In this episode we have bestselling non-fiction author Tony Riches who talked about Katherine Willoughby’s life, her relationship with Charles Brandon, and how she put her life back together after the worst tragedy you can imagine.
Check out Tony Riches’ Katherine – Tudor Duchess, book three of The Brandon Trilogy.
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Transcript of Tony Riches on Katherine Willoughby:
Heather:
Hello and welcome to the Renaissance English History Podcast, a part of the Agora Podcast Network. I’m your host, Heather Teysko, and I’m a storyteller who makes history accessible because I believe it’s a pathway to understanding who we are, our place in the universe and to more deeply connecting with our own humanity.
This is Episode 132. And it’s an interview with Tony Riches about Katherine Willoughby, the subject of his new book. But before we get into that, I just want to remind you that even if you can’t come to Tudorcon in person, there are digital streaming watch party tickets available. So all the talks will be filmed, and you’ll be able to download them and watch them later with the transcripts. We’ll be live-streaming the whole weekend. And so you’ll be able to be a part of the fun and excitement even if you aren’t there in person. So go to Englandcast.com/tudorcon2019 to learn more about that and we will see you online even if we can’t see you in person.
So with that all out of the way, let me introduce you to Tony Riches. Tony riches was born in Pembrokeshire in West Wales, UK and he spent part of his childhood in Kenya. He got a BA Degree in Psychology and an MBA from Cardiff University. He wrote several successful nonfiction books and then he decided that his real interest was in the history of the 15th and 16th centuries.
And now his focus is on writing historical fiction about the lives of the key figures of medieval history, his The Tudor Trilogy, which starts with the book Owen traces Owen Jasper and then Henry Tudor. It’s become an international bestseller and he is in regular demand as a guest speaker about the lives of the early Tudors. He was a finalist in the 2017 Amazon storyteller awards and is listed 130th in the 2018 top 200 list of the most influential authors. He’s now returned to Pembrokeshire, an area full of inspiration for his writing, where he lives with his wife. In his spare time, he enjoys sailing and sea kayaking.
Anyway, we’ll talk about Katherine Willoughby now. I wanted to ask you questions, one of which is just her life and who she was, and then your interpretation of her? And what it’s like writing her so? She kind of fulfills, like you talked before about how she was kind of this link in the next part of the story. Can you talk to me a little bit about how she is, the carry on from Charles Brandon, and the story that you’ve been telling really since Owen?
Tony:
Yes. Well, that’s exactly right, is that I originally started researching Henry because I was born in Pembroke, the same as Henry Tudor. And then I went back a couple of generations to look at Owen Tudor. At the time, had he didn’t have a bad press. He didn’t have any press at all really. So that was where I started from. And then each book seamlessly, slightly overlapped and continued somebody else’s story.
So in Owen, Henry was born, and then in Jasper, the second book, he came of age, he became king in the third book, and it was easy to decide where to go next because his daughter, Henry’s daughter, Mary Tudor, nursed him through his dreadful time with the quinsy when he could hardly swallow or let alone speak. And I was intrigued by Mary’s story, because of course, her brother Henry sent her off at 18 to marry the king of France. And that’s led to studying Brandon’s life, of course.
And I realized then that I had The Tudor Trilogy but it’d be perfectly good to have The Brandon Trilogy because it would be Mary with Charles Brandon and then after Mary dies of course, he married his 14-year-old ward, Katherine Willoughby. And the more I started looking into Katherine’s story, I was absolutely fascinated, because it’s a proper roller coaster ride, whether you’re talking about just relationships or a Tudor woman at the time of the Tudor court, or the religious seesaw that was going on, where you could get burnt at the stake for being on either side. I shouldn’t laugh It wasn’t funny to be burnt at the stake.
Heather:
But like even Henry himself, in one day, he burned Anne Askew and then another he’d burn the monk–
Tony:
But you see, Katherine actually knew Anne Askew because Anne was a Lincolnshire woman who got thrown out by her Catholic husband for wanting a simpler form of religion and Katherine Willoughby was very much tuned in to that, and so helped her. But then when Anne was being tortured in the Tower of London, Katherine must have been really quite concerned that at some point she’d be named. And of course, they didn’t use to ask very leading questions – “Is Katherine Willoughby a witch and a heretic?” And if asked you just said the word “Yes.” Then Katherine could have been burnt at the stake.
But the amazing thing is that, I mean, you have to respect Anne Askew, she went to her death without naming Katherine Willoughby. And that really must have hardened Katherine’s views about reform and the need for reform and the injustice of it all. It’s really quite difficult to understand. It was a matter of life and death, what religion you believed in. And I know there are countries in the world that are still a bit like that today. But it is completely shocking.
And so the other interesting dynamic, of course, is that Katherine’s mother, Maria de Salinas was a champion of Catholicism, and Catherine of Aragon’s lifelong companion. So Katherine Willoughby was brought up a staunch Catholic, so she had that as a background.
Last month, I visited Grimsthorpe Castle and I’d always thought that the chapel was a fairly modest thing being a Protestant chapel. But the chapel is a prominent room in the castle. As you go in into the great hall, you turn right and there’s this magnificent high ceiling room. And it was just amazing to stand in there and think, this is where Hugh Latimer preached, risked his life, by the way, to preach to Katherine and her neighbors, about the need for a simpler form of religion that ordinary people could understand. And he got burned at the stake for that in Oxford with Cranmer. That was the greatest injustice. And I think, if I had time, I’d write a whole book about Hugh Latimer because what a character, you know.
Heather:
And yes it’s so hard to get it, you know, that it happens then. I got into Tudor history, gosh, 25 years ago, through singing the music of William Byrd in high school and learning that he was a requisite Catholic, and what’s a requisite Catholic? That was kind of my entree into this – the Latin masses that were written during the Elizabethan period that were sung in secret, and that really appealed to the rebellious teenager in me.
I wonder how much of that, that could be a whole discussion, but how much of that was also linked to kind of the new scientific discoveries and the realization that people were making that maybe the earth wasn’t the center of the universe, and religion wasn’t all that, right before the Enlightenment. It’s almost like there has to be this last gasp of religious fervor taking over on both sides and it makes me think about that.
Tony:
It’s interesting, because before I started researching Katherine, I had this view of Protestant martyrs as rather …people that were whitewashing over the beautiful paintings of saints, and pulling down these magnificent effigies that had been there for centuries. And my view completely changed as I carried on, because all they wanted was for ordinary people to be able to go to church and pray in their own language, not in Latin. Bearing in mind, most of them couldn’t read or write. So a simpler form of religion which was relevant and meaningful to them. You can see how they thought that was a cause worth championing.
And then, of course, there were all sorts of people. Bishop Stephen Gardiner really set himself against Katherine. And that’s a great story in itself, isn’t it? How both of them for completely different reasons had the attention of Henry VIII. And Katherine had a mischievous streak and will deliberately goad Stephen Gardiner, making him look silly. And of course, it was quite hard for him to defend all the pomp and extravagance. The Catholic bishops dressed in gold cloth of gold and velvet and all that sort of thing.
And what Katherine was saying is “You’re only a man. You’re only an ordinary man,” you know? He just couldn’t put up with that at all. So there’s the famous story, is that she named her spaniel “Gardiner” and used to call it to heel it, which, of course, there is the …about laughing at that. But it was a dangerous game to play. And she knew it. One thing she wasn’t was naive, because she really knew what she was doing. And these days, I think she’d be quite an astute politician using political influence. More overtly than a lot of people might expect her to.
Heather:
Go back to the start of her story here, because we already have her now with Catherine Parr at court. So let’s go back to when she first met Charles Brandon. And how did that all happen?
Tony:
She led such a sheltered life because her mother closeted her away at Parham Old Hall. And, really, she was named after Catherine of Aragon, and she would have met her. She would have been quite comfortable with the royalty aspect of it, because her mother had been involved with royalty all of her life. But when Catherine’s father died, not only did she become Baroness of Eresby, she also became the wealthiest heiress in the country, because she inherited 30 manors from her father. And each manor was consisted of lots of farms and tenants and houses and gardeners.
And Charles Brandon, as we know, would have had his eye on her. Right from the moment her father died, he would have rubbed his hands together. And he went to Henry and borrowed the money to buy her wardship as a bride for his son also named Henry, after the king. And so that seems fair enough. But he only waited three months after Mary died before he married Katherine. And it’s that that raised the eyebrows that caught, not the age difference because it’s so important not to apply modern standards to it or because, Brandon was my age and then she was a 14 year old. Not naive, but she had led a very sheltered life.
Imagine what a culture shock it was to go from basically being an only child at Parham Old Hall to being in this hectic household with Brandon’s other daughters, and everything that was going on at Westhorpe. So she had a lot to get used to and a lot of adjustments to make. Then straight away she’s right into the Tudor court and meeting the king and then of course, getting a lot of attention from everybody because of course, they were the premier Duke and Duchess. They were the Harry and Megan of the time, you see.
Heather:
Right. And what was their relationship like? Because in your book you show perhaps a companionship but you have her not particularly madly in love with him.
Tony:
I struggled with that. Consulted a few people including my wife. How do you deal with the relationship between an older man and a 14-year-old girl without drifting into murky waters? And of course, she thought of him like a father figure. Don’t forget she’d lost her father, so she was in need of a father figure. And he fitted the bill perfectly. He was an old man, not by modern standards but by Tudor standards. When I was at Grimsthorpe castle, their portraits hanging on the wall in the corridor quite close to the room where Katherine spent her last days. And on the left-hand side, you’ve got Charles Brandon, really looking like the elderly Henry VIII with a gray beard, you’ve probably seen the portrait.
And then to the left of him is the older Katherine Willoughby but of course, she’s not that much older. She’s only in her 30’s and she looks like a young attractive woman and I believe she quite enjoyed being the Duchess of Suffolk. She liked that world. She got on well with Charles’s other daughters because they were the same age, of course. And it was a breath of fresh air after having been clustered away with a mother with only servants for company. Although she was 14, she grew up fast because she started attending Hugh Latimer’s sermons at Hampton Court.
If you’ve been in the chapel at Hampton Court with a fantastic– it was in that very chapel, you see. So I can really picture the scene where this I wouldn’t say impressionable young girl, but she had a very enquiring mind and was very questioning about the status quo. So to be legitimately exposed to somebody like Hugh Latimer, who Henry VIII was quite happy to hear to be quite controversial, because he enjoyed the way it upset the Spanish ambassadors and people like that. Because Henry was quite mischievous, as well, of course. And Katherine was probably taking notes and thinking “Hang on a minute. This is all starting to make sense to me.” Whereas the Catholicism her mother, which was of course the, it’s the harsh Catholic, Spanish Catholic–
Heather:
That’s the Spanish Inquisition, kind of Catholic.
Tony:
Yes, that’s exactly what. I don’t want to upset any Catholics, because I’m trying to say, if you think of it as a continuum, this was over right over to one side, the Spanish Inquisition side of Catholicism. And I think Katherine might have started a bit more over to the other side, and then really signed up to the idea of the need for reform. And it wasn’t called Protestantism those days, by the way, of course it was just the reformed religion, and they started calling it “the true faith”, which is a bit provocative for people like Stephen Gardiner, wasn’t it?
And of course, you have people like Archbishop Cranmer, hugely influential characters. That said, “Yeah, we agree. We’ve got the Church of England, it’s time to make our mark. And think about the everyday person turning up at church, who sits there blankly and uncomprehendingly listening to the music, but not understanding the words. I tried not to make my book too religious mind you, because that could have been a bit too much the other way because religion was only one part of the rather complex jigsaw of Katherine’s life. And was wanting really, I suppose, the whole time, some proper love and affection, because her mother was an old school, love and affection, I suppose. I tried to hint it that her father was gone.
Charles Brandon was a bit of how can I put it? I don’t think he might have treated Katherine as much of a wife in terms of his love and affection because at the end of the day, he married her for her fortune, and he didn’t waste any time taking control of her 30 manors in Lincolnshire and becoming the elder statesman of the North. So he became the greatest landowner in Lincolnshire and promptly took the money from the dissolution of the monasteries and rebuilt Grimsthorpe. So, the … at Grimsthorpe, lots of those have actually got stone from the nearby Catholic monasteries. And Charles Brandon is the person responsible for it.
Heather:
So her life after Anne Boleyn and after she’s married, and she has children with Charles Brandon, she has her sons, what’s life like for her then with Anna of Cleves–
Tony:
Yeah, that was, I think she didn’t know it at the time. But it was the cleverest move that Katherine made because what happened was that Henry needed somebody to go and welcome Anne of Cleves. And so he said to Charles Brandon, “You can represent me there. Go to Deal Castle, Kent and welcome this queen and of course, Katherine accompanied him, not realizing that it would change her life, because later on that connection and Cleves became a lifesaver for her.
But at the time, she could be a huge help to Anne of Cleves. And Katherine knew all about what it was like to be a stranger to Tudor court and how best to deal with Henry VIII. She would have been quite intrigued by Anna because Anna could hardly speak English. She spoke German, and Katherine could speak French and Latin but not German. So it must have been quite interesting to see them develop a friendship.
Heather:
And so then her husband dies and well, there’s the whole relationship, everything happening with Catherine Howard and then he was in Scotland, and then he was in France and then she gets these, in your book, she has these riders coming in the middle of the night and saying “You have to come to be with your husband, because he’s very sick.” So what did she do then after he died?
Tony:
She went into mourning, and put all of her energies into acting as an advocate for the reformed religion, and the kinds of things she was doing. She had all of the money then. And so she was very busy trying to get an English language copy of the Bible into every church in Lincolnshire and from there, every church in the country. That’s a major, major undertaking and guaranteed to upset a certain part of the society, but also to be acknowledged as a valued thing by the rest. And so that took up a lot of time.
And I think it was about three years before she finally actually came public with a love affair with Richard Bertie, who was a Master of the Horse and quite an interesting character in his own right, because of his role in helping them in exile. He was very brave, he could have taken no risk at all. But he actually went to the Tower, he went to Westminster, to see if he could negotiate some kind of deal for the family, and stood the risk of being incarcerated in the Tower for life or executed or burnt at the stake or wherever. And he took that risk. And then he went on his own to prepare the way for them, which he needn’t have done.
And at first, I couldn’t understand why he had done it. And of course, it made sense. He could travel fast and light and incognito, and do some negotiating and fix up somewhere for them to live. And then when the family followed, it’d be much, much safer for them. They’re just chancing it on their own. They had to move quite slowly. They had Susan who was a baby. Their daughter, Susan. And so that part of it gives an insight into his character. And their son Peregrine is also an intriguing character at Grimsthorpe. There’s a lot of a lot about Peregrine around.
So they did marry for love, and they were very much in love. And one of the things I did was I visited Willoughby Chapel in Spilsby in Lincolnshire, and the side by side Richard and Catherine effigies of them, and you get a real sense of that’s what they would have wished.
Heather:
I want to go back to her sons with Charles Brandon, because she had quite a tragedy happen with them.
Tony:
Yes. I mean, I’m trying to avoid spoilers for people that haven’t read. Now it’s well known that the sweating sickness, It must have been terrifying because the sweating sickness used to sweep through the country much the same as I don’t know what would it be like the flu or something flu does now. Except that it could take half the population almost within 24 hours if you’ve got it. There was no cure. And you’d shiver and sweat and die. Randomly people used to survive it–
Heather:
Anne Boleyn survived it.
Tony:
Yeah. That’s right. That’s a good example and perfectly fit and well, healthy People like Katherine’s sons, they were at university. And to be safe, she moved them right away to an isolated bishop’s palace at Buckden, which, by the way, is by the connection, is that’s of course, where Catherine of Aragon spent her last days. That’s how Katherine knew about it.
So she thought, “Well, I can relax a bit now,” because obviously, somewhere like Cambridge, the sweating sickness, with all the close together houses, narrow streets and everything like that. They didn’t know how it was spread, by the way, they still don’t really understand it. So can you imagine what it must have been like to hear that one of her sons had the sweating sickness? Because it was like the toss of a coin, there was a 50/50 chance of life or death. And so for them to both die, within hours of each other, must have been the end of the world for her really, because–
Heather:
Yeah, I can’t imagine how you’d go on from that.
Tony:
I did wonder whether to just have a whole blank chapter where nothing happens. Yeah, because she was just completely, utterly devastated. And of course, this is where Richard Bertie, who was, he wasn’t really her servant, because Master of the Horse isn’t really the same as a servant. It’s a member of the household. So Charles, Brandon was Henry’s Master of the Horse, for example. That didn’t make Charles Brandon Henry’s servant. It made him a valued sort of right-hand man kind of thing.
Heather:
And Robert Dudley was Elizabeth I’s.
Tony:
Oh, that’s another good one. And so it’s a very, very good role to have. But what I found out was the Charles Brandon had started a breeding stud at Grimsthorpe and this is where Richard Bertie had been recruited, as an expert horseman. And he did a very good job of developing that breeding stud into something which was renowned, at least throughout Lincolnshire.
But you have to remember how important horses were at the time, that they were the everyday transport but where they were also the luxury transport of the time. So to be managing the very best, selecting the very best horses and breeding them and then being able to sell them on was a very astute …running a business. And that was his role. So he would have been quite a comfort I think, to Katherine, when she was possibly her lowest ebb. And what she didn’t do was go public with that straightaway, like Charles Brandon did. She waited three years rather than three months. And I think that’s to her credit, because I think a year would have been enough. But I think it also gives an insight into how utterly devastated she must have been by the experience.
Heather:
I don’t know how anybody recovers from that, and then goes on and lives, but you do what you do.
Tony:
I think her faith helped her through it. You know that if you’ve got a very, a very devout faith, then that’s going to be something that you can use to help survive. As long as you don’t start questioning how God could do that to you, sort of thing.
And then of course, there’s a kind of parallel thing here, which is Catherine Parr. You mentioned Catherine Parr, as far as I can tell, that was one of the great friendships because Katherine Willoughby actually financed Catherine Parr’s publication of Lamentation. And if you look at the title page of The Lamentation of a Sinner, not only is Katherine Willoughby mentioned on the acknowledgments, but also a chap called William Cecil, who is coming up in my new book now.
William Cecil is a 50-year-old man, but he was a handsome young guy at the time. And luckily for Katherine Willoughby, he was happily married. But it would have been a good match, I think. William Cecil and Katherine Willoughby, because they shared a lot of interests, but he also had a lot of similar qualities. And of course, they both have privileged access. Firstly to Henry VIII then to Edward. And then, ironically, like I say, ironically, but Katherine knew all of Henry’s six wives. She knew all of his children. She’d actually played cards with Mary Tudor, she knew her well. There’s all these fascinating. You get given a very black and white picture of it all, it’s all very straightforward – Mary Tudor, Bloody Mary murdered all that. And it’s much more complicated than that.
Heather:
I wanted to ask you, without giving away too many spoilers, when Catherine Parr died, Katherine Willoughby was named–
Tony:
She wasn’t too pleased about that. Because the last thing she needed at the time was a baby to look after, especially which could serve as a symbol. And she didn’t have any choice, basically. So they all turned up at Grimsthorpe, and not just a baby, but a complete entourage of people because the child came with its witnesses and governances and servants and the whole lot. It was just a fait accompli, basically. There was no doing anything about it.
And just to make matters worse, Katherine was a bit miffed that the money for the salaries of all of these people, and I mean, I shouldn’t think the running costs of a baby are huge, but it was the size of the entourage, which raised an eyebrow and Katherine was expected to pay them all, and had to campaign quite doggedly to get the crown to fulfill its obligations.
Heather:
Then I want to also just kind of jump forward, I want to talk about one more phase of her life and then just ask you briefly about how you researched and what it was like writing from a woman’s perspective and all that. But I do want to talk about her period in exile, because that was quite for her. So just briefly, what can you tell me about–
Tony:
In the end, all she had on was the clothes on her back and such gemstones and jewelry that she could basically sew into the hem of her skirts. That’s how bad it was. So they didn’t even end up carrying luggage at one point because they were on the run. They had little Susan, a bawling, baby. And in fact, it was hugely dangerous for Susan, because they had to worry about what food they were having to walk, the weather conditions were atrocious, so there was snow and ice to cope with. And they would knock on somebody’s door, not knowing if they were going to be Protestant or Catholic sympathizers the whole time, which I think is a bit…
And I think if I was Mary, I would have said, “Best of luck to you”. You know, you’ve decided to go to exile. So I’ll leave it at that. She didn’t. Whether it was Mary Tudor herself or whether it was her advisors, but people were sent to search for Katherine Willoughby to try and arrest her and bring her back to be tried as a heretic, which that means that they could never completely relax because there can be a knock at the door.
It does remind me of I shouldn’t say Nazi Germany, but you know, the sort of thing where you never know. There’s another parallel when Jasper Tudor was in hiding in Tenby, which is close to where I live. Tenby was a Yorkist town and so he never knew which of his good friends would turn him in. Because the Yorkies’ sympathies were greater than their friendship, you know. And it was a bit like that with Katherine Willoughby.
And there’s all sorts of stuff. I mean, I mentioned about the connection with an Anna of Cleves, that they could take sanctuary in Cleves, but at one time, Henry VIII had a brilliant idea of marrying Charles Brandon’s widow after the king of Poland. And the king of Poland was up for that. He thought it was a good alliance between England and Poland. But it never happened because of course, Katherine wasn’t like Mary Tudor that she just had to do whatever Henry VIII said. She was her own woman and I think a very modern woman, considering that it was in Tudor times. But when she was in exile, the king of Poland was very happy to help them then.
So that little episode in her earlier life turned out to be perhaps even a lifesaver in a later life, because with the good conduct, a safe conduct pass from the king of Poland, then they were almost treated like royalty. And, you know, Richard Bertie got given a top job as a senior administrator at the region, which is extremely well paid and came with a nice house and everything. And that would have been the happily ever after.
And then of course, Mary Tudor died. Suddenly the message comes through. They’ve only just settled down to the whole new life, you know, learning whatever, the language of the district and everything, and then they hear Mary Tudor has died. So it’s safe to go back.
That must have been, I think, Katherine Willoughby’s life was a series of shocks and surprises, really, because when she got that news, they couldn’t really stay where they were. They had to go back, because she wanted to make sure then that Elizabeth I was not wavering too much in terms of the new religion and the reforms and didn’t just take the easy route and go back to Catholicism. And of course, as we know, that was a very complex – Elizabeth’s religion in the end was whatever suited her at the time, I think. So after all that, Katherine went back to Grimsthorpe.
Heather:
She would have wanted to make sure her lands were safe and everything.
Tony:
Yes, yeah. Well it was all kept well for her. So when she went back home, she had a beautiful, I mean, Grimsthorpe is lovely part of the country. It’s a magnificent place, with wonderful gardens. And it’s since been, it’s a shame in a way, because the landscape has been altered dramatically by a chap called Capability Brown, who put a great big…
We actually walked through the Tudor gardens, which Katherine Willoughby would have known and loved. And you really do get a sense, the years just vanish. And you can get a sense she could just be around the corner, perhaps reading a prayer book or something, looking at the view, and it’s on a bit of one of the few raised bits of ground in Lincolnshire. Lincolnshire is very flat and reclaimed from the sea, a lot of it. But Grimsthorpe is on a rise.
So you’ve got these magnificent views into the far distance, which are quite inspiring. And it was easy to see why Katherine would choose to return to what was actually her father’s house because her father was given Grimsthorpe by Henry VIII as a wedding present when he married Maria de Salinas. And so her father and mother’s spirits imbued the place. And of course, Katherine could use it then as a base, to carry on her work to promote Protestantism.
Heather:
It’s such a wonderful story. Her life like you say, she is quite modern in so many ways. What was it like for you writing from her perspective? And what did you do to kind of get in character to write her story?
Tony:
Yeah, people ask me that, because they say, how can you possibly? I tell you what, I confess I always struggle with childbirth scenes, because although I’ve had two children, that was present. I’ve got a very different perspective on it. So my wife beats those bits and helps to tone them down or to make them a bit more authentic. But of course, this is the third time that I’ve written a whole book from the point of view of a woman because I started with a fascinating woman called Eleanor Cabhom. I don’t know if you know about that. She was tried for witchcraft and in prison for life. So I had to try and get myself into her head.
So I went to Beaumaris Castle and sat in the cell that she was actually in. And it’s not so difficult as you might think, at the end of the day, because there’s quite a lot of information around about the lives of Tudor women, some excellent books. And I then obviously wrote about Mary Tudor, Queen of France. And so that gave me a bit of practice. And I think, I’d like to think that by the time I got to writing Katherine’s story, I was much better at seeing the world through her eyes than if I had not had the practice of writing the previous two books about women.
I’m now writing about a rather fascinating chap called Francis Drake. And I’m finding out that virtually everything I thought I knew about Francis Drake was wrong, which I shouldn’t be surprised about. But he’s a really intriguing character. But I can’t wait to get on to writing about Francis’s wife, Mary Newman. Very little is known about Mary, but I’m glad I’ve got her in the story, because he spends a lot of time away at sea, but I can also try and look at how Mary Newman views him. So I’ve got into this sort of vibe now and I can quite enjoy writing that.
Heather:
We’ve talked for a long time here. And I thank you for your generosity and sharing your knowledge and being willing to do this, especially after all our tech issues.
Tony:
I do recommend to anybody that’s in the UK to visit the Willoughby Chapel in Spilsby because it’s such, you feel such an instant connection with Richard Bertie and Katherine Willoughby, you can almost sense their presence. It’s a bit like when you go to Westminster Abbey and see Henry and Elizabeth of York side by side or Margaret Beaufort. You feel a connection with them, which you really can’t get from watching something on the television or reading it in a book.
Heather:
So your book is on Amazon and people can buy it there. And I’m pleased to say that the actress, Ruth Redman, she’s a well-known UK actress that did the audiobook for Mary Tudor. She did a wonderful job. I don’t know if you’ve heard her, but she’s agreed to narrate Katherine. She’s obviously a very busy lady because it’s not going to be available until the new year, but because she’s got the previous experience of narrating Brandon’s wife, Mary Tudor, she’s got a lot more depth and insight into Katherine’s story because she understands about the life at Westhorpe and everything. So I’m really looking forward to hearing that. That’ll be out in the spring, probably.
Heather:
Thank you so much Tony Riches for being here and for sharing and for continuing to tell these stories. You tell really wonderful stories, and it’s a privilege to speak with you, and it’s a privilege to read your books, and I just really appreciate it.
Tony:
Well, thank you for inviting me, and I really appreciate that. And I look forward to speaking to you again perhaps one day about Francis Drake.
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