The lecture starts at 18:00 GMT and 20% of our profits will go to local Kent charity, Hospice in the Weald.
Mary Boleyn has gone down in history as the “great and infamous whore”. She was the mistress of two kings, Francis I of France and Henry VIII of England, and sister to Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII’s second wife.
But in her book, Alison Weir explodes much of the mythology that surrounds Mary Boleyn by carrying out extensive, forensic research to facilitate a new portrayal.
‘Forced to be mistress’
She has concluded that the paternity of Mary’s two children can now be established, thanks to new and overlooked evidence and one was almost certainly fathered by Henry VIII.
Her research has also focused on the relationship between the two sisters, showing how Mary, as the elder of the Boleyn sisters, was soon overshadowed by the more accomplished Anne, and how Mary was more beautiful than Anne, although there is no authentic portrait.
Alison has discovered that contrary to popular belief, Mary did not gain a notorious reputation at the French court, and she probably spent ten years of her life living abroad. But at some stage in her life, Henry VIII forced Mary to become his mistress. However, there is evidence to suggest when their affair began.
Her astonishing and riveting book argues that Mary was entirely undeserving of her reputation as a great and infamous whore, or the calumny that was later heaped upon her, and also shows that Mary’s story had a happy ending and that she was by far the luckiest of the Boleyns.
Hear Alison talk about her research by joining us at Hever this autumn. See our booking information for ticket details.
Robert Olen Butler describes how he gets in the zone for writing every day, revisits his time in Vietnam, and describes his move from drama to fiction in this interview on YouTube with A Well-Lighted Place.
—Robert starts his working day, often before dawn, by grinding coffee beans in his writing cottage. He says a fiction writer must go into the unconscious “dream space” every day
Sarah Gristwood will look at the legends about Anne Boleyn and her daughter
There is no substitute for travelling to a place of history and seeing it with your own eyes if you want to understand the past, historian Sarah Gristwood says.
Writers will walk in the footsteps of the Tudors at Hever Castle this autumn and hear a series of talks about the castle’s famous residents – Anne and Mary Boleyn – and Anne’s daughter, Queen Elizabeth I.
But what people get from the experience of standing where they stood has nothing to do with “vibes” or “atmosphere”, Sarah says.
“We’re not talking about anything as abstruse as vibrations and even atmosphere may well have changed over the centuries. But some things don’t change – like the very lie of the land. You can see how history worked itself out much more clearly.”
Hever Castle is famous for being the childhood home of Anne Boleyn, and Sarah’s lecture, given with fellow historian Alison Weir, will offer an insight into the lives of both Anne and Elizabeth I.
Enduring fascination
Anne was the second wife of King Henry VIII. Their marriage in 1533 led him to break with the Roman Catholic church and bring about the English Reformation. But Henry’s ultimate aim was to father a legitimate male heir to the throne.
In the year she married, Anne gave birth to Queen Elizabeth I. But a year later, she had a miscarriage, and two years after that she gave birth to a stillborn male child. In 1536, she was committed to the Tower of London on a charge of adultery and even incest and was beheaded 17 days later.
Alison Weir’s work has led to her exploding much of the mythology surrounding Mary Boleyn
Sarah says: “The whore and the virgin are two popular perceptions of Anne and her daughter.
“Alison and I will be asking how much truth there is in the legends, and how much these two very famous women really had in common – what legacy Anne bequeathed to her daughter.”
Both Anne and Elizabeth captured people’s fascination at the time they lived and in the present day and Sarah explains their enduring fascination.
“I think part of Anne’s fascination is that she was a great self-inventor; a not particularly beautiful girl who managed to make herself one of the great romantic prizes – something that was also true of Elizabeth in a way,” Sarah says.
“That, and the fact that opinions about her – even during her own lifetime – varied so wildly.”
‘Tangled web’
Sarah’s view is that while Anne Boleyn suffered a horrendous early death, she only made a trade-off that many men have been prepared to make right through the centuries.
If she could say one thing to the young Anne, it would not necessarily be “don’t do it – don’t marry Henry”.
“Anne suffered a horrendous early death but she had won the highest rank and changed the future of her country,” says the best-selling Tudor biographer, journalist and royal commentator
“And, had she known it, she had given birth to a monarch who would be perhaps the greatest in Britain’s history.”
The Abroad Writers’ Conference lecture series at Hever will begin on 21 November, when Alison Weir will give a talk about Mary Boleyn, based on her best-selling book, Mary Boleyn: The Mistress of Kings.
The author and historian will look at the tangled web of relationships that developed between Henry VIII and the two Boleyn sisters – one his wife and the other his mistress.
Alison’s work has led to her exploding much of the mythology surrounding Mary Boleyn.
She has also presented compelling new evidence that almost conclusively determines the paternity of Mary’s two eldest children.
The lecture by both Sarah and Alison will take place on 22 November and will be followed by a special Thanksgiving dinner.
Come to the castle, have dinner with us, and chat with the experts
A while ago, we wrote our Hever Castle writing conference would be a first for us on many levels – our first conference in a castle, our first conference in autumn, and the first time we have combined history with literature.
But there’s another first for us. We are opening our doors to the public.
In the past, we met dozens of fellow writing types at our workshop events. But this time we hope to meet hundreds, because we are also staging a series of lectures.
Dress up, come and have dinner with us and a glass of wine, hear our speakers, get your book signed, meet like-minded writers and have a chat with our experts.
They will be talking about the Tudors – particularly Anne Boleyn who lived at Hever Castle – the state of publishing today, literature and journalism for our time, along with the art of simply putting words together and crafting your stories. If you’ve been following our blog, you’ll already know some of our speakers.
Here are the details of our lecture evenings. Each dinner will raise money for a locally-based charity. Those organisations will receive 20% of our profits.
Alex’s investigation into the ivory trade went viral (www.freefoto.com)
In the digital world, journalists are faced with a choice. They can write in ever-shorter forms for websites so readers need not scroll down, they can come up with short-form text designed for phones and tablets, and they can send their work in 140 characters to Twitter.
Or they can try the Alex Shoumatoff method: Write nearly 10,000 words and see it go viral – which was the result of his investigation into the ivory trade across Africa.
Alex believes a writer needs at least 10,000 words to do justice to the complexities and ambiguities of their subject.
“There is still a market for the long fact piece, as I’ve learned from the huge response to my last two outings,” he says.
Alex’s 9,720-word piece on the ivory trade, Agony and Ivory, was published in Vanity Fair last year, and was later nominated for a National Magazine Award. His 11,050-word excavation of the history of a vanishing New York civilisation, Positively 44th Street, came out in the magazine this summer. And his latest non-fiction book, Legends of the American Desert, a cultural and natural history of the Southwest which met with rave reviews, spans 500 pages.
Write a ‘vomit draft’
The question is what is the secret of producing top-class writing at speed?
“The guy who could really write fast, knocking off a whiskey-fuelled single draft that was print-ready, was Christopher Hitchens,” Alex says. “I am not a fast writer. It is always a tortuous process.”
Alex starts with a “vomit draft”, a process that he describes as letting your mind run free. He achieves this by putting down any association and anything that comes to mind.
Later, he prunes and shapes his work. And even Alex, who has been described by one of his Vanity Fair editors as “one of the great prose stylists of this or any century”, can struggle to find the right word. Sometimes, at that stage in the process, the right word can come to mind while he walks or sleeps, Alex says.
“But this said, when I am in the zone, on a roll, I do write fast,” Alex says. “The best writing is the most straightforward. Often, as I am explaining something to somebody, it comes out the most naturally and clearly – more so than when I am straining for how to put it while sitting at my computer.”
‘Battle for our planet’
According to Alex, a good writer is made by work, tremendous intellectual curiosity, and knowing how to write by reading the great. A good piece of writing is “like good music,” he says. But when asked which writers today will become the great writers of the future, he answers: “Not many that I can think of.”
Alex has put himself on the frontline of the battle for our planet, with his writing about the fast-disappearing natural world. In 2001, he founded DispatchesfromTheVanishing World.com to raise awareness of the current unprecedented extinction rate of species and traditional cultures and man’s dramatic impact on his habitat.
His writing has already saved ancient redwoods in California and halted a project to install a hydroelectric transmission line in Manotiba. And his investigation into the ivory trade is changing opinions of the nouveau riche on ivory carvings and jewellery in China.
When Alex gives lectures and workshops, he covers his own huge range of writing styles. His list includes literary journalism, writing to effect positive change, writing for the world, investigative journalism, advocacy journalism, literary travelogue, “far-flung” reportage, nature writing, writing about the natural sciences, popular science writing, ethnography, poetry, song-writing, family history and memoir.
However, while his writing styles may be numerous, Alex’s aim is simple and in line with his overriding concern. “To make audiences aware of the seriousness of our ongoing deepening planetary emergency and the thousands of things each of us can do to be part of the solution and not the problem.”
Paul’s first novel, Tinkers, won a Pulitzer (Pic: Lauren Goldenberg)
The experience of having your novel rejected repeatedly can be liberating, says Paul Harding, because it leaves you free to write whatever you want.
And Paul has proved that writing for writing’s sake pays off, because his journey from rejection slips to Pulitzer recognition is now known throughout the publishing and literary world.
He wrote Tinkers, a novel about a dying clock repairer who is released from the constraints of time and memory to return to the life he had with his father, but the manuscript remained unpublished for years and was repeatedly rejected.
Eventually, Tinkers found its way into print through a small publisher. It has since won the Pulitzer Prize.
The important thing to remember is not to confuse publishing with writing, Paul says.
“I felt that I was having my fair share of rejection, along with everyone else. But in the meantime it helped to think ‘hey, if I don’t get published, at least that means I can write whatever I want’. Art for art’s sake.”
‘It’s worth the trouble’
This is the advice Paul now offers to first-time novelists in the light of his experience.
“Be dogged. First, it can take a lot of time and effort for your manuscript to find the editor or agent who is going to love it and be its best advocate.
“Second, keep in mind that you’re working on something that might have profound meaning for other people someday – so it’s worth the trouble.”
And it’s that connection between the writing and reader that is key to producing exceptional writing, Paul says.
“I think that all good writing activates a sense of recognition in the reader.
“It’s the sense of ‘I’ve seen that before; I’ve felt that way before’.
“My favourite moments as a reader are when I realise that I’ve just read something that is true, and I’ve always known it to be true, and I’ve never seen anyone put it into words before.”
‘Read the best’
One of the most important jobs for a writer is to expose themselves to the best writing they can lay their hands on, Paul says.
“If you’re serious, you need to know what your art can do at its very best.
“You need to know the high-water marks of your chosen art, humbling as it is to compare your own stuff to it.”
The books that have inspired Paul are the classics. “I read and re-read older books – and tons of theology,” he says.
He freely admits to having barely made it past 1950 in terms of who he has and has not read. His favourites include Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain, Tolstoy’s War and Peace, Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past, and The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James.
Paul’s view is simple. “Time sorts art out, in some ways.”
Cultivating artistic vision
When he thinks back to his education in creative writing, he remembers his tutors showing him how they modelled the life of the mind that was necessary for making art.
He says: “I was privileged to watch people conducting their lives at the highest levels of intellectual and aesthetic sophistication.”
At Abroad‘s Hever Castle conference this November, he will be helping participants cultivate their own intellectual and aesthetic autonomy.
Paul explains: “I want to help them on their way to their own artistic visions, whatever they are, in whatever idiom.”
As for Paul’s own Cinderella story, he says he is now just “carrying all of the good fortune forward”.
Paul has already drafted his second novel, Enon, which is set in the same fictional world as Tinkers. He expects his next book to be out by summer next year.
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