By Darren Harris
Some authors say they were born to write and have always had it in them. Others will tell you how their challenges in life, maybe a difficult childhood, financial hardship or a traumatic event, inspired them to write. For me it was a little bit more complicated, so let me tell you a little about myself and how I came to write The King’s Son.
If you haven’t read it yet The King’s Son is a novel set in England in the 15th century, at the end of the War of the Roses. What makes it unusual is that it was inspired by two historical mysteries which have never been solved. Before I get to those unsolved mysteries, let me explain my journey to this point.
I was born in Leicester, in the English Midlands, in 1967. From a young age my mother instilled in me a love of history. She would read stories to me about characters from history such as Grace Darling, the lighthouse-keepers daughter who sailed out into a stormy North Sea in a rowing boat to rescue the survivors of a shipwreck, or Alfred the Great, the Saxon king of England who, while hiding out from the Vikings, took refuge in a peasant woman’s house and burnt the cakes he was supposed to be keeping an eye on resulting in a severe tongue-lashing from the woman. But the story that captivated my imagination the most was about King Richard III’s journey to and from the Battle of Bosworth.
The legend goes that as King Richard was leaving Leicester on his way to fight Henry Tudor for the crown of England, he passed over Bow Bridge on horseback and his spur struck the stone parapet of the bridge. An old woman (or some say a blindman) made a prophesy that where the king’s spur struck on the way to battle, his head would strike on the way back. Of course, King Richard thought this was nonsense. However, he lost the battle and his dead body was carried back to Leicester slung over a horse and, lo and behold, as the horse passed over Bow Bridge King Richard’s head hit the parapet where his spur had struck on the way to battle.
The fact that this happened in my hometown and that the battlefield of Bosworth lay just a few miles away added extra interest to this tale. I was enthralled by the stories my mum told me and I wanted to know more. I would save up my pocket money and buy books in the Ladybird history series to find out about Alexander the Great, Warwick the Kingmaker, Cleopatra, Captain Cook, and more. I was hooked on history and by the time I was 8 years old I decided that when I grew up I would become a history teacher.
As it happened, I had a history teacher when I was 15 or 16 who told me that I would never be good enough to be a history teacher myself. She shattered my dream and set me off on another path. My handwriting at that age was pretty messy. Teachers frequently complained they couldn’t read what I had written. I had begun tracing my family tree and wanted to write it out so I could frame it. This was in the days before home computers so the only way to do it was to improve my handwriting. I borrowed a pen from the art department at school and sat practising at break times. A teacher saw my writing and was impressed. He asked me to write labels for the Science room cupboards. Other teachers saw these and soon were asking me to write things for them. A teacher named Lisa Diggle paid me £20 to write two poems for her. This was a hell of a lot of money to a schoolkid in the 1980’s. She convinced me that I was good enough to set up my own business and supported me to apply for a business grant and set up my own calligraphy business in 1986. A lesson that I would never forget was that a teacher has the power to make or break a child, and that is an immense responsibility that should never be taken lightly.
My business initially went well. I wrote family trees, menus for restaurants, wedding invitations, posters, and myriad other things. The photograph above shows some examples of my calligraphy. I met Prince Charles and he looked at my work and we discussed how I had become a calligrapher. Queen Elizabeth II signed between lines of calligraphy I had written for the occasion when she visited a cider making company. I appeared in local newspapers and was interviewed on the radio. A decade or so later my calligraphy business was in decline because of the introduction of home computers which meant people could design and print their own documents at home rather than pay a calligrapher to hand-write it. To make ends meet I got a temporary job in an office, which eventually turned into a permanent job. Six years later, in 1996, I decided that this was not the career path I had intended or wanted. My love of history, nurtured by my mother, had never left me, and neither had my desire to become a history teacher so at the ripe old age of 28 I applied to go to university to study for a history degree.
While at university I also studied scriptwriting. One of my tutors was Christopher Walker, the producer who is probably best known for the comedy tv series The Upper Hand starring Honor Blackman and Joe McGann. Chris wrote on one of my scriptwriting assignments ‘You can clearly write, and on this evidence should!’ I told him that I really enjoyed writing but that my focus was on training to be a teacher. However, like Lisa Diggle had with calligraphy, Chris Walker gave me confidence and belief in my abilities as a writer.
Ironically, the day I qualified I was walking through Leicester city centre on the way back from my graduation ceremony when I passed the teacher who had shattered my dream of becoming a teacher all those years before. I should have walked up to her and said ‘hey, remember me? I’m the boy who you told to forget becoming a history teacher because I’d never make it. Well guess what?’ But I didn’t. Knowing I’d graduated with a history degree, and was about to go on to teacher training, that was enough for me.
I went on to pursue my dream to become a teacher, a job that I still do today. I taught history in a mainstream school before becoming Head of History at a special school. I set up a school museum so that the children could experience hands on history rather than chalk and talk learning. I invited re-enactors into school such as a Roman soldier and a medieval doctor. I took students out to visit castles, medieval manor houses, museums and battle sites. But it all revolved around stories about the past and bringing them to life. I hope that over the years I have instilled the love of history into the children I have taught, as much as my mum instilled the love of history into me.
So, now to the unsolved historical mysteries I mentioned at the start of this post. Richard III and the War of the Roses have long been two of my favourite historical topics. In 2012 Richard III’s remains were discovered buried beneath a car park in the city of Leicester, in an area that I knew well, that had been the Franciscan friary church in medieval times. About the same time I began writing a story based on two characters; Francis Lovell and Richard of Eastwell. Attached to each of these was an enduring mystery.
Francis Lovell was Richard III’s best friend. They had grown up together and Francis had loyally supported Richard through good times and bad, right up until Richard’s death at Bosworth. Francis didn’t quit there though. He continued to lead the Yorkist rebellions against Henry VII after Bosworth, a period that includes political intrigue, rebellions, pretenders to the throne, battles, murders and assassination attempts. Then, Francis just inexplicably disappears from the pages of history. He fought at the Battle of Stoke in 1487 but is not recorded among the battle dead. Strange for one of the leaders of the Yorkist forces to not be mentioned if he had died there. Surely this lord (he had been created a viscount by Edward IV) would have stood out from the common dead in his expensive armour and livery? There is no tomb or grave recorded for him anywhere. There are various rumours and legends regarding his death. Some say he died at the Battle of Stoke, maybe drowning in the river Trent as he tried to escape. Others suggest he escaped but died shortly afterwards of his wounds. The English statesman and philosopher Francis Bacon stated that according to one report he lived long afterward in a cave or vault. In 1708, according to one story, the skeleton of a man was found by workmen in a secret chamber in Francis Lovell’s family mansion at Minster Lovell in Oxfordshire. As the skeleton was revealed, it crumbled to dust as it was exposed to the air. It was suggested that Lovell had hidden himself there and died of starvation. However, there is no evidence that this is more than just a fanciful legend. An interesting postscript to the disappearance of Francis Lovell is that a year after the battle of Stoke, on 19 June 1488, James IV of Scotland issued a safe conduct to him; but was he still alive to accept it?
The second mystery revolves around Richard of Eastwell. In 1720 the Earl of Winchilsea was researching his family ancestry when he came across a record of the burial of a man named Richard Plantagenet at St. Mary’s Church in Eastwell on 22nd December 1550. This was an astounding revelation because Plantagenet was a royal name. Richard III was the last of 14 kings of England to carry that surname, and all other Plantagenet’s had died out within a generation of Richard III’s death. Arthur Plantagenet (Viscount Lisle), an illegitimate son of Edward IV, was the last known person alive with the surname, and he died in March 1542. So, who was this Richard Plantagenet buried in a churchyard at Eastwell, in a quiet corner of south-east England, and not in a royal tomb like all before him who carried that name? Historians have long speculated that Richard of Eastwell, as he has come to be known, could have been an illegitimate son of Edward IV or Richard III, or even one of the ‘Princes in the Tower’ who managed to escape.
These two historical mysteries would come together to create the two main characters in my debut novel The King’s Son. So what, you may ask, did happen to Francis Lovell, and who was Richard of Eastwell? I guess you will have to read The King’s Son to find out.
The King’s Son is FREE on Kindle Unlimited. It is also available on Amazon as an e-book, paperback or hardcover.
UK: https://amzn.to/3qUdsYB
US: https://amzn.to/3sYqJSM
CA: https://t.co/s0wQqH1Jcy
Thank you to all those who have already bought a copy and those who are intending to read it soon. Please remember to leave a review as these are so important for indie authors. I hope you enjoy The King’s Son and please look out for my future works.
