Gareth’s latest novel delves into Henry VIII era and receives worthy acclaim

25 January 2017

THE Tudormania of the past decade means there has been little of the lives of Henry VIII’s wives not opened up for 21st century scrutiny.

But it is the tyrannical monarch’s fifth wife — Catherine Howard — who has had less revision than most. She’s still largely known as the naive and ‘wanton’ one who had an affair and ended up with her head on the block — having somehow forgotten what happened to her famous predecessor, Anne Boleyn.

But Saintfield author Gareth Russell has delved further and the results are a new book that is receiving rave reviews from leading Tudor historians and authors, now familiar faces on TV.

‘Young and Damned and Fair’ is a “stunning reappraisal of Henry VIII’s fifth wife” according to Tracy Borman and “an unparalleled view into this tragic chapter of Tudor history” according to Amanda Foreman. Dan Jones describes it as a “terrific achievement”.

“The result is a book that leads us deep into the nightmarish final years of Henry VIII’s reign, wrenching open the intrigues of a poisonous court in a realm seething with discontent,” he said. “At the heart of it all is the fragile, tragic figure of Catherine Howard, whose awful fate is almost unbearable to watch as it unfolds.”

Such high praise is a remarkable achievement for the 30 year-old former Down High School student and Oxford graduate. And having just been named the Daily Mail’s ‘Book of the Week’ it looks like ‘Young and Damned and Fair’ is about to get Gareth a whole new set of readers.

Still taking it all in, the young historian said of the praise: “Yes, it is very flattering to be complimented. There is something inherently touching and quite encouraging for someone to give up their free time to read and engage with your book.

“Everyone at home has also been very supportive.”

Now writing full-time, with an agent in New York, Gareth’s work to date has included the ‘Popular’ series of novels focusing on the well-heeled, badly behaved teenagers of a fictional Belfast grammar school, a First World War themed history book and a play based on the doomed French Queen Marie-Antoinette.

Doomed queens have formed the subject of many of his history blogs over the years, but the subject of his latest work, Catherine Howard — barely out of her teens when she was executed — started life in his history masters.

“I took a close look at her household and her servants played a really crucial role in bringing her down,” he said.

“It would be difficult not to have sympathy for her. I think it is possible to have sympathy and still acknowledge she made mistakes.”

The downfall Gareth refers to is the allegations that emerged of a less than pure past. Catherine had been brought up in a household for aristocratic young women and arguably exploited by older men who visited their dormitory. There was also the emergence of an earlier betrothal before Henry — a king who expected a virgin wife-to-be.

But the nail in the coffin was her adultery with courtier and friend to Henry, Thomas Culpepper, revealed in a love letter — which Catherine signed.

With the ageing king having form in cruelly dispatching his wives, it would seem an act of madness. So what made Catherine think she could get away with an affair?

“Human beings are overly optimistic and we can be stupid,” is Gareth’s take on it. “We don’t think it is going to happen to us.

“I don’t think she ever really made a comparison between herself and Anne Boleyn. By the time of Catherine, it was unspoken that Anne’s execution for adultery was a cover. Anne had been involved in politics. Catherine hadn’t been brilliant or sparky.”

Henry, 30 years older than Catherine, with a rapidly expanding girth and ulcerated leg, had been besotted with his attractive and vivacious young wife. Gareth believes that he was genuinely devastated by her betrayal and that his pride was mortally wounded.

“I think he certainly was very upset, and at times enraged and devastated so that people feared for his wellbeing,” he said. “But it is difficult to feel sorrow for someone who wipes his tears away to sign a death warrant.”

As part of his research Gareth found House of Lords records which showed there were doubts raised over the legality of the death penalty in such a case. The choice of the death penalty, it emerged, was more to do with the increasingly tyrannical and unstable monarch.

“He could have sent her to a convent, or sent her away,” he said. “To me, what Henry did was he broke the toy so nobody could play.

“It’s also to do with his personality. When something has ended for Henry he will end it permanently.”

It’s a view that internationally-renowned historical fiction novelist Philippa Gregory agrees with in her review of Gareth’s book.

“Gareth Russell has done some beautiful new research to indicate that Catherine was not as foolish as some historians have suggested, and that her death was managed and manipulated by her offended husband, purely for his own revenge,” she wrote.

’Young and Damned and Fair’ also explores the wider context of Catherine’s world — a court unsure of itself with a king who brought about the Reformation but at the same time pursued ‘heretical’ evangelical Protestants and was leaning back towards Catholicism.

The king’s unstable behaviour and his courtiers’ deceptions while jockeying for position proved fatal to many, not just to Catherine Howard.

“Catherine’s story illuminates the fact that there was a lot of unrest and panic beneath the surface,” said Gareth, “These were really dark days.”

Instead of relying on the empty-headed flibbertigibbet stereotype, Gareth’s research also led him to a more rounded picture of a “very charming and well-mannered” accomplished young woman that “may have equipped her to be a successful queen”. But neither martyr nor heroine, Catherine has been somewhat set aside by historians over the years. For Gareth, though, it is Catherine’s ordinariness that made her death at the Tower of London scaffold on the morning of February 13, 1542, such a tragedy.

“The tragedy of Catherine Howard, I think, lies in the youth of the queen and the mediocrity of her personality,” he said in an earlier blog post.

“Catherine was vivacious, generous, pretty and fun-loving, but she was not remarkable. In a sense, the real horror of what happened to Catherine is that we all know a girl very much like her.”

Young and Damned and Fair is published by William Collins.

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