Writing narrative history
‘It encapsulates everything I love about medieval history. I'm interested in power and how it worked in an age where you've got no standing army, no professional police force, no modern communications - how does a government in Westminster rule a whole country? You've got these two individuals - first cousins, almost exactly the same age but such utterly different men - brought to the point where the failings of one mean that the other has to take over, causing a whole different set of problems. If you wrote it in fiction it would look too neat. And of course the fact that Shakespeare has told their story so gloriously is a whole other layer drawing you in...
Narrative is the key for me, and this is the key step away from the kind of history I was writing when I was teaching in a university. What I want to do is to stand in the shoes of the protagonists in my story, try and see through their eyes, so chronology becomes absolutely crucial, instead of the rather eagle-eyed academic overview where you're trying to analyse structures and processes.'
Helen Casto, author of The Eagle and the Hart: The Tragedy of Richard II and Henry V, She-Wolves: the Women Who Ruled England Before Elizabeth and Joan of Arc, in the Observer.
