England Before the Norman Conquest: An interview with historical fiction author Paula Lofting

Today I'm talking to Paula Lofting about her upcoming novel that follows one family's saga up to the world-changing Battle of Hastings, SONS OF THE WOLF.

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1) Tell us about your book.

SONS OF THE WOLF is the first in a series of novels set in 11th-century England in the years running up to the Battle of Hastings in 1066. Against a backdrop of historical events, the story unfolds as Wulfhere, the main character, is returning home south with his servant, Esegar, after fighting a great war in the North. Wulfhere is a king’s thegn who holds lands in the county of Sussex and the book follows him and his family as it weaves their saga into the tapestry of life as it was before the Domesday Book. 

When Wulfhere’s daughter, Freyda, enters into a forbidden relationship with the son of his enemy, he is forced by Earl Harold to agree to a betrothal that will bring peace to the warring families. Urged on by his beautiful but demanding wife Ealdgytha, Wulfhere has to think of a way to break the bargain without incurring the wrath of his lord, Earl Harold. In the meantime, there are battles to be fought in the countryside, but Wulfhere realises that sometimes, the enemy is closer to home.

2) What inspired you to write this book?

Having had a dream to write a historical novel all my life, various circumstances took me to other paths before I was finally in a place where I could crack on with it. At the time I was ready to undertake such a mission, my subjects of interest seemed to already be taken by other authors and so I waited for inspiration and the first glimmer of it was when I attended a re-enactment of the Battle of Hastings and I started to get a feeling for the era. I had been interested at some time or another in my life, in most periods of medieval existence and the pre-conquest era had fallen to the back of my mind somewhat. 

Attending the event awakened that old interest. I was incensed by what happened that day and wanted to know more. Before I knew it I was back in the 11th century, reading every non-fictional book I could lay my hands on and I also bought a great novel about Harold Godwinson by Helen Hollick. But there it was again, that same dilemma, someone had got there before me and written about my hero. What was I to do? And then I found David Howarth’s 1066: The year of the Conquest in which he identifies the man Wulfhere as the thegn of Horstede from the Domesday Book. 

Mr Howarth’s charming non-fictional account became the inspiration for Wulfhere’s story because it gave me the idea that I could write a book about an ‘ordinary’ man and his family and they were there, just waiting for me to create them, their lives and what life would have been like for the middle classes before and after the conquest. So SONS OF THE WOLF began to unfold in my head and went from my mind to the keyboard. Essentially, SONS wrote itself. I just let it happen.

3) Can you tell us about what went into developing your lead characters? 

Well, for Wulfhere, I had an idea about what I wanted him to be like, a sort of skeleton of him if you like and then as the book progressed, his character developed naturally into his framework. He is a warrior, but he is also a father, husband, lover, friend, enemy, servant, lord and landowner and so I had to make him multidimensional. 

I had to remember all these facets of him when he interacts with his co-characters and I have to decide which role would take precedent over the others in the current circumstances. For Ealdgytha, his wife, she was a little more complex because I think the reader will empathise with her one minute and hate her the next! She is less multidimensional than Wulfhere, but a very emotionally charged character which makes her so wonderful to write for. 

As for the other characters I have endeavoured to make each and every one of them as real as possible and the historical non-fictional characters such as the Godwinson family and King Edward etc, I have tried to portray them as they may have been with what little we know about them. I do think sometimes however that you can get a glimmer of a persona when you look at what deeds they performed and what they have achieved in history.

 I mean, what do you say about a man like King Edward, who kept the whole of England, Normandy and Denmark in a state of anxiety, waiting with baited breath as to who was to be his successor? That one thing was to cause so much heartache and injustice to his subjects. If I could go back in time I would have told him what for!

4) What is one of the most surprising things you learned about Anglo-Saxon England during the course of your research for this book? 

It really surprised me how well women were regarded in pre-conquest England. I think that their Wergild (the amount of money they were worth) was almost the same as a man who was the same status. She was able to own property and keep it upon her marriage. She had the right to attend court and pursue claims. She was not to be forced into a marriage (although this no doubt happened frequently) and had the right to a divorce if she wished with good reason. She was allowed to leave her property to whomever she pleased in her will. 

Much of that changed after the Normans came. Women lost their right to keep their lands she and all her property became that of her husband’s. It was still very much a patriarch society, but there was a lot to be said for being an Anglo-Saxon woman as opposed to a Norman woman.

5) Excluding the obvious, such as language, what sort of cultural changes did the Norman conquest bring that most people might not think about?

I think that perhaps not a lot of people realise that this is where the feudal system as we know it started. Okay so there was some element of it before the conquest, with men owing certain services for their land to their immediate overlord according to their statums, but the Norman system wiped out all the rights that these poor farmers had, the right to have their say in their local moot and at the shire moot was one of the things they lost. They were downgraded even further to almost that of a slave, who was bound to his new Norman master by his tenement. He was not free to go elsewhere if he did not like his master, as he had been before.

Life in England for the peasantry must have been pretty comforting, England had been a wealthy country and each thegn would have had it in their interest to treat his people well otherwise they could take their loyalty elsewhere. And for the peasantry, it was the thegn who would look out for them, speak for them in court and feast with them and listen to their troubles. He was duty bound to them. With the advent of castles, their new Norman rulers could throw a man in prison if he dared to complain or not do as he was told. 

After the Battle of Hastings and the various rebellions that followed for around five years or more, the middle nobility, the thegns, were virtually wiped out or downgraded. Those men were the ones who mediated for the peasantry and lorded it with the wealthier earls and thegns. They had been a buffer between the lower classes and the nobility. 

Now they were gone and it must have been a terrible time for the beleaguered farming community who had seen their villages decimated, their crops and animals and their farming equipment destroyed. And to compound their woes, the very men they had looked to were also destroyed.

6) How do you think English history would have unfolded had the Normans been defeated at the Battle of Hastings? 

Ha, this is a good one. Well if he had the chance, I think Harold might not have wanted William to be put to death, however who knows what a man might do if they are faced with this decision and this was quite an extreme circumstance for Harold. Historically, Harold had always been quite lenient with his enemies. He let Alfgar, the rebellious Earl of Mercia off many a time and Gruffydd the Welsh King who plagued the borders along Hereford. 

But yet his own brother Tostig had been killed at the Battle of Stamford Bridge only a few weeks before. Whether or not Harold had anything to do with that we do not know, but it might have had an effect on how he would have treated William if he had been alive after a defeat at Hastings. 

We do know that Harald Hardrada’s son Olaf was permitted to leave after Stamford Bridge with a promise to stay away and not cause trouble for England again. Anyway, I think probably Norman/English relations would have soured even further; William, had he been permitted to return back to Normandy, would have tried again and if he had not survived, his sons would have made a claim for the throne thus drawing Harold’s sons into a feud with them. If the conquest had not happened when it did, I think at some point it would have happened later, either with William’s successors or perhaps peacefully through marriage.

7) Can you tell us about some of your other planned projects? 

Whilst I am waiting for SONS OF THE WOLF to be published in August, I am working on the sequel THE WOLF BANNER, which has been written. It just needs to be edited. It was written as part of SONS, but I had no idea how much I’d written when it was finished and was advised to make it into two books. 

There were 250000 words in all and the whole project had taken me six years. I plan there to be about four books in the series. Also, I have been working on a modern day drama/thriller called KILLING THE SANDMAN about a young lad’s struggle to survive living with an alcoholic mother and an abusive stepfather. I hope to have this published with SilverWood Books also. 

I have also a project in mind for writing a novel based on Aethelflaed, Lady of the Mercians. She was Alfred the Great’s daughter, a great woman, who carried on her father’s fight to rid England of the Danes with her brother Edward. Then I was thinking about something in the First World War, for my Grandad who was in the 17th Lancers. I’ve got lots of ideas in my head but I think I am a long way off giving up the day job yet. Hopefully if things take off I can realise my dream of being an author. 

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Thanks, Paula.

You can read more from Paula at:

http://paulalofting-sonsofthewolf.blogspot.co.uk/
http://threadstothepast.blogspot.co.uk/
http://paulaperuses.blogspot.co.uk/

SONS OF THE WOLF will be released this August.

The Death of a Dynasty: An interview with historical fiction author Judith Arnopp

Today I'm talking with Judith Arnopp about her novel of Anglo-Saxon England, THE SONG OF HELEDD.

1) Please tell us about your book.

THE SONG OF HELEDD is the story of Heledd and her sister, Ffreur, celtic princesses at the hall of their brother, Cynddylan. When Heledd forms an infatuation for a travelling player, a man far beneath her, she triggers a chain of events that will bring down two kings and destroy a dynasty. The tale is a harsh one and terribly sad, a box of tissues highly recommended.

2) What inspired this book?

I studied Anglo-Saxon and medieval poetry at university and during the course of my research I stumbled across fragments of a 9th century poem, Canu Heledd, which forms part of The Red Book of Hergest. The Red Book was put together sometime in the 14-15th centuries, but the poems themselves are believed to have been written down in the 9th century but set in the 7th. As you probably know, poetry was originally an oral tradition, providing entertainment for long winter nights and it is quite possible that Heledd’s song was passed down from that early date. What makes Canu Heledd distinctive is that the narrator is a woman. Heledd is the only woman to feature prominently in the saga tradition where females are scarcely mentioned. And not only does Heledd narrate the tale but she is the sole survivor of a dynastic disaster and she blames herself for it. This dispensing with tradition suggests to me that Heledd’s story is perhaps a true one, a historical event passed down through the oral tradition to become legend. All the time I was working toward my Master’s degree, Heledd was singing her song in the back of my head. I knew then that I would have to write a story for her one day.

3) How has your background in medieval studies influenced your writing?

My first degree was in English Literature and Creative Writing. I knew I would write books, I’d been writing all my life, but I wanted to progress to longer pieces and knew I lacked the skills to do so. I majored in Anglo-Saxon and Medieval poetry and by the time I’d finished my Bachelor’s degree I realised I wanted to write historical fiction so I signed up for an M.A. in Medieval history to help achieve that goal.

4) One of the reasons British Isles historical fiction set in periods such as the Tudor or Georgian era is so popular is that it's easier for authors to research those periods because of rich documentation. You're hitting a period and area where that's not quite the case. Can you tell us a bit about the research that went into your story?

Oh, I never choose the easiest route - lol. First of all, I knew the poem, but I didn’t just want to replicate that; I write fiction. I am interested in how a person thinks, their motivations and excuses for breaking rules, making mistakes. The poem is full of triggers for the imagination, Cyndyylan’s purple cloak, his high hall, his fame for hospitality and throughout, a strong heroic tradition that is similar to the Anglo-Saxon. Then we have Heledd, lost and alone although we know she was once influential, strong and affluent. She is also absolutely tortured with guilt. She has lost her sister but she doesn’t mourn her. Why? I racked my brains trying to figure out why one would ever stop grieving for a sister who had obviously been greatly loved. I began to come up with a few ideas. Then, I read the recorded history of the period and was able to fit the poem into context. As you say the historical record for this period is sketchy and totally male orientated. The wars between Northumbria and Penda and the Kings of Powy are recorded but there are plenty of lovely gaps that provide perfect fodder for a fiction writer. I had terrific fun filling them in.

5) Accuracy in historical fiction is always a big debate, but, in your case you have less continuity of evidence than you'd probably prefer. How did you go about deciding how to fill the "holes" in the historical record and depicted some of figures in your work?


I think, if you will excuse me saying so, but there is an awful lot of hot air wasted over discussing accuracy in historical fiction. As soon as we put words into a historical character’s mouth we are crossing the boundary between history and fiction. And what is accurate anyway? There is no real truth, only opinion. My stories are about human beings in a historical world that cannot be replicated and never will be totally accurately represented. If you set out to produce an authentic historical world you are setting yourself up for failure. I try to be as accurate as I can but never lose sight of the fact that I am a woman from the 7th century communicating with the twenty first century. You have to tread a delicate line between the two worlds. I think it is quite dangerous to read fiction as history, if people want history they should read a proper history book. That is why all my novels have an author’s note pointing out, quite clearly, where my imagination takes over from the record and urging them to read around the subject further. I also write in the first person. I find that if I can step into my character’s shoes and ‘become’ them, my writing has more passion. You won’t find detailed descriptions of dresses or interiors because those things detract from the story I am telling. Heledd is standing alone on a stark mountain top, confessing her crimes, ripping aside her shame to tell us exactly where she went wrong. She isn’t interested in telling us how she tied her shoelaces or what colour her favourite frock was. Heledd will tell you about the realities of her world, the mud and the blood and the pain of being a woman in her time. It is sometimes uncomfortable to listen to her story but she grows from a thoughtless child into a broken woman who has learned many lessons and is striving to make peace with her god.

6) People write and consume historical fiction for a variety of reasons. What do you hope, fundamentally, to accomplish with your work?


I’ve written since I was a little girl and my main aim is to get better and better. I am not a bestselling author by any means but I do have a small band of followers. When I receive an email or a facebook message on my wall saying how much a reader has enjoyed one of my books then I know I have succeeded. I don’t expect to make a fortune from my writing, it isnt about that. I have a whole heap of stories in my head. It gives me huge satisfaction to write them down and even greater pleasure when my readers appreciate them. As long as I earn enough to continue to afford the ink and paper and to upgrade my PC once in a while, I will continue to write.

7) Do you have a favorite historical period?

I have always loved to read historical novels; they led me into studying history seriously. I will anything that is well written and credible. I often spot inaccuracies but they don’t really bother me, as long as it isn’t something silly like Guyfawks night in the 13th century or an Anglo Saxon peeling potatoes. I do prefer British history, but that is probably because it’s what I know best. Having said that, one of my all time favourites is Gone With the Wind, not because it is particularly accurate but because it is told by the losing side and speaks of the people’s emotion rather than the events. That is what interests me. Oh dear, I have strayed from your question, I am sorry. My favourite historical period is early medieval: King Alfred and Aethelflaed, The Wars of the Roses. I am a big Richard the III fan and, although I detest Henry VII and VIII, no one can help being fascinated by the Tudors.

8) Can you tell us about any of your other projects?

I am currently working on a Tudor novel. It is my first foray into a long piece in that period but my collection of short Tudor stories, Dear Henry: Confessions of the Queens is doing very well on Kindle and several readers have asked if I’ve done a full length novel. I thought I would oblige. It is very different in mood to The Song of Heledd and is called The Winchester Goose. The protagonists are Joan Toogood, a prostitute in Southwark, Francis Wareham,a male spy in the pay of Cromwell and two sisters, Bella and Eve Bourne, who are waiting women to Anne of Cleves and Katherine Howard. Again, it is fiction with a few historical figures here and there. I am about three quarters of a way through the first draft and it is going very well. Of course, the hardest part will be the rewrites and edits, which always take the longest time, apart from the initial research of course.

Other works include:

Peaceweaver
The Forest Dwellers
Dear Henry: Confessions of the Queens
A Tapestry of Time

All available on Kindle.

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Thanks, Judith.

If you'd like to see more from Judith, you can find her at  http://www.juditharnopp.com/.

You can purchase THE SONG OF HELEDD at:

Amazon.com
Amazon.co.uk 
Direct from the publisher