A few more photos: Apologies for strange formatting!

Here are a few more photos from my Norfolk research visit. For some reason the formatting won't let me publish more than a handful at a time. The first is a photograph of the interior of Framlingham Castle. The wall on the right in the shade with the two narrow Norman chimneys and window holes is where Roger and Ida's first home was - the old hall, with the chapel adjoining where the figures are. If you check back in my archieves, you can see an artist's impression of this hall. url here. http://tinyurl.com/yuoakm


The second picture shows the other side of the ward and the site of Roger and Ida's new hall, completed circa 1200 (he started building 1189/1190) The remnant of that hall is the building at the end of the row looking to the right with a white left side and blue door.








The third picture shows the mere, looking from the wall walk near Roger's new hall. In his day, it would have been a much larger spread out marsh.










The Bigod family had important sea-faring connections. They owned among other coastal villages Cromer, Hunstanton, Yarmouth and Ipswich. This photograph was taken on the way to Cromer for afternoon tea. I've used sea imagery in the novel for some of Roger's traits, and I get the impression he enjoyed his coastal territories and was a good sailor (unlike William Marshal!)

Family Crisis: Timewatch: Norfolk

I'm covering several bases in this blog.
First to say I might be a bit sporadic posting for a while but will try to keep posting on a regular basis. My mother in law is severely disabled i.e. she cannot cope on her own. Her main carer, my father in law was taken to hospital last night after a fall. My schedule is going to have to be rearranged as we work round this, so online time will be one of the casualties. For readers awaiting the new novel - don't worry. It's on track and will be delivered on time!

Timewatch. I've said quite a lot about it on the BBC2 Timewatch forum, although you'll need to scroll around a bit as the new posts are about their latest episode. http://tinyurl.com/37kkan
I feel the programme was reasonable entertainment for those who knew nothing or were generally interested, but very frustrating for viewers in the know or with an interest in The Marshal. It was mostly about the tournament and William Marshal was obviously a convenient peg on which to hang the subject rather than being a subject in his own right - so a massively missed opportunity. Professor Crouch and Juliet Barker knew their stuff and mostly I enjoyed the 'talking heads' section, although Saul David goes to knightschool was not as edifying. I was surprised to see one of the producers telling the forum that Geoffrey, son of King Henry II, had been killed at a siege by a crossbow bolt. (thus confusing him with his brother Richard the Lionheart) and the same again when the Grand Master of the Temple Church thought he might have 3 sons of William Marshal among the effigies. Actually there are 2. You'd think the custodian would know. Then again see an earlier blog of mine:
http://tinyurl.com/yook4a
Verdict - Interesting in a general sort of way but but rather uneven on its subject matter and could have been better presented and scripted.

My next main blog piece, inspired by thoughts while watching the programme, will be about the warhorses of William Marshal and co. (they barely got a mention)

Finally I said I'd post some photos of my research photos and inspirations to my blog, so here they are to entertain during what I hope won't be too long an absence.

Anon
Elizabeth
p.s. The formatting on the blog post has decided to play up, and will only let me post 4 photographs at the moment.... one of those days I suspect! Apologies
The pictures are of Framlingham Castle, Castle Acre, some blind arcading at Wymondham Abbey and the Prior's house at Castle Acre Priory.

William Marshal. The Greatest Knight: Timewatch Reminder

A reminder that the Timewatch programme about William Marshal - The Greatest Knight - is on BBC2 on Saturday at 8.10pm if you're in the UK!

The write up sounds as if it might be a bit 'boy's own' adventure without the budget, but it will be interesting to see how much of the essence of the great man - the Winston Churchill of his day - they actually manage to capture. I've just listened to the audio clip. Hmmm.... a lot about tournaments and warfare etc but very, very little about the Marshal himself. I really, really hope the programme focuses on the all round achievements of this remarkable, charismatic personality and doesn't just concentrate on the prowess of his lance. There was so much more to William Marshal than that. You can listen to the audio clip here: http://tinyurl.com/27cayj
There was a comment made that knights didn't have particular well developed leg muscles.. I don't know how true this is in an archaelogical context, but it seems to me that your legs would have to do a lot of work on the tourney field keeping you in the saddle. They wouldn't just be extraneous appendages. I'd be interested to know from a more informed viewpoint than that of the audio commentators.

The Next Lot of Research Books

Here is the next chunk of research books I've used to help me write THE TIME OF SINGING.
These are the more general ones involving politics and aspects of Medieval life. I've not listed them all, I'd still be here this time next week, but here's a cross-section selection. (try saying that 3 times fast!)
The picture is from The Castle Story by Sheila Sancha. It's a fabulous resource detailing the history of castle building throughout the Middle Ages. I particularly like it for its clear diagrams and reconstruction illustrations which have really helped me get a grasp on how things might have looked. If you click on the picture, it should enlarge to give you a good idea of how Framlingham Castle looked before my hero, Roger Bigod, rebuilt it when he was finally granted the earldom in 1189.

Also for the story of Framlingham Castle, I used a detailed article in Castles Conquests and Charters: The Collected Papers of R.Allen Brown published by Boydell.

English Heritage's guidebook to Framlingham Castle

Norman Stone Castles (1) The British Isles 1066-1216 by Christopher Gravell, illustrated by Adam Hook, Osprey Publishing. Fortress series. Has a good diagram of Framlingham's curtain wall and how it worked in defending the castle

The Building of Orford Castle - a translation from the Pipe rolls 1163 - 78 translation by Valerie Potter.

The Birth of the English Common Law by R.C. Caenegem - Cambridge University Press

English Justice between the Norman Conquest and the Great Charter 1066-1215 by Doris M. Stenton

England Under the Norman and Angevin Kings by Robert Bartlett

The City of London from Prehistoric Times to 1520: edited by Mary Lobel (maps)

Survey of Medieval Winchester vols 1 and 2 by Derek Keane

Old London Bridge Lost and Found by Bruce Watson - Museum of London


England Without Richard 1189-1199 by John. T. Appleby

The Medieval Garden by Sylvia Landsberg

Tournament by David Crouch

Armies and Warfare in the Middle Ages: The English Experience by Michael Prestwich

The Sword in the Age of Chivalry by Ewart Oakeshott

Cogs, Caravels and Galleons: The Sailing Ship 1000 - 1650 - Conway's History of the Ship

Sexuality in Medieval Europe: doing unto others by Ruth Mazo Karras

The Plantagenet Empire 1154-1224 by Martin Aurell

Next time, for a finale, I'll post a few pictures from my own gallery of photographs I have used to inform and inspire me.

Continuing the Research Books

Next up as promised, here is the list of my primary source research books used in the writing of THE TIME OF SINGING. I don't read Latin, but I can have a good guess at some of the gist when it isn't in translation - although obviously it's a boon when a translation is available. All of the below material is from sources around at the same time as my characters, so I feel they give me an immediate handle into their world and one that I can interpret for myself at first hand, rather than have it go through the filter of later opinion.

Not in any order:
Jocelin of Brakelond: Chronicle of the Abbey of Bury St. Edmunds.
Histoire de Guillaume le Mareschal, vols 1 and 2 - Anglo Norman Text Society
Richard FitzNigel - Dialogus de Scaccario - Oxford Medieval texts
Constitutio Domus Regis - Oxford Medieval Texts
The Treatise on the Laws and Customs of the Realm of England Commonly Called Glanvill - edited and translated by G.D.G. Hall - Oxford Medieval Texts
The Church Historians of England vol 1V part 1. The Chronicles of Melrose and Jordan Fantosme's Chronicle
The Great Roll of the Pipe for the 9th Year of Richard I. Click on the picture below for a larger image and you should be able to see an example of the pleas my hero Roger Bigod was hearing in Yorkshire in this period during his term as a royal justice on the itinerant circuit.

Feet of Fines for the 7th and 8th years of the Reign of Richard I - Pipe Roll Society

Feet of Fines for Norfolk and Suffolk 1199 - 1215
Pipe Roll Society

Court, Household and Itinerary of Henry II - collated and translated by the Rev. R. W. Eyton.

Roger of Wendover's Flowers of History volume 2 part 1. 1170 - 1215 AD

That's about it I think, although there may be one or two others lurking in forgotten corners. Next time round I'll list the political and social history sources that haven't fitted into these first two categories.

New Year, New Title, and grubbing among the tomes

First of all A Happy New Year to everyone and hope that it's a good one!

For me the first of January was deadline time to have a title for the work in progress. For the last year it's been known as Roger and Ida - the names of the protagonists, but obviously that's not what it's going to be called when it arrives in bookseller's catalogues. I had made a few suggestions to my publisher but there was nothing we could agree on. Finally, over the Christmas break, I got out my bible and headed off to the work of Ecclesiasts, Proverbs and the Song of Solomon to see if there was anything there that would fit. Eureka there was. Roger and Ida I now hereby officially name THE TIME OF SINGING. This comes from the lines:

'My beloved speaks and says to me:
'Arise my love, my fair one,
and come away;
for lo, the winter is past,
the rain is over and gone.
The flowers appear on the earth
the time of singing has come.'

Isn't that just beautiful? I have always loved the song of Solomon. It's a beautiful poem. The quote is very appropriate to the novel because when Roger first sets eyes on Ida she is singing, and she loves music. Gardens and orchards feature quite a lot in the novel too. There's also a line from the poem that says: 'Your flowing locks are like purple; a king is held captive in the tresses.' Since Ida had an affair with King Henry II before she married Roger Bigod, I felt that this line was synchronicity. I had been let to the right place and I am relieved to have a title to take the novel forward.

I thought I'd begin listing the research books I've been using to write THE TIME OF SINGING.
Perhaps a handful at a time. They won't be in any sort of order - just as they are assembled on the shelf above my PC at the moment. I have an extensive research library but the books I know I'm going to need to refer to, I pull out of the stacks and keep close.

Obviously biographies of the most important personages are important.
The main ones I have used - other than checking out the Dictionary of National biography online are:

The Bigod Family: an investigation into their lands and activities 1086-1306 by Susan Atkin (PHD thesis)
Henry II by W. L. Warren
King John by W. L. Warren
Eleanor of Acquitaine by Marion Meade
Eleanor: April Queen of Aquitaine by Douglas Boyd
Eleanor of Acquitaine and the Four Kings by Amy Kelly
Richard I by John Gillingham
The Bigod Earls of Norfolk in the Thirteenth Century by Marc Morris
William Marshal, Knighthood War and Chivarly 1147-1219
Who's Who in Medieval England by Christopher Tyerman

Next up in a few days the primary sources:

Post Script. Roger Bigod's Christmas

I mentioned in the post below (Merrie Christmas) that I'd post an Akashic moment re a Christmas spent with my current hero Roger Bigod, Earl of Norfolk and his wife Ida de Tosny, former mistress of King Henry II.
I asked Akashic consultant Alison King to go back to the early years of their marriage, before Roger was granted the Earldom.
Here's a snapshot moment.

Alison: Oh, this is Roger feeling ohhhhh, this is lovely. This is not at all like his usual calm self. Shivers down the back, a spark in the left side near his solar plexus. Smiles, happiness, ohhhh, spiciness! A myriad of tastes and colours. This is the slim, slight, light younger man. I comment that Alison had once compared him to a ballet dancer. Yes, not tall, but with that kind of muscular formation. I am getting the shivering feelings again. They are playing hobby horses and the horses are all incredibly decorated. He’s watching this (Alison laughs). They’re having an indoor tournament, but instead of spears they’ve got kind of dumbbell rattles with a ball on either end of the stick and they’re assaulting each other. It’s hilarious. There are bells on the hobby horses as well. It’s not ever so serious because the hobby horse jousters are doing it theatrically for the audience, so it’s a bit of a performance. I think they may be re-enacting recent conflicts and taking the mickey out of people. One person theatrically fell off his horse and the other person was over him with his dumbbell and got his small sword out (Alison waves to demonstrate). Everyone’s cheering. ‘Yay!’ Obviously the one who fell got his just deserts. Alison whoops with laughter. Now there’s a man dressed as a woman. Flicking the wimple and the hair and adjusting the jewels on the headdress. It’s a little bit like Les Dawson in drag – the over-accentuated female movements. He’s telling jokes about who loves who in the castle. It’s telling tales and generally really just embarrassing people – ‘I could tell you a tale or two, but I wouldn’t of course because that would be telling.’ And then he goes on to reveal all. Is Roger the butt of any of these? Not so far. I don’t know if the man who is dressed up is pretending to be the gatekeeper or pretending to be the gatekeeper’s wife and getting all the gen from that. So it’s like party pieces from the castle staff? Yes! I’ll see if Roger has a performance to do. Yes, but his isn’t funny. It’s sword play. He does the twirly swords. (Alison demonstrates – a bit like a cowboy twirling a colt 45). Roger is very clever at this. He’s thrown a sword, somersaulted and caught it. That’s the grand finale. Then he puts the sword in the floorboards and gets a round of applause. A bit of a naughty thing to do, but it’s only once a year. Ida sings a song. Someone’s playing a stringed instrument. It’s got a big round body with a little neck and only a few strings. It’s played with a bow and it stands upright on the table. That’s the end of the party. Everyone can have some more mulled wine and then get back to their private conversation.