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Blanche d’Alpuget became fascinated with the 12th century as a teenager, but it took another 50 years before she was inspired to write a five-book series about the first Plantagenet King of England, King Henry II and his superstar wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine, the richest woman in Europe at that time. Between the two of them, they were two of the most outstanding monarchs England has ever had.
I say inspired because when she talks about writing the series, she says that she sat down at her laptop and became totally immersed in the Plantagenet world for hours on end.
Hi there, I’m your host, Jenny Wheeler, and today in The Joys of Binge Reading Blanche talks about how the Plantagenets are attracting new attention from historians after years of having their reputations sullied by Murder in The Cathedral and T. S Elliot’s slant on Becket’s murder.
We’ve got three E-book copies of the first book in the series, The Young Lion to give away to three lucky readers. Enter the Royal House Giveaway on the website, the Joys of Binge Reading.com, or on our Binge Reading Facbook page.
But before we get to Blanche, just a reminder, Binge Reading is now on Patreon. For as little as a cup of coffee a month, you can support the show and get fortnightly exclusive bonus content. Find out more on www.patreon.com/thejoysofbingereading.com.
Six things you’ll learn from this Joys of Binge Reading episode:
- Why writing mysteries is like composing songs
- How ‘writing what you know’ worked for her
- Her passion for all things French
- Why parity for women mystery authors is important
- The writers she admires most
- What she’d do differently second time around
Introducing author Blanche d’Alpuget
Where to find Blanche d’Alpuget
Website: https://www.simonandschuster.com/authors/Blanche-dAlpuget/2637
Goodreads: https://amzn.to/3BWUXGO
https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/443884.Blanche_d_Alpuget
Amazon: https://amzn.to/3BWUXGO
What follows is a “near as” transcript of our conversation, not word for word but pretty close to it, with links to important mentions.
But now, here’s Blanche.
Jenny Wheeler: Hello there Blanche, and welcome to the show. It is wonderful to have you with us.
Blanche d’Alpuget: Thank you very much, Jenny. It’s really generous of you.
Jenny Wheeler: You have had a remarkable career as a journalist and novelist, and in public life as the wife of former Australian Prime Minister, Bob Hawke.
But today we’re here to talk about your latest masterpiece, the historical fiction series around the first generation of Plantagenet Kings – the founding family who, in various guises, dominated the life of England for 300 years.
You have written a number of award-winning contemporary literary novels in your earlier career, but this is quite a departure in terms of being a historical work and also being more in the line of genre fiction. What drew you to this rambunctious family?
Blanche d’Alpuget: In my late teens I was absolutely fascinated by the 12th century. I bought a whole lot of little books about it, which have now disappeared from print, from a tiny little bookshop in a lane in Sydney, and that has also disappeared. All the lanes have been covered over in Sydney just about.
I had what ended up being a very big collection of stuff about the 12th century, and when I wanted to turn to writing again after a long break from writing fiction, I first thought, as one does when thinking of the 12th century and great characters, of Richard I, Richard the Lionheart. I did quite a bit of reading on him, and then I thought, I really hate this guy. I still do.
Hooked on Henry. Henry II that is, one of England’s greatest Kings
Then I thought, I’ll look at his father, and that was it. I started to read about Richard’s father, Henry II, and I was totally hooked. Indeed, contemporary historians are now beginning to recognize that Henry II was one of England’s greatest kings. He was the earliest Plantagenet King, and also one of its earliest kings. He united the country in a way it hadn’t been before. So there we go. I was hooked on Henry.
Jenny Wheeler: It’s funny isn’t it, that Richard has got that sobriquet ‘The Lionheart’ as if he was a chivalrous, fantastic person, and yet certainly in your book, he doesn’t come through that way at all.
Blanche d’Alpuget: No, and he only got the title Lionheart years after his death, too. He was never known as that while he was alive.
Jenny Wheeler: You say in the author’s note to The Young Lion, which is the first book in the series and tells us the beginnings of how Henry got to the English throne, that the writing of it was proceeded by what you describe as a mighty gong.
For those who used to go to the movies in the 50s and 60s, there was this gong that sounded when a movie was coming on. You almost sounded as if it was some sort of mystical experience that led you to decide to start on this. I wondered, what was the catalyst for that gong sounding?
Blanche d’Alpuget: It was really going back to my late teenage years and this original fascination with the 12th century and 12th century people. That was the gong chiming in my head.
Henry viewed differently in England and in France
Jenny Wheeler: When you went to France to do your research for this book, because Henry started out as a French count and a duke, you mentioned that the French had a rather different view of Henry II that came through in their literature to what the English did. I wondered if you could maybe tease out for us a little bit what those differences were.
Blanche d’Alpuget: Yes, sure. To start with Henry was never a King of France but perhaps more importantly than that, he was a Norman. The Normans were Vikings, basically. That’s how Normandy was formed. The Vikings used to come down and raid the coast of France until they sailed up the Seine and said to the King of France, give us a piece of your countryside or we’re going to take Paris. The King wisely gave them Normandy, so the Normans and the French have never a hundred percent loved each other.
That’s one thing. The other thing is of course, France is a Republic and England is a kingdom, and France is Catholic and England is Anglican, and Henry is, rightly in my view, blamed for the murder of Thomas Beckett, who is a revered Saint among the Catholics.
Every week there are busloads of French who go across the channel to see the spot in Canterbury Cathedral where Beckett was murdered. There is a prejudice among French historians towards Henry.
Jenny Wheeler: It’s interesting that that pilgrimage to Canterbury should still be going on today, isn’t it?
Blanche d’Alpuget: Yes, he is an important saint. Trinity Sunday, which has been celebrated quite recently, was the date he made up himself. It was the date he was elevated to be head of Canterbury Cathedral, and he declared it Trinity Sunday. It has been observed ever since by Catholics and some high Anglicans.
Thomas Beckett’s different aspects of character – saint or oily moneyman?
Jenny Wheeler: When you see the picture that you present of Beckett in this book, probably if he hadn’t died the way he did, he would never have become a saint like he has.
Blanche d’Alpuget: Oh, never. His reputation in his lifetime was not good. He’d been a financier. When he was a young man, before he went into the church – he never became a priest – he was known as oily Tom. He was very, very good at finance and at raising money and he became Henry’s Chancellor and was an outstanding Chancellor. He could get blood out of a stone and did, for the king.
But then he saw a better way of advancement. Because he didn’t come from an aristocratic family, he came from a fairly commonplace family, he saw the way of advancement was through the church. He vigorously climbed that ladder, which was there for smart young men to climb, and he was certainly very smart. Sharp as a whip.
Jenny Wheeler: We know that the founding pair of the Plantagenets were Henry II and his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine. They were both highly gifted monarchs in their own right, I think it would be fair to say. However, their children certainly did not carry on that political savvy that their parents had, and you can’t help thinking that if Henry and Eleanor had been better parents, would the whole course of English history be different from what it is now?
Child rearing in the age of medieval aristocracy – very different
Blanche d’Alpuget: You might can’t help think that right now, but let me tell you that back then, monarchs did not raise their own children. In fact, very few of the aristocracy ever did raise their own children in England, or in France for that matter. It was normal, when a child was between three and six, to be sent to another family to be raised. It wasn’t that they were bad parents. Parenting just wasn’t done that way then. Initially they had a wet nurse and then they would be sent to somebody’s household.
In the case of Henry and Eleanor, they sent their eldest son to Beckett to raise as his godchild, so it’s not an argument against them as parents.
Jenny Wheeler: That’s good to know, because none of the sons really shaped up as being a suitable successor to the parents, did they?
Blanche d’Alpuget: Well, in a way, although I hate him terribly, Richard I, Richard the Lionheart did. He was an extraordinarily brave man, but he was foolhardy. He also happened to be six foot four or five, we know from his armor. He was very warlike, very aggressive, and he had the great advantage of very long arms, which if you are fighting with the sword is fantastic.
Jenny Wheeler: Yes, but he only spent a few months of his whole reign actually in England, didn’t he?
Blanche d’Alpuget: Yes. Just six months in England, and never bothered to learn English.
Jenny Wheeler: I guess he had some very able administrators there.
262 words
A Civil Service that ran the country – Henry’s invention
Blanche d’Alpuget: He did. That was thanks to his father who created the art of government, of being able to rule a huge amount of land on both sides of the sea, in England and then in France, without physically being present himself. Having very good administrators and having established a civil service that would rule in the absence of the physical presence of the king – that was unique in Europe. Henry invented that.
Jenny Wheeler: The books come alive. There is the most fantastic amount of what seems to me to be true detail in them. I wonder how you married up your research and the fact and fiction side of things, which is the challenge for every historical writer. How did you find that balance?
Blanche d’Alpuget: It’s funny, but I used to find when I’d go in and sit down to write, it was as if I could see it all. Honestly. I would leave home and I had this ugly little apartment where I wrote. I had done a lot of research, so I had a great deal of stuff in my head, but I’d sit down and the characters absolutely came alive for me and, as it were, talked to me and told me what was happening and showed me what was happening.
Jenny Wheeler: There were two in particular that stuck out for me in terms of curiosity about the balance between the fact and fiction. The first was the young minstrel who eventually became Sir Richard. The one Henry called “the lout”, who became his fixer for all sorts of nasty problems. I think he was totally fictional, was he, or was he based on anyone real?
Spys and courtiers in the courts of Kings
Blanche d’Alpuget: He was totally fictional, but he was the sort of courtier every king needed. He was a spy. He was Henry’s chief of espionage and of dirty tricks, so of course the name of such a person is not going to appear in the historical records. He was fictional, but he was based on what one knows about the operation and exercise of power.
Jenny Wheeler: The other one was Hamelin, the Earl of Surrey. He was a real character, but I think you gave him probably a huge, amazing backstory that was not there in the records. Would that be right?
Blanche d’Alpuget: That’s true, yes. I felt a very deep connection with Hamelin. I could absolutely see him the whole time.
Jenny Wheeler: You couldn’t help but be partly repulsed by Richard. Nevertheless, he had his charms, but Hamelin was fantastic as a character.
The spiritual aspect for all those key characters was quite strong. I’m thinking of Henry and Hamelin, and the Scotsman, Douglas. They all had experiences where mystical wisdom was imparted to them at key moments when they had to make critical decisions. I read an interesting thing – you say that mysticism was very much part of life in this time in a way that it isn’t in our time. We tend to maybe dismiss it.
Talk to us a little bit about that. Did that come through in the records as well?
Blanche d’Alpuget: In the histories I read it doesn’t, except every now and again there would be an implication of something. Certainly with Eleanor, she had a particular mystical experience when her eldest child was killed.
The importance of mysticism in medieval life
The thing to remember is that we mustn’t judge the past by contemporary standards. The past is a different country. The church and mysticism were integral to their lives and it’s integral to these stories. It was real to them. For example, relics of saints. They were taken absolutely seriously and indeed, a lot of the time they did cure illnesses and arrange marriages and do all sorts of things that people prayed to them to do.
But you must remember that right now, in the 21st century, a placebo will have a 30% chance of success, although it’s made of nothing, in curing an illness. We have a mystical belief in science and placebos, so that’s the point I’m making there.
Jenny Wheeler: You’ve remarked that you have quite a strong spiritual practice yourself. I wondered if you would be comfortable telling us a little bit more about that aspect of your life.
Blanche d’Alpuget: I went to live in Java when I was young. I was only 22, which is thousands of years ago, of course, and if there was one adjective that you would apply to the Javanese back then it was that they were mystical. I had my first adult experience of mysticism when I was 22, when I spent a lot of time with Javanese mystics. That led me, when I was 28, to start meditating. Since then, I have meditated on and off up until now, another thousand years.
There are more things in your philosophy Horatio . . .
I guess I’m very familiar with mystical things, so my own spiritual experience comes through. I would call myself a Christian. I don’t go to any church, but I’m still an absolute Christian and when I meditate, it is through what I would call the Christ. It’s not the sort of Christ described in the Bible. It’s an energy. I suppose I’ve just confused you more.
Jenny Wheeler: No, I thought you were going to say it’s not the Christ they talk about in the Bible Belt in the US.
Blanche d’Alpuget: Well, that too. Absolutely.
Jenny Wheeler: You had a lot happening in your private life over this period that you’ve been writing these five books. I think probably some of that time Bob’s health was declining and you were helping him through his final years.
Then also, towards the end, you had the personal challenge of breast cancer, possibly when you were finishing the last book, The Cubs Roar. I wondered if these books had become some sort of an escape for you, or were they particularly hard to finish under those circumstances?
Blanche d’Alpuget: They weren’t hard to finish because as you would know, and any fiction writer knows, you don’t need the discipline. People say, where do you get the discipline for writing? You’re so motivated to do it. It’s such a pleasure to go into another world. In Bob’s final years, I used to go off to work very happily, not to escape from him in any way, because we adored each other so much. But he had a carer, or he was usually still asleep when I went to work. I would have five wonderful hours back in the 12th century, and then I’d get in my car and drive into the 21st. That’s how it worked.
Building a legacy for the future
Jenny Wheeler: Turning away from talking about the specific books to your wider career, Henry and Eleanor obviously were preoccupied by this idea of legacy and building a monarchy. Who succeeded them and how they were going to be viewed was obviously important to them. I wondered how important a sense of legacy was to you, and what hopes you had to leave a legacy, if it does mean something to you
Blanche d’Alpuget: I think I’ve always wanted to share the knowledge that I have, such as it is, with other people. I was in one of the earliest waves of Australians who went to Asia. My first novels were set in Asia and part of my first biography was set in Asia too, in Indonesia.
It has been that act of sharing that I would like to think of as a legacy. These books, because they seemed to come to me almost mystically, almost as a channel, I hope people will find in them a legacy of what life in the 12th century was.
Jenny Wheeler: Do you think the Plantagenets have become more interesting to 20th-21st century people?
Blanche d’Alpuget: Well, as I said, contemporary historians are now reassessing Henry II, who was out of favor for a hell of a long time because of the murder of Becket, and I might say because of the play by, oh, his name has gone out of my head.
Jenny Wheeler: The Lion in Winter, was it?
Blanche d’Alpuget: No, Murder in the Cathedral. The Lion in Winter was a terrific movie. That was with Peter O’Toole and Katherine Hepburn. It wasn’t an accurate portrait of Henry at all by Peter O’Toole who played him. He wasn’t anything like Henry.
Movies that feature Plantagenets – Murder In The Cathedral
It was T.S. Eliot who did Murder in the Cathedral, which of course poured a great deal of ordure over Henry II. Now he is being looked at again more seriously, and what he achieved was truly astonishing.
Jenny Wheeler: A perennial question I like to ask everyone. Looking back at your career, and singling out your writing career, is there one thing you’ve done that you think has been the secret to your success?
Blanche d’Alpuget: Yes, it’s very prosaic. I have been well financially supported, initially by my first husband, then by the Australian Literature Board, and then by my second husband. Without money, it’s very hard to write. You have got to have a more or less full-time job and write in the margins of your time. But I was fortunate in having two men and the government willing to support my writing.
Jenny Wheeler: It’s wonderful that you’re so refreshingly honest about that. I have done nearly 200 of these podcasts now, and the one thing I’ve picked up over that time, although we never talk directly about money, is how many of these authors, who are writing terrific books and some of them get onto the New York Times Best-Seller List, but most of them are not making a decent living out of it.
I saw a stat the other day that 98% of the fiction books published by trad publishers sell less than 5,000 copies. You can’t make it a living on that, can you?
Gratitude for essential State support for the arts
Blanche d’Alpuget: No, you cannot. You need money from elsewhere. For example, Australia’s best-known writer because he won the Nobel Prize, Patrick White, had a huge private income. He was a member of the squattocracy, as we call the rich graziers here. I don’t know how it is in New Zealand, but the Literature Board has been enormously important to Australian writers for allowing them to keep going when otherwise they would just give up.
You get too tired. Writing takes an enormous amount of psychic energy. If you have worked full-time or you’re looking after kids if you’re a woman – or a man for that matter these days – and trying to write, it is too exhausting and you’re taking a very long while to do it.
Jenny Wheeler: Yes. Thinking of yourself as that 20-year-old in Asia and considering life today, has it unfolded in the way you expected? Have you got unfinished business still?
Blanche d’Alpuget: Yes, I have. I have traveled an enormous amount and I’ve lived in a number of countries, but I really want to travel some more, which is now impossible for a few years. I would like to see a lot more of Australia, which is possible and impossible. At the moment South Australia has closed its borders to people from certain parts of Sydney, including where I live in Sydney, but I hope as we get more vaccinated that will ease off and more travel will be there.
And I wouldn’t mind falling in love again.
Blanche as a reader – What she is reading now
Jenny Wheeler: Wonderful, Blanche. Turning to Blanche as reader – we always like to do this because this is a podcast where we try and suggest books to people that they are going to love, books they are not wanting to put down. What are you reading at the moment? Have you ever in the past, or now, been a binge reader?
Blanche d’Alpuget: I’ll go the second part first. In the distant past I binge read lots of authors when I was learning to write. You have to read a lot to be able to write. I binge read every single thing that V.S. Naipaul wrote until I got to hate him. More recently, I read everything by Michel Houellebecq who is essentially an absolutely awful man. So is Naipaul, as far as I could see. But great, great writers. I have just finished Houellebecq’s latest novel called Serotonin.
The author I do like binge reading who is not so literary as those two guys is Robert Harris, who I think is fantastic. His trilogy on Cicero is magnificent. Well, Cicero is the main character, but it goes through until Julius Caesar is who he is, and has Cicero murdered. It is a really marvelous book. I will read anything that Robert Harris writes.
Jenny Wheeler: What are you currently reading?
Blanche d’Alpuget: I’m currently reading two books. One of them is by a friend of mine who is a Sydneyphile, if I can say that, called Al Clark. He was the producer of a famous movie called Priscilla Queen of the Desert. This is the first part of his memoir called Time Flies, and it’s him growing up in Spain. I’ve only just started that.
Some more favorites for Blanche d’Alpuget
The other book I’m very much enjoying at the moment is, in English, The Fire of Joy. This is what it says on the title: “Roughly 80 poems to get by heart and say aloud.” They are chosen by the Australian who recently died – brilliant polymath called Clive James. I’m reading those. So, every night I’m reading some poetry and Clive James’s comment on that poetry, and at the same time I’m reading Al Clark’s memoir.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adventures_of_Priscilla,_Queen_of_the_Desert
Jenny Wheeler: Are you tempted to memorize any of those poems?
Blanche d’Alpuget: I’m trying. It’s damn difficult unless it’s something that you learned at school like Ozymandias.
Jenny Wheeler: We’re coming to the end of our time together, so circling around and looking back down the tunnel of time, if you were doing it all over again – and we are still referring to your writing career – what would you change, if anything?
Blanche d’Alpuget: I would have read a lot more than I did before I started writing, and I would have read a lot more poetry.
Jenny Wheeler: Interesting. I heard a podcast recently, Marianne Faithfull reading romantic poets. I must admit I haven’t had a chance to listen to her, but she had a whole section on this podcast that I listened to where she’s reading romantic poets. It seems to be a thing, this poetry thing.
Blanche d’Alpuget: Well baby, I was unaware of that myself.
Jenny Wheeler: What is next for Blanche, the writer? Have you got any ongoing projects at the moment, or are you taking a breather after this magnificent work?
Future plans include taking a well earned rest from writing
Blanche d’Alpuget: Thank you for so describing it. I am taking a breather because I had breast cancer last year, and I was being treated for most of the year. I’ve decided to take all of this year off, and my brain is absolutely vacant, so I’m not thinking of writing anything, no.
Jenny Wheeler: Are you enjoying that time?
Blanche d’Alpuget: Yes, I am, because as you would be aware, a writer’s life is you’re locked up by yourself, staring at a screen all day for the best part of the day. Social life is very restricted. I’m having great fun going to lunch and shopping and catching up with all my old friends from teenage years and early twenties. I’m really loving it.
Jenny Wheeler: That’s fantastic. Do you entertain chatting with your readers online? Do you do any sort of engagement, or are you doing some promotional work for this latest of your five books? How can people find you if they want to?
Blanche d’Alpuget: I don’t do chatting online. When social media first entered the universe, I had a good look at it and I thought, that is not for me. I am going nowhere near it. All I do is emails. People can email me and I’ll email them back, or they can write to me and I’ll write back. But I don’t do chatting online, I don’t do blogs or any of that sort of thing. It seriously doesn’t appeal to me.
The thing is, Jenny, I was in the public eye a great deal. I was also for years trolled before social media, and it absolutely put me off.
Jenny Wheeler: I can totally understand that. Thank you so much for being with us today. I salute you with that five books series. It’s fantastic.
Blanche d’Alpuget: Thank you, Jenny. I’m most grateful.
If you enjoyed hearing about Blanche and the Plantagenets….
you might also enjoy Candace Robb’s medieval mysteries set in York,
