This month author Eloise Williams takes us on a tour around the Elizabethan London featured in Honesty and Lies.
We’ll be visiting the key places where Honesty and Alice spend their time and Eloise will give you an inside sneak peek into the places as well as what it takes to bring this world to life!
The Globe
I love to write about the theatre and the Globe is surely one of the most evocative when it comes to historical stages. Don’t get me wrong, I love Victorian theatres with their decorative auditoriums, glittering chandeliers and plush velvet curtains. I’m also a sucker for other great outdoor venues, the Minack in Cornwall springs to mind as being exceptional, as does Regent’s Park. I also love a bit of street theatre, and the work of Brecht in breaking down barriers, or Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed which relies on audience participation. I feel as if I’m needlessly showing off my knowledge of theatres and practitioners now, but the point is, I adore it.
Before I became a writer, I was an actor and from the first professional performance I can remember, I was spellbound. Yul Brynner at the London Palladium is a pretty good place to start and though he meant nothing to me at the time – philistine that I was, I became completely enraptured by the costumes, lights, magic and story of the play. I’ve since been in lots of wonderful theatres, but the Globe is surely one of the most spectacular recreations of our time.
The audience in modern theatres – by which I mean British Victorian and onwards – tend to sit quietly until the end of an act and then applaud politely unless invited to take part in the action. Not so with an audience in Honesty and Alice’s day! There would have been shouting and heckling, ale being consumed in large quantities, cavorting and pickpocketing. The groundlings would have shoved and pushed for their view of the stage, and with their hard lives, poverty, and disease rife, the play had better be good to make it worth their while.
It’s that, which makes it so remarkable that a story could spellbind an audience. Of course, there was swordplay and gunpowder, beating drums and merry jigs, but ‘the play’s the thing’ and beyond these tricks of the trade and smells of the audience, the story soared capturing the hearts of the people and lifting them above the hardship for a while. At least, I like to imagine it did.
As Honesty says, ‘This is everything I ever knew that stories could be. The words curl and romp, frolic and gambol, trip from the actor’s tongues and enchant us all.’ If Honesty says it, it must be true, right?
This month author Eloise Williams takes us on a tour around the Elizabethan London featured in Honesty and Lies.
We’ll be visiting the key places where Honesty and Alice spend their time and Eloise will give you an inside sneak peek into the places as well as what it takes to bring this world to life!
Greenwich Palace
I visit London as often as I can and have favourite haunts. Highgate Cemetery – excuse the haunts pun – the Southbank, Postman’s Park and the West End are all well frequented by us and our tourist’s fascination with pretty much everything. But we wanted to discover somewhere new. ‘What about Greenwich?’ I asked my husband as I peered at a Google map. There’s an observatory in a big park and we can get the boat back. Feet weary of concrete and longing for grass agreed. And so, we set off.
I’d never heard of Greenwich Palace. I don’t know why. I’m not claiming to be a font of all knowledge by any stretch of the imagination but to know nothing of a palace of such stature and magnificence seemed a little bizarre. Oh, it’s not there anymore. That explains it then. But what a gift for a writer to recreate something which has disappeared! Yes! I wanted to do just that.
I had little idea of how people lived in Elizabethan times, save for the series of Blackadder in which Miranda Richardson played QEI which I couldn’t rely on to be wholly accurate, so I thought I’d better educate myself. Nothing helped me more than my visits to Hampton Court Palace, the Globe theatre and the Tudor Merchant’s House in Dinbych-y-Pysgod. The staff at all were so knowledgeable – thanks to them for answering a very annoying number of questions – and to be walking through these historic buildings was just wonderful.
I learned many things which helped me to visualise Alice and Honesty’s lives and how they might have lived at Greenwich. Or course, I am no historian, but I created a palace of my own which, whilst heavily influenced by Hampton Court, has its own identity too.
Seeing it through the eyes of the girls meant that I only had to recreate the places which were relevant to them. It’s a look at the palace through the eyes of the workers. They appreciate the beauty of the dresses and feasts, fine artwork and beautiful fountains, but they also have to work hard in the laundry room, cold underground tunnels where they fear the Thames will break through and drown them, and the stinking washhouse. The contrasts are extreme and the theme of appearance versus reality echoed my theme of honesty and lies so well it was almost as if it was planned that way.
This month author Eloise Williams takes us on a tour around the Elizabethan London featured in Honesty and Lies.
We’ll be visiting the key places where Honesty and Alice spend their time and Eloise will give you an inside sneak peek into the places as well as what it takes to bring this world to life!
The Thames
I love to write about water. It snakes its way through most of my stories and is, I suppose, the common theme which would draw them together if anyone should care to search for a link in my work. I often find myself absorbed by it. Looking at it, jumping into it, admiring or fearing it. The fluidity of the stuff, everchanging, glittering and gobbling, listening, drinking everything in. There’s such a magical quality to a body of water quite beyond the lifegiving, life-taking one. Think of the stories the Thames carries. The things it has seen and swept away. The voices which have sunk into it and the curious objects it leaves on its banks as clues for mudlarks and historians. It’s the heart of London.
A couple of years ago I took a boat from Greenwich to Southwark and pondered on the perspective it gives the traveller. How grand it would have been during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I to have seen Greenwich Palace – long gone now – on its banks. How frightening to slide past The Bloody Tower. How exhilarating to fight for your place on the water, jostled by other passengers and boats. To dock perhaps at Southwark, place of entertainment and home of the Globe. If you lived at Greenwich Palace, you might make use of a tide clock to make travel swifter. If you were a traitor, you might find your head on a stick for all to see from the barges which passed beneath London Bridge.
The Thames is a very different serpent now to the one it would have been in Elizabethan times. I’ve dipped my toes into its waters without fear of catching the plague and have viewed the Tower of London with a tourist’s eye and no fear of being rowed through Traitor’s Gate. But what fun it is to see London from the water and imagine it as Honesty and Alice would have seen it. The wares transported from foreign climes. Busy with galleons, and wherries and ships crammed with people. The stink of fish guts and scum and human excrement. Oh, what stinky joy for a writer! I hope you enjoy your journey!
Hilarious and full of crazy cartoons and fun facts, Fantastic Football is about the spirit of the beautiful game as much as rules. Covering the history of football, the future of the game including the rise in women’s football as well as the importance of diversity, and spotlights on top players, Fantastic Footballalso features a practical section on player positions, skills and tricks.
Fantastic Football is the second instalment in the Stupendous Sports series, which aims to do for Wednesday afternoon sport what Horrible Histories did for Year 7 History with Mr Simkin. Perfect for reluctant readers and those who like to dip into a good book, this is a team read!
Penny Thomas, Publisher at award-winning children’s and YA publisher Firefly Press, has acquired World rights in middle-grade novel A History of My Weird by Chloë Heuch.
Autistic Mo is struggling to fit into high school but then she meets Onyx. Onyx doesn’t care that she is an outsider and encourages Mo’s new obsession with the abandoned asylum in town. Will Mo’s quest to understand the history of her weird lead her and new friend into a calamity they can’t escape from?
As the overall winner of the Firefly Press Fiction Competition Wales 2022, judge and author Catherine Fisher called A History of My Weird ‘a stand-out winner, with its memorable and vibrant main character, and exciting narrative.’
‘This is a beautifully imagined and executed novel, with a terrific central character and a dynamic storyline,’ said Thomas. ‘We’re so delighted that Chloë has chosen to publish her second title with Firefly, following on from her absorbing YA novel Too Dark to See in 2020.’
Chloë Heuch said: ‘I’m overjoyed to sign with Firefly for A History of My Weird. I love Mo and can’t wait for others to be able to read all about the shenanigans she gets up to.
There have been times in my life when I’ve felt voiceless and invisible, but I’ve been able to find my way home to myself through writing. Working with teenagers for the last few years has inspired me to connect with that age group through stories about things I believe are important.’
