VIII

a pale face moving? There is the tiniest shake of her head: no, nothing. But a small smile flickers at the corners of her mouth as she turns back into the sunlight and continues on her way.

Q & A with H. M. Castor
     
     
    • Where did your inspiration for VIII come from?
     
    I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t obsessed with Tudor history. It started when I was at primary school – back then it was the outfits and the executions that intrigued me most! For years I skirted round Henry himself – if you’d asked me, I would have said I was more interested in his wives, his children… but Henry was like the spider at the middle of the web: once I’d looked at everyone around him, I came to be fascinated by what was going on at the centre. And I began to feel that my impression of Henry was not really the same as any of the other versions out there.
• How did you find your way into this well-known story?
     
    I didn’t have to find my way in: rather, the feeling of having something I needed to say grabbed me and wouldn’t let go. And this was despite a lot of resistance – in me! After all, you could line shelves and shelves with the books written about Henry VIII, there are so many – and many of them are utterly fascinating and brilliantly written. How could I possibly dare to add to them? But I became convinced I had something new to say. That was immensely exciting. The urgency of it really took me over – sometimes I couldn’t sleep.
• What was it that felt so new?
     
    The more I read about Henry, the more forcefully it struck me that I hadn’t ever found a satisfactory explanation of why he did what he did. And some of the things he did are so incredible – so apparently contradictory – that the question just nagged at me.
    Though in a way the story is well known, the well-known part is, in fact, only that: a part. Yes, he was that famous image: the fleshy, powerful-looking bearded king who had six wives. But just look at him earlier on… he’s an extraordinary boy: hugely talented, with astonishing warrior skills, and he’s said to be a model of virtue. What went wrong? How did that boy become one of the most villainous kings in British history?
• How did you find it inhabiting Henry VIII’s head?
     
    I had to try and sweep all the baggage out of the way, all the pre-conceived ideas I – and other people – had about Henry. One trick that helped was to use the name Hal rather than Henry – because as soon as the name Henry even sounded in my head the iconic image from the Holbein portraits came to mind. I couldn’t climb inside that icon.
    At first it was daunting, but in the end it became amazing – intoxicating and intense. Always difficult to get myself there, mentally, but once I was there… well, I felt as if I’d created a whole world, a place to go to in my head – and now I’m reluctant to let go of it!
• Why did you choose to tell the story in the first person?
     
    Two reasons. I absolutely didn’t want there to be a distance between the reader and Henry. I didn’t want anyone to open the book and think, ‘Oh, this is someone who lived hundreds of years ago; he’s nothing like me’. Because of course Henry lived in a world that was in many ways very different from ours, but he still felt fear and rage and love and frustration like we do. He still got the hiccups, you know, he still tripped over. He was a human being, waking up in the morning, not knowing what was going to happen next in his life.
    Secondly, I didn’t want to look at Henry from the outside; I knew that being on the inside and looking out at the world through his eyes would change the story entirely. I wanted to get a vivid sense of the particular world Henry inhabits in his mind – the claustrophobia of it, if you like, and the extent to which his thoughts shape what he perceives to be reality.
• How much research did you do before writing?
     
    I never stopped; I didn’t shut a book and think – OK, that’s the research done, now I start writing. In a sense I’ve been researching VIII almost my whole life (I’ve been reading about the Tudors since childhood, and I studied the sixteenth century at A level and then again at university) – but still, as the book developed, the story showed me how much more I needed to find out. For example, when Hal and his mother ride through London in the first chapter, I had to know their exact route and what they would see as they went along,