people who died whaling. One. Just one human death. Over decades. Look at an exhibition from a different point of entry and it is as if the whole past shifts and changes and suddenly makes sense.
Whether a writer chooses one strand or two, whether they only see the official history and follow the path of the Imlay brothers down the main street (the Princes Highway, the #1 road in Australia, which becomes Imlay Street as it passes through Eden) or whether the writer challenges standard history and starts to think of the locals who never left ... this rests on the type of story the novelist wants to tell. Most will tell stories that link to known heroes and established figures and will echo the sound of the larger bay. Their research will echo the interests of the new locals, who retired to Eden and don't know its deep history. Their story will reinforce the standard one and will resound and be seen and valued because it echoes what we already know. Other writers will echo the smaller bay and query Old Tom. Rare writers will look at history from somewhere else entirely and will bring us something very special indeed.

Judging the Crowns by Maggie Brookes

Have you ever said yes to something without really knowing what you were agreeing to? I've just taken on a marathon, though it also resembles a sprint. I was honoured to be asked to be one of the 9 judges for this year's Historical Writer's Association Gold Crown award for the best historical fiction novel published between 1st April 2024 and 31st March 2025. Lots of lovely books to read, I thought. I've been reading historical fiction all my life. I've had two historical novels published world-wide by Penguin. I have opinions. How hard can it be?

The coveted HWA gold crown award.

Well, first of all, there are 131 entries, from more than 40 publishers, big and small. And I know that each one of those novels has been meticulously researched, painstakingly written and rewritten, edited, proof-read and finally published. I sympathise with all that effort, angst and joy. At a modest estimate of 2 years to research and write each one, that would be 250 years of work. A more realistic estimate of 4 years per book is a staggering 500 years of labour! It's a big responsibility, but also a opportunity to learn so much – about history, about publishers, about structuring and pacing narrative, about stories that jump out at readers, and also about what's being published right now.

The hard copy books waiting to be read.

The first thing I notice is gender. Judging by the first names of the authors, more than 95 of the 131 appear to be women (and perhaps some of the tantalising initials are women too.) History girls are alive and flourishing! Are women writers particularly drawn to history, I wonder? The judges are also predominantly female, with 8 out of the 9 of us being women. (Are women more inclined to agree to take on these kind of roles?? Answers on a postcard.) We are Louise Hare (Chair), Ellen Alpsten, Mark Ellis, Louise Fein, Alison Joseph, Amy McElroy, Carolyn Kirby, Linda Porter and me. Louise says: 'I love seeing how broad the category of historical fiction is, encompassing so many different genres. This is my third time of judging the Crowns and I’m always fascinated by the trends that emerge within each cycle. I see our role as vital in rewarding literary merit within historical fiction, but really it’s about celebrating great reads, those books you want to tell all your friends about.' Under her guidance, we  have until September to agree a longlist, October a shortlist, and November to choose a winner. Yikes!

Louise Hare, chair of judges, with HWA member Jim Burge at the award ceremony.

Gender is also noticeable in the protagonists of the novels. Taking a straw poll of the 93 books I've been sent so far in hard copy, there is a massive predominance of books about women, particularly pioneering women whose names have been forgotten, but also enslaved women, witches and detectives. Perhaps this isn't surprising when a Guardian article from 2019 says that women readers account for 80% of sales in the UK, US and Canadian fiction markets – far more women than men are literary festivalgoers, library members, audio book readers, literary bloggers, and members of literary societies and evening classes... and form book clubs.  

MA Sieghart's book The Authority Gap found that 'men were disproportionately unlikely even to open a book by a woman. For the top 10 bestselling female authors (who include Jane Austen and Margaret Atwood as well as Danielle Steel and Jojo Moyes), only 19% of their readers are men and 81%, women. But for the top 10 bestselling male authors (who include Charles Dickens and JRR Tolkien, as well as Lee Child and Stephen King), the split is much more even: 55% men and 45% women.  In other words, women are prepared to read books by men, but many fewer men are prepared to read books by women.'  I suppose that's just as well for male writers! Ian McEwan once wrote: 'When women stop reading, the novel will be dead.'

The books I've received seem to divide into four main sub-genres: 1) extraordinary women from the past, both real and imagined; 2) crime / mystery / thriller / gothic (some a mixture of those) ; 3) mythical re-tellings and fairy-tale inspired historical fantasy. And then there's 4) war, from the Trojan wars to the Napoleonic wars; WW1; the interwar years; WW2 and the cold war. I've written three novels about women in war not because I'm interested in war but because war brings out the worst and best in people, and that gives plenty to write about.  Writing about the past has always seemed to me to be a way of writing about the present.

There are also stand-alone stories from across the centuries, which can't be slotted into those categories. All human life is here.  Authors too, range from the ultra well known to debut novelists. Only three of the books I've received so far have been in translation, though many are set in other countries, from the Americas to Africa and Japan. I'm learning so much! There are several dual or triple time-line stories. The biographical fiction shows the historical range of the first 85 books I was sent in hard copy, from the first century AD to the 12th, 13th, 14th, 15th, 17th, 18th and 20th centuries.  Many are about powerful women in royal families, perhaps because there is more about them in the historical record. Just one of these books has a male protagonist, although at school I was only taught history about men. The bias of history is being slowly re-written, page by page and book by book.

The HWA flag.

As I read, I bear in mind not only the effort of the writers, but also what it means to win these awards.
Elizabeth Fremantle, who won the 2024 Gold Crown Award with Disobedient, her extraordinary novel about Artemesia Gentileschi, says 'Disobedient, of all my novels, is closest to my heart, so it meant a great deal that it was the one to be recognised by the judges. I was truly humbled, and on the night utterly astonished, that my book was chosen from a short-list of such calibre.'

Disobedient by Elizabeth Fremantle

In 2022 AJ West won the Debut Crown award with The Spirit Engineer. He says 'Winning was a complete shock and – un-English as it may be to admit it – a source of proud vindication after years of struggle to get published. Recognition from the HWA prevents me from being too pessimistic when things feel heavy and impossible. It reminds me that, though I'm not yet a wealthy author, nor necessarily an author with his book in high street windows, nor even an acclaimed author, I am something much more smug and satisfying: an author who benefits every day from the support of his fellow writers, whom I admire in greater measure.'

And so I dive in. Eight weeks till the longlist. How hard can it be?

 Maggie Brookes, novelist and poet. Author of  historical novels The Prisoner's Wife and Acts of Love and War. As Maggie Brookes-Butt: Wish, New and Selected Poems.

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The Sacra Infermeria: Malta by Kathryn Gauci

The Sacra Infermeria from the Entrance Fort Elmo

Many visitors to Malta these days visit The Malta Experience at the Mediterranean Conference Centre, situated opposite Fort Elmo in Valletta, unaware that this building, which overlooks the Grand Harbour, once housed the most important hospital in the Mediterranean – the Sacra Infermeria – built by the Knights of St John of Jerusalem. I visited this remarkable place one year ago, and was disappointed to see that most people only went for the Malta Experience film portraying the island's history, yet only a handful chose to do the second tour of what was once described in the 17th Century, as the best hospital in Europe,

The hospital was built in 1574 by Grand Master Jean de la Cassiere (1572-82) after the previous great Knight, Jean de la Valette, embarked on building Valletta, making it the capital of Malta after defeating the Ottomans in the Great Siege of Malta in 1565

Grand Master Jean de la Cassiere

The Knights of the Order of Saint John, or Knights Hospitallers as they are also known, were a Catholic military order founded in the 12th-century in Jerusalem and were known for their care of sick and injured Christian pilgrims. By the time of the success of the First Crusade in 1099, the Hospital of St John was already well-known among pilgrims and regarded as a separate organisation from the monastery of St. Mary. The brothers at the hospital saw it as their duty to provide the best possible treatment to the poor. The monastic Hospitaller Order was formally created when the Pope issued a papal decree, Pie postulatio voluntat, on 15 February 1113 to the head of the Hospital of St John, Blessed Gerard de Martiques.

Pie Postulatio Voluntatis

The document is in the National Library in Valletta

The Pope subordinated the hospital to his authority and exempted it from paying tithes on the lands it owned. He also gave the right to its professed brothers to elect their own master and placed several other hospitals and hospices in southern Italy under the governance of the Hospital of St John in Jerusalem, as they were located at port cities from which pilgrims travelled to the Holy Land. The Knights Hospitallers were in Jerusalem until 1291, and then moved to Cyprus (1302–1310) and afterwards to the island of Rhodes (1310–1522). After an attempt to defend themselves against Suleiman the Magnificent’s Ottoman Forces, a siege that lasted six months, the Knights were allowed to go freely to Malta in 1530. There, they were administered as a vassal state under the Spanish viceroy of Sicily and became rich through trade and what was deemed a lucrative profession of the day – becoming fine corsairs, or pirates. Yet at their heart was a philosophy to care for the sick and wounded of all religions including their Muslim captives.

Entrance from street level to the infirmary.

The Great Ward

The Sacre Infermeria has 6 levels and the first level, once used for the poor, is now used for events such as CHOGM ‘67, the Malta Regatta Dinner, and other prestigious events. Halfway down this room, there is a ramp where the poor entered. The Old Ward was later extended during the years 1660 to 1666 under the rule of the Cotoners. During this time, arches were spaced between the beds. Grand Master Nicholas Cotoner (1663-80) also founded the School of Anatomy and Surgery here; the forerunner of the Medical School of the University of Malta. The Great Ward is 155 metres long by 10 1/2 metres wide and could house 300 single beds and 914 patients with each bed allowing for 3-4 people. Interestingly, the rich still received the same service, True to their faith, no one of another faith was turned away. There was also the Phalangue, an irregularly shaped section of the infirmary reserved for patients suffering from contagious or venereal diseases. Some with contagious illnesses were later sent elsewhere, usually to the area in Marsamxett Harbour which was primitive and provided little accommodation and comfort, although the area was used when plague afflicted Malta in the first half of the seventeenth century. Quarantine was forty days, representing the forty days of Jesus in the desert.

Valletta in 1801. The hospital can be seen next to St Elmo's Fort

It should be noted that fear of contagious diseases was rife at the time. Passengers and goods arriving on ships, even with a clean bill of health, were required to remain under observation for a short period of quarantine. The site selected was very convenient. It was on the south side of the new city below the Castille bastion and the Lower Barracca, along the Valletta wharf of the Grand Harbour. There was a row of stores and warehouses, above which was residential accommodation for passengers and crew kept under observation. A special loggia was also built for the benefit of distinguished passengers. A few yards away from the isolation quarter a row of bollards formed a barrier to keep away unauthorised persons from entering the quarantine. That barrier gave rise to the name by which the wharf is now known - "Il-Barriera". From here they could safely approach the hospital.

Five rooms were specifically sectioned off for venereal disease patients needing mercury inunctions. The Great Magazine Ward consisting of 109 beds for sailors and soldiers of the Order, as well as galley-slaves was located in the basement of the infirmary. On the second basement level, was the Magazine Ward with 36 beds for the mentally ill.

To clean the wounds, vinegar was used. Sea salt and honey were also used for infections as an antiseptic. It is said that kidney stones could be removed safely within a matter of minutes and amputations were swiftly dealt with by the sword.

For all this goodness, women were not admitted. If a woman was rich, a doctor would personally visit her home. For all other women, a cross was painted on the patient’s door and a nun would pay her a visit. Normally all nuns acquired some medical education. Women were not even allowed to visit their male relatives at the hospital.

The garden at St Catherine's Monastery

In the Great Ward, one can still see ventilation holes along the wall facing the inner walled garden, which is where the auditorium for the Malta Experience now stands. In its time, the garden would have been large and built after the style of Arab gardens, containing citrus fruits and many medicinal herbs. The scent would have been wonderful. Such gardens still exist in Malta but on a smaller scale. The Monastery of St Catherine’s is one of them. It shows that they processed their own rose and orange water and had an abundance of honey.

Towards the closing stages of the 18th century, there was a general decline in the Order. Life had changed and the Knights of St. John were losing their raison d'être. Liberal ideas were spreading throughout Europe and to make matters worse, the French Revolution led to all the rich estates of the French langues being confiscated, pushing the Knights to the brink of bankruptcy. This decay was reflected in the administration of the Sacra Infermeria, where conditions were vastly different from those of its former days. In 1786, the noted English philanthropist John Howard, visited Malta's hospitals and recorded his impressions in a book titled 'An Account of the Principal Lazzarettos in Europe'. His account of what he saw in Malta was anything but flattering and is one of the first indications of the decline of the Order's hospital. According to his report, doctors doing their rounds were forced to press a handkerchief to their faces to ward off the unbearable stench.

When the hospital was used as a garrison, horses were tethered to the arches. Note the iron ring.

The building was used by the British Military Forces as the Garrison Hospital (1800-1920) At the time, British soldiers suffered an outbreak of what was called the Malta fever. The disease caused undulant fever in men and abortion in goats. It is transmitted by goat milk. In 1886, the medical facility became well known when Major-General Sir David Bruce, (29 May 1855 – 27 November 1931), became chairman of the Malta Fever Commission that investigated the deadly disease, by which he identified a specific bacterium as the cause. Bruce was born in Melbourne, Australia, to Scottish parents, engineer David Bruce and his wife Jane Russell Hamilton, who had immigrated to Australia in the gold rush of 1850. He returned with his family to Scotland at the age of five. Sir David discovered the bacterium, now called Brucella, in 1887 along with the bacterium and the disease it caused. Brucellosis, together with the protozoan Trypanosoma brucei, are named in his honour.

During WWII, the building suffered severe bomb damage but was later restored.

David Bruce

The members of the Mediterranean Fever Commission