AGES OF MEMORY by H.M. Castor

I’ve just completed a two-week tour to mark the publication of the paperback edition of my Tudor novel VIII. It took me to all sorts of places – Ipswich & Bramhall, Oxford & Hampton Court – and among them was my old childhood stamping ground of Leamington Spa & Warwick, neighbouring towns that have spread so close to one another that, as Eric Morecambe used to say, you can’t see the join. Here, Keith & Frances Smith, the lovely owners of the independent bookshops ‘Warwick Books’ and ‘Kenilworth Books’ (see their website) arranged for me to speak at an evening event alongside Nicola Shulman and Prof. Eric Ives, at the most wonderful venue imaginable…


'These deep eyes were now surveying them, slow and solemn, but very penetrating... One felt as if there was an enormous well behind them, filled up with ages of memory and long, slow, steady thinking; but their surface was sparkling with the present...' J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers

The week before last, early on the Wednesday evening, a taxi deposited me outside an ancient building in the town of Warwick. I walked up to the imposing gate. Since it was well past 5 o’clock, a notice beside the gate said ‘Closed’ but, feeling rather Alice-in-Wonderland-ish, I thought I should try the door anyway. I turned the giant handle (above) and stepped inside. 

The gate from the inside

I had come to speak at an event in this most august of venues: the Lord Leycester Hospital in Warwick.

Alone inside the gateway, I hesitated. As anyone who has had the misfortune to wait for a train with me would confidently predict, I was early. No one else was in sight. What should I do? Ah, what? Loiter, of course! Loiter and look about me and feel the privilege of spending some time alone in this flabbergastingly gorgeous place.

The Westgate of Warwick (left), with chantry chapel above, and The Lord Leycester Hospital (right)

The Hospital’s own website (here) offers this potted history:

The Lord Leycester Hospital is not now, and has never been a medical establishment. The word hospital is used in its ancient sense meaning "a charitable institution for the housing and maintenance of the needy, infirm or aged".

The Hospital is an historic group of timber-framed buildings dating mainly from the late 14th Century clustered round the Norman gateway into Warwick with its 12th Century Chantry Chapel above it. Hidden behind the ancient buildings is the tiny but delightful Master's Garden.

For nearly 200 years it was the home of Warwick's mediaeval Guilds. In the reign of Queen Elizabeth I it became a place of retirement for old warriors. So it remains today as an independent charity providing a home for ex-Servicemen and their wives.

I loitered my way into the galleried courtyard, passing beneath this bear and ragged staff – an emblem that has been associated with the Earls of Warwick since at least the 14^th century, and was used by Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, favourite of Elizabeth I (whose father & brother were Earls of Warwick). It was Dudley who, having bought these buildings in 1571, set them up as a home for aged or injured soldiers.

Inside the courtyard, on the façade of the Master’s house, I spotted other bears standing guard along with a marvellous bristling porcupine (the porcupine was an emblem of the Sidney family, who were linked by marriage with the Dudleys).

The Master of the Hospital himself, Lt. Col. Gerald Lesinski, soon emerged from the door you can see on the left above. He would have been well within his rights if he'd asked me brusquely what I thought I was doing, peering at his house after closing time… but, on the contrary, he was all graciousness & generosity. He had, he told me, just been looking through the Hospital’s guest book and had found Oscar Wilde’s signature. “I knew we had Dickens and Darwin,” he said, “but I didn’t realise we had Wilde too!”

Oscar Wilde… Dickens… Darwin… I looked at the buildings about me with fresh eyes. The Lord Leycester, I reflected, is not only a medieval place, a Tudor place… it has been a Victorian place too. And a Georgian one, and an Edwardian and an everything-in-between-and-since.

Of course, you simply cannot stand here without thinking of the past in some fashion. But often I tend to think of the past in slices, rather than taking in the scale of the whole it… So, I look at these buildings and automatically estimate when they were built… and then, a few moments later, I try to picture them during my favourite period, the 16^th century.

And in so doing, I tend not to think of the sheer length of time the buildings have stood here and all that has happened in that time - the enormous well these buildings represent, filled up with ages of memory.

A short time later, as I looked across the street from the Lord Leycester, instead of defining the (wonderfully wonky) half-timbered building opposite (above) solely by the era in which it was built, I thought instead about all the changes it must have seen, and how it had stood there while the brick houses that you can just make out on the right were being constructed. And I realised that I’ve often looked at rows of buildings of different dates as if they were simply different cakes lined up in a cake shop window: this is 14^th century flavour, this is 18^th century flavour…

...instead of recognising that the 14^th century one is a building that, perhaps, stood alone before it acquired neighbours - or perhaps had other, different neighbours and stood solid even as they were demolished and replacements built.


It’s rather like a child’s view of the people around them, i.e. Granny happens to be a wrinkly person whose job is to be my grandmother, rather than Granny has seen so much! She was my age once, and then my mum's age too, and has lived through so many more days & years than me…

Now I began to think: the Lord Leycester Hospital buildings are medieval & stood here as the Wars of the Roses raged... but they stood here during the Civil War too – and during the Napoleonic Wars and the Russian Revolution and the Blitz. I began to think: these buildings were lived in by soldiers who fought in the Crimea, and on the Somme (perhaps). These buildings have seen all those days and months, those decades and centuries, and they will be here – I very much hope – when I am in my grave.

How easy it is to forget the accumulated weight of the past! If people’s life experience shone out of the tops of their heads like the light of Dickens’ Ghost of Christmas Past, the elderly’s would shine tallest & brightest… (for an illustration of the ghost, see here).

In the same way, the life experience (if I can put it that way) of these buildings is awe-inspiringly huge. And they have been significant not just at the time of their 'birth', but in each period they have 'lived' through. It is not only the new buildings of any period that give the flavour of that time. Just as in Henry VIII’s inventory there are treasured old items (devotional objects that belonged to his mother or grandmother, for example, or a sword used by Henry V) as well as items from Henry's time, so too the people of each period have inhabited, used, loved (or hated) old buildings, as well as modern ones.

When the Lord Leycester Hospital itself was ‘modern’, there would have been ‘old’ buildings in Warwick, of course. Over the centuries, as the Hospital has stood firm, buildings around it have come and gone. The idea plays in my mind like a time-lapse film – like this intriguing film from 1901 (credited as the first time-lapse film, in fact) which records the demolishing of a theatre in New York (it runs first in reverse, so that the theatre seems to be being built): see the film here.

Note the beady-eyed white pigeon!

Add to all this another layer: in the Lord Leycester Hospital, for me, the sweep of history is riffle-shuffled with my own personal memories.

For example, I love the Great Hall where that evening’s event took place – & where once, as the Master told me, James I sat down to dine (they still have the chair he sat in!). I love it for its marvellous beamed roof & higgledy-piggledy lattice windows…

… but I also love it because it was the venue, 23 years ago, for the Ruby Wedding celebration for my very dear great-uncle & great-aunt, Gordon & Lucy Southeard, and I could not possibly spend a moment in that room without thinking of Lucy (who still lives in Warwick) and without remembering Gordon - a remarkable, lovely and much missed man.

Uncle Gordon & Auntie Lucy (wearing red button-holes)
 in the Great Hall 

Try to hold your attention wide, taking in all that sweep of time, and it’s as if a pack of cards is being shuffled - what you see is: now that day, now this, now – in your mind’s eye – James I, now Oscar Wilde, now (for me) Uncle Gordon… now the astonishing kaleidoscope of every moment, great and small, that this building must hold in its memory:

How many people have stood in that dark doorway on the right (above), over the centuries? For how many people has the Lord Leycester Hospital been an old friend, a part of their lives, a place past which they have walked daily?

Never mind Oscar Wilde or Robert Dudley, what about the ordinary people of Warwick who knew it in, say, the 1720s, or the 1830s, or the 1940s?

That Wednesday visit turned into a wonderful evening, and I must end this post with some book recommendations. My fellow-speaker was Nicola Shulman, author of Graven with Diamonds, which is an audacious, erudite & superbly entertaining new analysis of the poems of Thomas Wyatt, and the uses to which they were put within the claustrophobic inner circle of Henry VIII’s court.

The chair for the evening was Prof. Eric Ives, author of an absolutely brilliant biography (the biography, I'm tempted to say) of Anne Boleyn - The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn. Prof. Ives is also the author of (amongst other things) a fascinating analysis of the rise & fall of Lady Jane Grey: Lady Jane Grey - A Tudor Mystery. And – to be published this June – a book on the Reformation that I can’t wait to read: The Reformation Experience. See details of all 3 titles here.

(l-r) Prof. Eric Ives, Nicola Shulman, Brother Peter, me

Here we are at the steps to the chantry chapel alongside Brother Peter, one of the Hospital’s residents.

Thank you to Keith & Frances Smith of Warwick Books for arranging & supporting the evening, and to the Master for welcoming us so warmly!

The Lord Leycester Hospital is open to visitors all year round and can be contacted about hosting events (including weddings) through its website here. It relies on visitor fees to keep it going and is an independent charity well worth supporting!

H.M. Castor's novel VIII - a new take on the life of Henry VIII - is published by Templar in the UK and by Penguin in Australia. It is now available in paperback, hardback & ebook format.

H.M. Castor's website is here.

THE FIGHTING WRITER by H.M. Castor

I may as well 'fess up straight away. I’m unfit. An aerobically-challenged, 41 year-old mother of two. My body was not built for physical feats. I used to do a great deal of ballet (in my youth), but my joints always creaked and groaned even then. I was not born bendy – quite the opposite – and when I worked for a while at The Royal Ballet (not as a dancer, but as a dance notator) the stretches I used to watch the dancers perform were enough to make me weep with envy (lie on your back, one leg extended straight along the floor… now touch the other foot to the floor above your head… and breathe…). Add to this the fact that I now spend my days hunched over my desk, my exercise consisting of little more than an arm-stretch now and again in the direction of the bookshelf, or a steady pad to the kitchen and back for another bucketful of coffee, and you will realise the magnitude of the challenge I faced when writing as Henry VIII for my novel VIII.

Because Henry – as long as his body was capable of it – lived to fight. He was obsessed with martial arts (early 16^th century English style) and what’s more, he was very good at them. Since for a large portion of my book he is fit, athletic and capable of a good scrap, this was going to need to be a significant feature of the narrative. How could I possibly write a convincing fight scene – or rather, several? How could I recreate the moves? I was used to watching the construction of ballet choreography, and we all know that sword fights in films are choreographed too… but not only is fight choreography a highly specialised art (of which I know nothing), it isn’t even what I was aiming for. I didn’t want a fight that made good viewing – I wanted a real fight.

And, other than childhood tussles with my sister, I am lucky enough to be able to say that I have never had a for-real physical fight in my life.

What to do?

My first answer was a trusty one, with which many writers will be familiar: procrastinate. As I wrote my drafts, I found myself skipping over the fight scenes time and again, sketching them loosely but leaving the detail for later. This could not, of course, go on indefinitely. Eventually the time came to face it: I was going to have to grapple (if you’ll excuse the pun) with the problem.

So I took my courage in my hands and heroically, ahem, browsed (online) the wonderful shelves of The London Library. I found many gems, both contemporary (medieval and renaissance) treatises on fighting techniques (the picture at the start of this article is from The Flower of Battle, an Italian martial arts manual, written c. 1410) and modern books too. Two of the latter that I would especially recommend to anyone interested are: The Martial Arts of Renaissance Europe by Sydney Anglo and English Martial Arts by Terry Brown. Both are fascinating and rich in detail, and the particular delight of Terry Brown’s book is that he has hands-on knowledge and includes, not only a wealth of historical evidence, but step-by-step photographs explaining various techniques.

Terry Brown is, in fact, something of a hero of mine (from afar - I've never met him). Already a hugely experienced and accomplished practitioner of Eastern martial arts (he has studied Fong Yang kung fu ('The Beggar's Art') for 44 years, plus Singapore's national martial art Khong Chang ('Open Palm') to Black Belt 2nd Dan level) he has now spent many years researching and practising English martial arts techniques.

'English martial arts' is an odd phrase (and please note I'm aware that there must also be Scottish and Welsh equivalents, but in researching Henry's life I necessarily had to concentrate on the English tradition). School audiences are always somewhat baffled by it (understandably). Martial arts? No problem! Not only have most of them heard of Bruce Lee or Jet Li and seen a film such as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon or House of Flying Daggers, but also there's always a sizeable crop of hands in the air when I ask how many attend lessons themselves. However, it's invariably Eastern martial arts we're talking about. As Terry Brown says in his foreword:

During the past fifty years there has been an explosion of popularity in the martial arts: kung fu, karate, taekwondo, among others, are names and systems that immediately spring to mind. It is therefore understandable that many in the West regard the Orient as the home… of martial arts. This means that many of us have tended to accept that European cultures did not have formal martial arts systems, and that when our fighting men (and women) went into battle they did so as members of the ‘hack 'em and bash 'em brigade’… [On the contrary] the English had at their disposal an extremely sophisticated martial arts system that was every bit as effective as those originating in the Orient.

This is quite a stunning thought – especially when you consider that this system, once so established, has been almost entirely lost (and would be so completely if it weren’t for the efforts of expert enthusiasts like Brown).

The origins of the English martial arts system lie, Brown’s book tells me, in ‘the heroic traditions of Anglo-Saxon culture’, added to by the Vikings’ ferocious expertise in warfare. ‘This merging of military skills gave rise to a unique and effective fighting art’, which by Henry VIII’s day employed such weapons as the broadsword, backsword, quarterstaff and billhook, as well as pairings of weapons such as the sword & dagger and sword & buckler (a small round shield with a spike in the centre, which could be used for attack – in a punching movement – as well as defence). Techniques for using these weapons were very different from those employed with the rapier (a weapon that came along after Henry VIII had hung up his sword) – and since it’s rapiers that we most often see used in film fights (though often not very realistically) I knew that watching my favourite on-screen duels was not going to be much help – sadly – in my research.

However, helpful though step-by-step photos are, nothing compares to being able to watch people in action – so I was hungry for something on screen. Something that I could watch… and watch… again, and again, and again. This was, after all, what I spent a large part of my time at The Royal Ballet doing: slowing down a video of Darcey Bussell, say, or Carlos Acosta, so that I could analyse the exact details and timing of their movements (and in the process wearing out many a video recorder’s pause function!). Happily, help was at hand in the form of the ever-useful YouTube.

I found some great teaching videos posted by experts in ancient European fighting techniques. Here are two examples of some basic moves:

An over-leg throw.

A demonstration of long-sword techniques.

There I was, then, spending many a happy & absorbed hour watching… and reading… and imagining. But still I felt that something was missing. I wanted to know what it felt like to square up to an opponent. And I realised that nothing was going to be able to take the place of practical experience…

So I decided to enter the fray myself. (Please at this stage remind yourself of my first paragraph: I am an unfit, creaky-kneed 41-year-old… etc etc.) My eldest daughter (who was 5 at the time) had recently taken up taekwondo with a highly experienced teacher in Bristol who’d been recommended to us as ‘brilliant’. I sat in on my daughter’s classes. It looked incredibly fun, and the atmosphere was friendly and inclusive – the teachers were generous and encouraging not just with super-fit teenagers, but with little ones and parent-aged beginners too.

So I steeled myself for humiliation and bruises and joined in – and instantly I loved it.

Here are my teachers – very kindly wearing VIII t-shirts! Grand Master Dung le Van (7^th Dan Black Belt – which, in case you’re not familiar with the grading system, is very very impressive) is in the centre, with (l-r) Chris Bond and Minh le Van.

I’m not experienced enough – and probably never will be – to manage full-on sparring (if you don’t know what taekwondo sparring looks like, here’s a little film to give you a taste). But just by watching the instructors (who are themselves fantastically accomplished) and also by squaring up to them myself I have learned so much: what it feels like to be poised, alert, ready to respond instantly (if you can!) to your opponent’s move; the importance of watching your opponent’s eyes… It took me a crucial step closer to imagining what Henry might have felt, albeit in a different discipline.

There’s just one more thing to add. I’m writing my next novel now, about Henry VIII’s daughters Mary and Elizabeth. They were not, of course, trained to fight. But I’m carrying on with the taekwondo. Why? Because I’ve found it so helpful - after a day struggling with the frustrations of a chapter that won’t come right, or a plot point where I’m stuck – to go to training and concentrate on kicking & punching a pad as skilfully as I can, pitting my (limited) wits against an endlessly demanding but also endlessly encouraging teacher. It forces me to drop what I’ve been thinking about, to come downstairs from my brain into my body, and to focus completely on the task in hand: on the present moment, in other words. I leave class exhausted, aching and beetroot-faced, but with clear eyes and a brain refreshed. And very often, when I next sit at my desk, I find that the seemingly intractable problem has shifted, mysteriously…

As writers’ therapy – or therapy for anyone, in fact – I highly recommend a good fight!*

*(In a controlled environment, wearing appropriate protection and with expert supervision of course!)

For anyone who lives within kicking distance of Bristol, details of Master Le Van’s classes can be found here.

Terry Brown’s website is here.

My own website is here.

VIII is out now in hardback, published by Templar.