Football is a Numbers Game

I have a confession to make: despite this being an unusual topic for this blog, it wasn’t really hard for me to decide to invite our guest to share today. I did think about it. For a minute or two. But then I sent off the invite via email, and now here we are.

But Stephanie, you say, the title of this article uses the word football. And Sharon never wrote about American football. That’s true. Nor did she write about any other sport, since you brought it up.

All of that is true. But bear with me. Fans who followed Sharon closely for any amount of time on social media and her blog know that Sharon had a few passions in life: history, animals, her family and friends, and football (and not even necessarily in that order). Over the course of my friendship with her, it was a rare Sunday during the NFL season that we didn’t connect about football, either before a game, during a game, or after a game. And oftentimes all of the above. She subscribed to sports channels so she could keep track of the league at large, watched multiple games simultaneously on game day, knew the latest gossip on coaches and teams, new trade deals, injury reports… so basically all the things. And she held very strong opinions, the strongest of which was her love of the Philadelphia Eagles. Being a Minnesota Vikings fan, I tried not to hold that against her. We can’t all be perfect.

Since I became the caretaker of Sharon’s website and blog, I have tried to mirror presenting things that Sharon herself would have presented: talking about her books and their histories, hosting guests, and introducing you to newly published books. Today I want to do all of those things wrapped up into one. Sharon loved football. I’ve invited a guest to her blog, and this guest is going to introduce you to his new book (published October 3).

I’ve followed Matthew Coller for about three years now, initially through his daily podcast about Vikings football, but since have become a subscriber to his daily newsletter and Substack. Matthew is a beat reporter who loves football, and he self-admittedly does little other than footbally things. (He is also a chess fanatic, eats a lot of Taco Bell, and drinks Diet Dr. Pepper… but that’s for another day.) When I found out he had written a book about the history of the data analytics giant PFF (Pro Football Focus), I knew I had to invite him to talk about it. Sharon would have loved his book and undoubtedly would have told her fans about it.

I think you all know someone who loves football, and I think Football Is a Numbers Game would make the perfect Christmas gift for someone on your list! So with that long-winded introduction out of the way, I give you Matthew Coller.

I want to start by admitting something: Until I was asked to write a guest article here, I had never heard of Sharon Kay Penman. If you are wondering why someone who has not read anything that Sharon wrote, that’s because Stephanie Ling asked me to write an article here about my upcoming book Football is a Numbers Game: PFF and How a Data-Driven Approach Shook Up the Game because Sharon, I’m told, loved football. 

©Graham Turner, Studio 88 Ltd.
https://www.studio88.co.uk/acatalog/Graham_Turner.html

I can see why a historical novel writer would be into football. It has its fiefdoms and drama, the winners are crowned and the losers get tarred and feathered. Football has a million little stories within a season and characters that captivate you and drive you crazy. Following the journeys of 53 players, coaches, managers and fans has always been the best part. I imagine watching months worth of games that tell a complete tale is similar to reading a novel and holding your breath as it all unfolds. 

Before writing this I read on Wikipedia about Sharon’s inspiration for The Sunne in Splendour inwhich she said King Richard III was “a classic case of history being rewritten by the victor.” Gosh, that happens all the time in football. It made me think about how close Tom Brady, considered the best quarterback ever, was to losing during all of his championships. He was often within one play of losing. Not that he wasn’t great, it’s just that he gets to be considered football’s king rather than its biggest choke artist because a few things went his way in the most important moments.

My impression is that Sharon and I have written about very different subjects for very similar reasons (though it only took reading a small amount to see that she was a far greater wordsmith). She would take one piece of history, research the heck out of it and then take you there with her storytelling. That is along the same lines of what I tried to do with my book, except in a non-fiction way. 

Football is a Numbers Game is about a band of football-loving people who came together through a confluence of unlikely events to build a data company that completely changed the way the football universe operates and views the game. It’s about a fun little project that was started by an Englishman with a football magazine and a computer that ultimately turned into a $160 million company that works with every pro and college football team. 

The Englishman, Neil Hornsby, started logging football statistics into spreadsheets while he was going through tough times in his first marriage. When he grew bored with some of the available numbers and analysis of the game, he started inventing his own stats. Using message boards, he found other people who were thinking along the same lines and put together a small group of football nuts who were willing to watch the games and write down things that happened to form these new stats. Through the internet he met a struggling minor league baseball player from Boston, a wine distributor in Napa Valley, a tech wizard looking to escape the corporate world, a college kid unsure of his future, a bored math professor and a number of others who thought it would be fun to participate. They never could have predicted that their life directions would all be changed by Neil’s project. 

Neil Hornsby

After they started publishing the information on the website ProFootballFocus.com, Neil’s little band of online friends were contacted by an NFL team and the largest sports broadcasting network in the world ESPN. It became more than just giggles at that point. In 2014, a highly respected sports broadcaster bought the company and aimed to build something special. Neil’s numbers eventually played a role in the Eagles winning the Super Bowl. 

But the road from playing in their football sandbox to operating a major company turned out to be more difficult than they could have expected. While they were changing the game, things inside the building grew tense and there were struggles over who would lead the company and in which direction they would take into the future.

Meanwhile there was a revolution going on in the sport. Football had always been an eye-test game but its leaders were starting to take notice that following the data could help them make better decisions. The data revolution didn’t just change the lives of Neil’s group. People who were never at the forefront of the game, like a Princeton grad with a Wall Street background who was hired as a general manager, began to get opportunities never seen before in the sport. Now there are data competitions that pro football teams use as hiring grounds to build their front offices. 

The crazy thing is that this only happened within a couple year span. It was only about five years ago when data exploded in the NFL. The people chronicled in my book might one day be looked at like the Wright Brothers of sports data.

I came away thinking about how something as deep in the sports woods as football analytics could end up having so many human stories behind it. 

So maybe you folks will like it. I wish I could give Sharon a copy and see if any of my characters reminder her of people in her books.  

Thanks to Stephanie for giving me the chance to say a few things about my book and her support of my day job, covering Minnesota’s football team. I appreciate all of your time and I’m thrilled to have learned more about Sharon. It’s not hard to see see why all of you are fans of her work. 

You can find Matthew’s book, Football Is a Numbers Game: Pro Football Focus and How a Data-Driven Approach Shook Up the Sport in stores, on Amazon, or from your favorite bookseller.

About Matthew Coller

Matthew officially became a Minnesotan when he moved from Buffalo, New York, to the Twin Cities to cover the Minnesota Vikings in 2016 for 1500ESPN Radio. He covered the team for 1500ESPN.com and the Purple Podcast. When the station rebranded as SKOR North, Matthew was given his own Monday-Friday show called Purple Daily, which offered 365-day per year coverage of the Vikings. In 2020, the station went off the airwaves due to COVID cuts and Matthew launched Purple Insider as a daily newsletter and podcast. He also wrote the book “Making of a Miracle: The story behind the Minnesota Vikings’ improbable 2017 season.”

You can read Matthew’s work and find his podcast at https://purpleinsider.com. You can also find him on X (@MatthewColler) and Substack (https://purpleinsider.substack.com/).

What are we going to do with all this stuff?

By Stephanie Churchill Ling

I remember standing in that room, shelves and shelves of books surrounding me, feeling like I was inside a highly curated private library. The truth is that I actually was in a highly curated private library. It just happened to belong to a dear friend and one of the most beloved historical fiction authors of the modern era. After so many visits, the smell of books, the rows and rows of research and notebooks, the bins of pamphlets, was so familiar to me. Now I faced the task of reconciling memories of a successful author with my memories of the sweet, unassuming woman who had collected it all.

“What are we going to do with all this stuff?” I asked Mary Glassman, who stood on the other side of the room with another armful of books she had just brought down from the upstairs office.

She didn’t even have to reply. Her face mirrored the same feelings of determined resignation as mine.

It was March 2021, and our dear friend, Sharon Kay Penman, had passed away only a handful of months previously. Lost in a sea of grief, and uncertain what to do with the houseful of files, papers, books, and binders, Sharon’s family reached out to me, asking for my help. Not only was I a close friend of Sharon’s, but I was also an author with some connections to her publishing world. They hoped I could use my connections and knowledge to help them sort through a lifetime’s literary estate.

The day before, I had arrived at the Philadelphia airport from Minneapolis. Mary picked me up, and we began the hour long drive to Sharon’s home in Mays Landing, NJ. We both felt a mix of emotions, knowing the task ahead, realizing we needed to set aside our sorrow and get down to business. It would take a well-executed plan to accomplish the huge project ahead of us.

Like me, Mary was a long-time fan of Sharon’s. She had met Sharon initially in the summer of 2011 when she participated in the In the Footsteps of Eleanor of Aquitaine Tour, spending around ten days visiting Paris, Poitiers, and other sites closely associated with Eleanor’s life and times. After their connection on the tour, they shared hundreds of emails, and every summer, Mary traveled the short distance to Sharon’s home for a special lunch. One of the multitude of things they often discussed was how to go about cleaning out Sharon’s garage.

The idea of cleaning out Sharon’s garage was something Sharon and I talked about often enough as well, and as Mary and I drove together to May’s Landing to do just that, the whole idea felt smothered in poignancy. This was not how we had ever envisioned accomplishing the task.

It was only when we arrived at her house on Essex Street that the enormity of what lay ahead truly hit. I had visited Sharon many times, but now, seeing the house upturned and unpacked, the job seemed to loom larger than it had just an hour before.

“We’ve begun to sort through her personal things,” Nancylee, Sharon’s sister-in-law, told us. “Billy,” Nancylee’s son and Sharon’s nephew, “has been living here to help, and we’ve gone through a lot already.”

Mary and I stood just inside the front door, surveying the piles in the living room all around us. To our right, and through the doorway to the den, lay the most significant part of our work: bookshelves lining the walls as they had always done. On top of the bookshelves sat plastic bins of papers, pamphlets, and other research material from a lifetime of traveling to England, Wales, and France.

The “den” filled with all the research books consolidated from all parts of the house.

Over the course of the next several days, we sorted and moved thousands of books, repacked reams of files and papers and binders—notes, research, book drafts, and correspondence.

But to ask, “What are we going to do with all of this?” is a bit misleading. For the weeks prior to our arrival, we had already begun to contact institutional libraries and public libraries, seeking donation recipients. We understood that Sharon had spent hours upon hours tracking down some of the items in her collection. We knew she had paid several hundred dollars, in some instances, for a single book she needed for research (often to verify a single fact). We were not about to let those books go into a dumpster!

In the following weeks, visitors from the Rutgers Law Library (Sharon’s former alma mater), would arrive to peruse and make selections. A curator from the Penn Libraries at the University of Pennsylvania would do the same. The job only required us to combine all the books from two levels of her house in one place, organized by topic, to make the librarians’ jobs easier.

Okay, so that was the books sorted.

But what about all the papers, files, manuscript drafts, and research?
Did I mention we were surrounded by piles? Piles and piles? We had discovered papers in closets, papers in drawers, papers in the garage, in bins, in buckets, in the laundry room. Sharon kept nearly all the correspondence she had ever received from fans. Paper hid in every nook and cranny in her house. The guest room bedside table? Yep. Even there.

Sunne in Splendour drafts
Photo courtesy of Mary Glassman

“It’s a shame I don’t live here so I could devote months to cataloging and recording everything,” I sighed as Mary and I sat companionably in Sharon’s living room one evening. “We could almost turn her house into its own research library. What a treasure trove for a person who might want to write a biography about her.”

But we both knew there were dreams, and there was reality. It would take funding to accomplish such a task, and the Penman family needed to act quickly to empty the house and get it on the market. Time was not our friend, and there simply was not a wealthy philanthropist waiting to swoop in and fund a private research library. We needed to prioritize and save what we could.
And in that, we were not without help.

Waiting in the wings to take on the enormous task of preserving Sharon’s writing heritage, if not her fan’s correspondence, were two organizations: The Richard III Society, and Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru—the National Library of Wales.

Matthew Lewis

Matthew Lewis, the newly elected Chair of the Richard III Society—a historian and author in his own right and with whom I had previously corresponded in various writing and history circles—agreed to take on the task of accepting the donation of all materials related to The Sunne in Splendour, along with the rest of the Plantagenet series. It was an arrangement we imagined Sharon would have personally approved of. It was only necessary for us to group all the material together, package it into plastic bins, and await Matthew’s work on the mammoth task of arranging transportation to the other side of the pond. Thanks to Susan Troxell of the American branch who was the “boots on the ground” to pick it all up and prepare it for it’s ultimate journey.

Bins ready for the Richard III Society
Photo courtesy of Mary Glassman

That left all the research, notes, marketing, correspondence, and drafts of the Welsh books.

Outside Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru
Left to right, Owain Roberts, Sally McInness, Rob Phillips, Mary Glassman
Photo courtesy of Mary Glassman

Enter Rob Phillips, Head of Archives and Manuscripts Section and the Welsh Political Archive, Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru (The National Library of Wales) in Aberystwyth, Ceredigion, Wales. The Welsh Political Archive exists to collect, store, catalogue and promote archival material which reflects the political life of Wales. While Here Be Dragons is a work of historical fiction, the series portrays events that happened during some of the most dramatic and heartbreaking periods of Welsh history.

Mary and Edward Jones
Photo courtesy of Mary Glassman

Special thanks go to Mary’s husband, Edward Jones. A Welshman and local who had his own connections with the library, Edward connected us with Rob in the first place, and we would not have been able to navigate the path without him!

With the blessing of the Penman family, Rob began to work on the months-long process of preparing all the necessary legal and tax documentation for the donation. Then, some time in the summer of 2021, Mary sent the materials from her home, directly into the hands of Rob and staff at the library. Mary and Edward were able to visit the library later on, meeting with Rob in person.

At UPS, packaging materials to send to Wales
Photo courtesy of Mary Glassman

We had found homes for the most important pieces of Sharon’s literary legacy. But the actions were not without mixed emotions. How strange to sort through decades’ worth of a person’s life’s work. Reams of correspondence between Sharon and her long-time agent Molly Friedrich, and her editor Marian Wood revealed gems of history. The feelings it induced to find marked-up drafts of her very first book, The Sunne in Splendour, and to read Sharon’s personal journal documenting her struggles and worries over her inadequacies as a writer! It seems strange to think that such a literary giant could ever have doubts about her own abilities, but it only takes remembering a piece of advice she gave me years ago to remind me that it isn’t so odd. “Always be suspicious of any writer who thinks they have it all figured out.”

I trust you, Sharon. Afterall, I was the one to teach you to write a text, and to your last day you were convinced you didn’t have it figured out.

Sharon’s house has since been sold. The room, which was once filled to the brim with books about the native flowers of Israel, rare biographies of various medieval noblemen, and farming practices of medieval France now belongs to another.

Though Sharon is no longer with us, fans will always have her more than a dozen works of art in the form of historical novels as a way to remember her. The Penn Libraries and Rutgers University Libraries now have a larger research collection by way of Sharon’s own personal library. The Richard III Society will preserve the collection related to the Plantagenets, and Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru in Aberystwyth will preserve a beloved piece of its own Welsh history.

What will we do with all this stuff? We will pass along a heritage, and we are all richer for it.

In coming installments of this blog, I will update you on the status of the donated collections.

A Birthday Tribute

Today we want to celebrate the life of our favorite author. In some ways it would be fitting to enumerate her literary accomplishments, including a list of her books and her best-seller status. But that sort of attribution would be sterile and redundant. If you are reading this, you already know that Sharon Penman had an unparalleled skill with story. She had a unique ability to capture the intricate details of real life in the times and places she wrote about. She also had a deep understand of humanity, its foibles and strengths, allowed her to write characters readers connected to on a personal level.

Literary talent is admirable, but it’s not why she is beloved. It’s because she touched the hearts and lives of her readers on a very personal level. Her sincere interest in their lives, her compassion and tender heart toward their hardships and woes, found her constantly reaching out via letter and email, on social media and in person.

And so to honor her birthday, readers have submitted their favorite memories of our dear Sharon.

Sharon and Stephanie on a weekend getaway to the shores of Lake Superior, Minnesota (with Paula Mildenhall, not pictured)

Stephanie Churchill Ling – My own story of connection to Sharon begins like so many others – it started as an email which turned into an ongoing, regular correspondence. She became a writing mentor and friend. But more than that, she became family. I visited her many times over the years, spending a week at a time with her. Some of my best memories include simply existing. We would often sit in her living room, working on our various pieces of writing, only now and then chatting. It was companionable silence, but a companionship of kindred spirits. This was interspersed with hours and hours of non-stop talking, spending evenings talking about history, politics, and her always-beloved football. I miss her gentle spirit, her sweet smile, and her unfailing heart of concern for people. I miss Sundays during football season texting back and forth to celebrate or comiserate over our favorite teams. I even forgive her love of the Philadelphia Eagles and Aaron Rogers. I miss her New Jersey accent. I miss my friend!

Sharon, Kylee Jones Boggs,
Mary Roberts Glassman Jones

Mary Roberts Glassman Jones – Happy birthday Sharon! (Penblwydd hapus iawn) I am fortunate to have had so many that it’s hard to pick just one.That being said, probably my very favorite times with Sharon, were when I had her to myself!I would go to visit at her home in New Jersey, a short 90 minute drive from me, and we spent the day talking for hours about all kinds of things. Books, the Philadelphia Eagles, authors that she hated, authors that she loved, how we should be cleaning out her garage! I would bring lunch, she provided the wine and it was lovely getting to know each other better. I was also fortunate to be on both her Eleanor of Aquitane and Richard III tours. We miss you so much Sharon, but will always have your words and memories of times together. Diolch yn fawr!

Linda Hein – I was visiting Sharon in NJ, and we were taking about pets, and about what a hellboy cat Butterscotch was. I had only had him for a few months. She was so kind and gentle, and talked me into keeping hellboy, so it’s because of her that Butterscotch and I are still in the same flat. He turned into a naughty but loving cat and I cannot imagine life without him. I think of Sharon often when he is laying in my shoulder, purring. She sent a huge gift box for Butterscotch soon after I left from visiting her, and we still have many of those toys!

Sharon and Lisa at Eleanor’s Palace in Poitiers, France

Lisa Adair – I don’t even know where to start. I wrote Sharon a couple of fan letters in the 90s and she graciously wrote me back. When the chance arose to meet her in France on the “In the Footsteps of Eleanor of Aquitaine Tour,” I greedily signed up. Sharon was as delightful in person as she was on paper. My first day there, a group of us went to lunch with her and I found myself surrounded by people that had my same interests, and Sharon shared stories of her research, her books, her behind the scenes snippets of writing. In that one lunch I felt it was already worth the price of the tour, and we hadn’t even started yet. After lunch, Sharon and a few of us walked over to Shakespeare and Company – a bookstore, naturally. Sharon and I were chatting and she told me her guilty TV pleasure was watching BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, and I could totally see that. There were too many moments on that tour with her to recount. But after the tour we kept in touch. Every time she came near my town on a book tour, I would be there and we’d go to lunch or dinner then go back to her hotel after the signing to talk even more. We had a small tour reunion at her house in 2014 and myself and a couple of other fans got to stay at her house for a few days. I miss her. I miss her laugh. I miss her emails. I miss her wit. I miss her sharp intellect. I miss her checking on me when she heard of bad weather in my area. I even miss her talking about football, though I’m not a fan of it. She was special and was truly a gift to us all.

Priscilla Royal – Sharon was the ultimate storyteller. She not only wrote brilliant books after impeccable research, she was equally compelling in her speech. She also had a wonderful sense of humor. Once we were talking during a dinner and she started to laugh. “Have you noticed how many people have just stopped talking and suddenly become interested in medieval sex?” she asked. Then she flashed that wonderful smile of hers…

Larry Steele – I first “met” Sharon at a reading she did at Denver’s Tattered Cover bookstore. By meeting I mean that she autographed the book I purchased that evening. I began following her on Facebook and began interacting with other Penmanites — engaging in coup attempts and the like. When she came back to Denver for the Historical Novel Society meeting, I took all of my books to the signing event and got to chat as she signed them all! I also met David Blixt at that event. I was later admonished for not stopping by when I was in New Jersey a few years back. Boy I miss her — and Justin.

Eric Pratt – I can remember with clarity when I asked members of Sharon Kay Penman’s fan club to see if I could get help in supplying my classroom with a copy of The Queen’s Man. Responses from fans specifically Stephanie Churchill put me directly in touch with Sharon who was also very sympathetic to my plight. With The Queen’s Man out of print in the U.S., she reached out to her agent, Mic, in Great Britain and found a way to get books sent to me at a discounted price, and even shouldered the price of the shipping herself. That alone would have been enough to earn Sharon a devoted fan and friend for life. After Sharon had the books sent, she continued to stay in contact with me via email, receive samples of my own writing, and be a kind ear and friend throughout some hard and happy times as a teacher. The last communication I had with Sharon was the inscription she wrote in my copy of The Land Beyond the Sea, “To Eric, my friend and fellow writer. I hope you enjoy The Land Beyond the Sea. If not, feel free to lie to me! – Sharon” I miss my friend and favorite author, and I assure you, Sharon, your book is a triumph; I enjoy it more than words can express.

Lisa Markovitz – I was in my twenties when my father gave me Sunne in Splendour to read. I didn’t think I would enjoy this massive book, but I loved it. We would go on to impatiently await each of Sharon’s new books. Time and Chance came out just after my father’s death. I drove an hour in the rain with my beloved books to a bookstore to meet Sharon at a signing event. As I pushed my pile in line, along with everyone else, I worried I was expecting too much. When I met her, I ended up blubbering my story. She sweetly, patiently sat me down next to her, signed all my books, wrote “to Edward” in Sunne, as I cried next to her. That was the beginning of a decades long friendship that included two European tours. She was an amazing author, friend, and kind person. She is so very missed.

Sara and Sharon, King’s Ransom book tour

Sara Bornstein – My favorite memory of Sharon is the time I not only got to meet her at a book reading, but she gave me a cupcake! Because her book When Christ and His Saints Slept is the reason I decided to select History as my major in undergrad, I was beyond excited when I discovered that she’d be doing a book reading in Seattle, which was only a two hour flight for me. I posted in her Facebook Fan Club that I was flying from Alaska to see her. At her book reading before she started she said she was so surprised that I and another reader, coming from Vancouver, had flown in from so far to see her that she had a cupcake for each of us as compensation! Sharon was so nice and humble and I’m so glad I had the chance to meet her! (I even wrote about the encounter in a blog post!)

Dayle Jacob – An emergency book purchase (couldn’t have lunch without a book!) led me to Sunne in Splendour in paperback. Halfway through, my book was a victim (along with most of my house) of a brutal hurricane…OH, NO! Luckily, my Mom was able to replace it saying I was going to love it and she had already purchased all of the rest of Sharon’s books, the Welsh Trilogy. Love it I did, and wrote to Sharon through her publisher. An invitation to a reading of her latest, The Queen’s Man, had me driving Mom 6 hours one afternoon to hear her. She recalled my letter and we had a lovely time. A thank you email to her led her to send a hardcover edition of Sunne, beautifully inscribed to me. Birthday love to this beautiful soul gone way too soon. Thank you for the joy.

Rozie Haines – I was never fortunate enough to meet Sharon although it was wonderful reading her regular Facebook posts. The Land Beyond the Sea accompanied me during my baby daughter’s open heart surgery and recovery. It’s a testament to Sharon’s fantastic skill that she was able to capture me during the long 7 1/2 hour wait for surgery to be completed. The book kept me occupied for a number of days while I sat by her bed in ICU – several doctors and nurses commented on the size of the book and progress through it! I’m so grateful to her that I had it to read at such a difficult time in my life and so sad we’ll never have the joy of a new SKP book again. I’m pleased to report my daughter is now a thriving 3 year old!

Tracey Pyke – Some 16 odd years ago I sent Sharon an email just to thank her for writing such incredible books that enriched my life and expanded my love of history. I didn’t expect a reply, but reply she did and we had a brief email chat. That meant a great deal to me, and she will forever remain a loved and respected presence on my bookshelves.

Ana Marija – I first read The Sunne in Splendour in the 90s, as a teenager, and it made me an instant and lifelong Ricardian. I was incredibly happy and honoured to be friends on Facebook with Sharon and that we interacted on several occasions, and one of my favourite moments was seeing her react to the discovery and confirmation of Richard III’s remains in Leicester. I’m so glad she got to experience that in her lifetime.

Rona Goodall – I first came across Sharon Penman on my honeymoon in California in 1987. I picked up Here Be Dragons in a bookshop. I was attracted by the cover in the first instance, and then reading the blurb on the back, I knew I wanted to read this book. It was the start of a love affair with this author, who loved the Plantagenets as much as I do. She brought this period to life. I was also delighted to come across The Sunne in Splendour, which fed my Richard III obsession. When she had completed all the Plantagenet stories, I fell in love with the Land Beyond The Sea. Justin de Quincy was a super character and his medieval mystery adventures, were a joy to re-read in the last year. I counted myself very fortunate to be able to ‘speak’ with Sharon on Facebook. We disagreed about Mary Queen of Scots and Elizabeth I, but in a very fun way. I was very sad to learn of her death.

Tricia Hurst – Sharon was an active participant on her fan FB page. When I was wondering if I should keep perusing a career in law, Sharon spent time talking me through this. She helped me realize that while the law was not for her, it is absolutely what I was meant to do.

Lisa Belkin – My life became enhanced when while reading her new book The Devils Brood. I looked at the back jacket and saw that she wasn’t a resident in France or Wales like we thought but just a 20 minute car ride from our house! Her stature might of been small but whenever I read one of her books she becomes a giant. We gave my daughter Sara some of her Bat Mitzvah money to spend at Borders and the first book she picked out was Christ, and we were hooked. Because she only lived 20 minutes from me, whenever we could, we would meet her for lunch we would always go to Applebee’s because we knew we could enjoy a three hour gabfest at lunch and never be kicked out. Sharon had unrelenting back problems that kept her home at times and I’d stop by at lunch with my dog for a play date. No one loved dogs like she did and was such an advocate for adoption. May her memory be a blessing and go pick up a book. Rereading Christ right now. I am very honored to be among so many people who had the opportunity to read her work and those that got to meet her.

Patrice Batyski – I e-mailed Sharon quite a few times. She was kind enough to reply in depth. We finally met at a book signing and we became friends, almost family. I was at her 70th birthday party.

Kelly Stambaugh – In the days prior to meeting Sharon during her Time and Chance tour we exchanged a few emails. One has always stuck with me when I told her that I would be traveling 5 hours to meet her; she wrote “please be careful driving that far, I don’t want you to get stuck in the middle of nowhere with ravenous wolves baying in the distance. Oh sorry, it’s just my overactive author’s imagination at work again.” She was an amazing person that I feel so grateful having been able to meet. I will always treasure the memory and the photograph of us together at that meeting.

Hannah Maiorano – I read Sharon’s books for years, she was my favourite historical fiction author and inspired my love of medieval history. So when it came time to apply for an MA in Medieval history, I asked her for recommendations. She took time to write me back and offer a few different universities. First and foremost she said Aberystwyth because she had completed many hours of research at the National library of Wales. So I ended up going there where I met my now husband. Because she took the time to write back one of her many fans, my life was changed for the better, forever. I will always be thankful for her for that and her books will always have a special place in my heart.

Sherri Rankin – I first read Sharon’s book “Here Be Dragons” and totally fell under the spell of not only Sharon’s writing but also of Wales. I later found a copy of “Sunne In Splendour” at a used book stand at the Allentown Fair. I was hooked. Years later when I became a teacher at my school I would introduce my students to Sharon’s books. At one of her book signings down near Philadelphia, my best friend and I went and got to meet Sharon in person. She was the most down-to-earth person. She gave an entire set of the Justin de Quincy books to my best friend who is an English teacher. Years later my son went into the Peace Corps and one of the other Peace Corps moms I met was actually a friend of Sharon’s. We tried several times to get together for a lunch but unfortunately time, Covid and then Sharon’s passing conspired against us. I have been greatly influenced by Sharon’s books. When traveling in Wales in 2017 I made sure to go to the church where Llewelyn’s coffin is and to the church where Joanna’s coffin is supposed to be. (We couldn’t get in, construction). I miss knowing there will be more books and that such a kind and caring person inhabits our world.

Yvonne Connelly – Was it our first day in Paris in 2011 when our group of historical literary nerds first met Sharon? Every day of that incredible “Eleanor” tour with Sharon was special. Then, in 2018 I was lucky enough to book a slot on the Richard III tour in England that was special because we had incredible opportunities to view the famous parking lot and speak with the people who actually found Richard’s bones. While the group activities were great, I especially treasured her personal attention to each of us. She became a major influence in my life; e.g., while having lunch at the Tower of London, she mentioned that she particularly liked my (often irreverant) sense of humor! (I had never known I had a good sense of humor!). She continued to stay in touch and I treasure her novel-length emails. She became for me the loving mother that my soul had longed for and my love and respect for her will stay with me always.

Alan Fear – In 2012 I began writing my PhD. thesis in literature on Welsh identity and Memory in Here Be Dragons, I wrote an e-mail to Sharon asking if any other academic work had ever been undertaken on the novel and was delighted and felt honoured when I received a personal reply from Sharon. Some months later I wrote another e-mail with some specific questions and once again, despite her work-load and the “Deadline Dragon” breathing down her neck, this must have been for A King’s Ransom, Sharon took the time to honour me with a personal reply with some special insights into that great mind and the “making of” HBD. Finished my PhD. in 2017 and still read the princes trilogy every 5 years or so.

Joanne West Cornish – I own all of Sharon’s books. I have also bought many copies through the years of my favorite, her magnificent first, The Sunne in Splendour, to give away and ultimately infect others with her magical writing. She was a treasure to be shared, and a loss to all of us.

Ode to a Mother

Even as a 21-year-old, Sharon’s poetic prose seemed to predict the lyrical author she would become. Sharon’s brother Bill thought you might enjoy this letter she wrote to their mother on May 5, 1967.

I only regret that I have but one life to give…

A guest post by Samantha Wilcoxson

I was blessed to meet Sharon Kay Penman at a bookstore event for the launch of King’s Ransom. My nerves sizzled as I waited for my turn with the new brick of a novel and my UK version of The Sunne in Splendor, which I brought to have signed. Did I dare share with such a talented and successful writer that I also hoped to bring historical figures to life in my own books? That my Elizabeth of York was partially based upon the woman as Sharon had portrayed her?

Thankfully, I made a couple of friends as we stood in line. One of them I am still friends with to this day! We even took a group photo with Sharon once our turn came. My nerves were soothed enough that I dared to mention my book as Sharon kindly signed the two I placed before her. I couldn’t wait to see what she had written. ‘Facebook friend and fellow writer,’ she addressed me in one. ‘To Samantha, who shares my passion for the past,’ she wrote in the other. Her words encouraged me more than I can say.

Fast forward to today, and I have written several books about historical figures to whom I feel close connections, most recently Nathan Hale. Imagine my excitement when I heard that Sharon had also been interested in American Revolution history! She had even thought about writing a novel set during the era. That insight along with an invitation to share my latest book with Sharon’s fans gave me the same sort of warm feeling that I had meeting her that day.

I wonder what Sharon thought about Nathan Hale. Surely, his tragic story was too short for one of her novels! Uttering the words, ‘I only regret that I have but one life to give for my country’ when he was only twenty-one years old, Nathan left behind a poignant, but brief, tale.

Connecticut Hall

Nathan was fourteen in 1769 when he enrolled at Yale College with his brother, Enoch, who was nineteen months older. The brothers were so close that classmates called them Primus and Secundus. They were also befriended by Benjamin Tallmadge, who went on to fame of his own during the American Revolution. Throughout their four years at Yale, they studied history, philosophy, and religion, in addition to discussing current events as the colonies moved toward rebellion.

I recently learned that Benjamin Franklin was Sharon’s favorite founding father. His words make up one of the chapter header quotes in But One Life. ‘The madness of mobs or the insolence of soldiers, or both, when too near to each other, occasion some mischief.’ It is a chapter in which Nathan, Enoch, and Ben discuss news of what later became known as the Boston Massacre. I put myself in their shoes, reading contradictory reports and wondering which was true. These boys were in their mid-teens, discussing issues that would determine their future and the future of a country not yet conceived in that year of 1770.

After commencement in 1773, Nathan took a teaching position while Enoch continued private study to earn his minister’s license. During this brief time before the outbreak of war, Nathan established his progressive thinking by offering classes to females from 5 to 7am before the boys arrived for their lessons each day. Too soon, however, he left his schoolhouse for the New London Artillery.

The remainder of Nathan Hale’s story is the portion with which most Americans are familiar. Shortly after the Declaration of Independence was signed, he volunteered for an espionage mission against the advice of those who knew him best. Nathan wanted to be useful to his country and General Washington, but that did not relieve him of his trusting nature and lack of cunning. Within days, he was captured by the loyalist Major Robert Rogers.

The next morning, 22 September 1776, without a trial or hearing of any kind, Nathan Hale was executed by the British, and his corpse was left to hang in the sun as a warning to anyone else who might be tempted to serve as a rebel spy. Although Enoch tried, he was never able to recover his brother’s body.

Nathan Hale is attributed with a few last words. The ‘but one life’ regret is the best known one today and is a paraphrase of Joseph Addison’s Cato, a work that Nathan almost certainly read while at Yale. The Essex Gazette reported that Nathan had said another paraphrase of Cato, ‘If I had ten thousand lives, I would lay them all down.’ The diary of a British soldier testified that he ‘behaved with great composure and resolution, saying he thought it the duty of every good Officer to obey any orders given him by his Commander-in-Chief; and desired the Spectators to be at all times prepared to meet death in whatever shape it might appear.’ Nathan could have said any or none of these things, but the fact that those who knew him best believed that they rang true as things Nathan might have said is testimony to his character.

I wanted to capture it all in my novel, But One Life – the friendship, the brotherhood, the striving for liberty, and the willingness to sacrifice. I grew attached to Nathan as I was writing. He was so close to my own sons’ ages that it made me consider what they – or I – might do if duty and sacrifice were required. Though I have not been put in a position to make those difficult choices, I do feel compelled to do my little part to keep alive the memory of those, like Nathan Hale, who have.


You can learn more about Samantha and her writing on her blog, or visit her on social media: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Goodreads, Pinterest, Amazon Author Page. You can purchase But One Life on Amazon.

Legendary

by Margaret George

Legendary.  This word is thrown around a lot, often being applied when it is wildly inappropriate.  But it is not inappropriate for Sharon Kay Penman, a truly legendary author of weighty—in more ways than one—historical novels.

The legendary Sharon Kay Penman:

Legendary in the story of how the only copy of a five hundred page first draft of her Richard III novel was stolen from her car, and how after five years when she was unable to write because of the trauma of losing it,  she was able to go back to it and rewrite it from memory and from scratch.  Such a setback in writing a first novel would have stopped most aspiring writers, but not Sharon.

Legendary in the meticulousness of her research, and in her graciousness in correcting anything that someone pointed out as slipping past her guard.

Legendary in her warmth and true appreciation of her readers, and in her response to them. 

Legendary in her concern for others and her eager support of other writers.

Legendary in my own life as a caring friend and an enthusiastic booster of my work, as a sister in writing books of similar nature and size, and sharing the process with me.

Sharon first came into my life in 1987.  We were both published in the UK by Macmillan, and had the same editor.  Her 1982 The Sunne in Splendour had been a great success.  I was a debut author and had just published The Autobiography of Henry VIII.  Our mutual editor asked her if she would read it and give a nice quote for it. 

Margaret and Sharon

Asking someone who is a Ricardian to say a good word about a Tudor is like asking a descendant of Lincoln to say a good word about John Wilkes Booth.  But Sharon, gracious soul that she was, did read it.  She said I didn’t convert her about Henry VIII, but she did like the writing!  Later she promoted my Elizabeth I novel as the only Tudor she could stand.  Sharon’s sense of humor was another of her outstanding characteristics.

We met several times in person and hit it off really well, enjoying one another’s company.  As time went on we had a regular correspondence about our work and what was going on in our worlds.  In preparing to write this tribute, I pulled up all 162 emails from her to reread them.  Earlier there were letters written on onionskin paper—remember that?  As I read through them I was struck by several things.

One, how she often apologized for ‘being slow to answer.’  But she always did answer, and at great length.  So good was she at correspondence it was like she was sitting there beside me. 

Second, how concerned she was with others’ welfare.  She often contacted me if she had heard there was a tornado or flood in my area to make sure I was all right.  When Covid started, she found a way to order masks when they were difficult to obtain, and sent me the information.  Without my even asking, she offered to post notices about my new book on her website, or on Facebook, and to interview me for NPR and her blog.

Third, it was not just me, but many others that she reached out to.  She had an enormous, almost nineteenth century-size circle of correspondents, and each was special to her.  She led several author’s tours—including one on Richard III and another on Eleanor of Aquitaine and treasured her time meeting her readers face to face, too.  Someone said that paying attention is the highest form of compliment, and Sharon paid attention to people, listened, and remembered just about everything you said.  She gave each person that ultimate compliment of attention.  And she welcomed new people into her life; she was accessible no matter how famous or busy she was as the years passed.

Fourth, she was so bonded to her characters and her scenes that when she was in the midst of a book she almost transported herself there, signing off an email with, ‘must go, the battle is about to begin and I have to get to the heights nearby.’  Perhaps that is why her novels have such a sense of time and place.

Fifth, she struggled for many years with health issues, starting with bouts of mononucleosis, then muscular-skeletal problems that made it difficult for her to sit at the computer– a real professional challenge– and other health burdens like headaches. 

Sixth, in addition to the struggle just to be able to sit at the computer, she had a lot of computer troubles.  She claimed they were possessed!  I know they did scramble and drop emails, devour texts of her work, and must have passed on their malady because succeeding generations of tech equipment seemed likewise infected.  Nevertheless she soldiered on, when a lesser person would have thrown in the towel.   She gave them names like Demon Spawn, Melusine, and Draig, and tried to co-exist with them. Sometimes she called for an exorcism via a tech guru to bring them to heel.

Despite all these obstacles she wrote ten masterworks of historical fiction.  Her final one, The Land Beyond the Sea, was completed struggling against many factors, which she triumphed over.  She had the victory of seeing it published in March 2020.  She also wrote four award-winning medieval mysteries, called the Justin de Quincy series, drawing on her background knowledge of the era and her love of mysteries.

Last, I came across something in the emails I had almost forgotten:  we both took one of those silly ‘who were you in the past?’  quizzes and found out we were the same person:  Boudica, the warrior queen of Britain who almost drove the Romans out in AD 61.  She said I really should make Boudica my next subject. She even came up with a title for the book! Now in searching for that next subject I feel that Sharon is reminding me of a very tempting choice.  And, I am also reminded of how much alike we were, sisters in authorship, thinking alike in many ways.

Her kindness and unselfishness came to me one last time, in December of 2020.  I had asked her if she could write a letter of recommendation for me to an organization I was applying to join.  Without hesitation she wrote it and sent it off, mentioning offhandedly that she had just been diagnosed with a new illness, but it wasn’t anything to worry about, she wasn’t worrying and neither should I or anyone else be.

Only a month later she left us.  I was stunned, as was everyone else, but her last communication to me, about the letter of recommendation, will always stand as a testament to her stoic character and love and concern for others.  As an author she was great, but as a person and a friend even more so.

Sharon, we miss you but you will always be with us!

Proposal for The Land Beyond the Sea

Before a publisher agrees to a contract on a new book, an author must present a proposal for the book’s theme and content. Sharon’s publisher first heard about The Land Beyond the Sea (its original working title was “The Kingdom Beyond the Sea) in July, 2012. The following is her proposal for what would end up being her final novel.


JULY 29, 2012

It has been a while since we last talked about what I wanted to do after I completed Richard Lionheart’s story and ran out of Angevins to write about.  As I explained back then, I have been interested for several years in writing about the Kingdom of Jerusalem, also known as Outremer, which poetically translates as The Land Beyond the Sea, my working title.   Its history is a writer’s dream, with high drama, tragedy, a clash of cultures that continues to resonate today, enough battles to satisfy even the most bloodthirsty of my readers, several genuine love stories for the romantics, and a cast of characters so colorful and compelling that no novelist would dare to invent them out of whole cloth.

            All of my books are ensemble productions, of course, but there are always a few characters who get more time on center stage.   In The Land Beyond the Sea, that will be Balian d’Ibelin, one of the most powerful lords of Outremer, who appears in Lionheart and was the hero of Ridley Scott’s epic film, Kingdom of Heaven.   The novel opens in 1177, the year in which Balian wed Maria Comnena, Queen of Jerusalem, the widow of a former king and mother of five year old Isabella, who would one day rule Jerusalem herself.    Balian’s family was already very influential, and now, as the husband of a former queen and the stepfather of a future one, he would be closely involved in all of the dramatic events that would convulse the kingdom in the sixteen year story arc (1177-1193) of The Land Beyond the Sea.   

            Outremer was a young realm, one baptized in blood, for when the men of the First Crusade captured Jerusalem from the Saracens in 1101, they showed no mercy to the Muslims and Jews living in the city; those convinced they have God on their side always find it easier to demonize the enemy.  After establishing a Christian kingdom, most of the crusaders went back to their own countries, their vows fulfilled.  But those who stayed had to adapt to an utterly alien world, a land of blazing heat and exotic customs and enemies who were also neighbors.  They soon realized they were a small island in a vast Saracen sea and accommodations were necessary if they hoped to survive.  And as they were exposed to the Saracen culture, they began to change, to become a people who were neither Europeans nor Saracens.   These native-born Christians called themselves Poulains.   Balian was proudly Poulain.     

            When the novel begins, Outremer was ruled by a cousin of the English Royal House, Baldwin IV, and the Poulains were facing the greatest threat yet to the survival of their young kingdom.   The Saracens had united under the Sultan of Egypt, Salah al-Din, better known to posterity as Saladin.   Defeating Saladin would have been a challenge for any king, but Baldwin was hopelessly handicapped from the outset.  One of history’s truly tragic figures, Baldwin was intelligent, educated, charismatic, very courageous, and dedicated to the welfare and protection of his people.  He was also doomed, for he was afflicted with one of the worst medieval scourges—leprosy.  He fought his disease as fiercely as he fought the Saracens, though, and when he learned that Saladin was planning to invade Outremer, he won a remarkable victory over a much larger Saracen army at Montisgard in 1177; Saladin himself barely escaped capture.

            Balian took part in that battle, too, for he was loyal to his young king.  But that young king was dying and all knew it.  Baldwin would survive for another eight years and during those years, his kingdom was in turmoil, for Saladin’s star was on the ascendancy and the Poulains were divided over the succession.   When Baldwin died at age twenty-four in 1185, the crown passed to a child, his sister Sybilla’s sickly eight year old son by her first marriage.  Balian was a man of honor and although he had grave reservations about Sybilla’s second husband, he supported her son’s claim.  But the little boy died in less than a year and Outremer was once more in chaos, riven by political intrigue and conspiracies. 

            The two rivals for the crown were Baldwin’s sisters, Sybillla and Isabella, Balian’s stepdaughter.  Sybilla was the elder, but she was wed to a man few wanted to see as king, a French adventurer named Guy de Lusignan.  Guy seems to have had charm—Sybilla certainly thought so—but not much common sense.  And so before they agreed to crown Sybilla, the lords of the kingdom demanded that she divorce Guy first.  She agreed, but after her coronation, she declared that she had the right as queen to choose her own consort and she chose Guy.   I cannot help admiring her spirit; it is just a pity that she had such poor taste in men, for Guy’s errors in judgment would result in the kingdom’s greatest disaster. 

            Sadly for the Poulains, Guy saw Balian as an adversary because he was wed to Isabella’s mother, Maria, and turned for advice to one of history’s great villains—Reynald de Chatillon.  Reynald was a French knight of obscure origins who—like Guy himself—was able to make an advantageous marriage to a great heiress.  With her wealth to draw upon, he became a force to be reckoned with and soon revealed those qualities that would win him such notoriety—his fearlessness, his cruelty, and his utter lack of prudence.  His boldness led to his capture by the Saracens and he was held prisoner for seventeen years, finally freed in 1177, emerging fluent in Arabic and with a burning hatred of his Muslim foes.    

            It was Reynald’s rash, reckless advice that led Guy into the trap Saladin set for him at Hattin in July, 1187.  The Christian army was destroyed and Guy and Reynald were taken prisoner.  Guy was lucky, for Saladin assured him that “Kings do not kill kings.”  Reynald would be beheaded by none other than Saladin himself and many would see his death as his just punishment for the grief he’d brought upon their kingdom.  Town after town fell to the victorious Saracens after their triumph at Hattin, until Jerusalem itself was threatened.

            Balian was one of the few lords who’d been able to fight their way free at Hattin and he asked for and got a safe conduct from Saladin to fetch his wife, Maria, and their children from Jerusalem, now under siege by the Saracens.  But the desperate citizens pleaded with Balian to take command and he could not bring himself to abandon them.  Instead, he sent word to Saladin, explaining why he felt honor-bound to stay and asking to be released from his vow to remain only 24 hours in the city.  Saladin and Balian had long enjoyed a relationship of mutual respect, and Saladin not only agreed, he provided his own men to escort Balian’s family to safety.  Saladin was still set, though, upon taking Jerusalem by storm, seeing it as a blood debt, retribution for the massacre of Jerusalem’s Muslims when it was captured by crusaders in 1101.  This would be Balian’s finest hour, for he convinced Saladin to accept a peaceful surrender by offering to ransom the townspeople and by threatening to destroy all of the Muslim holy places in the city if they had nothing left to lose. 

            It was the fall of Jerusalem in October, 1187 that triggered the Third Crusade, the subject of my last novel, Lionheart.   All that was left of the Kingdom of Jerusalem was the city of Tyre and a few scattered castles.   Having been freed by Saladin, a desperate Guy de Lusignan lay siege to the city of Acre, and this became the focal point of resistance to Saladin.  Sybilla joined Guy at the siege, staying loyal to her man till her last mortal breath, dying of the plague that swept the crusader camp.  Her two small daughters died with her and Guy was suddenly in a very exposed position.  He insisted he was still a consecrated king, but others saw him as the man responsible for the catastrophe at Hattin.  At this point, another adventurer, one far more capable and cunning than Guy, now swaggered onto center stage.

 Conrad de Montferrat was an Italian marquis, but he lusted after crowns.  When Sybilla died, her younger half-sister, Isabella, was the rightful queen.   Unfortunately, her circum-stances were eerily similar to Sybilla’s, for she, too, was wed to a man considered unworthy to rule.  Humphrey de Toron had been burdened with a poet’s soul in a warrior’s world, and what we might see today as virtues—his kindness, sense of honor, and pacific nature—were seen by his contemporaries as fatal flaws.  Conrad, ever the opportunist, took advantage of Humphrey’s unpopularity and sought to take Isabella away from her husband, with the connivance of her mother, Maria, her stepfather, Balian, and virtually all of the lords and bishops of Outremer, for they knew only a strong king could save their kingdom.

Isabella is a very interesting woman; she was eleven when she was married to Humphrey and she was just eighteen in 1190 when Conrad staged his coup.  She was said to be very beautiful and she would later prove to be both courageous and quick-witted.  She did not want to be parted from Humphrey, but eventually she was forced to yield and as soon as her marriage was annulled, she was hastily wed to Conrad, who at once claimed the crown. 

Some of these events are mentioned in Lionheart, of course, and some of these people appear in it as well, but Lionheart was Richard I’s story and whatever did not affect him directly was not dramatized.   In The Land Beyond the Sea, I will be doing the back-story for Lionheart, introducing the characters who were always off-stage, like Balian’s “dangerous and devious Greek wife,” as Richard described Maria in Lionheart.  The one complaint that some of my readers had with Lionheart was that they did not get to meet Saladin, for he and Richard never met.  Obviously, he will be a major player in The Land Beyond the Sea, as will his shrewd, pragmatic brother, al-Malik al-Adil. 

            Since Conrad did not take part in Richard’s crusade and Balian supported Conrad, I won’t have to worry about repeating scenes already dealt with in Lionheart.  The rivalry between Conrad and Guy was finally resolved in 1192, when the Poulains selected Conrad and Richard pensioned Guy off with Cyprus.  But Conrad’s triumph was a brief one.  Just days after he learned he was to be king at long last, he was slain as he rode through the streets of Tyre by two men sent by the Old Man of the Sea, the chieftain of the feared Muslim sect called the Assassins.   The Poulains panicked, for Isabella was only twenty years old and pregnant, and they desperately started a search to find her a new husband before Conrad was even buried. 

            It is now time to speak of Balian’s co-star.  Henri, Count of Champagne, was of royal birth, nephew both to Richard I and the French king.  He arrived in the Holy Land in 1190, at age twenty-four, where he was to distinguish himself during the Third Crusade.  A young  man of charm and courage and wit, he was blind-sided when he hurried to Tyre after learning of Conrad’s murder and was acclaimed by the people as their next king.   He was reluctant to accept, for it would mean lifelong exile from his beloved Champagne and his own family, but he was pressured into agreeing, and then something remarkable happened—he fell in love with his new wife. 

            What of Isabella’s role in this race to the altar?  She’d already shown her mettle by refusing to surrender Tyre to the French and claiming that Conrad’s dying wish was that she yield the city only to her cousin Richard.  She showed it again by coming to Henri and assuring him she was willing to wed him.  The Saracens were scandalized by the fact that she’d marry Henri while carrying Conrad’s baby.  One of them blurted out to a Poulain, “But whose child will it be?”  He was dumbfounded when the answer was, “It will be the queen’s child.”  They were a practical lot, the Poulains.  But then, given their precarious hold on power, they had to be.

            What first interested me about the Kingdom of Jerusalem was the impact that daily interaction with the Saracens had upon the succeeding generations of Poulains.  They learned to respect Saracen medicine, to adopt the Saracen custom of ransoming prisoners, and friend-ships inevitably developed—as with Balian and Saladin.  But because their numbers were so small, they were dependent upon European crusaders, men who arrived in Outremer burning with religious zeal and hostility toward the infidels.  They were horrified to discover that the Poulains had a more nuanced, less dogmatic view of those same infidels and the native-born Christians found themselves regarded with suspicion and scorn by their own allies.   I think my readers will find this clash of cultures as intriguing as I did.

            I also think my readers will find Balian to be a very appealing character—a courageous battle commander but with an instinct for conciliation; at one point, he prevented civil war from breaking out between the political factions in Outremer.  He was comfortable being married to Maria, a strong-willed woman who did not fit the medieval stereotype of the sub-missive, docile wife.  He formed friendships with some of his Saracen adversaries, believing that their kingdom’s survival depended upon cooperation as well as military strength.  And he was enough of a pragmatist to support the ruthless Conrad of Montferrat because he knew that Conrad would be a far better king than Guy de Lusignan.  He devoted his life to the defense of his homeland and when he dies at book’s end in 1193, he dies secure in the belief that his kingdom will survive.  After all, their greatest threat, Saladin, was now dead and Outremer in the safe-keeping of his stepdaughter, Isabella, and her new husband, Henri of Champagne.  Like most of our dreams, it will prove to be ephemeral, but Balian is spared knowing that. 

            My Lionheart readers lavished praise upon those chapters set in the Holy Land and were very enthusiastic when I revealed my desire to return to Outremer for my next book.  They seem particularly keen upon meeting Saladin at last, getting to know Balian better, and spending more time with the young lovers, Henri and Isabella.   I know there are drawbacks to social networking sites like Facebook, but they do give writers the sort of reader feedback we could only dream about in the past.

            From a logistical standpoint, The Kingdom Beyond the Sea would be a shorter book than Lionheart; I hear all of us heaving a sigh of relief at that, me especially.   The chroniclers gave me such a unique map for Lionheart that I felt compelled to follow it to the end of the road.   That won’t be true for this book; the events are documented but not in such dazzling detail as they were for Lionheart.  And of course I am already very familiar with Outremer’s history, so I wouldn’t be starting from scratch.  Once A King’s Ransom is done, I ought to be able to slide seamlessly back in time and start weaving my tapestry about the tragic Leper King, three spirited, independent queens, the legendary Saladin, and Balian d’Ibelin and Henri of Champagne, two men who played such important roles in some of the most consequential events of the Middle Ages.    

As ever,

Sharon Kay Penman

Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine: Founding an Empire

Hi Friends! This is Stephanie, your trusty page administrator and the trustee of Sharon’s social media. Continuing in the vein of Sharon’s routine support of other authors, I’ve got a special treat to share.

I’ve asked author and historian Matthew Lewis to be a guest today. While his main focus is the Wars of the Roses and Richard III, he’s a historian of the middle ages in general. As such, I asked him to stop by and talk about his newest book, Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine: Founding an Empire.

Over to you, Matt!

I know what you might be thinking. What’s a Ricardian doing at the wrong end of the Plantagenet dynasty? It’s a fair question. My answer would be that understanding the end of a story (or at least the closing of a chapter) often requires knowledge of its beginning. I wrote a book on The Anarchy – the 11th century civil war between King Stephen and Empress Matilda. I found that period fascinating (and given my interest in the Wars of the Roses I was worried that civil wars fascinated me so much). A biography of Henry II seemed like a natural sequel, and when Henry bursts onto the scene, it is impossible to ignore the woman at his side. Eleanor of Aquitaine is every bit the match for Henry, and so I decided to write a joint biography of them.

Although Henry and Eleanor were, in many ways, the original European power couple, telling their story presents unique problems. Eleanor had lived an incredibly full medieval life before she even met Henry. The death of her father left her an unmarried teenager and one of the greatest heiresses in Europe. Louis VI soon married her to his son and heir, and within weeks the king died so that Louis VII came to the throne with Eleanor as his queen. She seems to have exerted a great deal of influence over Louis, something his councillors and courtiers resented. That made Eleanor a target, and I think it is through this lens that we need to view later criticisms of her, not to mention sordid stories that began to do the rounds. It’s incredible how they’ve stuck despite a lack of real evidence for them, and plenty of political motivations for seeking to undermine her.

Eleanor and Louis VII

Eleanor had been Queen of France, a mother to two daughters, and had been on the Second Crusade to the Holy Land, spending Easter in Jerusalem, before she encountered Henry in Paris. Her marriage to Louis was annulled amid rumours that she had indulged in an affair with her uncle, Raymond, Prince of Antioch whilst in the Holy Land. The basis for this claim seems to be the fact that Raymond advised a course of action that Louis refused to accept. Eleanor agreed with her uncle, perhaps believing that he had far more knowledge of the region and its politics than they did, but Louis refused to be swayed.

From this were birthed not only tales of an affair with Raymond as the only possible explanation for Eleanor dissenting from her husband’s decision, but also later stories of Eleanor planning to run away and marry Saladin, who was around twelve or thirteen at the time. For good measure, accusations were added that she had engaged in an affair with Geoffrey, Count of Anjou, Henry’s father, and that her lust for Henry ruined her marriage to Louis. For Eleanor to be convicted of these scandals in the court of public opinion for over 800 years based on such flimsy evidence is ludicrous.

I encountered the young Henry in depth when writing about The Anarchy. He arrives near the end in earnest but has a couple of fascinating cameos earlier on. I particularly liked the story of him bringing a small mercenary force to England when he was fourteen to chance his arm. When it went horribly wrong, he asked his mom, Empress Matilda, for money to pay his men, but she refused. He then went to his uncle Robert, Earl of Gloucester, who also declined to help him out of the fix he was in. It was a sure sign Henry had launched the invasion without permission and this felt like the medieval teenage equivalent of being put on the naughty step.

Stephen and Henry

What happened next tells us a great deal about Henry, and about King Stephen, and probably helped bring about the end of The Anarchy. Henry made the apparently absurd move of asking King Stephen, his mother’s cousin, but his rival for the throne of England, to bail him out. To astonishment that has echoed through the centuries, Stephen handed over the money Henry requested. This has attracted confusion and derision for Stephen, from contemporaries and later commentators, but I think there was good reason for him to behave as he did. It allowed him to meet the chivalric imperative of helping another, and a family member too, to help prevent him suffering dishonour. It also got Henry and his men out of England quickly and without trouble. Beyond that, I think it created a relationship between Stephen and Henry that prevented all-out slaughter in 1153 when Henry returned in earnest as the twenty-year-old Duke of Normandy and Aquitaine, and Count of Anjou and Maine, to claim the crown of England. There was an odd series of standoffs, and a refusal to fight that is usually put down to nobles tired of the ongoing wars. The two leaders seemed just as happy to dodge a showdown and met at least once to discuss things as their armies hovered behind them. I can’t help wondering whether Stephen’s behaviour towards Henry, the notion that one could be civil to an enemy, that the cause between them didn’t mean they had to personally despise each other, left a mark. It feels like something we could do with more of today. If it had created a well of goodwill, it was to help settle the disputed succession in Henry’s favour. Stephen’s oldest son died, his other son expressed no desire to become king, and Stephen adopted Henry as his son and appointed him heir to England.

In December 1154, Henry and Eleanor arrived in England for their joint coronation. They now oversaw territories that sprawled from Hadrian’s Wall to the south of France. The problem was that this made them a threat to many, most notably the King of France. Louis VII had set Eleanor aside, and there had been efforts to blame her for their lack of a son and heir. On her way back to Aquitaine, Eleanor had been the subject to two kidnap attempts that aimed to force her into marriage. The second had been made by Henry’s younger brother Geoffrey. It seems likely that she sent word to Henry that she would be willing to marry him, and Henry, who was busily preparing an invasion of England when the offer arrived, dropped everything, and darted south. Louis was outraged that his former wife, and vassal, had remarried without his permission. He was terrified at what looked like an empire the match created on his doorstep. For Eleanor, the appeal of Henry was probably less some passionate obsession with a younger man than a realistic assessment of who was single and in a position to protect her and Aquitaine. Henry was the obvious candidate.

Murder of Thomas Becket

Henry is, for me, a complex character. He shunned all majesty, preferring to send his Chancellor Thomas Becket to Paris to make a splendid, showy entrance to the city because, well, it just wasn’t Henry’s style. Politics during this period demanded a degree of flexibility that I think Henry struggled to find. Borders and rights were often left deliberately in fuzzy, grey areas to avoid endless disputes, but Henry craved definition and certainty. His goal throughout his reign was to recover and restore all of the rights held by his grandfather Henry I, and he would pursue these ferociously and doggedly. Blurry borders and ill-defined authority were no good to Henry. Some of the times he got himself into the deepest trouble, such as the Toulouse Campaign in 1159 and the Becket Affair that ended so tragically in 1170, it was because he wanted his rights clearly defined from these grey areas.

Eleanor was, I think, always preoccupied with Aquitaine. I suspect she felt her duty to protect the duchy even more keenly because she was a woman in a world increasingly wary, if not downright fearful, of female rule. If there was an assumption that she wasn’t up to the task, that only drove her harder to prove that she was. Her interest in their second son, Richard, was probably less to do with selecting a favourite child than with his having been conceived in Aquitaine and positioned to be its next duke. He was the future of the place that meant the most to her. It is for this reason that I didn’t see Eleanor’s move to Aquitaine in 1168 as the split in their relationship it is often portrayed as. Eleanor was in her mid-forties, and the couple had seven children, including four sons (no doubt to Louis VII’s irritation!). I position this move not as a mark of a cooling in their relationship, which had never required constant physical proximity, but as a reward. Eleanor was allowed to return to the place she loved above all others as its duchess, to train Richard in the tricky art of ruling Aquitaine.

Telling the stories of Henry and Eleanor together was, as I mentioned earlier, tricky. In part, that is because Henry imprisons his wife for fifteen years. The shocking move came in the aftermath of uprising of the couple’s sons. Eleanor was suspected of instigating, or at least encouraging and facilitating, the revolt. Although their sons and other rebels were swiftly forgiven and rehabilitated. Eleanor was not. Like so many other facets of their story, I don’t think the traditional story paints the full picture. I wonder whether Eleanor took a hit for the team, tacitly accepting punishment as a ringleader because that allowed their sons to be reconciled to their father quickly: it wasn’t their fault, it was their mother’s influence.

Louis and later his son Philip II consistently tried to drive a wedge between Henry and his sons to disrupt the vast territories they saw as a challenge to Capetian authority. Any prolonged dispute between Henry and his sons played into the French king’s hands and was a dynastic risk to all that Henry and Eleanor had built. There is no real evidence to position Eleanor as some kind of mastermind in a bid to tear her family and their lands apart. There was simply no benefit in it either. Eleanor would remain in England for most of the rest of Henry’s life in what is usually characterised as comfortable house arrest. In the cost Henry incurred on her care, and her placement at one of her favourite castles at Old Sarum, there is little trace of the vindictive, wronged husband. In her attendance at celebrations where their sons were present, there seems little fear on Henry’s part that she might try again to incite an uprising.

The moments that are perhaps most telling are those of grief. Henry allows Eleanor to travel to Normandy to visit the grave of their son Henry the Young King. When their third son Geoffrey also dies, Henry seems to want to spend time with Eleanor. As he is forced to reconstruct the shattered settlement of his domains, it is to her that he turns for help. Perhaps time and sorrow softened any sense of betrayal, but perhaps there had never been one. It was part of the show of power, and Eleanor played her role perfectly. She was able to retire comfortably as Queen of England, with Aquitaine in the capable hands of Richard, and in doing so, take the sting out of the conflict between her husband and their sons. If that was the case, it was a poor return for her efforts when their sons continued to betray their father, even to his death in 1189.

King John

After that, Eleanor goes on to live what, for anyone else, might constitute the third glitteringly impressive medieval life she was gifted. As the mother to Richard the Lionheart, she helped him sure up his succession, find him a wife, manage his lands while he was on campaign, and spring into action at the age of 68 to raise and personally deliver his ransom when he was taken prisoner on the way home from the Holy Land. When Richard died without an heir, it was Eleanor who was the pivotal figure in securing John’s succession. She preferred him to her grandson Arthur, Duke of Brittany because the latter had been raised under French wings, out of her control. It was, at 75, perhaps her first real mistake.

When Eleanor died in 1204 at the age of 80, she elected to be buried where she had spent her final years, at Fontevraud Abbey. She had her tomb placed beside that she had commissioned for her husband, Henry, suggesting again a fondness that undermines the view of their relationship as fractious and difficult. Henry lies still, his eyes closed, holding his regalia, as he probably never was in life. Eleanor has her eyes open, watchful still. A book rests on her chest, though in typically enigmatic style, we are left to guess what she may be reading. If she is reading at all, and not still observing and listening. Their second son, Richard, lies at their feet, another restless Plantagenet brought to stillness by the greatest leveller of them all.

Henry and Eleanor were an extraordinary couple, who lived extraordinary lives – in Eleanor’s case about three of them. I hope I have done them justice in my biography and tried to view them more as people than political caricatures. There is, I think, so much more to their story than we usually allow.


Matt Lewis is an author and historian of the middle ages. His main focus is the Wars of the Roses and Richard III, but he has also written on The Anarchy, Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, and Henry III. A book on rebellions in the medieval era is due soon, and Matt’s current project is a biography of Warwick the Kingmaker, in a return the fifteenth century.

Website: Matt Lewis – Home (mattlewisauthor.com)
Blog: Matt’s History Blog – Hopefully interesting snippets and thoughts (wordpress.com)
Twitter: @MattLewisAuthor

Purchase Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine: Founding of an Empire at bookshop.org or bookdepository.com.

Order of the White Boar

Guest post by Alex Marchant

How well do you know the story of the real King Richard III?

That was the tag line for my first two books about the man who is perhaps England’s most controversial king, The Order of the White Boar and The King’s Man. Although my third book in the sequence, King in Waiting, opens more than a year after Richard III’s death in battle and the usurpation of the English throne by a certain Henry Tudor, the tag line remains appropriate. For the story that most people connect with King Richard is still of great relevance in the years after his death – the period of King in Waiting, which explores the legacy of his life and actions.

A huge part of that legacy in many people’s eyes is the mystery of what happened to the so-called “Princes in the Tower”. This is how history tends to remember his two nephews, the sons of his brother King Edward IV who were declared illegitimate and put aside in the summer of 1483 by Parliament, which then offered the crown to Richard. I think it’s safe to say that, in the main, what people think they know about these two boys is based on Shakespeare’s dramatic play about King Richard, in which they’re portrayed as defenceless innocents cruelly murdered by Sir James Tyrell on the orders of their evil, scheming uncle.

What most people don’t realize is that the story related in the play only evolved in the decades after the alleged events – and that the story that’s come down to us from Master Shakespeare is a fabrication based on very few known facts. Shakespeare was writing in the 1590s after all – more than a hundred years after the death of his leading man – and he was also writing under Queen Elizabeth I, the granddaughter of the man who took Richard’s crown. It wouldn’t have been polite, or indeed politic, to write a play based on the historical fact of Henry Tudor being a usurper, a pretender who stole the crown primarily through the treachery of men (including his stepfather) who had sworn oaths of loyalty to his predecessor. Better to paint that predecessor as the worst of all possible villains, deserving of his fate.

King Richard III, portrait in the National Portrait Gallery

Shakespeare’s primary source was Raphael Holinshed, who wasn’t even born until forty years after Richard died. Holinshed likely based his own (hi)story on that penned by Sir Thomas More, who was himself only seven at the time of the battle in 1485. More was brought up in the household of one of Richard’s bitterest enemies, John Morton, and he began and then abandoned a “history” of Richard, unfinished, in around 1515. It was found among his papers after his death in 1535 and only published many years later. It’s uncertain how heavily edited this final version was, or indeed why More abandoned it. Did he come to the conclusion it must be biased nonsense – or did he never mean it to be a “straight” history at all?

The chapel, all that’s left of Gipping, Sir James Tyrell’s estate where a family legend says the “princes in the Tower” once resided “by permission of the uncle”

After all, More’s “history” is full of errors that any competent historian could easily have avoided (such as the age at death of King Edward IV and the length of his reign), and his story of James Tyrell being an unknown knight who offers his services to King Richard to kill his nephews has no apparent basis in fact either. The real Sir James was very well known to Richard, in whose service he had been for some years and by whom he was knighted in 1482 for his part in the Scottish wars. There is also no evidence of Sir James confessing to the murder of the boys before his execution (on a completely different charge) in 1502 – no mention of it, indeed, until More’s claim in the 1510s that “the King gave out” that Tyrell had confessed to this heinous crime. By that time, of course, both Tyrell and Tudor himself had been dead some years.

Sir Thomas More – did he intend to write a “history”, a “mirror for princes” for a young Henry VIII, or a piece of oratory that he knew to be pure fantasy?

What really did happen to the boys is a lot less clear than More’s narrative might suggest. The records of the time are scant and there are signs that many were deliberately destroyed, perhaps because they didn’t fit the “official” narrative that was forming, particularly in the history of England commissioned by Tudor and written by Polydore Vergil more than twenty years after Richard’s death. Therefore definitive “facts” about the boys’ fates after the last reported sighting of them are hard to come by. Tales of their deaths by murder, or drowning as they were shipped across the English Channel to the continent, rub shoulders with rumours that they were kept incognito in various different places around England and abroad. Perhaps all we can definitely say is that they were not officially seen in public again after the summer of 1483, when we have a report of them being seen playing in the gardens of the Tower of London.

One “fact” we do know from the very early years after Richard’s death is that in 1487 someone was crowned King of England in Christ Church Cathedral in Dublin. This coronation was performed with the support of Richard’s sister Margaret, Dowager Duchess of Burgundy, his nephew John, Earl of Lincoln (who was Richard’s heir until Tudor took the throne), Viscount Francis Lovell, Richard’s great friend and chamberlain, and many lords and bishops of Ireland, plus several who had travelled over from England.

The Palace of Margaret of York in Mechelen, where the crowning of the Dublin King may have been planned

Who the “Dublin King” was is shrouded in controversy. The extant records of the time don’t even agree who it was he claimed to be. Was he a boy or an adolescent? Did he claim to be the young Earl of Warwick or a son of King Edward IV, either the elder, Edward, formerly Edward V, or the younger, Richard of Shrewsbury? And was he genuinely who he claimed to be or an impostor?

A much-later drawing of the boy named “Lambert Simnel” who it has long been presumed was crowned king of England in Dublin in 1487

We may never know for sure, but if you’ve read my earlier two books, The Order of the White Boar and The King’s Man, you’ll probably guess which of the candidates I chose to be the hero of my third, King in Waiting, as I explored this part of King Richard’s legacy. One of the early reviews of King in Waiting says, “This theory is plausible and even seems unremarkable as the author tells it here.” “Unremarkable” is a word many authors might find underwhelming in a review. However, but in these circumstances – where the notion explored challenges five centuries of “history”, accepted by many people with little question – I have to say I was delighted to read it.

I mention this person as the “hero” of King in Waiting, but perhaps I should rather say focal point. As ever in my books, perhaps my “hero” – the leading character through whose eyes we view the action – is in fact Matthew Wansford.

Matthew Wansford and friends in their earlier adventures

As might be expected in a book aimed primarily at younger readers, Matt, a merchant’s son from York, was 12 when he entered Richard’s service as a page at Middleham Castle in the first book. In the opening chapters of the third, he is now 16 and, after almost a year, finally reunited with his fellow members of the Order of the White Boar, Alys and Roger, whose friendship sustained him during his early days at Middleham. Together with Richard’s little son Edward, the three of them formed their own secret chivalric Order in imitation of the knightly Orders of the Garter and the Bath, and swore to serve Richard faithfully. King in Waiting, together with its soon-to-be-published sequel Sons of York, relates the adventures of this teenage chivalric order in the company of the Dublin King – whoever he was… And through these books I hope to persuade readers – of whatever age – that it’s best to approach the past with a realization that all history is based on interpretation, even “official” histories, and that interpretation is always open to debate…

About the author:

A Ricardian since a teenager, and following stints as an archaeologist and in publishing, Alex now lives and works in King Richard III’s own country, not far from his beloved York and Middleham.

The discovery of Richard’s grave in 2012 prompted Alex to write The Order of the White Boar and its sequel The King’s Man to bring the story of the real man to younger readers. King in Waiting and its sequel Sons of York (due out 2022) explore his legacy in the following years.

 Alex has also edited two anthologies of short stories by authors inspired by King Richard III: Grant Me the Carving of My Name and Right Trusty and Well Beloved… (both sold to raise money for Scoliosis Association UK (SAUK), which supports people with the same condition as the king), and published a standalone book, Time out of Time, following the timeslip adventures of Allie Turner who discovers a doorway into the history of an ancient English house, Priory Farm.

Alex’s books can be found on Amazon at:

myBook.to/WhiteBoar

mybook.to/TheKingsMan

mybook.to/KinginWaiting

mybook.to/WhiteBoarBooks1-2

mybook.to/TimeoutofTime

mybook.to/GrantMetheCarving

mybook.to/RightTrusty

My Facebook author page 

My Twitter handle  and Matthew Wansford’s

Instagram: AlexMarchantAuthor

I’ve never experienced anything like this…

I really don’t know precisely when their friendship began. It was sometime after she’d published The Sunne in Splendour. Sharon told me the story once, though she told me so many fascinating stories about her life over the course of our friendship, it’s hard to keep them all accessible in my memory. Her fan base won’t recognize her name, because she was a quiet, gentle soul who loved her privacy. And for this reason, I won’t use her real name, will only call her Vivian.

At some point, Vivian reached out to Sharon in the form of a fan letter after Sunne was published. The very notion of having “fans” was brand new to Sharon, because everything about being a published author was brand new. Vivian gave Sharon what most authors consider priceless treasure: detailed feedback. As a result, Vivian and Sharon went on to exchange frequent letters. And very quickly after that, Sharon began to rely on Vivian as a writing partner.

We call them alpha and beta readers now– indispensable critique partners who serve as sounding boards for new books. And in Vivian’s case, for every chapter, one at a time. Vivian became Sharon’s rock as she navigated the drafting and editing process, using Vivian’s opinons and good sense as her support. Along with her brilliant editor, Marian Wood, much of Sharon’s writing success can arguably be credited to dear Vivian.

And she would need a rock, for immediately after writing Sunne, she began work on her Welsh trilogy. As her fans know all too well, Sharon would soon find herself embroiled in an emotional rollercoaster as she unfolded the tragic story of her beloved Wales.

The following are portions of a letter Sharon wrote to Vivian in September, 1990, as she neared the final chapters of The Reckoning:

The letter goes on to explain to Vivian how she plans to break down the next events in Davydd’s life (or what remained of it) for the book to end. And as a result, she goes on to explore the idea of endings in general.

And because Sharon knew how hard these scenes were for her to write, she worried that they might just be too much for her readers too.

I think she carried that pain with her for the rest of her life, because she always referred back to Davydd’s death scene as being the hardest thing she’d ever had to contend with.

“I’ve never experienced anything like this,” she said. And I don’t think she ever did again. Henry, Eleanor, and their brood certainly had plenty of dramatic moments for her to record, but nothing ever really seemed to touch her quite so tragically again as the story of Wales.