Robin Hood - the anti-hero for today as discovered by Lauren Johnson

Today I'm welcoming Lauren Johnson to talk about her new debut, The Arrow of Sherwood. I have always been fascinated by Robin Hood, so I asked Lauren -

Why do you think the legend of Robin Hood has been so enduring?

Lauren : I think Robin endures because he is an antihero – throughout his history, from at least the fifteenth century, he has been a symbol of misrule, of chaos, sometimes of outright violence and lawbreaking. His connection with Mayday in the past is a clear sign of that, because May was all about raucous celebration and upsetting the norm. But he is also a very modern hero. You can see that in the Robin Hood tax campaign – we still want a figure who stands up for the poor and needy, against the seemingly all-powerful wrongdoer. In all our modern TV detective shows, the main character could almost be Robin Hood – they do what they have to, to bring down the bad guy, even if it means bending the rules. He’s mischievous, but he stands for something, and that’s really appealing.

What will surprise the reader about your version of the character of Robin Hood, and will we be meeting Maid Marian?

In The Arrow of Sherwood you will meet pretty much all the archetypes of the Robin Hood story, but probably not in the way you expect. At the start of the book Robin comes back from crusade – he was sent on it to do penance – and the first person he meets is called Marian Peverill. They are supposed to get married, in one of the usual noble arranged marriages, but they deeply dislike each other. There is no respect between them whatsoever. That scene was one of the first I had in my mind – these two famous romantic characters appearing, and they can barely tolerate being in the same courtyard.

I wanted to make Robin, like all the characters, just a bit more human than in lots of versions of his story. He has grown up as a lord’s son but he feels constrained by his family and spent lots of his youth around lowborn men – there’s a bit of a Henry V element to him in that respect. But returning from crusade he is supposed to give up his ties to the common friends he had, and properly become a lord, ruling over them, focusing on increasing his estate and keeping the law. So a lot of the book is about that struggle: between being the lord his family want him to be, and his instinct to help his old friends. Not just because he feels that some other lords are abusing their power and he ought to stop it, but also because there is that danger-seeking element to him that enjoys transgressing rules.

You work as a costumed interpreter, can you explain what this is and how this helps your understanding of history?

Costumed interpretation – sometimes called live or historical interpretation – is a combination of dramatic performance, historical presentation and one-on-one conversation, usually in heritage settings. At its simplest, it means I wear a costume and engage with the public as a character from the past. I have been very lucky to work in a wide range of time periods, portraying very different – but always interesting – characters. I’ve played everyone from medieval princesses to Victorian scullery maids.

I think my experience as a costumed interpreter has helped me massively, not only in my understanding of the past but in my story telling. As part of my research I often go beyond reading about historical events and my character to learn songs, dances, social behaviours, contemporary stories – some of which are pretty weird – and that means I get a really rounded view of the past. Then, having done my own research I have to impart that knowledge to members of the public, from toddlers who might just want to know about medieval animals or my crown, to hyper-informed professors in their 60s. You get very good at gauging what interests the public and the best way of getting your information across.

And then there is simply the fact that I’ve been in the really privileged position of running up and down castle stairs in flat leather shoes, felt how you move in a laced gown with really long beautiful sleeves that can trip you up, sat in a medieval great hall and watched recreated court cases or stories being told – I’ve even shot a trebuchet in my time and withstood a siege from the castle walls. (Not literally, I hasten to add.) When you have the physical experience of a period of history and you’re engaging with your character, you get very close to feeling like you are back in that era, and I think it helps you understand their behaviour.

How important is the real-life history to your re-telling of the story and what is the favourite source you have used?

For me, the real-life history is very important. Obviously, I’ve written a story about a man who almost certainly didn’t exist in the way his myth is now remembered. But I very much wanted to root my version of Robin Hood in a real world – a period that I had spent a number of years researching and interpreting.

I came at this story with a clear question in my mind. A lot of the popular mythology of Robin Hood has ossified over the years – we think of him being a nobleman who lives in the forest with his common friends and Maid Marian, who helps King Richard against evil Prince John and steals from the rich to help the poor. But that character doesn’t really make sense in the twelfth century, when Richard and John existed. Noblemen were usually very separate from the people on their land, and you didn’t get noblewomen hanging out in forests with paupers. So my question was: If a nobleman called Robin of Locksley had existed in that era, how might he have become the Robin Hood we recognise today? I wanted to fuse the historical fact with that myth.

In terms of research, my favourite sources are contemporary ones that bring the past to life. I love twelfth century stories – Marie de France, Chrétien de Troyes, the moral fables. And I really like visual sources. I would love to take more time to just sit and look at manuscript images, because they are extraordinary, and they reveal so much about medieval life and their sense of humour. It’s a later document than my story is set but the Luttrell Psalter of about 1320-40 is brilliant from that perspective – it’s full of scenes of medieval noble life, like the lady sending her husband off to war and handing him his armour, or feasts being served at great tables, or royal ladies on the move, with an absurdly long wagon and all their servants and animals. Those sources bring the past to life, and make your realise that they were still human beings – it bridges the gap between us and them, and that is always what I want to do in my work.

Thanks Lauren, I've loved talking to you - and all the best with The Arrow of Sherwood.

You can follow Lauren on Twitter @History_Lauren or visit her website at http://laurenjohnson1.wordpress.com

Writing Historical Fiction - The Power of Then and the Power of Now

All historical fiction readers understand the power of Then. The lure of an unknown time or place which is only unknown because it happened to take place before we were born. Unlike fantasy, this is an unfamiliar world which, if we took them back far enough, our own flesh and blood ancestors would be able to recognise. The small everyday details are what represent for me the power of Then. The type of flax cloth used for washing your face, the way a fire was lit with a tinder-box, the particular smell of tallow candles, the tickle of a feather in your hat. As a novelist my job is to place the reader in that time, but only recently have I come to understand that the job of doing that is really all about the power of Now.

The best plots spring straight out of Character. In other words, if my characters have strong enough motivations, particularly opposing ones, then the plot will naturally arise from their thoughts and actions. My most convincing writing arises when I inhabit the character so well that I lose track of time and am fully in the Now with that person going about their daily life. When I am trying to force the character to conform to a plot idea, historical event or action, then the writing becomes harder and less natural. Much of it is about listening to the character's voice and letting them speak.

The British Library

For a historical novelist to find that voice might mean reading diaries of the time, listening to archive material or looking up dialect dictionaries - all things I did to try to find voices for my two country girls in The Gilded Lily. I also read plays by Aphra Behn and by Dryden. My previous characters had all been well-educated, spoke proper English and had broad philosophical and worldly horizons. Not so Ella and Sadie Appleby, my two working maids from a small isolated village in The Gilded Lily. Their vocabulary was of necessity smaller, many of their thoughts were conveyed by gestures - a shrug or a raise of the eyebrows. They had naive views about finding fame and fortune and their place in the world, but more complex views about justice and fairness and honesty.

And I wondered how this would change as they went on the run in the big city, whether they would learn new ways of speaking or  new ideas, or yearn for new horizons. And of course they do - the city moulds them into someone different, but not just the city, the London characters they meet; the wigmaker, the pawnbroker, the astrologer.
















Of course I live in the twenty first century so after my research the voices I heard in my head were not pure 17th century, but unique voices, a blend of 17th and 21st century expression. It is odd, but once I can hear my characters speak, then the characters become flesh and blood. Them surprising me is all part of the Power of Now. This is probably one of the reasons why I enjoy writing my books from several different contrasting viewpoints. I spend time in the company of each character, walk a few miles (or chapters) in his or her shoes.


For The Gilded Lily that meant becoming so familiar with my 17th century map of London that I could literally walk the city streets and turn left and right from Sadie and Ella's lodgings to the Pelican Coffee shop where Jay Whitgift, the handsome, but deadly, rogue did his business. As I went I practised walking as they might walk, looked up at the landmarks on the way.

For me, a narrative structure arises from the choices of my characters not from my own choices. How can that be, when I am both creator and created? This is the mystery and excitement of writing for me - the discovery of a great adventure, or that moment when I come back to myself and read it back, and see that the character is alive there on the page.The Power of Then, and the Power of Now.

THE GILDED LILY
Blurb:

A novel of beauty and greed and surprising redemption, set in a London of atmospheric coffee houses, gilded mansions, and the shady pawnshops hidden from rich men’s view,

England, 1660. Ella Appleby believes she is destined for better things than slaving as a housemaid and dodging the blows of her violent father. When her employer dies suddenly, she seizes her chance - taking his valuables and fleeing the countryside with her sister for the golden prospects of London. But London may not be the promised land she expects. Work is hard to find, until Ella takes up with a dashing and dubious gentleman with ties to the London underworld. Meanwhile, her old employer's twin brother is in hot pursuit of the sisters, and soon a game of cat and mouse begins. As the net closes on the girls, danger looms from quite another unexpected horizon...

UK version out 13 Sept
US version out 27 Nov