The Daughter of Time, by Josephine Tey. Book review

First published 1951. Edition reviewed: Arrow, 2002, ISBN 0-09-943096-7. 220 pages.

The Daughter of Time is a historical mystery set in 1950s England. All the main characters are fictional but the mystery they are attempting to solve is a real one, the disappearance of the ‘Princes in the Tower’ during the reign of Richard III in 1483.

Inspector Grant of Scotland Yard is laid up in hospital with a broken leg. Bored by the predictable reading material proffered by well-meaning friends, he becomes interested in studying historical portraits. One in particular captures his imagination; he thinks the face should belong to a judge or a statesman, and is astonished to find that it is a portrait of Richard III, whom he vaguely remembers from history and Shakespeare as the archetypal wicked villain. Puzzled that the face in the portrait looks so different from his expectations, Grant enlists the aid of his friends and the hospital staff to investigate Richard’s career and the mystery surrounding the disappearance of his young nephews, the ‘Princes in the Tower’. Did Richard III really have them murdered as Grant’s history lessons said, or can the evidence bear some other interpretation – and point to some other culprit?

This is an unusual and ingenious historical mystery, and I found it a delight from beginning to end. It would earn a place in my heart just for Grant’s splendidly dyspeptic opinion of production-line romances, thrillers and gloomy literary fiction:

“The Sweat and the Furrow was Silas Weekley being earthy and spade-conscious all over seven hundred pages. […] The rain dripped from the thatch and the manure steamed in the midden. Silas never omitted the manure. It was not Silas’s fault that its steam provided the only up-rising element in the picture. If Silas could have discovered a brand of steam that steamed downwards, he would have used it.”

This passage appears on the second page and sold me straight away. The rest of the writing lives up to the initial promise, crisp, elegant and compact with not a word wasted. The contemporary characters are sketched in with a few bold brush-strokes that bring them vividly to life as individuals with their own quirks and foibles: the soppy nurse; the brisk nurse; flamboyant Marta, for whom the word ‘actressy’ could have been invented; the rather vague student who is suddenly galvanised when Grant’s investigation catches his interest.

Like The House on the Strand (reviewed earlier), although a very different novel, The Daughter of Time captures the thrill of pursuing an intellectual puzzle and the satisfaction that comes from tracking down an elusive fact. Grant becomes so absorbed in each new scrap of evidence that he quite forgets the discomforts of his injury and the frustrations of confinement. Don’t look for action – the entire novel takes place in Grant’s hospital room, with assorted friends bringing him books and snippets of information. This is a chase purely of the mind, but no less gripping for that. I would hazard a guess that anyone who has pursued a tricky question through obscure historical sources will recognise Grant’s quest.

The Daughter of Time uses Grant’s investigation of Richard III to explore the processes by which actual events get turned into simplified and widely accepted narratives of history, which then take on a life of their own and become highly resistant to question. Grant complains that people do not like having their preconceptions challenged, and then promptly proceeds to demonstrate it himself by taking comical personal offence at his discovery that Thomas More was not a contemporary biographer of Richard III as he had previously believed. For me, this is one of the key strengths of the novel. It reminds the reader, in dramatised form, that many of the things we think we know as ‘fact’ are probably nothing of the kind. Critical thinking and assessment of evidence are vital in history – as in many other fields of study – and while interpretation may be necessary to make sense of an incomplete set of evidence, one should always keep in mind the distinction and be prepared to consider alternative interpretations. The Daughter of Time can be read as an enjoyable case study of that principle.

Although Inspector Grant is convinced that he has solved the mystery and exonerated Richard III, I would suggest that readers who are interested in the history of Richard III’s reign exercise caution before swallowing the (fictional) Inspector’s conclusions whole. The reason that the mystery of the princes’ fate still qualifies as a Mystery is because the definitive answer is not known with certainty and the limited evidence can support more than one interpretation, all of which answer some questions and raise new ones. I agree with Grant that the case against Richard III is far from proven; I part company in that I don’t think Grant’s alternative solution is proven either.

Ingenious, stimulating historical mystery with a sharp point to make about the importance of critical thinking, told in lively and economical prose with a varied cast of characters. Deservedly a classic.

The Stolen Crown, by Susan Higginbotham. Book review

Sourcebooks, 2010, ISBN 978-1402237669, 377 pages. Edition reviewed: uncorrected advance review copy, kindly supplied by publisher.

Set in 1464-1485, with an epilogue covering 1492-1496, The Stolen Crown covers the later years of the Wars of the Roses and the short reign of Richard III, as told by Harry Stafford Duke of Buckingham and his wife Katherine (Kate) Woodville. All the named characters are based on historical figures.

When six-year-old Kate Woodville witnesses her elder sister Elizabeth secretly marrying Edward IV, King of England, she knows her life will never be the same again. The next year, aged seven, she marries the nine-year-old Harry, who is already Duke of Buckingham after the untimely deaths of his father and grandfather and will come into a great fortune when he comes of age. Kate does not particularly like her young husband’s devotion to his hero, the king’s younger brother Richard of Gloucester, though as yet it casts little shadow over her comfortable life and their adolescent happiness together. Harry is annoyed at being excluded from the high office and power that he thinks his rank entitles him to, but his “delicious Kate”, as he calls her, is considerable compensation. Then in 1483 King Edward IV dies unexpectedly, and as Richard claims the throne for himself in place of his two young nephews, Harry suddenly finds himself at the very centre of power. It is the chance he has dreamed of, to make himself indispensable to his hero Richard – but it comes at a terrible price.

The Stolen Crown is narrated alternately in first person by Harry and Kate. I liked seeing two points of view, particularly as Harry is closely involved in the action after the death of Edward IV and so is an actor in events that Kate would have had to be told about at second hand. The tone of the two narrators is rather similar, perhaps reflecting their shared aristocratic upbringing, and I found I had to pay close attention to the chapter headings to check who was speaking.

As with The Traitor’s Wife and Hugh and Bess by the same author, The Stolen Crown is full of historical detail. All the named characters, even down to ladies in waiting and pages, are based on historical figures. The novel covers the intricacies and contradictions of fifteenth-century politics effectively, often by means of older characters explaining matters to Kate when she is a child. It can be tricky keeping track of all the players, especially given the limited number of popular Christian names in use at the time (practically every family had a Margaret, an Anne, an Isabel or Elizabeth, an Edward, a Richard, etc). The lists of characters organised by family at the front of the book are invaluable.

As the book starts when Kate and Harry are both children, for the first half of the book they are often on the periphery of events as observers rather than participants. It was interesting to watch them growing up and being shaped by their families and experiences, particularly the development of their relationship from children through adolescent romance and into a loving marriage. On the other hand, I found this made the book seem rather slow for the first 200 pages or so, until Edward IV dies and the pace steps up a gear.

The key strength of the book for me was the portrayal of Harry’s relationship with Richard III, which on Harry’s side appears to be mainly hero-worship with faintly homoerotic overtones. This fits well with Harry’s character as developed in the story; having inherited his dukedom as a child and (astonishingly, given the political turmoil of the times) never having been seriously threatened, Harry seems to be still an overgrown teenager even in his late twenties. Imperious, with an inflated sense of his own importance and inclined to speak first and think about the consequences later, he is hopelessly unsuited to high politics. (It’s no surprise that he is affectionately greeted in the afterlife with, “Well, Harry, you certainly made a fine mess of things, didn’t you?”). Richard, who is three years older and has been involved in the cut and thrust of war and politics since the age of sixteen, is a stronger, tougher character and it seems natural that the immature Harry would look up to him. I’m curious about Richard’s side of the story, if only to see whether the relationship was as one-sided as it appears. Yes, the book does give an unequivocal answer to the perennial mystery of the Princes in the Tower, and no, I’m not going to tell you what it is.

Kate is sweet and likeable, with the emotional resilience characteristic of Susan Higginbotham’s other medieval heroines. Picking up the pieces to rebuild her life after personal and political disaster, she reminded me of Eleanor de Clare in The Traitor’s Wife.

The novel is written in straightforward modern prose, attractively salted with occasional wry humour. A helpful Author’s Note at the back sets out the historical background and the rationale for some of the author’s decisions about the various unsolved historical problems. It also very helpfully summarises what happened to the various main characters after the end of the story, and in some cases gives some information about the role their descendants played in later history.

Unsentimental portrayal of the turbulent events surrounding the short and ill-starred reign of Richard III, and in particular the dramatic role played by Henry Stafford Duke of Buckingham.