Not Five but only Four Postcards by Adèle Geras

Once upon a time, I used to collect period postcards. I have lots of them, in assorted files and boxes in my house. I picked them up at book fairs, and in second hand shops where there were often cardboard boxes full of them. It was fun to look through them and considering them now, I see that my taste ran to Victorian and Edwardian family groups, devoted engaged couples and fat babies sporting waterfalls of lace. 

Then, one day, I came across what was obviously a set. I bought all five of them. They struck a real chord with me. Since that time, which must have been in the late 80s, I've thought a lot about why these particular images meant so much to me.  I was, and still am, very interested jn photography and had written a short story called The Poppycrunch Kid about the supernatural power of the camera. [This appears in a book called Letters of Fire, long out of print.] I wrote a poem about the  men I imagined taking these haunting photographs.

Then, the IRA  bombed the centre of Manchester in June, 1996  and suddenly, the subject of ruins was once more in my mind.

That day, the day that  Manchester was bombed, I was in town. I wanted to buy a wedding present and went to Piccadilly on the bus. I found the square unusually full. When I made my way towards Debenham's I was stopped by a policeman.

"You can't cross this line,  Miss. There's been a bomb threat," he said. And as he finished speaking, the bomb went off. It was very loud and very frightening and hideously close to where we were. 

The aftermath was amazing. Crowds of silent people lined up in a very orderly manner to board any bus they could...the buses were all pressed into service to evacuate us  from the scene. There were also queues around phone boxes. Remember those?  In 1996 hardly anyone  had a mobile. I certainly didn't.  I went straight home on one of the buses. Four miles away, my husband had heard the explosion.

A few days later, we  went for a walk together through the city. Seeing all the shops, all the pubs, all the places we were used to seeing whole suddenly and shockingly broken, shattered and empty was traumatic, horrible. I can remember standing outside a pub which had a defiant notice chalked on a board outside. You can't kill  Manchester, you bastards! it said, and I was reduced to tears. No one was killed that day. Only the fabric of Manchester: the stones, the glass, the wood lay in pieces and I felt heartbroken.

I remembered these postcards. Here they are. I've copied the English words printed on each card. They are also there in French. Under the title it says: La Guerre, 1914-17 LCHParis  

Reninghe Belgium (the church bombarded by the Germans)

Pervyse (Belgium) The ruins of the church

La Panne (Belgium) Effect of a 75 on a spys (sic) house

Nieucappelle (Belgium) View of a brewery after the bombardment

There was a fifth postcard. The best of them all and I cannot find it. It may be in another file and it may surface  again one day.  It is of the same soldier who appears in the Nieucapelle Brewery photo but it's a different pose. The only description I have of it is in the poem I wrote shortly after buying all five. It gives, I hope, a good description of what was shown.  I'm sorry I have only words to convey its power.   The poem follows: 

Five Postcards: La Guerre 1914-17 LCH Paris

L.C.H Paris photographed the War,
sent men to tiptoe over stones cracked open
(but oh, the mud on patent leather shoes
accustomed to sliding
round and round the ladies! The hands
that draped silk gowns alongside cardboard urns
and tucked undying flowers into décolletages
will touch raw air outside the studio.)

Pervyse, Nieucapelle, Reninghe, La Panne,
les ruines, les ruines après le bombardement.

With difficulty on uneven ground
they found flat places,
covered their heads with black,
looked for something representative.

Here, a numbered bomb
blew the spy's house
to dust under a dune of bricks.
Only one corner, the last window
as they were.

Then, two grey church views:
free-standing arches rise in fields
of carvings scattered into shards.
Towers show white skies
through torn lace of masonry,
windows with no glass.

The brewery roof has gone, leaving
a lattice of timbers.
There's a soldier in this picture,
embarrassed by his own survival.
Behind the camera, under the dark cloth
he imagines the head, a skull's curve.
He's propped his bayonet 
against the sandbagged wall
and made his own, much smaller conflagration:
lighting a cigarette,
breathing out the smoke. 

The Public Part of UK Author Earnings - Katherine Roberts

April 6th marks the start of a new financial year, and I have a new History Girls post to write... so you can probably guess what this one is going to be about! In the same way that I find it impossible to create anything while I'm thinking about money, I also find it impossible to blog about creativity. Instead, I thought I'd show you a graph from my finance file that counts as vaguely historical since it covers my 14-year career to date (and that feels like a long time in publishing these days).

UK library loans of my books (Year 2000 - 2013)

In case you can't read the figures up the left hand side, these show the approximate lifetime loans for my books. Years are across the bottom, and book titles are written on the curves. Here they all are, listed in order of popularity:

The Great Pyramid Robbery - 56,000 loans (heading off the top of the graph)
Spellfall - 35,800
Song Quest - 28,000
The Babylon Game - 20,000
The Mausoleum Murder - 18,800
The Amazon Temple Quest - 17,200
The Olympic Conspiracy - 15,000
Crystal Mask - 12,900
The Colossus Crisis - 8,000
The Cleopatra Curse - 8,000
I am the Great Horse - 6,800
Sword of Light - 5,500
Dark Quetzal - 5,400
Lance of Truth - 200

Notes:
1) Figures correct to June 2013, as reported by the UK Public Lending Right office.
2) My final two Pendragon titles Crown of Dreams and Grail of Stars are not shown on this graph, since they both published in 2013.
3) Data is not gathered from every library every year. Each year a different sample of UK libraries is taken, and the results are scaled up to account for the whole country - this means it's possible zero loans can show for a book that actually loans quite well in the author's local library, whereas a sample taken from an author's local library where their books are popular might skew figures for that year the other way. (Over time, though, the sampling system should be fair to authors wherever they live.)

You would probably expect books with earlier publication dates to show the most lifetime loans, and indeed my most-loaned title The Great Pyramid Robbery (historical fiction, hooray!) was published back in 2001, while my second most popular title Spellfall (fantasy) was published in 2000. You might also expect books that have had several editions to show more loans than the others, and happily my award-winning debut book Song Quest (currently in its third edition at Catnip, after being first published in hardback by Element and then in paperback by Chicken House) comes in a clear third.

Books only published in the last couple of years will obviously not show many accumulated loans yet, but already the first title of my Pendragon series, Sword of Light (published in 2012 and chosen for the Summer Reading Challenge that year), has performed one of those fascinating crossovers on the graph and is now officially out-loaning the third title of my earlier Echorium Sequence Dark Quetzal (published in 2003).

In fact, if you look carefully at the graph, you'll see several places where my historical titles have overtaken my fantasy titles in the loan stakes, which makes me wonder why children's historical fiction is not easier to place with publishers. On the other hand, this is only a UK graph, and historical books are not popular everywhere. My Echorium Sequence titles (Song Quest, Crystal Mask, Dark Quetzal), which all have surprisingly flat curves on the graph, sold better than their loans suggest particularly in the US. My Seven Fabulous Wonders books on the other hand, even the one shooting off the graph, did not sell in America - or at least only as export copies - since they were not taken on by an American publisher, although they did get translated into several European languages where their historical settings are presumably more familiar with readers.

I find library loans quite interesting, because they are - or used to be - a fairly accurate reflection of print sales, and it's true The Great Pyramid Robbery and Spellfall were my top two selling titles in print. It also used to be that loan figures for a title were higher than the UK print sales, at least in my experience - but lately there's a different pattern emerging, with books selling as many or more copies in print as are being borrowed from libraries. Also, I've had my backlist selling as ebooks with online retailers for a couple of years now, and out of those books I am the Great Horse - although flattening off now on the loans graph - last year outsold the rest of my backlist put together. So perhaps ebooks are taking over where library loans flatten off?

I am the Great Horse - now an ebook

I'll admit the flat part of the curve occurring at a lower rate of loans for each successive book is rather worrying. Is this because of the recent library closures? Cuts to public funding? Or the frustratingly slow period in my career a few years ago? I'd have to compare my graph with other authors' PLR graphs to be sure if it is a trend... but Sword of Light (second curve on the right) looks to be reversing that for me, so perhaps there is some hope yet for my future as an author. Also, this graph shows data from UK public libraries only, and does not include loans from the many excellent school libraries around the country that I know keep copies of my books on their shelves so children can  borrow and read them if they want to. That's a good thought to end on.

Right, that's enough displacement activity! Just got time for a few fun figures to warm up before tackling my accounts...

The reason this graph lives in my finance file is because each one of those loans has earned me between 4p and 6.2p under the Public Lending Right scheme (the rate per loan varies each year). So, over the course of my career to date, working with an average of 5p per loan, my most popular book so far The Great Pyramid Robbery has earned me approximately £2,800 (or £200 per year), and all of my titles added together have earned me a total of  £11,880 (or about £840 per year). I'm always a little uneasy about PLR, since it comes out of people's taxes who might never read books... on the other hand, libraries are one of the public services we pay our taxes for, and there is a cap on payments to limit the burden on the public purse.

Historically, the PLR payment has not always existed for authors, but library loans clearly account for a large section of my readership, as they must do for many other authors. I'd be interested to hear readers' views on whether authors should be paid for these loans, especially if/when ebook lending takes over from print.

***

Katherine Roberts writes historical fiction and fantasy for young readers.

Her latest series the Pendragon Legacy about King Arthur's daughter is now available from Templar in hardcover, paperback or ebook. Meet the heroine Rhianna Pendragon and her friend Prince Elphin of Avalon in the free ebook prequel Horse of Mist.

More at www.katherineroberts.co.uk

"Converting Our Island into a Peninsula" - Joan Lennon

You know how it is - when I was researching the Slightly Jones Mysteries* I came across far more fascinating tidbits than could possibly fit into the stories themselves.  My publishers kindly allowed me to play with a section at the end of each book, with Did You Know?s about the 1890s, about the different cities each book was set in, interesting facts, quizzes and challenges. For example, at the back of The Case of the Hidden City there is this question:

TRUE OR FALSE?
Today many people travel to Paris from Britain by train, going through the Channel Tunnel.  The first proposal for a Channel Tunnel was put forward early in the 20th century. 

FALSE.  Out by 100 years!  As early as 1802, French engineer Albert Mathieu had come up with the idea of a tunnel under the English Channel, lit by oil lamps, with horse-drawn coaches and an artificial island halfway across for changing horses.

That was all there was room for, but here is a picture of Matthieu's vision, complete with chimneys that go up to the surface to help purify the air.

Nothing came of it, but the idea was still out there, as this 1805 cartoon of a possible invasion plan by Napoleon, by sea, in the air, and under the ground, suggests:

Fifty years later, and we see Thomé de Gamond's 1856 plan for a Channel tunnel, with a harbour and air shaft partway across on the Varne sandbank. 

The New York Times in 1866 published a report from The Railway News, which wrote about Gamond's proposal as a challenging but entirely doable project.

"The estimated cost of the whole work was 170,000,000 of francs, or rather less than £7,000,000 ... The whole work would be completed in six years.  We are by no means sanguine that the plan of M. GAMOND  will ever be carried out; but certainly the plan of converting our island into a peninsular by means of a submarine isthmus is one within the range of the engineering science and mechanical appliances of the present day.  The grave and practical question, "Will it pay?" involves the consideration of other and totally different questions."

In spite of the reporter's lack of sanguineness, the proposal was accepted by Napoleon III and Queen Victoria - until the Franco-Prussian War put paid to it.  General Wolseley was adamant that:

"A couple of thousand armed men might easily come through the tunnel in a train at night, avoiding all suspicion by being dressed as ordinary passengers, and the first thing we should know of it would be by finding the fort at our end of the tunnel, together with its telegraph office, and all the electrical arrangements, wires, batteries, etc., intended for the destruction of the tunnel, in the hands of an enemy ... The invasion of England could not be attempted by 5,000 men, but half that number, ably led by a daring, dashing young commander might, I feel, some dark night, easily make themselves masters of the works at our end of the tunnel, and then England would be at the mercy of the invader."

Finally, nearly 200 years after Mathieu's proposal, the Channel Tunnel was opened.  And the daring, dashing, young French commander?  I'm still waiting.


Joan Lennon's website.
Joan Lennon's blog.

* The Slightly Jones Mysteries are:
          The Case of the London Dragonfish
          The Case of the Glasgow Ghoul
          The Case of the Cambridge Mummy
    and The Case of the Hidden City

The Knight of the Tower - by Katherine Langrish

I was looking for something to write about for today’s blog post, and decided I’d try and find Thomas Tusser’s Book of Good Husbandry, that wonderful Elizabethan farmer’s guide written in pantomime-style couplets: this kind of thing, from memory:

Get home with ye brakes ere summer be gone

For tethered-up cattle to sit down upon.

But I couldn’t find it. If your bookshelves are anything like my bookshelves, you’ll understand why. Instead I spotted Caxton’s translation of ‘The Book of the Knight of the Tower’, published by the Early English Text Society.  Pulled it out, opened it, and came straight across this ridiculously wonderful anecdote – I’ve modernised the vocabulary and spelling a little.  When you’ve read it, you’ll know just why I had to write about this instead. Master Tusser must wait his turn. 

Of Her that Eat the Eele and Plumed [plucked] her Pye [Magpie]

I shall tell to you an example of the fate of women that eat the good morsels behind their husbands’ [backs].  There was a damsel that had a Pye in a cage which spake and said all that she saw.  And it happed [chanced] that the lord of the house made to keep a great Eele in a trunk in a pond. And he kept it much dearworthly [preciously, carefully] for to give it to some good lord of his, or to some friend, if they came to see him. And it happed that the lady said to the Chamberer, that it were good to eat the great Eele, and they thought that they would say to their lord that thieves had eaten him. And when the lord came home, the Pye began to tell and say to him, ‘My lady hath eaten the Eele.’  And when the lord heard this, he went to his pond and found not his Eele, and came home to his wife and demanded her what was befallen of his Eele?  And she attempted to make excuses.  And he said to her that he was certain thereof, and that the Pye had told him.  And in the house therefore was great sorrow and noise.  But when the lord was gone out, the lady and the Chamberer  came to the Pye and plucked off all the feathers of his head, saying ‘Thou hast discovered us of the eele [told on us about the eel]’, and thus was the poor Pye plucked and lost the feathers of his head.  But from then forth on, if any man came into that house that was bald, or shaved [like a monk] or had a high forehead, the Pye would say to them, ‘ye have told my lord of the Eele’.  And therefore this is a good example, that no good woman should eat for licorousness [greed] sweet or dainty morsels without the knowledge of her husband.  This damsel was after much scorned and mocked for that Eele, by cause of the Pye that so oft remembered it to such as came thither bald or shaven.

Fabulous, yes?  That’ll teach her to eat eels behind her husband’s back. I love the broad, almost slapstick comedy: ‘he went to his pond and found not his Eele’… It’s clear that this story was always intended to be a funny one: the difference between Now and Then, however, is that Now we enjoy the comedy but ignore the moral, whilst Then, the comedy was there only to enliven the moral and make it more memorable. The Knight of the Tower really did believe that wives had better not sneak delicacies their husbands never intended them to have. Besides, such deceit might lead to other things. It might lead to this.

by the Master of Guillebert de Mets, Walters Art Museum

The Knight of the Tower was Geoffrey IV de la Tour Landry, and he wrote this long book of advice in 1371-2 for the use and instruction of his daughters.  He was a widower, and doubtless a careful and loving parent, and he worried about his growing daughters’ reputations and morals. He opens the book in traditional medieval style, pensive in a garden, mourning his dead wife in a passage of great tenderness:

And of all good she seemed to me the best and the flower, in whom I so much me delighted: for in that time I made songs, lays, roundels, ballads, virelays and new songs in the most best wise that I could; but death which spareth none hath taken her, for whom I have received many sorrows and heaviness in such wise that I passed my life more than twenty years heavy and sorrowful…

Seeing his daughters coming towards him, ‘young and little…’, he begins to remember the days when he himself was a young man ‘and rode with my fellowship in Poitou’, how his friends (and he?) had made love to young ladies ‘for they had neither dread nor shame… and were well-bespoken … and thus they do nothing but deceive good ladies and damsels’. 

Like many a father before and since, The Knight of the Tower Landry decides his daughters have to be protected from such young men. ‘And for this cause… I have thought on my well-beloved daughters whom I see so little, to make [for] them a little book … to the end that they may learn and study and understand the good and evil that is past [ie: that has happened in the past] for to keep them from [that] which is to come.’

You can’t help but like him; and I like him even more when he adds:  “I have made two books, one for my sons and the other for my daughters.”  Sadly, I don’t think the one he wrote for his sons has made it down to us.  I dare say people have commonly been less concerned about the morals and behaviour of their boys: the book of advice for girls, however, became an instant smash hit. The introduction of the EETS edition says: “It was copied many times, and by the end of the 15^th century it had become widely known. There are still at least twenty-one manuscripts of the French text in existence; and English translation was made during Henry VI’s reign; Caxton made a new English translation which he printed in 1484, and German version made by Marquart vom Steim, ostensibly for his own two daughters, was published at Basle in 1493”  with woodcuts like the one below, in which a fiend stalks around a young woman who is committing the sin of vanity by dressing her hair and looking in a mirror. 

The book continued to be printed right down into the 19^th century, and it’s still so lively that you can see why. It must have been a popular read even for the young women who were supposed to be benefiting from it. The chapter on ‘How women ought not to be jealous’ begins with a fight between two ladies in which one of them breaks the other’s nose with a staff. Chapter 15 (xviij) is entitled ‘How a woman sprang upon the table’.  In Chapter 19 (xix), ‘Of the woman that gave the flesh to her hounds’, a lady insists on feeding her two little dogs on ‘daily dysshes of soupes and fryandyses delycyous’ (delycyous is so much more delicious than delicious, don’t you think?) in spite of the warnings of a friar who tells her not to waste food which could be given to the poor.  Naturally she then falls ‘sick unto the death’ and ‘there came upon her bed two little black dogs’ which lick her lips and mouth till they turn it ‘as black as a Cole’!  Shiver! 

Yes, there are nine chapters listing the nine follies of Eve (some of which I lifted for evil Brother Thomas to use in my medieval fantasy ‘Dark Angels’). Yes, there are plenty of pious examples taken from the Bible.  But these are constantly enlivened by tabloid stuff such as Chapter 62 (lxij) ‘Of the roper or maker of cordes and kables and of the fat Pryour that was Ryche and a great lechour’. Who wouldn’t want to read it?

A last example:

Fair daughters, see that you begin no strife to no fool [ie: don’t begin arguments with a fool], nor to them that are hasty and hot. For it is great peril. Wherof I shall show to you an example which I saw happen in a Castle wherein many ladies and damsels dwelt. And there was a damsel, daughter of a right good knight. And she wax angry [lost her temper]in playing at tables [gambling] with a gentleman, which was hot and hasty and most Riotous, and was not right wise.  And the debate was of a dice, which she said was not truly made. And so much it increased that words were enhanced, and that she said he was a coward and a fool. And so they left their play by chiding and strife.

Then said I to the damsel, My fair Cousin, anger yourself with nothing that he says, for you know well he is of high words and foolish answers … but she would not [take my advice] and she said to him that he was worth nothing and … not truth; and so the words arose, that he said, if she had been wise and good, she should not come by night into the men’s chamber and kiss them and embrace them without candles. And she … said that he lied, and he said he did not … and there was much people that heard it and knew not what to think.

It seems young people haven’t changed much down the years!  It’s a bright little glimpse of the lives of the privileged, bored and hasty-tempered young noblemen and women of the fourteenth century castle.

From a Book of Hours c. 1460 in the collection of the Walters Art Museum

Invent a Punctuation Mark - and defend it: Musings on the History of Exams by Eve Edwards

This year is a long dreaded year in our family.  I knew it was coming when I had my second child in 1998.  Two children, two years apart - that meant the time would come when we would have them sitting major examinations at the same time, both asking to be let off chores, both feeling the stress...
Hormones are enough to cope with but then add GCSEs/A levels on top - who thought that was a good idea?

As an involved type of parent on the Arts side (I'm a liability when it comes to Maths or any of the science subjects) - I have been looking at past papers and timetables.  It will probably come as no news to you that there is a debate as to whether exams are 'dumbed down' in the UK from the experience of previous generations.  Many readers of this blog work in education so will be all too familiar with this dispute.  This post isn't so much about that, though I do have a view which I'll put out for comment at the end.  No, what it prompted me to ponder was just what is the longer history of exams?  When did it begin to be thought of as a good way of sorting out the educational sheep from the goats?

I suppose the first requirement of a society to have examinations (beyond the obvious one of begin developed enough to have an education system) is to believe it desirable to appoint people on merit rather than through a hereditary principle.  Your king can become one because his dad sat on the throne but you wouldn't want your doctor to operate on you for gallstones just because his father had done the odd operation or two.  No sir, you want to know he has practised and studied for himself.

Many ancient civilisations had exams for young men to pass - that surely was the seed of the Olympics - a competition for all kinds of skills.  However, for the start of my history of exams, I was thinking of a national, written test in a form that modern school children would recognise.

My money is on the Chinese being the first - as in so many things.   Their famous civil service tests may have started way back in the 7th century (we are in the mists of time here so dates are uncertain).  Then followed centuries of fluctuating fashions in education, not to mention changes in dynasty, but it seems that some basics remained in place: the idea was to find the best administrators to serve the emperor and it was possible for some of those in far-flung areas or from humble backgrounds to advance socially if they had sufficient skill.  At one point, the sought after skills included ability to compose poetry, which in my more fanciful moments I think we should introduce to our present day civil service.  Imagine your tax return coming in blank verse - or passport application as a limerick.  There was a young man from...

So if the Chinese get the prize as the society with the longest exam history, who has the most extreme?  This is a matter of opinion - medical training comes to mind - but for pure torture, I think BUD/S training for US Navy Seals might be up there - 6 months of basic underwater demotion/seal training.  It includes the aptly named 'Hell Week' when they try to put off recruits by pushing them to the edge and beyond their limits.  It fits my description because there is some paperwork among the physical torment.  And I thought my week of finals at Cambridge was bad.

And what about the most brain teasing exam in history?  I think this might go to All Soul's in Oxford who have a long an honourable tradition of interesting examinations.  The exam is held to select two Prize Fellows to hold their position for seven years.  I was just looking through the past papers and they are a hoot - especially the General Knowledge paper.  One question is 'Devise a new punctuation mark - and defend it.'  I'd love to sit an exam like that - a bit like wandering into Alice in Wonderland.

There is much more to be said on this theme but I think it is time I arrived back at today's examination students - are the exams they sit dumbed down?  The first thing I noticed was the length of papers.  The longest written exam at GCSEs that most students take is English language coming in at 2 hours 15 mins.  Hang on, didn't exams all use to be 3 hours back in the day?  I think there is a removing of that intense pressure - possibly for very good reasons - but it does seem a gentler exam experience now.  And content?  Well, I've been favourable impressed by most syllabi studied by my children in the Arts - history taught thematically, some interesting course work (compare the portrayal of a disintegrating mind in Macbeth and Frankenstein), but yes, I guess that some of it seems not very stretching and answers on the tick-box scheme.  But then, thinking back, we too had our shortcuts, our set answers, our 'predict what's going to come up this year' strategies.  Maybe the dumbing down accusation is because the industry of education makes this all the plainer thanks to YouTube videos and revision guides?  The craft of taking exams is more transparent.

What do you think?

Writing What You Know - Lucy Inglis

When writing non-fiction, there is a definite process for constructing a body of research and then drawing upon it for a book. The more sound and extensive the research, the better for the book. The framework is also more rigid. Writing fiction is a different process in terms of creative freedom, but sometimes solid research pays off. I'm currently finishing a historical novel for Young Adults, and I was excited by the prospect of this particular project. On mentioning that I was working on a historical YA, pretty much everyone assumed it would be set in the eighteenth century and almost certainly in London. But it's not. It's set in nineteenth century America, a period I have absolutely no knowledge of. Why? I don't know. I knew the story I wanted to tell, but how to make it real was key. I also knew how irritated I get with lazy historical fiction. If I ever read another novel set in the eighteenth century where all the women are simpering misses and every surgeon a filthy-pawed walking pesthouse, I shall scream. So, when I wanted to write about Montana during the goldrush and the massacre of the American plains bison, I thought I'd better do my homework.

The internet is, of course, brilliant for images and information about flora and fauna, dates and facts, but the meat of getting to know another time is more likely provided by real stories about the people who lived then. Did you know that Civil War soldiers favoured licking morphine powder out of the palms of their hands to deal with pain because it was quick to take effect but also slower release? Or that the Colt revolving rifle, so popular during the Civil War, had a nasty habit of discharging all six shots at one if not kept immaculately clean and dry? Pretty tough during war. Or, that native Americans saw sex as a social exchange and expected a gift afterwards, even if it was a shirt or some elk teeth, as a symbol of that exchange, leading settlers to get thoroughly confused about issues of morality, consent and 'price'? I don't ever want to butcher a bison, but I think I could talk someone through which bits are used for what and how kidney fat is the real delicacy. I know far too much about corsets, pioneer marriage statistics and I've come across some fantastical given names: Relentless and Helpless my favourites so far.

Most of this research will never see the light of day. Let's face it, a lot of it is pretty dry bones. But it has given me the confidence to construct characters. It's handed me plot mechanisms that save me from relying on 'happy coincidence' - a thing that irritates even when done in a masterful fashion and shows little respect for the reader. Yes, fiction is about making things up, but it's far more satisfying to make things up that you know may have happened. Is it any good? Well, that's not for me to decide!

Cromwell at the Swan by Mary Hoffman

Achieving the impossible - a review of the RSC productions of Wolf Hall and Bring up the Bodies

Ben Miles as Thomas Cromwell and Lydia Leonard as Anne Boleyn

When I first heard that Ben Miles was to play Thomas Cromwell in the RSC adaptations of Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall and Bring up the Bodies, my instinctive reaction was "but he's much too good-looking."

I was wrong, of course. Miles has reached that point in his acting career where a piece of imaginative casting like this gives him the chance to throw off the shackles of early romantic lead swoonworthiness and show us what he's really made of. And on the days when both plays are done he has most of six hours to do it in.

From the opening lines of Mike Poulton's brilliant adaptation of Hilary Mantel's two Man Booker prize-winning novels, you know you are a safe pair of hands. After a wordless prologue of Tudor dance when we first glimpse  Henry Vlll, Katherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn, the scene switches to Cardinal Wolsey's house, where a very wet Cromwell enters.

"Cromwell. Late," says Stephen Gardiner, Wolsey's Secretary.

"Yes - Isn't it?" answers Cromwell, pleasantly putting his rival firmly in his place.

You sense from the beginning that this is not a man to tangle with. And then you are with Cromwell and his master, the Cardinal, and their dialogue sweeps you into the life of this busy, loyal, calculating and intelligent man. You don't need the actual beginning of the book where the young boy Thomas is brutally beaten by his father; there are enough allusions to convey that.

Although Ben Miles really is outstanding as Cromwell, the whole ensemble is strong, with not a false note. Cardinal Wolsey is Paul Jesson, a towering presence even after death, the father figure that earns Cromwell's undying devotion and informs so many of his later actions and loyalties.

Henry Vlll is Nathaniel Parker, again not an obvious choice for the role, but this in an interpretation, not an impression and his growing menace, self-deception and unpredictability are well conveyed.

Just how do you set about adapting a 653 page novel into a three hour play, with interval? Mike Poulton describes it as "taking apart a Rolls Royce engine and reassembling the parts into a light aircraft." You don't get Mantel's voice, that tone that she described to us here on the History Girls as "something between first and third person," but you do get some of the flavour of her personal touches, through the inclusion of details like  Ambassador Chapuys' fantastical Christmas hat, rendered suddenly inappropriate at court through the news of old Queen Katherine's death.

You don't see Cromwell's daughters, snatched away by illness, but they are there  in reference and in the cracking of Miles's voice when he reads the name of Anne Cromwell, written in his late wife's prayer book. We do see Lizzie Cromwell, played by Olivia Darnley, who is also - amazingly - Mary Boleyn, and we get a strong sense of Cromwell's family life, as we do in the books.

Photo by Francesco Guidicini

Hilary Mantel has been criticised for being too kind to Cromwell, for making him too believably human, but surely this is right? We know he was married with three children, two of whom died young and that he was unfailingly loyal to his old master. However ruthless he might have been in his political choices and sense of expediency and self-preservation, that doesn't mean he couldn't have been a loving family man and faithful friend. What she does is present a controversial historical figure in the round and Mike Poulton's scripts do that too.

Only at one point, in Bring up the Bodies, in the scene where Cromwell makes his pact with the Dukes of Suffolk and Norfolk to bring about Anne's downfall, did I feel a lack of sympathy with the main character. And I didn't feel that in the book so maybe there was there a slight loss of nuance.

It apparently took Mike Poulton nine drafts to come up with this masterly transfer from page to stage. You don't sense the effort behind it. He says that members of the audience will miss some favourite scenes and that for me included the peacock-feather Angel wings and the huge Christmas star that so terrified Mark Smeaton when he was shut up with them in Cromwell's house. But the drama worked fine without them and that is the main thing.

The roles of Cromwell's clerk Rafe Sadler and his friend's son, the poet Thomas Wyatt are enlarged to give more opportunity  for confidences and a sense of whom Cromwell trusts. And who could have guessed that mousy little Jane Seymour, played by Leah Brotherhead, could be so interesting and savvy? Well, anyone who had read the books, I suppose.

Ben Miles with Paul Jesson as Cardinal Wolsey

I did wonder about that, about how many of the people in the sold-out Swan Theatre in Stratford would have actually read both titles. I think you probably get much more from the plays if you have, though it could be that people have just been drawn there by the books' and the writer's enormous reputation. And they would have enjoyed the experience too.

What you see is the story arc of the rises and falls of reputations and the fatal consequences when Fortune's wheel spins the characters down to the bottom-most part of their circulation. First Cromwell, then Anne Boleyn and of course, when the third book, The Mirror and the Light, comes out (we hope) next year, the whole pattern will be repeated with Cromwell himself. And that must surely be staged as well, completing his remarkable trajectory from blacksmith's boy to Earl of Essex and the most powerful man in England after the king.

After the king. That is the point. We see how Henry can turn on a sixpence (?a groat) when angered by Ambassador Chapuys. He rounds on Cromwell and the blacksmith's boy nearly wallops his monarch. As Henry's reign progresses, we know he will deteriorate into even more fits of temper and irrationality: Cromwell's fate is already written in the stars if not yet on the page.

This is a fine and subtle adaptation. I particularly admired the way in which we saw only the rehearsal for Anne's execution, not the bloody act itself. Almost every choice is the un-obvious, the rejection of sensationalism and horror in this most violent of love stories.

And the recurrence of the dead Cardinal was just right, reminding us of one of Cromwell's most powerful attachments, the older man who had, unlike the blacksmith, valued him and treated him well.

The plays are transferring to the Aldwych Theatre from 1st May to 6 September and it will be another sell-out. I shall go again, even though only the most expensive seats are left. It will be interesting to see the change from a thrust stage to proscenium. Or maybe the theatre will be adapted? 

Whatever happens, I can't wait.