Looking backwards and forwards by Mary Hoffman

Since I have the first-of-the-month position in which to write History Girls posts, I can take the opportunity to wish all our Followers a very happy and fulfilling 2016.

And I can, Janus-like, look back over 2015 and forwards to the coming year, in which the History Girls will turn five! Watch out for a special birthday party on 1st July.

Statue of Janus in the Vatican Museum

First, we have lost some of our regular History Girls and gained some new ones. We say goodbye to  Laurie Graham, Christina Koning, Eleanor Updale and Clare Mulley and au revoir to Louisa Young, who leaves us a monthly poster but will be back as a Reserve and also a guest in 2016. Eleanor and Louisa have been with us since the beginning and we wish them all well..

In their place we welcome Vanora Bennett, Katherine Clements, Katherine Webb, Miranda Miller and Julie Summers. You can read about the new HGs on the About Us page. People only ever leave us because of pressure of work and sometimes they come back; the door is always open.

Looking back over last year shows we had a slew of anniversaries, from VE Day (70 years) on 8th May

VE Day celebrations in London (Imperial War Museum)

to the sealing of Magna Carta (800 years) on 15th June.

Magna Carta 12 97 version

 And there was the Evacuation of Dunkirk (75 years) at the end of May/beginning of June;

The Little Ships, Chatham (Colin Smith Creative Commons)

the Battle of Waterloo (200 years) on 18th June

Artist: Thomas James Barker

 and the Battle of Agincourt (600 years) on 15th October.

15th century miniature

It's a bit heavily biased towards the military and the political, perhaps because History being "about chaps" tends to show up in commemorations. What do we take from the celebration of these dates in the calendar? The Battle of Britain Memorial Service (also 75 years autumn 2015) created more column inches over Jeremy Corbyn's non-singing of the National Anthem than anything about what was actually being remembered and honoured.

Photo credit: Beata May

But there's a world of difference between a battle victory for the British at Waterloo and that at Agincourt. In both cases the French were on the losing side (though Wellington said it was a close-run thing) but the more recent conflict led to eighty years of peace in Europe. Whereas Henry V's victory in France against a force far superior in numbers came bang in the middle of what we loosely call the Hundred Years War and marked the high point of English possessions in France.

After Henry died young his infant son, Henry Vl was crowned king of England and France but it was downhill all the way after Agincourt in terms of England claiming territory across the Channel. That was an ambition that seemed obvious and right to English kings for reasons the woman in the street now (and possibly then)would find incomprehensible.

Borders are artificial politically-imposed boundaries but they do at least make some sense when marked by a large geographical feature like a stretch of water. In our era, when Superpowers from countries thousands of miles away from a conflict feel they have a right (or to put it more charitably, a duty) to intervene with bombs and drones and soldiers, the whole notion of sovereign states is differently undermined.

"Truly to speak, and with no addition,
We go to gain a little patch of ground
That hath in it no profit but the name.
To pay five ducats, five, I would not farm it"

says the Norwegian Captain to Hamlet in explanation of his massed forces marching on Poland.

Hamlet Why, then the Polack never will defend it.

Captain Yes, it is already garrison'd.

Which brings me to next year's major anniversary, at least for me. Not a battle or a treaty or a natural disaster but the 400th anniversary of  the death of Shakespeare on 23rd April. The History Girls really must do something special for that. My own personal celebration of the life of my favourite writer will include publishing on that date my YA novel Shakespeare's Ghost. The cover came yesterday and you will be seeing more about it here.

BBC 2 will continue its very successful The Hollow Crown series with the first tetralogy (to be written, though later historically) of the three Henry Vl plays and Richard lll. The previous cycle had a very memorable Ben Whishaw as Richard ll, Jeremy Irons as Henry lV and Tom Hiddleston as Prince Hal/ Henry V. The ubiquitous Benedict Cumberbatch will play Richard lll and Geoffrey Streatfeild his older brother Edward lV. I can't wait!

By coincidence I have just finished reading Dan Jones' The Hollow Crown, the sequel to his The Plantagenets. it is very readable indeed and it's such a complicated period of battles, treachery, familial in-fighting and summary executions that one needs a clear guide.

But back to 2016. There are a host of anniversaries coming up from the Battle of Hastings (950 years) on 14th October

to the Great Fire of London (350 years) in September.

Artist Rita Greer 2008

And from January to December there are bound to be mentions of the 80th anniversary of the succession and abdication of Edward Vlll.

Here on The History Girls we have a stellar list of guests lined up, including Tracy Chevalier and Alison Weir.

It only remains for me to wish you all the very best that 2016 can bring and preferably no battles!

The Hollow Crown by Mary Hoffman

I want to talk about Shakespeare as a writer of historical fiction. If you saw the remarkable BBC2 mini-series The Hollow Crown (Richard the Second, Henry the Fourth, Parts 1 and 2 and Henry the Fifth) in July, you might be more or less aware of how he took historical facts and bent them into the shape required for his drama.

For example, Henry Percy (Hotspur) and Prince Hal were not contemporaries. Percy was born in 1364 or 1366, the man who would be Henry V in 1386. It was his father, Henry lV (born 1367), who was more nearly Hotspur's contemporary. But it makes a much better story to have the old king of the middle two plays in this history cycle - the second Shakespeare wrote although the events date from earlier than in the first tetralogy - worrying about how different his scapegrace son is from the fiery warrior of the north.

Many other characters are changed or combined from their historical equivalents and I certainly don't expect anyone, not even Shakespeare, to be as interested in the Plantagenets as I am. Suffice it to say that when Edward, Duke of York, says in Henry the Sixth, that "Edward the Third had eight sons," he - and Shakespeare - is simplifying!

But there is a book that will sort you out beautifully and it is by John Julius Norwich. I can't recommend Shakespeare's Kings (1999) too highly; he takes each play (including the doubtful Edward lll) and sets out the historical facts before showing how and what Shakespeare changed.

But back to The Hollow Crown. It was beautifully produced, costumed and acted, yet the first three plays were watched by an audience of only 800, 000 - "we few, we happy few" as one reviewer put it. I can only hope that iPlayer, catch-up TV and foreign rights will eventually boost those numbers considerably. I can remember John Barton's Wars of the Roses on TV and The Hollow Crown was a worthy successor.

Ben Whishaw played Richard the Second as a cross between Michael Jackson (complete with pet monkey) and Jesus Christ. That was fine by me but the addition of Saint Sebastian into the mix diluted the Christ-symbolism.

And here the director decided to add a bit of historical fiction of his own. Rupert Goold, to satisfy his own vision of the piece, took a step too far. In the play the deposed Richard is killed by Sir Pierce (pun intended?) of Exton, a character apparently invented by Shakespeare. The likely version is that the king was starved to death in his captivity in Pontefract Castle (or The Tower of London, if you are Rupert Goold).

This invention probably made the director think he had carte blanche to reinterpret the murder any way he wanted. But to give the deed to Aumerle was crass in the extreme. And having it done by crossbow was just so that he could underline the homo-erotic Saint Sebastian imagery he had spuriously introduced.

Aumerle (or Aumale) was the second Duke of York and cousin to both Richard the Second and Henry the Fourth. His closeness to Richard made him a conspirator against the new king but he repented. Nevertheless, it is absurd to think he would have chosen to show his loyalty by assassinating the deposed one.

At least, I think so! Which means I can accept some tampering with historical facts but not others. I suspect we all have our limits.

In the second play, Henry the Fourth had transmuted from Rory Kinnear to Jeremy Irons, a magnificently hollow-cheeked monarch, already racked both with the illness that would kill him and by guilt over the deposition and death of his cousin.

Prince Hal, later Henry the Fifth, was played by Tom Hiddleston, who is surely in line for a BAFTA.

And the two middle plays were groaning with well-known faces: Julie Waters as Mistress Quickly, Maxine Peake as Doll Tearsheet, Simon Russell Beale as Falstaff.

It was a masterly performance of Falstaff, but I was surprised to see comments on Facebook about his being "an unpleasant character"! Of course he was - that was part of Shakespeare's point. Too many people misunderstand him as just a fat, jolly Lord of Misrule and forget that he corruptly accepts payment to let recruits off the muster for the wars, steals money from supposed old friends and consistently bad-mouths his supposed young friend Hal.

And yet, and yet. Doll cares for him and Mistress Quickly's account of his death in Henry V is always truly moving. And I have never found the rejection scene in Henry lV Part Two as painful as it was  played by Russell Beale and Hiddleston.

There was so much too admire in these productions that the odd blemishes diminish to quibbles. I wish they hadn't cut the bits in Richard the Second that explain why Bolingbroke and Mowbray were fighting at the beginning and why the king banished them both.

But there was one omission by Thea Sharrock, the director of Henry V, that was extraordinary. Henry's order to kill the French prisoners leaves a very unpleasant taste (see John Sutherland's essay "Was Henry the Fifth a War Criminal?"). But to leave out the French murder of the boys who were pages and squires to the English army at Agincourt!

"Kill the poys and the luggage!" says the Welsh captain, Llewellyn and I shall never forget how Jonathan Slinger delivered it in the RSC History Cycle at Stratford. Sharrock seems to have cut it just in order to have the Boy (perhaps the same as Falstaff's Boy) grow up to be John Hurt, the Prologue.

What did you all think? Did the directors tamper too much with Shakespeare? Did Shakespeare tamper too much with Plantagenet history? Was Henry the Fifth a war criminal? Am I too picky? Do you have a crush on Tom Hiddleston? All answers welcome.