Death of a Queen - the last days of Anne Boleyn

On Thursday 18th May 1536, a queen sat alone in a room in the Tower of London, waiting for her death.

Outside, on Tower Green, a scaffold stood draped in black, with wooden stands for the thousand spectators who would watch her execution the next day. A swordsman had been brought over specially from France: beheading by sword was quicker an cleaner than by axe. It was, in a way, an act of mercy.

The queen was Anne Boleyn, wife of King Henry VIII of England. She had been queen for about three years, and in that time had given birth to a girl who was to go on to become Queen Elizabeth I, one of the greatest rulers our country has ever known.

Anne had been crowned in triumph and splendour at Westminster Abbey, and had once been the subject of poems and love letters written by the king - so what had changed? What had brought her to that room, to that evening, to the sword that waited for her the following morning?

Anne Boleyn (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

Guilty as charged?

Anne had been tried and sentenced to death for the crime of adultery: being unfaithful to her husband - and because her husband was the king, this made her guilty of treason. Five men - including her own brother, George - had already been executed for their part in her crimes.

But Anne's real crime was not adultery. Most historians now agree that the charges against her were false. So why had the charges been brought in the first place? What was Anne guilty of, that she had been arrested in the first place?

You could say she was 'guilty' of three things:

1. Not giving the king a son.

In Tudor England a king needed a son to rule after him - an heir - but King Henry VIII had no heir. His first wife, Katherine of Aragon, had given him a daughter called Mary, and Henry had eventually divorced Katherine and married Anne instead. Anne had also failed to give birth to a son, instead giving Henry another daughter, Elizabeth.

In Henry's eyes this meant that God was not pleased with him, and it gave him enough reason to start to look elsewhere for a wife, eventually settling on Jane Seymour, one of Anne's ladies-in-waiting.

King Henry VIII (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

2. Supporting religious reform

Anne was very religious. At that time, the church was very powerful in England and all across Europe, but Anne disagreed with the power of the church. She, along with a growing number of people, believed that only the Bible could tell Christian people how to live - and that people should be able to read the Bible in their own language. Most Bibles were in Latin, and translating the Bible into English was counted as treason.

Supporting these changes in religion (called 'reformation') was dangerous for anyone - and maybe especially so for the wife of the king.

3. Making powerful enemies

This was perhaps Anne's greatest crime. She was a woman at a time when women were expected to be obedient to men, and worse than that she was outspoken and confident! She was not afraid to speak her mind, and frequently clashed with the men who advised the king.

One of her greatest rivals was a man named Thomas Cromwell, who had risen from humble beginnings to the role of the king's closest advisor. Historians believe it may have been Cromwell who arranged for the false charges to be brought against Anne, eventually leading to her death ...

Thomas Cromwell (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

A timeline of death

2nd May - Anne is arrested for adultery and treason, and taken by barge to the Tower of London.

6th May - Anne writes a letter to King Henry VIII, begging his forgiveness for any offence she had caused but not admitting to adultery.

12th May - Four men are tried for adultery with Anne and found guilty.

15th May - Anne and her brother George are tried for adultery and treason and found guilty.

17th May - Henry's marriage to Anne is declared null and void - which means it is as good as if it never happened. The five men accused of adultery with Anne are beheaded.

18th May - Anne thinks that she is due to be executed on this day, but it is a mistake. Her execution is set for the day after. Her captors say that she is very calm and seems ready to die.

19th May - Early in the morning, Anne is taken to the scaffold on Tower Green. She is dressed very simply, and appears very calm. She gives a speech to the crowd who have gathered to witness her death (including Thomas Cromwell). She pays the executioner and forgives him (which was traditional). She is blindfolded, and kneels upright. The executioner swings his sword, and Anne passes into history.

Anne Boleyn's Execution (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

Writing challenge

Anne was accused of crimes that she probably didn't commit. We all know what it's like to be accused of something we didn't do - how unfair it feels! But Anne was calm and graceful, and the letter she wrote to King Henry VIII was just as calm and graceful.

For your writing challenge this week, imagine you have been accused of something you didn't do. Maybe:

- Hitting someone else
- Breaking something
- Taking something that didn't belong to you

Write a letter to your accuser, explaining to them why you didn't do whatever it was. Be as persuasive and calm as you can. Don't accuse them of anything! Remember the idea is to convince them that you are innocent.

About the author

Matthew Wainwright is an author of historical fiction for young people. His latest book, 'Through Water and Fire' is set during the Tudor period and features an appearance by Anne Boleyn. It has been shortlisted for the Young Quills Award for historical fiction for young people, in the 11-13 age category.

Find out more about Matthew: matthewwainwright.co.uk

Get 'Through Water and Fire' from Waterstones

Olympics - by Robin Scott-Elliot

It took the time you have spent reading these words, and probably the rest of this sentence as well for my favourite ever Olympic moment to happen. Actually, probably these as well… I need enough to cover 9.63 seconds.

That was the blink of an eye Usain Bolt needed to win the men’s 100m gold on a warm, raucous July evening in London in 2012. I was sitting up in the media seats, just above the finish line. I’ve watched and written about sport for 25 years, all around the world, but this was the night of nights because I love the Olympic Games.

I’m fortunate enough to have been to three, the first in Sydney in 2000. But having it in London was special – I could walk to the stadium from my house. Imagine walking from your house to see the fastest man the world has ever seen win the greatest event of the Olympic Games! When I was growing-up I loved watching the Olympics, and no event more than the one to determine the fastest person on the planet. In the moments before the starting gun fired, the hairs on the back of my neck would stand up when the commentator said sotto voce, as they always did, “the final of the men’s 100m…”

My view as Usain Bolt won 100m gold in London

(Copyright Robin Scott-Elliot)

There’s no Usain Bolt anymore – I’d have him as the greatest sports person I’ve ever seen – but there are, of course, still the Olympics and there is plenty to look forward to in Paris from 26 July. The opening ceremony will see each country float down the Seine on a flotilla of boats from Albania to Zimbabwe, the A to Z of the world (although thankfully there will be no R for Russia).

Every Games has a story of its own. There will be heroes and villains – every good story needs a good villain – there will be (sporting) tragedies and improbable triumphs all played out to the backdrop of one of the world’s great cities.

The countdown proper has begun to Paris 2024 with the arrival of the Olympic torch in France this week. This will be the third time Paris has hosted the Olympics yet it’s still 100 years since the world’s best athletes last gathered in the French capital. In 1924, only 135 of them were women out of more than 3,000. This summer there will be around 10,500 athletes in all, half of them women – the first 50/50 split in Olympic history.

Modern Olympic history begins in 1896 with the first Games in Athens, held there because the ancient games had been born in Greece. The very first is believed to have taken place in 776BC.

Paris’s first Games came in 1900 when events such as underwater swimming – take a deep breath and off you go! – cricket and pigeon shooting… with live (soon to be dead) pigeons.

The London 2012 stadium

(Copyright Robin Scott-Elliot)

The 1924 Olympics in Paris became famous in Britain as the ‘Chariots of Fire’ Games, Eric Liddell and Harold Abrahams winning gold medals. There was also gold in the pool for the American Gertrude Ederle who a year later was to become the first woman to swim the Channel. The 1924 US Olympics team were given a ticker-tape parade in New York for topping the medal table; Ederle received one all of her own for swimming the Channel for which an estimated two million people turned out.

Olympic heroes last through the ages, and often mean something beyond their sport… Jesse Owens winning four golds in Berlin in 1936, Fanny Blankers Coen winning four of her own in London in 1948, 14-year-old Nadia Comaneci producing the perfect 10 in Montreal in 1976.

There has too always been a dark side to the sport; from doping to corruption to protest, such as Tommie Smith and John Carlos with their Black Power salute in 1968. And there’s been real tragedy, the murder of Israeli athletes and coaches and a West German policeman by terrorists in 1972. 

There are, thankfully, so many uplifting stories to find in 128 years of modern Olympic history, so many well-I-never tales. Here’s one from the last time the Games were in Paris. Johnny Weissmuller was born in what is now Romania and arrived on Ellis Island in his mother’s arms before he turned one. After catching polio as a child his doctor advised his parents to take him swimming to aid his recovery. He was a natural – by the time he arrived in Paris he was already a world record holder. He won three gold medals, and a bronze in water polo, and added two more in Amsterdam four years later. After he hung up his trunks, Weissmuller switched to acting and was cast as Tarzan – he was to star in a dozen Tarzan movies (in between five marriages) and become one of the best-known actors in the world. He’s remembered today as a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and features on the album cover of The Beatles’ Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

In Sydney for the 2000 Olympics

(Copyright Robin Scott-Elliot)

Who will be the stories of this Paris Games? Let me give you a couple of names to look out for, one British – Sky Brown, who turns 16 just before the Games. She’s a world champion skateboarder and could turn her bronze in Tokyo into gold in Paris. And my other one to watch is Summer McIntosh. She’s from Canada, she’s 17 and she could win as many golds as Tarzan himself.

Robin Scott-Elliot has been a sports journalist for 25 years with the BBC, ITV, the Sunday Times, the Independent and the ‘i’, covering every sport you can think of and a few you probably can’t. He threw that all away to move home to Scotland and chase his dream of writing books instead of football reports. Once there his daughters persuaded him to write a story for them and that is how his career as a children's author began. Finding Treasure Island is his latest book and is published by Cranachan.

Seaside history - Wondrous Winter Gardens by Susan Brownrigg with free school resources

 

In the late 19th and early 20th century holidaying at the seaside became extremely popular in Britain. The expansion of the railways meant that a trip to the coast was easier and there was a host of natural and built attractions to draw in visitors. Unfortunately sunny weather couldn't always be guaranteed, so towns quickly realised that indoor attractions were needed.

Winter Gardens were the solution - entertainment complexes made out of glass, often with trees and flowering plants inside.

A souvenir of The Crystal Palace owned by the author.

(Photo: Susan Brownrigg)

Winter Gardens owners took their inspiration from The Crystal Palace the stunning iron and glass building originally constructed for The Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations in 1851 at Hyde Park, London. The Crystal Palace was the idea of three men - Prince Albert, Henry Cole (also known for creating the first commercial Christmas card) and Joseph Paxton. 

Paxton had been designing glass houses for twenty years when he was commissioned to create The Crystal Palace including the Lily House at Chatsworth which was built to protect the giant Victoria Regia a rare tropical water plant that had been newly discovered and its seed brought back to Britain.

The Crystal Palace was so popular it was moved south of the River Thames to Sydenham in 1854. It was sadly destroyed by a fire in 1936.

Souvenir of The Southport Pavilion Winter Gardens

 & Aquarium owned by the author.

(Photo: Susan Brownrigg)

The first Winter Garden was built in Southport, Lancashire, on land between the Promenade and Lord Street it's smart shopping street which is said to have inspired the famous Champs-Élysées in Paris.

The Winter Gardens was built by Manchester architects Maxwell and Tuke, who also designed Blackpool Tower, though they both died before it was finished.

Their Winter Gardens opened 150 years ago, in September 1874, and was advertised as 'the largest conservatory in England' and was built between two brick pavilions.

Postcard showing Southport Winter Gardens (right) owned by the author.

(Photo: Susan Brownrigg)

There were extensive gardens outside the building and a 170 foot promenade inside where visitors could stroll and admire the indoor planting. There was also a band pavilion, a reading room, a chess room and a conservatory filled with plants and flowers as well as a cascade (waterfall.)

The aquarium had over 20 tanks for fish including sharks and pools for seals and crocodiles.

An opera house was added in 1851 designed by the renowned theatre designer Frank Matcham (he also designed the famous Blackpool Tower Ballroom).

The opera house was destroyed by a fire in 1929 and was replaced by the art deco Garrick Theatre which later became a cinema and then a bingo hall and is now set to be transformed into a fancy spa hotel.

The Garrick Theatre, Southport, was built on the site

of the Southport Winter Gardens Opera House is set to be restored.

(Photo: Susan Brownrigg)

Winter Gardens soon followed at Bournemouth and Torquay on the South Coast. 

Southport and Bournemouth Winter Gardens were demolished in the 1930s but the one at Torquay was sold to Great Yarmouth who had the building taken apart and the pieces transported by barge to its new home! 

Now Grade II* listed, the Winter Gardens closed in 2008 but is due to be renovated as it was awarded a Heritage Horizon Award by the National Lottery Heritage Fund.

Blackpool Winter Gardens features on the cover of Gracie Fairshaw
 and the Missing Reel by Susan Brownrigg (illustration by Jenny Czerwonka)

My latest children's book - Gracie Fairshaw and the Missing Reel is partly set in Blackpool Winter Gardens. The story is set around the filming of a movie in the resort in 1935. The plot was inspired by actress Gracie Fields filming Sing as We Go in the town. In the book, my characters visit the posh Renaissance Restaurant in the Winter Gardens and go to a casting call in the Spanish Hall.

Coronation Street entrance with white faience tiles, to Blackpool Winter Gardens.

 (Photo: Susan Brownrigg)

The Blackpool Winter Gardens opened in 1878 and is also Grade II* listed. Early attractions included gardens and a roller skating rink. 

Early features included a fernery. There is also a horseshoe promenade and the floral hall which has a beautiful glass roof.

Glass roof, Floral Hall, Blackpool Winter Gardens. (Photo: Susan Brownrigg)

The building has had many changes over the years, including three versions of an opera houses (the first was also designed by Frank Matcham).

It is also home to not one, but two Wurlitzer organs!

Wurlitzer organ, Empress Ballroom.
(Photo: Susan Brownrigg)

In 1896 a Big Wheel was added to the outside of the building, in the hope it would be a rival attraction to Blackpool Tower. The 'jolly wheel' as it was known locally was closed in 1928 and taken apart. Apparantly the carriages were sold off! A similar one is still going strong in Vienna, Austria and features in the classic 1930s film The Third Man!

Author's paperweight souvenir showing Blackpool Winter Garden's
 Big Wheel. One of the Winter Gardens glass domes is visible on the left of the image.
(Photo: Susan Brownrigg)

In the 1930s when other Winter Gardens were being demolished, the one at Blackpool had a makeover. 

J.C Derham was hired to do the construction, while Andrew Mazzei, who worked as an art director for the Gaumont Film Company was responsible for the decoration.

His rooms include the Spanish Hall, the Ye Galleon bar and the Jacobethan style Baronial Hall which look like they have wooden paneling and decoration but are actually made from fibrous plaster - a material used for making film sets and props.

Ye Galleon today (Photo: Susan Brownrigg)

The Baronial Hall is now used as a wedding venue

(Photo: Susan Brownrigg)

Blackpool Council bought the Winter Gardens in 2010 in a £40 million pound deal. They have renovated a lot of the rooms inside which had fallen into disrepair. 

They have made repairs to the Empress Ballroom roof and £1.8 million was spent on restoring the glorious Spanish Hall's roof.

The Spanish Hall's decoration includes depictions of Spanish villages

 in plasterwork. Photo: Susan Brownrigg

Hopefully the Winter Garden's historic Pavilion Theatre will be next to be repaired.

Further up the coast, the surviving part of Morecambe Winter Gardens, originally the Victoria Pavilion Theare, is also currently being restored. 

It is great that these important building are being preserved for the future.

Author Susan Brownrigg in the Empress Ballroom,
Blackpool Winter Gardens during an open day (Photo: Susan Brownrigg)

Susan Brownrigg is the author of the Gracie Fairshaw mystery series set in 1930s Blackpool and Kintana and the Captain's Curse.

FREE RESOURCES: Schools can download free education resources relating to Gracie Fairshaw and the Missing Reel and Susan's other books HERE

Find out more about Susan and her books at susanbrownrigg.com or follow her on socials

Using the setting in your writing as another character with Ruth Estevez

 

Most of my books are set in my native Yorkshire, and knowing the landscape intimately, means I can describe it with the love I have for it as well as the knowledge of its hills, dales and coastline.

I use it as another character in my books, not only through my lens as the narrator, but also through my characters’ emotions and the action. I think it’s fair to say that place holds a strong central position in most of my novels.

But as we’re Time Tunnellers here, I’m going to talk about my Jiddy Vardy Historical Fiction Trilogy which is set in Robin Hood’s Bay on the Yorkshire Coast.

So, I’ve been through each book in the trilogy and tried to pick out how I use place in the story.

First though, a little context:

Jiddy Vardy was a real-life female smuggler in 1700’s Robin Hood’s Bay, Yorkshire. Her mother was from Naples and her father, an English aristocrat. Jiddy arrived in the Bay, as it’s called locally, parentless, to be brought up by an elderly, childless couple.

The inspiration for this real-life character came from a few pages about her in a local history book about smuggling called A Rum Do! by local author, Patricia Labistour.

Jiddy is described as tall, dark, beautiful, brave, strong and loyal. I thought she sounded like a great character for a story and I was surprised practically no-one had heard about her. I set out to rectify that. It’s my on-going mission! So please, help spread the word!

So, armed with a great central character, and a stunning location, and with all the researched smuggling stories, I had the makings of some excellent material for the books.

The story is full of action – smuggling – and the whys and development of this illicit trade opens up discussions about the definition of crime, what leads some people to break the law, and then questions about who should make laws, especially when those who make them know nothing of local community needs and its people. It is also a coming-of-age story, first love, women’s rights and choices and identity. So many discussion topics!

However, it is also about place. And that is what I want to talk about here.

Jiddy Vardy grows up in a remote village with cottages higgledy piggledy clustered on a hill leading down to the North Sea and its dangerous tides. Moorland and marshland cut it off from much of the world and roads at this time were atrocious!

Perfect for clandestine activity.

Robin Hood's Bay viewed from the top

(photograph Ruth Estevez)

Robin Hood’s Bay bursts into life as a character, not only because it is so fascinating and I love it, but because for the story, it is a must.

I bring the place alive as another character by various methods:

1)     The narrator’s descriptions. That’s me! My voice.

2)     Through the eyes of different characters, in particular Jiddy.

3)     Linking the descriptions to what is going on in the action.

4)     Jiddy’s emotions. How the descriptions of her environment mirror her mood. (A bit like Thomas Hardy does with the weather in novels such as Tess of the D’Urbervilles)

5)     How the landscape affects characters and how it forms them. (If they lived somewhere else, would they be different people?)

I also use personification in my descriptions through adjectives and verbs. This brings the landscape alive by giving it human or animal attributes.

Using verbs for example from book 1:

a)     The causeway lolled empty.

(The causeway is an extension of the road reaching out onto the beach)

Lolled suggests a place where no action is happening, it’s without purpose, an area at rest which is what I wanted in this scene. At other times, it is full of activity.

b)     The cliff meandering green and brown.

We think of people meandering as they walk, weaving a path, so the image is of a cliff not in a straight line, taking a stroll.

c)     Waves roar, they trip over themselves, a scurry of waves.

These show the sea with a personality, behaving like a human.

d)     The silver sky shivered cold.

Again, the sky taking on human actions.

Looking at a place through a character’s eyes, for example Jiddy, when she looks at the village, the adjectives show her mood as she views it. She is unsettled by an event that has just happened and she looks at the place she knows well with that unsettled eye:

Steps, Robin Hood's Bay
(Photograph Ruth Estevez)

Out in the ginnels and lanes, buildings hemmed her in, bairns whined, dogs yelped, nets tangled, beating, slapping, the suffocating stench of fish and mould and the sight of pinched eyes and red, flaking knuckles.

All the adjectives and verbs are unpleasant. Verbs like whining, yelping, beating, slapping, they are all threatening, and Jiddy feels the buildings are holding her in. This passage is taken from book 3, Full Sail and shows her state of mind as she views her surroundings.

The voice of the narrator (me!) is also used. Here, we can talk about including the senses in description as well. If we used it all the time though, I think we’d put the reader on overload! So, it’s choosing where to use it and which sense at a certain time. Certainly not all at once.

I tend to use the senses in places that are alien to my characters to show they are on higher alert than usual. For example, when Jiddy arrives in an opulent department store, I use sounds, sight and smell.

Marble counters bounced back sound. A clock ticked…the scent of animal pelts, rose water and musk mingled…fabrics fell in folds, frills and tucks. The room exploded with dresses, ornaments, shining objects.,,the wealth grew heavier. Lights shone brighter. Glass gleamed sharper. (Book 3, Full Sail.)

It’s dazzling, overwhelming. Ominous in the ‘heavier’ and ‘sharper.’ And I don’t feel description has to be realistic either, I like it used to give a sense of a place and atmosphere, rather than it always being logical. But that comes down to personal style as well. A writer just needs to be consistent in this and that it suits the story.

Description can also be used to make comparisons between places: the new versus the familiar.

For example, when Jiddy arrives in York (in book 3), she compares the size of the Minster (the huge church in the centre of the city) to the height of the cliffs she knows at Ravenscar. She can only describe something new through something familiar.

Ravenscar (Photograph by Ruth Estevez)

So, there are many ways to make a place a character in your writing and I hope these examples illustrate the way I use it and perhaps, you may want try these out as well.

My challenge is for you to describe a place in one or a mixture of these methods. You can personify a building or a forest, or the sea, for example. Use adjectives and verbs to personify the place.  Or compare somewhere new through familiar buildings and landscape. Show us the mood of the onlooker through the verbs and adjectives you use. Above all, have fun!

Thanks to the Time Tunnellers team for inviting me onto the blog today. Happy writing!

Ruth Estevez is the author of six novels, including the Jiddy Vardy trilogy, which is inspired by a real-life female smuggler from Robin Hood’s Bay, Yorkshire. She is a semi-finalist in the BBNYA Awards 2023 and was the Guest Speaker in the Cheshire Prize for Literature 2023.

Ruth has previously worked as a scriptwriter on the children’s TV series Bob the Builder and worked in theatre and TV from Opera North, Harrogate Theatre-in-Education Company, Pitlochry Festival Theatre to ITV’s Emmerdale. She has taught scriptwriting on the Contemporary BA Film and Television Degree Course at Manchester Metropolitan University.

Ruth is also Project Coordinator for the Portico Sadie Massey awards for Young Readers and Writers, based at The Portico Library in Manchester.

Instagram: @ruthestevezwriter

X: @RuthEstevez2

Facebook:  @RuthEstevezM

Website: www.artgoesglobal.wordpress.com

You can buy the Jiddy Vardy Trilogy here: Wave of Nostalgia

 

#MaryQueenofScots - 10 Pictures and a Classroom Resource

I have long has an interest in Mary, Queen of Scots. For any teachers tackling Mary in the classroom, I have created comprehensive teaching resources for The Boy, the Witch and the Queen of Scots, free to download HERE. The tragic queen was born at Linlithgow Palace on the 8th of December 1542, barely three weeks after Scotland's defeat to the English at the Battle of Solway Moss. Below, I am pictured with her statue at Linlithgow. Sadly, her life was to get more complicated still.

When little Mary was six days old, her Father James V of Scots reportedly turned his face to the wall and died. Allegedly, he said:'It began with a lass and it will gang with a lass.', referring to his disappointment that his family line was not to carry on through a male heir. Aged 9 months, Mary was officially crowned at Stirling Castle, pictured below.

However, her life was to become even more challenging: King Henry VIII of England had insisted that his own son Edward and Mary should be wed, an arrangement ratified in the Treaty of Greenwich. However, the regent in Scotland, the Earl of Arran, renounced the treaty, ushering in the prologued period of violent confrontation known as the 'Rough Wooing'. Five-year-old Mary was whisked off to France and, as a teenager, married to the French Crown Prince, her childhood playmate. Hoever, that stability and happiness was soon to be at an end: her husband inherited the French crown but died soon thereafter, leaving Mary widowed and without a purpose at the French court. She was persuaded to return to Scotland.

However, Scotland was not the country she had left behind. The Catholic Mary was returning to a now Protestant Scotland. Influential preachers like John Knox had persuaded many influential noblemen to become Protestants, including Mary's half-brother and closest advisor James Stewart. From the very beginning of her reign, John Knox tried to stir up trouble for Mary.

As a writer, I was particularly interested in this newly arrived 18-year-old Queen Mary. She certainly didn't have her troubles to seek, but she appears to have had considerable charm and vivacity, travelling across Scotland on lengthy progress journeys and indulging in dancing, riding, hunting and hawking. I found myself particularly fascinated by Mary's love of falconry and decided to make my boy hero an apprentice falconer. This necessicated some research, both theoretical...

...and practical.

Particular mention is made of Mary's merlins for which she had a particular fondness. A merlin is Britain's smallest bird of prey, but more than capable of hunting and supplying the Palace kitchens with larks, for example.

I discovered that the Catholic Earl of Huntly became a formidable foe when Mary did not back his wishes for a counter-reformation to reinstate Catholicism. On her progress north in the summer of 1562, she snubbed the Ear's invitation to visit his castle at Huntly, then called Strathbogie. Here I am, visiting its ruin.

Mary was probably wise not to trust the Earl - rumour had it that he planned to kidnap the Queen and marry her forcibly to his son. Instead, Mary bypassed his castle and gathered support to finally defeat the Earl at the Battle of Corrichie, fought in Aberdeenshire in October 1562. Mary was victorious.

It is true that in the years to come, Mary made some very questionable choices, particularly when it came to the men she chose to trust. However, she also had more than her fair share of bad luck and unfair treatment at the hands of others. In The Boy, the Witch and the Queen of Scots, I hope that I can portray a different, more hopeful side of the tragic queen: a fun-loving, considerate, charismatic, thoughtful and energetic go-getter, a teenager who is all too often judged too harshly. Whatever the truth, Mary's iconic status and hold on the imagination is set to continue, as this recent exhibition on her cultural legacy shows.

Barbara Henderson is the award-winning author of eleven books. Her new title, The Boy, the Witch and the Queen of Scots, is out from Luath Press now. Find out more about Barbara at www.barbarahenderson.co.uk.

My family’s tragic band of brothers - by Robin Scott-Elliot

 

History was my favourite subject at school and it still fascinates me today – I’ve always got a pile of history books next to my bed (my favourite place to read!). What interests me most about history is not the big picture, the great canvas that shows the rise and fall of empires and kings and queens, but the all the small portraits of the people who make up history. I want to know about those in the frontline, the led not the leaders and that’s why I have a fascination with family history.

This is what got me into history in the first place – my family story. Everyone will have something in their family history worth sharing. I help put together a podcast (We Have Ways Family Stories) in which listeners send in stories of their relatives from the Second World War. Hundreds were sent in. These range from tales of brave men and women doing incredible things… to those whose battle was just to stay alive… to those whose part in history almost makes you laugh.

One listener told of a relative who worked at a top-secret weapons factory. The roof was covered in grass to make it look like a field with a few wooden cows and sheep scattered around. This person’s job was to climb up on to the roof each morning and move the cows and sheep around in case the Germans realised they were always in the same place.

So, everyone’s family has a story but you have to go out and look for it. That’s what I did with mine and it’s one of the main reasons I became obsessed with history.

Bertie Anderson

I’ve an old photograph hanging in my house of my great-granddad, WH Anderson, known as Bertie. It’s been handed down the family and I grew up hearing stories of Bertie and his three brothers, Ronnie, Charlie and Teddie. They were all killed in the First World War and so I decided I wanted to write their story so we would have a way of always remembering them and their short lives.

The Anderson brothers

This is what I found out…

When war began in the hot summer of 1914, Charlie Anderson, a lieutenant in the Highland Light Infantry, wrote home that he “was so glad we will all be in this one together.” Charlie, like many Britons and in particular British soldiers, was excited at the thought of going to war. He pictured marching off to fight the Germans with his three brothers at his side. But by the time his brothers arrived in France, Charlie was already dead.

Charlie’s war lasted eight days. He went into the trenches on 11 December 1914. On 19 December he took part in an attack on the German lines and was never seen again. His body was never found. His parents, Nora and Willie, were told he was missing, but that didn’t mean he was dead. They had to wait seven terrible months until it was confirmed Charlie was gone forever.

By then Ronnie was at the front. He joined Charlie’s battalion, determined to ‘do his bit’, as people at the time used to say.

He lasted longer than Charlie, but not by long. In October 1915, Ronnie, a tall man with long legs, didn’t notice he’d stopped by a place in the trench which was not as deep as the rest. He was shot by a sniper.

What must this have been like for the two remaining brothers, Bertie and Teddie? What about Nora and Willie? Two of their children gone, the remaining two now at the front and in daily danger of suffering the same fate. What was it like to live like that for day after day, month after month, year after year?

Teddie Anderson

By March 1918, Teddie was in the Royal Flying Corps – he left school and joined up. The first time he went abroad was to go to war. If you lasted six months at the front as a pilot, you were sent home to be an instructor – most pilots didn’t last that long. Teddie sent long letters home from France. In one he wrote about singing all the way home after surviving a raid on some German observation balloons. I picture him sitting in the cockpit, swaddled in his massive leather coat with its fur collar, scarf flapping in the wind and goggles fixed tight, shouting out his song. I wonder what song it was?

On 16 March 1918, Teddie, now an instructor in Kent, suffered a catastrophic engine failure while on a test flight. His injuries were fatal. “He slipped away to a better place,” the nurse who treated him wrote to Nora.

Nora put a thin black line through 16 on her pocket March calendar. Nine days later she made another mark.

On 21 March, the Germans launched a huge attack, a last bid to win the war. Bertie and his men of the Highland Light Infantry stood in their way. On 25 March he was killed. He’d spent his final day leading his men in attack after attack. He died a hero – later awarded a Victoria Cross. The medal is in the Imperial War Museum along with photographs and the story of him and his brothers. When I go to London, I go and see the medal. It feels like I’m saying hello.

The telegram sent to Bertie's wife, Gertie,
 informing her that he'd been killed

Bertie never knew of the medal, or the fact he would be considered a hero. I wonder what Nora, his mother, made of it. Four children, all gone in the space of four years. How do you cope with that? She made an album about her boys, photographs and letters and newspaper cuttings, everything she had of them. All she had left of them.

I’ve got the album. I’m looking after it until I hand it on to my children and I hope they will hand it on in due course. And that way someone will always remember Nora’s boys, Bertie, Ronnie, Charlie and Teddie.

Robin Scott-Elliot has been a sports journalist for 25 years with the BBC, ITV, the Sunday Times, the Independent and the ‘i’, covering every sport you can think of and a few you probably can’t. He threw that all away to move home to Scotland and chase his dream of writing books instead of football reports. Once there his daughters persuaded him to write a story for them and that is how his career as a children's author began. Finding Treasure Island is his latest book and is published by Cranachan.