Your History: Writing the Past Event

Annie Garthwaite’s debut novel Cecily takes us to the battlefields and bedrooms of 15th-century England. Here she ponders what fiction gives us that history can’t.

Writing historical fiction is hard work, and the depth of research required shocks me still. But knowing the history is only the beginning. Once I understood the physical, political, religious and emotional ‘scape’ my character Cecily inhabited, I needed to look beyond it to find her story.

The late Hilary Mantel said, “History is no more the past than a script is a performance or a map is a journey.” She was right. The writer of fiction takes the bare bones of history and gives them life.

You might say Cecily is about the matriarch of the House of York during the Wars of the Roses, one of Ludlow’s most prominent historical figures. So far, so good. More meaningfully, it’s about how women exercise power in a world where men hold the power cards. It’s about what a woman might do to protect her family. Or what happens to a person when they reach for power rather than let themselves be destroyed by it. It’s about matters that preoccupy us today but set in a world and time that let us view those matters through a new lens. The historical novelist’s task is to satisfy the reader’s hunger for an emotional connection to a time long gone that chimes with universal human experience. E.L. Doctrow described it perfectly. “The historian,” he said, “will tell you what happened. The novelist will tell you what it felt like.”

Cecily was published in 2021. Garthwaite’s second novel, The King’s Mother, will be published in July 2024. On Saturday 25th November she will chair ‘Writing the Past: Great historical fiction and the medieval history that inspires it’ – an event hosted by the Mortimer History Society. For details see www.mortimerhistorysociety.org.uk/events.

Photo: Ludlow Castle, Cecily’s 15th-century home © Manuel Diaz
www.mortimerhistorysociety.org.uk
www.ludlowhistory.co.uk