Interview with Robin Maxwell

I was thrilled to get the chance to ask Robin Maxwell some questions about Signora da Vinci! I reviewed the book here and really loved it, and also enjoyed sharing Robin's thoughts about stats and readership. I hope you enjoy this interview! (Philippa Gregory fans...be forewarned!!)

What sort of responsibility do you feel to the real people that lived when writing historical fiction about true people?

Massive responsibility. I'm really careful about what I put out there about any historical figure, especially if it's a negative portrayal, because these people are long dead and have no recourse -- no way to rehabilitate their names. Anne Boleyn's reputation still suffers today from the 16th century "spin doctors" who portrayed her as a traitor and a whore. Because I write screenplays as well as novels, I have opinions about historical movies as wells as books. Two of the most egregious cases of character assassination occurred in Philippa Gregory's The Other Boleyn Girl, and in the feature film "Elizabeth".

I'm always a bit uncomfortable slamming Ms. Gregory, as she is so unbelievably successful that my griping might be construed as "sour grapes." And all historical fiction authors owe her a debt of gratitude for truly putting the genre on the map. But back when TOBG was in galleys and our editor-in-common at Simon and Schuster asked me if I'd blurb it (I was a logical choice because I'd written The Secret Diary of Anne Boleyn) I was taken completely aback by what I read. The book was certainly a page-turner, but Gregory had taken a character whom I had carefully studied and found to be a bold, courageous woman of her time -- one whose life story deserved a sympathetic retelling -- and ripped her apart in every way possible. it seemed to me that all the most hideous rumors about Anne (and there were many, put forth by her many jealous enemies and Henry VIII's minions) had been trotted out, and because they made for a spicy, sexy, wildly dramatic story, they were set down for readers as fact. Gregory's Anne was conniving and appallingly bitchy. She slept with her homosexual brother George and five other men while she was Henry queen, and was so horribly self-serving that she literally stole Mary and Henry's bastard son and brought it up at court as her own.

I understand that we write fiction and we therefore have some wiggle room, but that is just plain made-up. In no history book does it say that Anne took Mary's child or brought it up at court. That she did this in The Other Boleyn Girl was the most atrocious thing Anne did -- something that broke her sweet sister, Mary's, heart. Now, a few discerning readers who deeply study Tudor history would know this was rubbish, but 99% of readers would not know. And so many people read that book, it was such a phenomenal bestseller, that now you have an entire generation of readers interested in history who believe Anne Boleyn was an arch villainess. If I'd been Henry VIII, and Anne had really been the person Philippa Gregory wrote her to be, I'd have had her head chopped off, too! Needless to say, I declined to give the book a blurb .

In the case of Michael Hirst, who wrote the screenplay for "Elizabeth" (not to mention the entire "The Tudors" TV series) he took some jaw-dropping liberties with several historical figures. He characterized Francis Walsingham (played by Geoffrey Rush) as a homosexual assassin, and William Cecil, Lord Burleigh as a doddering old man in the early years of Elizabeth's reign (neither true). Further, he asks us to believe that at the time Elizabeth first took Robin Dudley as her lover, she had no idea that he was a married man. That she had to be told of his marital status by the ancient Burleigh. More rubbish! In fact, Elizabeth and Dudley had been friends since childhood, and she had stood at the wedding of Robin and Amy Robsart. It is true that much later in their lives (when Elizabeth was consumed with ruling England and Dudley was not such an integral part of her daily life), he took another wife and kept it secret from the queen for two years, throwing her into a rage when she discovered it.

Many times to adapt history to a screenplay format, writers are forced to "telescope" history (pull spread-out events into a closer time-line), and sometimes we meld several characters into one to avoid "a cast of thousands." But Hirst squashed so many years into so brief a span, that aside from the inaccuracies, it made the plot confusing, even to someone like me, who knows the period like the back of my hand.

I think it's important to keep intent true, the basic facts correct, especially where we have access to the facts. What I'm always hoping for are "holes in history" where there are no facts. Then I very carefully and logically extrapolate from those that I do know, and create, or re-create what makes good sense to have happened, or what people would have said. I think that in most cases, truth is stranger and more entertaining than fiction. Add a couple of gaping "holes in history" to play with, and you've got a whopping good yarn.

How much time do you spend researching before beginning to write?

Months and months. More if I'm tackling a new subject or new historical figures. On The Queen's Bastard, though I knew my characters Elizabeth I and Robin Dudley, I knew nothing about the man claimed to be their illegitimate son, Arthur Dudley. I trolled around in college and large public libraries to find what amounted to 5 pages of history about the man. I knew nothing about the Spanish Armada, or about horses and horsemanship. All of my protagonists were serious horse people, but I am seriously allergic to horses, so I had to get most of my information from books and from my agent who is, herself, a horsewoman.

For Mademoiselle Boleyn, I was familiar with many of my characters, but it took place in France, where I had never traveled. Books and the internet helped me through that. With Signora da Vinci I was in virgin territory, starting from scratch -- all new characters, a new country that I'd never been in, and an earlier time with its particular political history which was necessary for me to understand on a deep level. Then there were new arenas I had to familiarize myself with -- apothecaries and alchemical laboratories, neo-platonism, and the history of the Turin Shroud. This was certainly my most labor-intensive novel, and there was never a time during the entire writing process when I could put away the research materials. Even working on the last page of the epilogue, I still had books in my lap.


I loved how strong Caterina was. I read in the interview included in the book that you found several research books about women who dressed as men during this time. What might have been some of the other motivations for doing so?

The “Two Joans” of Medieval times – Joan of Arc ( fifteenth century) and Pope Joan (ninth century) were two of the earliest and most formidable cross-dressers in European history, and I can only assume that their motivation were spiritually based. I think it's interesting that while many others were less well-known, enough soldiers, sailors, stonemasons, shoemakers, rogues, pirates and clergymen attempted to pass as men that ordinances and official decrees were enacted in several countries forbidding women to wear men’s clothing. Not only did they dress the part of their male counterparts, they swore, smoked pipes and engaged in strenuous physical tasks. Some even married other women. Indeed, the vast majority of known cross-dressers hired on as soldiers and sailors. Some were motivated by a lust for adventure or patriotism. Others joined the army or went to sea lusting after their husbands or lovers – unable to stand separation from them. But I can't help but think that many of these strong-minded women just wanted out of the dead-end lives in which the vast majority of them were trapped.

What fascinates you the most about this time period?

It was not just the time period but the place at that particular time -- Florence, Italy, 1466. It was, just at the moment that Leonardo came to begin his apprenticeship, in the very cauldron of the Renaissance. The greatest minds alive were re-discovering classical Greek, Roman and Egyptian philosophies that defied the Catholic church in ways that were desperately heretical. The great masters such as Boticelli (who is a character in Signora da Vinci) were producing some of the iconic works of art and architecture that are synonymous with the Renaissance. And members of the the Medici family, who play such critical roles in my story, were at the height of their power, wealth and glory. I had been worried about leaving Tudor England after writing six novels about that place and period, but I found out I had no reason to be concerned. My next book, O, Romeo, takes place in Florence as well, in 1444, and Lorenzo "The Magnificent's" mother, Lucrezia, is the best friend of my protagonist, Juliet.

Why did you choose to write about Leonardo da Vinci's mother?

I had actually wanted to write about Leonardo, who has, to my way of thinking, the most astonishing mind in history. But publishers today are most interested in books from a woman's point of view. Just a little digging proved to me that Leonardo could hardly have inherited his "genius genes" from his father, a cold-hearted, social-climbing, petty bureaucrat. That left his mother as the font of his genius. There was the obvious problem of so little being known about Caterina. But for an author of historical fiction, who prides herself on knowing how to fill in the holes in history, it was a fabulous opportunity. Too, there was much known about the Medici, and life in Florence at that time. And I had the benefit of many great biographies of Leonardo, his works, and the writings in his notebooks. From the child, I was able to extrapolate the mother.

What other books would you recommend about this time period?

Here are some of my research "bibles" of the period, though you'll find a more complete bibliography at the end of the book.

David Melling, Understanding Plato
E.J. Homyard, AlchemyFrancis Yates, Renaissance and Reform; The Italian Contribution: Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition; The Rosicrucian Enlightenment; The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age
Serge Bramly, Leonardo, The Artist and the Man
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, arranged, translated and with an introduction by Edward MacCurdy Charles Nicholl, Leonardo Da Vinci – Flights of the Mind
Christopher Hibbert, The House of Medici, It’s Rise and Fall
Hugh Ross Williamson, Lorenzo the Magnificent
Michal Levey, Florence
Philippe Aries and George Duby, A History of Private Life – Revelations of the Medieval World
Rudolph M. Dekker and Lotte C. Van de Pol, The Tradition of Female Transvestism in Early Modern Europe
Valerie R. Hotchiss, Clothes Make the Man; Female Cross-Dressing in Medieval Europe