Friday, November 13, 2020

The White Ship


 Author Andrea Zuvich interviews Earl Charles Spencer, one of my favorite historians. To quote:

I love to find stories from the past that have been fully or partly forgotten, and then I enjoy bringing them forward, out of the shadows, for a fresh audience. In the process, I aim to shine a light on the age in which such an event occurred. It’s what I did, for instance, with Killers of the King – a look at Charles I, the first two English Civil Wars, the Commonwealth, and the Restoration, underpinned by the energy of an international manhunt. Well, with The White Ship I found myself in an even richer pasture. There has never been a more terrible maritime tragedy, in England’s history. It soon led to a truly ghastly civil war, as you say. It has fantastically strong female characters at its heart – especially the Empress Matilda, the accomplished and remarkable heiress who was meant to succeed her father, Henry I, but who was beaten to the Crown by her cousin Stephen, the one great man not to go down on The White Ship, because he was feeling ill and disembarked the doomed vessel just before it put out to sea. As I said to my publishers (William Collins), the tale of The White Ship is essentially Titanic meets Game of Thrones, with Sliding Doors thrown in! But, more than the unimaginable tragedy of the shipwreck, there is so much more to share with the reader – the strong rule of Henry I, the Conqueror’s youngest son, who comes from nowhere to rule England, then beats his eldest brother in battle to scoop up Normandy, too. How Henry accommodated the Pope, in a way that largely worked for kings of England till Henry VIII tore down that structure more than 400 years later. How Henry built up royal governance with great effect – establishing the Exchequer that still dominates our finances now. How he dealt with overmighty aristocrats and meanwhile promoted men of humble birth who relied on him for their power. And Henry I led able armies, forged clever alliances, and trounced his great rival across the Channel, Louis VI – known, thanks to his generous girth, as “Louis the Fat” – in battle. The tragedy of The White Ship is the spine of a much larger story, which goes from the Vikings, through the battle of Hastings, the shipwreck and the Anarchy, through to the establishment of the Plantagenets as England’s rulers. (Read more.)


More on the books of Charles Spencer, HERE

Share

No comments: