Tudor History: Author Interview with Lady Penelope scribe Sally Varlow

Kelly Hewitt: Your grandfather, E.L. Mann, was a historian who wrote Unknown Warriors, The Battle of Lewes, The Battle of Hastings and The Chislehurst Mystery and other books about important historical events. How much of an influence on your writing are your grandfather and his historical writings?

Sally Varlow: I was tremendously influenced by him, because he made the past so interesting. He was a born story-teller and I would listen spell-bound to his tales of Francis Drake, Boadicea, Napoleon, Mary Queen of Scots, King Arthur, Admiral Nelson, and of course Queen Elizabeth. I still remember his description of Elizabeth giving her Tilbury speech to her troops before the Spanish Armada arrived; so it was wonderful to be able to bring that episode in to The Lady Penelope. My writing style is very different from his, but l think we both aim to keep our readers turning to the next page.

Kelly: The Tudors are a very popular subject at the moment. Your work is really great because you have worked to uncover a very important historical figure. Mary Boleyn, Arabella Stuart, and now Penelope have all been rediscovered by modern writers. Do you think there are more figures out there for discovery?

Sally: Yes, I’m sure there are more figures to be “discovered”, or at least re-examined. On-line catalogues and mss have revolutionised the way we can now search thousands of documents and collections, and some – especially the Folger Library - are superbly user-friendly. Every generation needs to look again at how people from the past are evaluated, and test assumptions made about them. And sometimes, as with Lady Penelope, you find their critics are not using sound evidence. So there’s a need to challenge whether or not their reputation is deserved.

Kelly: You have written about falling in love with history as a child. Did you continue to study history through the remainder of your education? Where did you attend university?

Sally: At school I could never decide if I liked history or literature best, so I did a BA joint honours degree in English and History at the University of North Wales. We had really first-rate professors: John Danby was brilliant on Wordsworth and the Romantics; Helen Miller, famous for her work on the Tudors; and R.A Lewis, who was inspirational on the early Victorians. Doing joint-honours meant I had to skip the early dramatists, so I went on to the University of East Anglia and did an MA in English social comedy, from morality plays to Restoration drama. But I’d had enough of academic life after that, and instead of doing a PhD I went into journalism.

Kelly: Many authors have careers before being published. Did you have any interesting jobs on your way to publication?

Sally: I was lucky enough to get straight on to magazines in London, starting with a couple of financial journals. To be honest I didn’t enjoy the subject, but it was a foot on the ladder, and within a few years I moved on to “Nova” magazine, as chief sub and production editor. It was just before the UK edition of “Cosmopolitan” was launched, and “Nova” was the most exciting and ground-breaking journal in the country. I guess “Nova” strengthened my habit of challenging what other people write, or say, and it certainly stood me in good stead with “The Lady Penelope”. Most historians write her off as a libertine, the “scandal of her age”, and it’s not true.

Kelly: You recently went to a book signing and talk about Penelope Devereux, Mary Boleyn, and your new book at Hatfield House. How did it feel to be in such a historic location presenting your book and research? The historian in me certainly feels jealous.

Sally: I enjoy talking about her wherever I go, and I’ve had lovely audiences at libraries and village halls from Ludlow to Henley and Warwick. But historic houses linked to Penelope and Mary Boleyn certainly add an extra “buzz”, and I’ve had great fun speaking at Kenilworth Castle, Penshurst Place, Petworth House and Lydiard Park, as well as Hatfield – which is so important in Queen Elizabeth’s story. It’s slightly daunting, though, because there are always excellent questions from people who are very clued up on local history. But that means I’ve a chance to learn more, too, so it’s very rewarding.

Kelly: It is clear that you have a great passion for the history of Mary Boleyn and her children by Henry VIII. Is there another area of history that appeals to you?

Sally: At the moment my head is so full of Tudor and early Stuart life that it’s hard to remember other periods exist! But I do find the later 18th C. interesting: the way Romanticism and independence swept through France and North America as well as Britain.

Kelly: The Lady Penelope is an exciting book to read because so many of the most important and influential historical figures play major roles: Francis Walsingham, Walter Raleigh and Robert Cecil not to mention Mary Queen of Scots, Queen Elizabeth I and King James I. Are there particular figures that you find more intriguing than others?

Sally: You’re quite right: one reason Lady Penelope’s life is fascinating is that all the famous figures and great events of her day are involved in it. The other reason is: why did someone so beautiful and celebrated virtually disappear from history? And that, to me, makes Penelope more intriguing than the other figures about whom we already know a lot. Or do we? I suspect there’s room for more research on Robert Cecil.

Kelly: What happens next for you Sally? Do you have another historical book that you are working on?

Sally: I have started work on another Elizabethan lady, who was well known to Penelope, though I’d better not name her yet. But I’m not making much progress because my husband, Peter, and I recently acquired the other end of our 15th-century house (formerly owned by an elderly lady artist); and though it’s not very big we’ve masses to do restoring it, and the garden.

What I'm Reading: The Painter of Shanghai by Jennifer Cody Epstein

I was up until 4 am last night reading a new book that arrived in the mail. The book is The Painter of Shanghai by author Jennifer Cody Epstein. The publisher has been touting The Painter of Shanghai as a novel written in the same style of Memoirs of a Geisha, writing that readers who enjoyed Arthur Golden's immensely successful novel will be sure to take pleasure in reading The Painter of Shanghai.

Here is a brief synopsis of the novel: Down the muddy waters of the Yangtze River and into the seedy backrooms of "The Hall of Eternal Splendor," through the raucous glamour of prewar Shanghai and the bohemian splendor of 1920s Paris, and back to a China ripped apart by civil war and teetering on the brink of revolution: this novel tells the story of Pan Yuliang, one of the most talented—and provocative—Chinese artists of the twentieth century.

I have really been enjoying this book, part of the reason I lost track of time and stayed up way too late. For her part Epstein has done a great job keeping the story moving along at an interesting pace, combining elements of Chinese history, poetry, and language into the narrative that make the book feel real. The author also develops a cast of rich characters that include Pan Yuliang, her uncle, the madam of "The Hall of Eternal Splendor", and another prostitute. I am looking forward to continuing reading this book.

I am also very happy to announce that I will be doing an interview with Jennifer Cody Epstein to talk about The Painter of Shanghai, the writing of her first novel, and her inspiration for writing a novel set in China.

Is anyone else reading this novel? What do you think? What would you ask Epstein? Please do reply.

Sweet September: New Non-Fiction

Lottery millions, mad Mary Lincoln, the science of of the brain, one Empress turned Emperor, and the diary of a Ming scholar.

Exciting new books to look forward to.
All authors will be interviewed in the weeks to come.


Money for Nothing by Edward Ugel
September 18, 2007 -- $24.95

Ed Ugel knows what winning the lottery can do for a person. How? He never officially won the lottery for himself but instead, at the age of 26, he landed a job at The Firm, a company that goes out of its way to find lottery millionaires who have found that being rich isn't nearly as easy as it may seem. Ugel's job requires him to visit these millionaires, seeing up close how devistatingly broke some of them are, to offer them a cash settlement in exchange for the yearly pay off lottery winners often opt to take. Those who choose to accept the deal are deeply in debt and are lured by the idea of a large lump of money at one time. What they don't realize is that it's a terrible deal which, as Ed notes, doesn't end in his customers being all that happy with him. His memoir is funny because he has been in the trenches with ordinary people who won outrageous amounts of money and adopted even more outrageous habits as a result. Winning the lottery isn't always the miracle it might seem and by reading Money for Nothing you'll see, via Ed's inside experience, exactly why.

The Madness of Mary Lincoln by Jason Emerson
September 6, 2007 -- $29.95

Apparently Mary Todd Lincoln, wife of the famed President Abraham Lincoln, was always a little bit off her rocker, but when her husband was assasinated the First Lady went totally nutty. Her son, thinking that Mary was both incompetent and dangerous, tried his mother publicly and proceeded to have her committed to an asylum. However, Mary wasn't completely incompetent as, with the help of friends from teh asylum, she escapes and flees to Europe. Now, with the help of author and historian Jason Emerson, we now know even more about the sad life of Mary Lincoln. Emerson has uncovered twenty-five letters written by Mary Lincoln herself , mostly sent while she was still in the asylum. In addition to the letters, Emerson presents previously unpublished information about Mary's psychiatric diagnosis, the history of her mental illness, and how Mary's plot to murder he own son Robert changed their relationship. The Madness of Mary Lincoln is the first book to be printed about Mary Lincoln in twenty years. Emerson has done a great job at shedding more light on the tragic life of one of America's most known first ladies.

Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of Reading the Brain by Maryanne Wolf
September 4, 2007 -- $25.95

Maryanne Wolf, a professor at Tufts University and director of its Center for Reading and Language Research, takes a detailed look into reading the brain. How is it that our brains do some of the things that they do? Reading, for instance, is a miracle that Wolf points out we taught our brains to do only a few thousand years ago. The process of learning how to read, Wolf points out, changed the intellectual evolution of our species. Perhaps even more interestingly, Wolf says that brain that examined tiny clay tablets in the cuneiform script of the Sumerians is configured differently from the brain that reads alphabets or of one literate in today's technology. Learning to read comes with certain implications to an evolving brain. Sound complex? Don't run away just yet. Maryanne Wolf knows her stuff, she is passionate about the brain and determined to share that knowledge with her readers. I am certainly no scientist and yet, having read a few chapters of this book, I can say that I am really beginning to ... wrap my brain around it.

Daughter of Heaven by Nigel Cawthorne
September 25, 2007 -- $ 24.95

I have already written a little blurb about this book. I have always been fascinated by Chinese history and so getting a hold of this book was a sure thing. Cawthorne has been a pretty prolific author, writing about the strange laws of Old England, the sex lives of Popes, and the history of witches. Daughter of Heaven looks to be an interesting book, heavy with deception, murder, and intrigue. Hawthorne writes that Wu Chao, who became a concubine to the Emperor at the age of thirteen, seduced her way to the throne. Wu, the book claims, seduced her way onto the throne, executed her enemies, and murdered her own children in order to stay in power for more than fifty years. That probably made for awkward holidays.

Return to Dragon Mountain: Memories of a Late Ming Man by Jonathan D. Spence
September 20, 2007 -- $ 24.95

The last Ming Man in question is Zhang Dai, one of the most important essayists of the Ming Dynasty. One of the things that make Zhang Dai so essential to Chinese history was his age. Zhang's long life meant that he had witnessed the conquest of China by the Manchus and the fall of the Ming dynasty in 1644. He had literally seen it all. The turmoil taking place in China during his life lead Zhang Dai to write a history of the Ming Dynasty in addition to recollections of his youth. Jonathan Spence is an experience Chinese scholar and is able to take Zhang Dai's writings and find interesting information that provides new insight into the culture of China at the time. Zhang Dai's writings and Spence's strong background in Chinese history promise to make Return to Dragon Mountain a successful piece of history and analysis.