Lady Cecily Stonor of Stonor Park

The Church of Saint Mary the Virgin in Oxford, where the distribution of Catholic literature helped expose Lady Cecily's devotion to her faith

A few months ago, I fell into a conversation about heroism and whether it still serves a purpose. In his biography of Anne Boleyn, published in 2010, Professor George Bernard dismissed the idea, quoting the Communist playwright Bertolt Brecht's response to "Unhappy the land that has no heroes" - "Unhappy the land that needs heroes". Bernard, paralleling the old idea of heroism with the contemporary fascination with celebrity, continued, "Models are not necessary ... Men and women should not need to study the life of Anne Boleyn, or modern 'celebrities', to learn that if you do not like your lot in life, you should do what you can to improve it."

This certainly raises a valid point about projecting our own needs and neuroses onto the men and women of the past and, in doing so, misrepresenting them. However, I also think that people can be heroic and inspirational without being whitewashed. Theology teaches us that even the holiest saints had their flaws. To be inspired does not necessarily equate with creeping on metaphorically knee to the shrine of the revered. In this vein, I am delighted to share an article by American author Stephanie A. Mann, author of Supremacy and Survival: How Catholics endured the English Reformation, who has written a reflection on Lady Cecily Stonor, a English Catholic who defended her faith in the time of Queen Elizabeth I. 

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Lady Cecily Stonor of Stonor Park by Stephanie A. Mann

Although I write often about the Catholic martyrs of the English Reformation era and certainly highlighted them in my book about the English Reformation—and there are three women honored by the Catholic Church among the canonized and beatified martyrs of that era, I have not chosen a martyr as my heroine.

The heroine I’ve chosen does have much in common with those three martyred Catholic women (St. Margaret Clitherow, St. Margaret Ward, and St. Anne Line). She could have suffered the same punishment they did: she was a recusant Catholic and she protected Catholic priests in her home. Because she came to trial in 1581 before it was a felony for hiding Catholic priests, she avoided execution. But she suffered much because she remained true to her Catholic faith and her conscience.

Lady Cecily Stonor (nee Chamberlain) and her late husband Sir Francis Stonor (+1564) had two sons, Francis and John, and three daughters. They were recusants and because they would not attend Sunday services in the Church of England, they had to pay huge fines, selling land and estates as necessary. In 1577, according to the Stonor Park website, the family paid the modern equivalent of £50,000 in fines.

Cecily Stonor was elderly when she was brought to trial in Oxford for her recusancy. Her home, Stonor Park, Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire was a refuge for Catholic priests. The Jesuit Edmund Campion stayed at Stonor and his “Decem Rationes” was printed there and then boldly distributed in the Church of St. Mary the Virgin in Oxford, copies laid out carefully on the benches for Commencement on 27 June 1581. The authorities hunted Campion down on his way to Norfolk and captured him at Lyford Grange in Berkshire on 15 July. Then authorities came to Stonor Park on 4 August, finding the press, another Jesuit priest, William Hartley, and the printer—they also arrested Cecily, her son John, and four servants.

Questioned about her recusancy, Lady Stonor proclaimed that she had remained true to her Catholic faith even though the monarchs and government of England had changed religious policy several times. She referred particularly to her devotion to the Catholic Mass in her statement:

I was born in such a time when holy mass was in great reverence, and brought up in the same faith. In King Edward’s time this reverence was neglected and reproved by such as governed. In Queen Mary’s time, it was restored with much applause; and now in this time it pleaseth the state to question them, as now they do me, who continue in this Catholic profession. The state would have these several changes, which I have seen with mine eyes, good and laudable. Whether it can be so, I refer to your Lordships’ consideration. I hold me still to that wherein I was born and bred; and so by the grace of God I will live and die in it.

Cecily Stonor had experienced the Tudor dynasty, seeing the religious changes made once Henry VIII had proclaimed himself Supreme Head and Government of the Ecclesiae Anglicanae, while she had remained unchanged in her profession of religion.

Although her son John bore the weight of the blame for the priests and the printing press, going into exile after breaking his parole and not conforming to the Church of England, Cecily and her daughters were placed under the authority of her elder son Francis Stonor, Jr. She was held in house arrest for the rest of her life—and the family remained resolutely Catholic.

Cecily Stonor is my English heroine because she remained true to what she believed and she bore the consequences. She represents many Catholics during the long recusant era in England who faced great fines, suspicion, arrest, harassment, and even exile or execution because of their loyalty to their faith. Lady Stonor resisted the tide of conformity to the state’s demands; all she wanted was to attend Mass and practice her Catholic faith.

Lady Stonor even has a royal parallel: the Old Pretender, whom his supporters called James III and VIII. Son of James II and Mary Beatrice of Modena, his birth precipitated the Glorious Revolution in 1688. He had the opportunity regain his father’s throne in 1714, if he had just renounced his Catholicism and embraced Anglicanism. Like Cecily Stonor more than 125 years before him however, he held “still to that wherein [he] was born and bred”. Unlike Henri IV of France who accepted the Mass to gain the crown, the Old Pretender kept the Mass and lost the crown to “continue in this Catholic profession.”

Stephanie A. Mann is the author of Supremacy and Survival: How Catholics Endured the English Reformation, available from Scepter Publishers. She resides in Wichita, Kansas and blogs at www.supremacyandsurvival.blogspot.com.

A few days in Oxford

Good morning! This was my view as I emerged from work yesterday afternoon. I am back in Oxford, carrying out some research for my biography of Catherine Howard, Young and Damned and Fair, which will be out next year. I'm so happy to be back here, working in the Bodleian again. When I was an undergrad here, I had my own preferred place to work, and the habit has stuck. My current nook of choice is in the Bod's Upper Reading Room, down by the windows that overlook the Bridge of Sighs, behind me, and the entrance to Holywell Street and what was once the History Faculty Library. Now, all the History books for the faculty are kept in the Gladstone Link, an underground facility with a tunnel that runs beneath the cobblestones. It's a bunker of books.

I got in yesterday morning and stayed at the Randolph Hotel again. I am a sucker for a good poached egg, and along with not being able to carry any kind of musical note in song, not being able to execute the perfect one myself is a huge regret. (Resolution for 2015?) The poachies this morning were fantastic - so I have no excuse after a good breakfast not to be as productive as possible for the rest of the day. The library closes a little early at the weekends, so this evening I'm having dinner with one of my favourite people in the world, a dear friend who I first met in these cobbled streets. I'm telling myself that these evening plans are a good incentive to plough through some very questionable handwriting, even by sixteenth-century standards. I'll think of it as earning rewards, and whatnot.

I am going to keep you all posted about how the research is going over the next few months, and where I'm off to. In the meantime, I'm off to some sixteenth-century wills. Have a wonderful day. 

Claire Bloom discusses playing Lady Marchmain

Award-winning actress Claire Bloom has played some of history's most famous women, including Katherine of Aragon in Henry VIII, the Tsarina Alexandra in Anastasia: The Mystery of Anna and Queen Mary in The King's Speech, as well as appearing in adaptations of Richard III,  The Brothers Karamazov and acting opposite Charlie Chaplin. In 1981, she won critical acclaim for her fantastic and intelligent performance as Teresa Flyte, the Marchioness of Marchmain (above), in one of the most successful British television dramas - a twelve-part adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's novel, Brideshead Revisited.

 

Central to Brideshead's themes are its treatments of both the English aristocracy and the Catholic faith, with Bloom's Lady Marchmain operating as their greatest proponent. Trapped in a failing marriage to her estranged husband, who cavorts in Venice with his mistress while Lady Marchmain divides her time between their London townhouse and palatial seventeenth-century home at Brideshead Castle, the marchioness's devotion to her religion has led to her described as either the heroine or antagonist of the story. For some, Teresa's quiet elegance and charm masks her suffocating control over her children, that pushes at least two of them to the edge of a nervous breakdown. In the novel, she is unfailingly polite and dignified, leading her son Sebastian's unhappiness with her to baffle the novel's narrator, Charles, although he too eventually comes to regard her sumptuous charm with suspicion. In the 2008 movie version of the story, which saw Emma Thompson take up the role (left), Lady Marchmain was cast squarely as the root of all her children's problems, with Lord Marchmain actually referring to her "crucifying" their second son, Sebastian, with her controlling ways.

 

However, in her autobiography, Claire Bloom defends Lady Marchmain with, I think, a very fair personal take on the character she played.

 

"I still find it puzzling when I am told I played a manipulative and heartless woman; that is not how I saw her. Lady Marchmain is deeply religious, and her dilemma includes trying to raise a willful brood of children on her own, while instilling them with her rigid observance of the Catholic code. Sebastian is both an alcoholic and a homosexual, and from her point of view, he lives in a state of mortal sin. She has to fight for his soul by any means in her power, with the knowledge that her efforts may lead to his destruction. A born crusader, the Marchioness confronts her difficult choices head on; her rigidity of purpose, which I don't in any way share, is understandable in context. The aspect that rings most true is her sense of being an outsider, a Catholic in Protestant England. Not such a leap from being a Jew in Protestant England as one would imagine."

 

"Trash written by trash": The Belgian royal family responds to its critics

A few weeks ago, I posted an article on how the British royal household seems to be getting sassier with unwarranted attacks on the royal family's private lives, after photographers invaded the privacy of the Duchess of Cambridge while she was on holiday in France. Now, it looks like Belgium's royal family is following suit. Prince Philippe, the Duke of Brabant, is the heir-apparent to the Belgium throne; he is a graduate of Oxford and Stanford, where he took his masters in political science. He has also served in the Belgian armed forces and one of his main priorities as heir to the throne is promoting Belgium's economy, representing the kingdom at over forty economic conferences. 

The Duke is married to Princess Mathilde (nee d'Udekem d'Acoz) and they have four children together - Elisabeth, Gabriel, Emmanuel and Eleanor. Recently, the couple have been the target of books and articles claiming that their marriage is a sham and that their children were conceived through artificial insemination. False interviews with the Duke's father, King Albert II, to substantiate these rather dubious claims, but both the palace and the couple themselves have retaliated by firmly rebutting the allegations. 

The blog Cross of Laeken, which is a fantastic blog that focuses on the Belgian royals, talks about these rumours and about the royal household's reaction to them. 

Christopher Hitchen's thoughts on "Brideshead Revisited"

After posting my review of the 2008 movie adaptation of Brideshead Revisited, starring Matthew Goode, Ben Whishaw and Emma Thompson, I came across an article in the Guardian by the late, brilliant Christopher Hitchens. While I never exactly agreed with Christopher Hitchens' views on many things - namely the monarchy and some of his critique of religion - I always admired his superb skills as a writer and this reflection on what makes Brideshead Revisited so compelling, reminds me why.

Hitchen deftly highlights how Sebastian's sexual ambiguity and male beauty is almost certainly an homage to the martyrdom of the Christian saint, Sebastian. He demolishes the idea that Charles and Sebastian were not romantically attached to one another and goes to town on "the ridiculous word 'platonic' that for some peculiar reason still crops up in discussion of the story". He cleverly explores how Christianity helped shape not just the novel's storyline, but also some of its sentence structure. But his best analysis comes on how he believes it's the ghost of the First World War and the millions of war-dead that haunt Brideshead Revisited - shaping characters as diverse as Lady Marchmain (whose three brothers were killed on the Western Front and who is determined to immortalise them in a dynastic history) to the bullish "Boy" Mulcaster, a viscount's heir who becomes involved in repressing the General Strike because he thinks it will make the "Glorious Dead" of the war proud that he, who was too young to fight in 1914, stepped up to save the nation from its internal enemies in 1926.

It's a brilliant article, from a brilliant writer, and it can be accessed here.

"Brideshead Revisited" (2008)

In 1981, Evelyn Waugh's novel Brideshead Revisited was turned into a lavish eleven-part television drama, with a combined playing-time of nearly thirteen hours. It is still generally agreed to be one of the greatest television series of all time. It not only captured the fantastic characters of Waugh's book, but also the atmosphere of the 1920s and 1930s, when most of the novel is set. In 2008, a new movie version of the  same novel came out starring Emma Thompson, Michael Gambon, Ben Whishaw, Matthew Goode and Hayley Atwell. Any movie of Brideshead Revisited was always going to struggle by being compared to the television show thirty years earlier. After all, the movie has to do in two hours what the television show got to do in thirteen. Inevitably, parts of the story suffer or are cut short. 

For those unfamiliar with the story of Brideshead Revisited, it centres on a young upper middle-class student called Charles Ryder, who goes to study History at Oxford in the early 1920s. Initially, he befriends his cousin's circle of serious-minded friends and tries to devote himself to his studies like they do. However, he's already beginning to bore of this worthy but dull existence when he meets a strikingly handsome young aristocrat, Lord Sebastian Flyte. The pair (one is tempted to say "the couple") meet late one night when Sebastian, who has been out drinking heavily with his wealthy friends, vomits through Charles's open bedroom window and then sends him dozens of bouquets of flowers the next day to apologise. Charles is dazzled by the flamboyant, clever and eccentric Sebastian, who spends almost none of his time studying and most of it drinking, partying and organising picnics. (Needless to say, I'm a Sebastian fan.) Sebastian, who is repeatedly described as the most charming man anyone has ever met, is equally smitten with Charles and seems to regard their friendship as the only form of genuine affection he's ever known. One fateful day over the holidays, Sebastian invites Charles to visit him at home - which turns out to be a sprawling and magnificent country palace called Brideshead. There, Charles meets Sebastian's family, including his devoutly Catholic mother, Lady Marchmain, and his stunningly beautiful sister, Julia. From there, the slow disintegration of Charles and Sebastian's relationship - and Sebastian's sanity - dominates the rest of the novel.

To begin with, what's right with the new version of Brideshead Revisited? Well, there are some very fine performances. Matthew Goode is very handsome, in the manner of a 1930s' pin-up, and he plays the lead role of Charles Ryder with a lot more angst and heart than the character was given in either the novel or the TV show. Hayley Atwell also manages to make her character, Julia, far more likable and she captures all of Julia's spoiled flirtatiousness perfectly. Michael Gambon and Emma Thompson as Sebastian's parents, the Marquess and Marchioness of Marchmain, are both very good and Ben Whishaw is, as ever, absolutely marvelous. On the one hand, his version of Sebastian is far more openly pathetic and a good deal less charming than the television drama's, but he also lights up the screen any time he's on it and helps give the movie a heartbreaking curve that it might otherwise have lacked. Greta Scacchi, Felicity Jones, Ed Stoppard and Joseph Beattie are also memorable in their performances as Cara, Cordelia, Bridey and Anthony Blanche (far less camp and much more astute in this adaptation.)

The movie is also undeniably beautiful, in nearly every shot. Oxford looks, as ever, nothing short of breathtaking. Brideshead was filmed at Castle Howard (below), the home of the Earl of Carlisle, just like it was in 1981 and the house has lost none of its power to dazzle the audience, in the same way it dazzles the character of Charles. Venice, Italian beaches, 1930s London and luxury transatlantic liners all combine to make this a costume drama lover's dream. Like Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette, Brideshead Revisited is simply stunning to look at from start to finish.

But, like Marie Antoinette, there's an absence at the core of Brideshead Revisited. You're not quite sure what you're supposed to feel or who you're supposed to sympathise with - with the obvious exception of Sebastian. Part of the problem comes from the time issue, which naturally means certain storylines have to get simplified. In the novel, it is strongly implied that very early on in their friendship, the relationship between Sebastian and Charles was sexual. It was certainly romantic, with Charles describing himself repeatedly as being "obsessed" with Sebastian and later saying that Sebastian was the "forerunner" for all the subsequent (female) loves of Charles's life. However, the novel was published in 1945 when censorship was still rampant and Waugh himself was a devout Catholic, who was unlikely to go into too much detail about it. It's therefore left up to the reader to decide just how far Sebastian and Charles went with each other during their summer term at Oxford - and there are no clear answers in the novel about whether one is straight or gay. Indeed, at one point, the sexuality of both Charles and Sebastian seems to be equally confusing or confused. The issue is left unresolved, because Sebastian's alcoholism and nervous breakdown severs the boys' relationship and Charles, of course, eventually ends up in a messy love triangle with two women. In a nutshell, we don't quite know what happened between Sebastian and Charles, physically, but they're clearly supposed to be in love with one another in the book. With thirteen hours of screen time, the 1981 television show was able to play with this idea brilliantly and the television show is as ambiguous and teasing as the novel was. Shots of them sunbathing naked together on the roof of Brideshead, snuggling together in a gondola, being congratulated on their love by Sebastian's father's mistress, chatting while Sebastian bathes and strolling arm in arm through the Botanical Gardens in Oxford litter the television series, but not once are they shown actually kissing. Like the novel, the jury is still out in the television show. It's the original (and benign) form of "don't ask, don't tell."

The 2008 movie, however, doesn't have the time to do this and it was apparently felt that modern viewers wouldn't appreciate the subtleties. The ambiguity of both characters' sexuality is therefore stripped down to an easy-to-digest label - in the movie, Charles is straight and Sebastian is gay. And indeed, it's his inability to reconcile his homosexuality with his mother's fervent Catholic faith that eventually pushes Sebastian into the downward spiral that practically kills him in the end. Charles is obsessed with Sebastian, yes, but apart from one rather chaste kiss between the two of them after a night of heavy drinking, there's no indication that Charles genuinely believed himself to be in love with Sebastian, too. 

Portraying the two leads as being on opposite sides of the sexuality fence could actually work if it was done right, but all it did here was to make Charles's actions even more selfish and socially-ambitious than they are in the novel. (Which is saying something.) Charles Ryder's one redemptive feature, in my eyes, was that he had the capacity to love. In the movie, it now seems as if he goes along with Sebastian's infatuation with him, simply because he likes Sebastian's company and his big, big house. 

The reduction of the novel's portrayal of sexuality is also mirrored in how the movie chooses to portray its other great theme - spirituality. Whilst the novel and the television show both stuck to Waugh's pro-Catholic view of things, even though he could acknowledge its flaws, the film plumps for making Christianity the villain of the piece. And, in particular, Sebastian's mother - Lady Teresa Marchmain, played by Emma Thompson. Whilst Thompson's sweet voice sings the Salve Regina during evening prayers with her children, her all-consuming obsession with her Catholic faith crushes down on her family's life and, eventually, destroys at least three of them. With Sebastian's sexuality much more of an open issue in the movie, it's strongly implied that Lady Marchmain knows all about it and that she's doing everything in her power to force her psychologically-fragile son to "choose" an alternative lifestyle. Over dinner, she only seems to warm to Charles once she realises that he isn't friends with Anthony Blanche - the story's only "out and proud" gay man, whom Lady Marchmain evidently blames for having "manipulated" Sebastian into thinking he's gay. As she pushes and prods Sebastian to change his ways and places spies around him at Oxford, she ironically drives him further and further into the arms of the alcoholism she's trying to save him from. Thompson's performance is, I think, magnificent. And she clearly loves playing this ill-informed matriarch, who wreaks misfortune whilst firmly believing that she's doing good. The problem is that by turning Lady Marchmain and, by extension, Catholicism (or her version of it) into the baddie of Brideshead, the film strips away all of the story's ambiguities and complexities. With Lady Marchmain standing centre-stage as the fount of all that's wrong with her children's lives, and later Charles's too, we as an audience lose a lot of the other brilliant bits of Brideshead Revisited: Charles's social climbing, Julia's staggering self-obsession, Sebastian's weakness, Bridey's prudishness and Lord Marchmain's pleasure-loving selfishness. All of the other characters seem to become less interesting and less important, because of the story's insistence that it's Lady Marchmain who's to blame.

There are a few other tiny problems with Brideshead, namely that it doesn't quite seem to capture the accents and mannerisms of the era in the way the 1981 television show did. Trying to pull it out of the shadow of the TV show is also next to impossible and comparisons are inevitably made throughout, if you've seen it. Whilst the TV show will probably still enjoy cult status long after the film, there's still quite a bit to praise in the more modern adaptation. Brideshead Revisited is enjoyable, lovely to look at and it has some very fine performances. (Trailer below.)

An article on "Popular"

Over on my other blog, actress Emerald Fennell (seen above in her role as 1930s aristocrat Lottie Mountstuart in the recent British television drama Any Human Heart), writes a very kind and very funny article about my novel Popular, which will be published in the UK and Ireland on July 7th this year, then in South Africa (August 1st), Canada (August 23rd) and Australia and New Zealand (August 29th.) 

Click here to read Emerald's full article and I hope you enjoy it!

"When Gareth gave me the first draft of Popular, I was in the middle of my university exams and supposed to be reading Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde, a grim task that I had already been putting off for months. I told myself that I would quickly read the first chapter of Gareth’s book and then get down to some serious study. That serious study never happened. I was completely gripped, and read the whole thing in one sitting, laughing like a lunatic and compulsively turning the pages. My degree almost certainly suffered, but unfortunately Chaucer didn’t stand a chance in the fight against Meredith and her friends: they kicked him in the crotch, called him a smelly peasant and sent him hobbling back to the fourteenth century."

The Fall of Anne Boleyn (Day 8): Rich Pickings

"In his study at Westminster, Thomas Cromwell was beginning to feel the pressure of the case against the Boleyns. His visit to the Tower two days earlier, coupled with the daily reports coming in from Sir William Kingston, must have shown him that whilst the Queen had wobbled, she had not cracked like they might have hoped. The tactics of surrounding her with unfriendly faces, withholding information about her friends and family, refusing to give her the full details of what she would be tried for and denying her access to her own servants had certainly upset and occasionally infuriated her, but it had not made her any more afraid of the government, or inclined to co-operate. If anything, she seemed to be taking it as some kind of challenge. There was also the issue of the logistics of the trial - only Cromwell, and possibly Sir William Fitzwilliam, knew the full details of what was true and what wasn't and so it was vital that he kept on top of things. The trial of Sir Henry Norris, Sir William Brereton, Sir Francis Weston and Mark Smeaton were due to take place on Friday and the Grand Jury, the evidence, the alleged dates of their adultery and treason, all needed to be arranged without drawing too much attention to the gaping holes in the Crown's case. Cromwell also had a rising tide of public disapproval about the Queen's imprisonment to quell and various pamphlets lampooning both the King and Jane Seymour were beginning to circulate in the city; if the King found out, he would be furious. And added to all this, Cromwell also had to continue fielding the dozens of letters arriving asking that when the money and jobs of the Queen's so-called lovers were divided up, Cromwell would use his "good mediation and furtherance" to help his friends and supporters, all of whom were now declaring their inviolable loyalty to him in the same fulsome terms they had once used in letters to Anne Boleyn."

This blog's look at the upper-class reaction to the Queen's downfall and the opportunity it presented for the lands, titles and fortunes of her alleged lovers to be carved up amongst Thomas Cromwell's supporters. Click HERE.

Above: Hans Holbein's portrait of Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII's chief adviser for most of the 1530s, and who organised the logistics of the Queen's downfall. Historians are still divided today about what role he played in the events of May 1536 and if deposing Anne was his own idea or whether he was simply following orders. 

March 21st, 1556: The Burning of Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury

Today is the anniversary of the burning to death in Oxford of Thomas Cranmer, Protestant Archbishop of Canterbury, on the orders of Queen Mary I. As Claire Ridgway writes on The Anne Boleyn Files, Cranmer's execution was technically illegal and therefore an act of tyranny on Mary's part, since he was apparently unable to reconcile his twin devotion to both Protestantism and the Divine Right of Kings. How could Mary be wrong since she was Queen? Therefore he recanted his previous repudiation of Papal authority and that recantation, under English law, was supposed to exempt the penitent from death by burning. 

However, the Queen was so consumed with hatred towards the old archbishop for his role in pronouncing her mother's divorce twenty-three years earlier that she insisted the execution went ahead anyway, acting upon the advice of the ultra-conservative Bishop of London, who both doubted Cranmer's sincerity and despised his politics. 

On the pyre, Cranmer thrust the hand that had signed his conversion into the flames first, thus sealing his reputation as a Protestant martyr. 

For a full account of the execution, you can click on Claire's website.

For Cranmer's earlier association with the Boleyn family, click here. 

"Any Human Heart" (2010)

I'm so excited to be able to post a link to Channel 4's new television series, Any Human Heart, an adaptation of the bestselling and award winning novel by William Boyd, which has one of my favourite people, Emerald Fennell, amongst its glitteringly delightful cast. Very exciting. 

Emerald and I first met at Oxford just before Christmas of 2006, when I was directing my second student play and she auditioned, as one of 83 girls competing for the three main roles in my favourite play, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. We got to speak properly for the first time at the call-backs, when I accidentally scheduled the next auditionee an hour after Emerald's audition ended. So, we stayed and chatted for a while and I was heartily relieved that, at last, someone told me that my neurotic fear of flying was more than justified. It's not how often it happens, but how bad it will be when it happens. Even worse if the plane nose dives, then rights itself, and you're the person who wet yourself mid-plummet and have to live with that shame for the rest of the flight. True words. Perhaps some of my favourite memories of our time in Oxford include us, bedraggled and exhausted sitting, without shame, with various 18th century costumes and props slung over our arms as we waited for a post-rehearsal supper table to open up at the Chiang Mai restaurant. Good times. Less endearingly, on my part, there was an incident during a rehearsal for Dangerous Liaisons in a music room at Worcester College, when I - very tired and stressed with the dress rehearsal approaching - was interrupted by someone banging away on a defunct drum kit behind me. For some reason, I assumed it was my friend Johnny Rhodes, so I spun round in high fury and snapped, "Johnny, for f***'s sake! What are you doing?" Only to discover that it was Emerald on said drums; at which point, my demeanour changed entirely and I beamed, "Oh, it's you, Emmy. Well done." Johnny meanwhile, from the far corner of the room, glowered with seething fury from behind his 18th century valet's attire.

The novel Any Human Heart - published by Penguin - is written like a diary or a collection of papers and it follows the life of a fictitious author and art expert, Logan Montstuart, through his existence in the English upper-classes for most of the 20th century. Educated at Oxford in the years between the two world wars, Logan marries into the aristocracy - his wife Lottie (played by Emerald) is the daughter of an earl. However, life is not exactly plain sailing and the story of Any Human Heart chronicles Logan's misadventures across the British Empire as it enters its twilight, his interaction with the ex-King, Edward VIII and his social-climbing American wife, Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor (played by X Files and Bleak House alum, Gillian Anderson), and his life in America and France in the later half of the 20th century. 

It's a fantastic book with a wonderful cast for the adaptation, which was written by William Boyd. It will be broadcast later this year by Channel 4, in four 2-hour segments. So do look out for it! Amongst the cast are Oscar winner Jim Broadbent as the elderly Logan, with Pirates of the Caribbean 4's Sam Claflin and Pride and Prejudice's Matthew Macfadyen playing the younger versions; joining them, apart from Emerald, are Brideshead Revisited's Hayley Atwell, Sex and the City's Kim Cattrall, Tom Hollander as Edward VIII, Gillian Anderson and The West Wing's Richard Schiff. 

I'm obviously hugely excited about this, especially since it seems absolutely no time at all since I was directing Emerald in a student production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Dangerous Liaisons. And giving her the first three chapters of Popular which I had written, to see if she thought they were any good. I'm obviously incredibly grateful for the feedback I received right after she had finished reading them. Johnny, on the other hand, failed to read them at all and got away with saying, "Yeah, yeah, I loved the party in Chapter ...." And inserted any number he could think of. A clever strategy which worked until he accidentally hit upon the one chapter in the book sans party.

It's incredibly exciting that Any Human Heart is finished and I can't wait to see it.

The trailer for Any Human Heart can be watched here.

The Beginning of the End for Lady Jane Grey

“By this time news was brought that Sir John Williams was also proclaiming Queen Mary in Oxfordshire. From that time forward certain of the council, that is, the Earl of Pembroke and the Lord Warden sought to go out of the Tower to consult in London, but could not as yet.”
- From The Chronicle of Queen Jane, and of Two Years of Queen Mary

The Mary Tudor: Renaissance Queen blog continues its excellent anniversary posts on the rise to power of Mary Tudor in the summer of 1553, with an account of 13th July, when the first serious cracks in the regime of Lady Jane Grey (above) began to appear.

Saint Peter's College Alumni Dinner

Tonight I attended a lovely supper at the Royal Belfast Golf Club for the alumni of Saint Peter's College, Oxford, in Northern Ireland. The evening was hosted by Sir Kenneth Percy Bloomfield, former Head of the Northern Ireland Civil Service, and his wife, Lady Bloomfield. Sir Kenneth, whose County Down home was the victim of a savage I.R.A. terrorist bomb attack in 1988, attended Saint Peter's, where he read Modern History from 1949 to 1952. I read the same subject at the same college in Oxford, but from 2004 to 2007.

My "Plus One" for the evening was the lovely Aisleagh Morgan, an old school-friend, who attended Queen's University in Belfast and the Oxford Law Institute. The Golf Club, one of the oldest on the island of Ireland, was a beautiful setting and the food was fantastic. Conversation ranged from the inevitable eulogisation of Oxford to the swapping of stories of pranks at St. Peter's (for decency's sake I left out many of those I had either been involved in or cackled at like a demented harpy); the history of Northern Ireland in recent times, life in the diplomatic corps, life in America, service to the Ethiopian Imperial Family, memories of visits to the U.S.S.R., Aisleagh's impending nuptials and the trials and tribulations of being a lawyer were also discussed.

To those of you interested, our old alma mater stands on the site of two medieval hostels built in Oxford in the 13th century. During the Civil War, it served as the location of the Royal Mint, as established by the monarchist government-in-exile, which centred in Oxford after London was hijacked by Parliament. The hall, which is today the students' dining hall and the location of the Senior Common Room, was known as New Inn Hall, but it became known as Saint Peter's Hall in 1929, when it was established as Permanent Private Hall of the University of Oxford by His Grace the Bishop of Liverpool, Francis John Chavasse, an Anglican priest deeply committed to widening access to the hallowed halls of Oxford. The college, dedicated to the Prince of the Apostles, was granted full collegiate status in 1961, although most of its buildings date from the medieval or Georgian period. It is located in the very centre of Oxford and today it has an excellent reputation for extra-curricular drama and sports, in particular.

Famous ex-alumni include, apart from Sir Kenneth, His Royal Highness Prince Jigyel Ugyen Wangchuck, Heir-Presumptive to the Throne of Bhutan, who was in my year and history class at St. Peter's; Carl Albert, the 54th Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Edward Akufo-Addo, who was President of Ghana from 1970 to 1972, the Reverend W.V. Audry, author of the famous Thomas the Tank Engine children's book stories, Sir Paul Condon - former Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Paul Reeves, who was both the Archbishop and Governor-General of New Zealand, painter Kurt Jackson, left-wing film director Ken Loach (Cathy Come Home, The Wind that shakes the Barley), actor Hugh Dancy (David Copperfield, Black Hawk Down, King Arthur, Elizabeth I, Basic Instinct 2, Savage Grace, The Confessions of a Shopaholic) and Oscar-winning screen-writer Simon Beaufoy, who wrote the scripts for The Full Monty, Miss Pettigrew Lives For a Day and Slumdog Millionaire.

May 12th, 1536: The Trial of the Queen's Concubines

"So we'll live and pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh at gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues talk of court news; and we'll talk with them too- who loses and who wins, who's in, who's out- and take upon's the mystery of things as if we were God's spies."
- From William Shakespeare's "King Lear," Act V, Scene III

On Friday, May 12th, 1536, Sir William Kingston, Constable of the Tower of London, escorted Sir Henry Norris, Sir William Brereton, Sir Francis Weston and Mark Smeaton into Westminster Hall where, three years earlier, Anne Boleyn had been honoured with a lavish Coronation banquet at the height of her triumph.

Built during the reign of King William Rufus, who had ruled England from 1087 until 1100, the Hall would now play witness to one of the most extraordinary and shameful trials in British history. Thomas Howard, 63 year-old Duke of Norfolk, sat as presiding judge and the King's representative over the four men accused of having committed treasonous adultery with Queen Anne Boleyn. According to the indictment created by the Grand Jury of Middlesex who along with the Grand Jury of Kent had jurisdiction over the trials (they were the closest two to London and thus the easiest to control and organise from the Crown’s perspective), the men had been partners in the Queen’s “frail and carnal appetites” and insultingly referred to them as “her adulterers and concubines”. Grim-faced and self-righteous, the Duke ordered the trial of the four men who had dishonoured their king to begin.

May 8th, 1536: Radix malorum est cupiditas

"For they that will become rich, fall into temptation, and into the snare of the devil, and into many unprofitable and hurtful desires, which drown men into destruction and perdition."
- 1st Timothy, Chapter 6, Verse 9

After breakfast on May 8th, 1536, the 16 year-old Duke of Richmond sat down in one of his London mansions to write a letter to the Bishop of Lincoln. The young duke - christened Henry FitzRoy - was King Henry VIII's only acknowledged illegitimate child, the product of a love affair between the king and a pretty young lady-in-waiting, Elizabeth Blount, carried out at the end of the 1510s. The royal bastard was one of only three men to hold the coveted title of a duke - the highest rank in the English aristocracy - the others were the Queen's uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, and the King's former brother-in-law, the Duke of Suffolk; a fourth, the Duke of Buckingham, had been executed for treason in 1521. As well as being Duke of Richmond, the teenager was also Duke of Somerset and Earl of Nottingham - thus making him, unquestionably, the highest-rank aristocrat in the kingdom.

Slim and handsome, throughout the scandal surrounding the Queen, the Duke of Richmond deftly avoided commenting on his stepmother's presumed guilt, except when in his father's presence. It was not just that his marriage to Lady Mary Howard, the Queen's cousin, had been arranged at the Queen's behest three years earlier, but Richmond had also been politically involved with one of her accused lovers, Sir William Brereton, and another, Sir Richard Page, had been in his service for half a decade.