Hear ye! I’m so pleased to announce that we have recently released a new audiobook:

To celebrate this new release, I have the privilege of welcoming the author, Eleanor Swift-Hook, for an EXCLUSIVE interview today.

Welcome to my salon, Eleanor! Before we go into the book itself, what is it about the seventeenth century that inspires you?

I think every era has its inspiring aspects, but for me, the 17th century stands out as being a time of both great upheaval and great growth.

This was the century that began with the invention of the telescope, with Kepler and Galileo, and the realisation that all the old certainties about our very place in the universe were mistaken – astronomy overturning astrology and rewriting the script for philosophy. It was the century of Descartes, Newton and Pascal, of Groeteus and Hobbes.

And, at the same time, art was entering the flowering of an almost photorealistic clarity, combined with a trend to depict ordinary people and objects with as much care and attention as previous eras had reserved for the elites and their luxuries. So we have a record, which shows us people, places and everyday objects with such detail and clarity that it is easy to picture what life was like. Artists, including some amazing women like Judith Leyster, Mary Beale and Gesina ter Borch, flourished alongside their more famous male contemporaries – van Dyke, Ruebens, Lely and Rembrandt and my personal favourite Philips Wouwerman.

Literature came of age as the printing press reached a new level of ubiquity, so news and new ideas could cross continents and be in the hands of hundreds instead of just a handful. Science, theology and politics spread like wildfire. And literature too. Shakespeare wrote nearly half his plays in this century and was joined by greats such as Ben Jonson and James Shirley, and that is before we consider the Restoration playwrights.

I guess I am left wondering not so much what inspires me about it, as why the 17th century doesn’t inspire many more people!

I feel the same way! Who are some of your favourite historical figures from the seventeenth century?

I have mentioned a few of them already but one of my top favourites would certainly be Elizabeth Stuart, the ‘Winter’ Queen of Bohemia. She was the daughter of KIng James VI/I who married the Elector Palatine Frederick V. Frederick was the leading Protestant prince in the Holy Roman Empire. He accepted election by the Protestant Bohemian estates, to become King of Bohemia. But the emperor, who those estates had set aside to elect Frederick, retook Bohemia by force and the Palatine couple were deprived not only of their kingdom but of their lands in the empire. They lived as exiles in The Hague as many attempts were made by various alliances to reclaim at least their Palatine lands. Even after her husband’s death, Elizabeth never stopped fighting to try and regain those lands for her eldest son.

Another top favourite would have to be her fourth child, and third son, Prince Rupert. He alone of her 13 children was born as a prince in Bohemia, and was very nearly made heir to the throne by the estates because he had been. He would go on to gain fame as a commander in the First English Civil War, where he championed his uncle’s cause. He was not just a brilliant military commander on land and sea, like all his precociously talented siblings, something of a polymath and decidedly polyglot being fluent in at least seven languages. He was also a passionate scientist, who was one of the founders of the Royal Society and a superb artist, applying his skills to develop the mezzotint etching process. He was also, like all his siblings, extremely good looking!

Oh yes – he was an incredible man! What first piqued your interest in history?

I was first drawn to ancient times, oddly enough, but once I encountered a group of English Civil War Society reenactors at university and got involved with that, I developed a complete passion for the period.

Some historians suggest that readers may steer away from the seventeenth century because of the complexity of the politics and religion – it’s all a bit too much. The Thirty Years’ War is just one of many conflicts that took place in the Early Modern period, and perhaps some readers less familiar with the period may be daunted by the upheaval inherent in that time. What do you make of all this?

I guess my first response would be that anyone who approaches any era of history and sees it as anything other than incredibly complex, is missing something important. We often put historical times in a small box and think of this century or that decade and sum it up in a few glib words.

The complexity we have in our own lives, in the events we have lived through, should surely remind us that past ages were not like that – they were whole worlds, full of millions of people living their lives.

Every era in history is a vast swathe of human experience and, although it is very human to want to simplify, our own lived experience should tell us how mistaken it is to take that approach to history.

In my opinion, the conflicts of the Thirty Years War are truly not so hard to understand if viewed through the same decreasing lens. There were two matters at stake for most influential people – religion and political power. Of the two, religion was the dominant force, but not so dominant that the Catholic French were content to let the Catholic Habsburg family rule all Europe unchallenged, or so dominant that the Protestant Elector of Saxony didn’t decide his lands were best secured by supporting the emperor rather than opposing him.

Sometimes religion wore the clothes of politics, as in the civil wars in Britain where religious opposition to the king by Puritans, took on political issues to justify itself. Sometimes it was the other way around and hard politics donned the cloak of religion to secure support, as did the Swedish King Gustaf Adolph when he invaded the empire claiming to be there to liberate Protestants, but in truth coming as a conqueror.

For me the complexity is caused by humans being human and that is a huge part of the fascination of the era.

The Fugitive’s Sword can be a standalone read, but really is the first book in a prequel series, Lord’s Learning, to your popular and beloved series, Lord’s Legacy. Would you please tell us about how the idea came about?

It began with the purpose of telling the story of one man: Philip Lord, who has a mysterious past and a striking appearance. But his story is never told from his own perspective so we only ever see him through the eyes of others.

Those were the key decisions I began from. A ‘What if…?’ historical question that defined his origins and the desire to present a character who we can only know as we might know a person in real life: through what he says and what he does. A main character whose thoughts we never know, whose perspective is always filtered through the perceptions of others. An enigmatic man to the reader, therefore, with an enigmatic heritage.

Both choices set up a number of challenges for me as a writer, but I think they led to a rather unique result and having told the story of Philip Lord uncovering the truth about his past, I felt drawn to write about how he became the man who a young lawyer encounters in a smoke filled alehouse in County Durham, and to explore the stories hinted at and sketched in brief, but never fully told, about the close companions he has about him at that time.

I loved how you had two main stories, with several secondary aspects, that eventually came together really beautifully by the end of The Fugitive’s Sword. What is your technique for writing your novels? I love learning about how different authors create their work. Do you meticulously plan everything, or go where the story takes you?

I begin with a timeline of the historical events that my characters must dance through. I try hard not to impact those in any way that would leave a muddy bootprint on the known historical record. Once I have that, I will take the story I want to tell and weave it through the timeline – adding in new fictional points.

I will invariably have immersed myself in book after book of reading about the time and the events before I set pen to paper, but whilst I keep the key points on the timeline in mind, I write scene by scene and sometimes will rewrite the fictional points on the timeline as something I think is a better way to take the story comes into view through the process of writing it and understanding how the characters are experiencing the events.

So it is a bit of both – stacks of research, a solid timeline both historical and fictional, and then writing the story as it comes.

Did you always have the backstory for your characters in your head or did you work on that more after the success of the Lord’s Legacy series?

The backstory was always there if not sketched in full detail. I had no notion at the time that I would write the prequel series so I was not as meticulous as I maybe should have been in every detail, which made some of my work when planning Lord’s Learning a bit more difficult as I had to be sure to account for all the casually mentioned anecdotes from each character’s past!

Who is your favourite character in the series, and why?

I’m not sure I can play favourites amongst the major characters. It is a bit like asking a parent to choose a favourite child in a large family! They all have some aspect that I really enjoy when writing about them. However, I think Philip Lord is probably the one who I would have to come back to if pushed. He is the central focus of the series, even if we only get to understand him through the eyes of others. He acts a bit like the Philosopher’s Stone when I’m writing: if a scene is not sparking enough, then introducing him into it, in person or in mention – or if he is already there having him take centre stage, always seems to somehow transmute those around him, and bring the whole scene to vibrant life.

For those new to your work, which book would you suggest they read first?

I think that would depend on their area of historical interest.

Lord’s Learning, which opens with The Fugitive’s Sword, takes in a broad swathe of Europe. As well as England, it visits the Netherlands, Germany, France, Italy and elsewhere. It is something of a coming of age story and has a touch of romance, but mostly it is a story of adventure against the backdrop of brutal warfare. The Fugitive’s Sword is set in the closing months of the Jacobean era, and sees Philip Lord, a teenager, exiled as a traitor and thrust alone into the violence of war both on land and at sea. For audiobook fans this really is the perfect introduction to the series.

On the other hand, The Mercenary’s Blade, which is the first book in my Lord’s Legacy series, is probably a good starting point for anyone who has a particular fascination for the civil war era.

I really enjoyed collaborating with you during the process of making your book into an audiobook. You were very communicative and encouraging and patient. You created a relationship in which I felt I could contact you to find out how you wanted some things said or a characterisation – it’s important to have a positive environment for such a project.

Thank you for saying such kind things.

To me, the audiobook is not ‘mine’ it is very much a shared project. You have used your superb performance skills to interpret The Fugitive’s Sword, and in doing so, bring it to life in a way it could never be as just words on a page.

Thank you so much!  Do you have any current projects you’re working on which you can share with us?

Needless to say I am working on the rest of Lord’s Learning. At the moment, this looks as if it will run to at least four volumes. The third book is about to enter final edits and will be released in the early months of next year – probably in March – and the fourth is presently a collection of notes, a pile of research books and a document with a few thousand words. If the muses are kind I hope to complete that next year. In addition, after many people have asked to know if Philip Lord and his companions survive the wars, I have been writing a book to explore that. And as these things often do, it might even suggest another short series set in the 1650s which has the working title ‘Lord’s Legend’…

I have also just brought out the first fruits of an interesting collaboration between myself and M.J. Logue, who also writes in the civil war but her main character fights for Parliament. When we realised our characters were only a year apart in age and had both been active in the European wars, we could not resist asking ‘What if they met?’ and the result has been a short series of novellas, the first of which, An Orphan Spirit: Amsterdam 1627, is now in the world and more should follow next year.

Since I sadly won’t have the honour of having you as a guest on my live show, I’m going to ask you what I ask all my guests: For a Fantasy Stuart Dinner, who would you invite? What would you serve? Who would you sit next to?

The Stuart era is packed with people I would love to meet, all those I have already mentioned and so many others: Pocahontas;  Teresa Sampsonia, Lady Shirley, who travelled as an ambassador for the Persian Empire, Margaret Cavendish,  who wrote a book considered by some to be the first science fiction story; King James IV/I, erudite and entertaining – but ideally not in company with his brother-in-law King Christian of Denmark as they allegedly got extremely drunk and rowdy together, and so the party would end with ambulances at dawn not coaches at midnight! I could go on and on, but I shall restrain myself and consider that I have a limited table and this is a dinner party not a banquet. So let me say no more than eight guests. But which eight?

I would invite Prince Rupert, of course, and his mother Elizabeth of Bohemia. I would also invite Peg Hughes, the woman history knows as Prince Rupert’s mistress, but who seems to have been the only woman he truly gave his heart to and was his partner not a mere plaything as the term implies.  I would love to meet her as she must have been an amazing woman to hold his affection. If it were possible I would want his brother Maurice there as well, as I think he was a remarkable man who never managed to step out of his brother’s long shadow and died too young. In fact I would love to invite all Rupert’s siblings – and his children, but this is a dinner party so I have to set the limit there.

As for others, I would be tempted to ask Sir Matthew Hale to ask how (and why) he managed to stay steadfastly neutral in the civil wars and try and change his views on women’s rights in marriage, and Sir John Urry (serial turncoat) to find out what his driving principles really were. Oh, and Descartes, if only to give him a good talking to about promulgating the myth that animals are just automata with no real feelings.

And my last guest would be Oliver Cromwell. It would be fascinating to hear him and Prince Rupert discussing tactics, and I would love to know the reality of the man who has become mythologised in British culture as both a hero and a villain.

As for what I should serve, I am not sure. As this is a fantasy dinner party, taking place out of time, maybe I would regale them with modern fare and serve pizza, with ice cream for dessert, to see what they thought of it! And I would sit myself between Rupert and Cromwell, if only to ensure swords were not drawn!

Thank you!

And thank you so much for inviting me to this interview. I have really enjoyed answering the questions!

Bio

Eleanor Swift-Hook enjoys the mysteries of history and fell in love with the early Stuart era at university when she re-enacted battles and living history events with the English Civil War Society. Since then, she has had an ongoing fascination with the social, military and political events that unfolded during the Thirty Years’ War and the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. She lives in County Durham and loves writing stories woven into the historical backdrop of those dramatic times.

You can find out more about her books on her website or follow her on Twitter/X @emswifthook.