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Behind The Book With Tony Riches

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Behind The Book With Tony Riches 

Last year I did a Q&A with Tony Riches which you can read by clicking this link https://booknotions.com/qa-with-tony-riches/ . I recently finished the first book in his Stuart Queens Trilogy titled Queen Anna which is available now wherever books are sold! I’m glad to be doing this Behind The Book Q&A discussing Queen Anne! 

Q: Welcome back to Book Notions Tony! I can’t believe it’s been a year since we did a Q&A! Would you give a brief description of the book Queen Anna? 

Thank you for inviting me back. Queen Anna is the first book in my new Stuart Queens trilogy and follows the story of Anna of Denmark from her early life as a teenage Danish princess in Copenhagen to becoming queen consort of three kingdoms. Based on extensive research, including rare primary sources, I hope this book will help restore Anna’s rightful place in history.   

Q: What attracted you to Anne of Denmark as a subject for a novel?

A: I became intrigued by her story (which I knew virtually nothing about) and I knew there was more to Anna (which is how she signed her name) than the frivolous woman most people know. I’d reached the end of my Elizabethan series, so it was natural to progress to exploring the lives of the Stuart queen consorts, and how they endured such hardships yet are overshadowed by their husbands.

Q: I know in our Q&A last year you said you spend a year researching each of your books. You came across Anna’s story while writing about Bess Raleigh the wife of Sir Walter Raleigh. What was it like actually visiting the actual locations where Anna, James and previous monarchs before and after them lived such as Hampton Court Palace? 

It’s interesting how Hampton Court is so strongly associated with the Tudors, yet was home to many of the Stuarts. Anna spent her final months at Hampton Court and moved her bed to the palace bedchamber associated with Queen Jane Seymour. The adjacent privy lodgings were used by her personal attendants—including her loyal friend, Annie Kaas, who travelled with her from Denmark, and her young son, Prince Charles, who became King Charles I.

Q: Which scenes did you enjoy researching and writing? 

Anna missed the Danish celebrations of Christmas and Candlemas, which were banned by the dour ministers of the Scottish Kirk as ‘popish’. I therefore enjoyed researching and writing a scene where her young daughter Elizabeth (who became the ‘Winter Queen, Elizabeth of Bohemia) performs a Candlemas dance for her. I also enjoyed learning about Anna’s court masques with Ben Jonson and Inigo Jones, and managed to find Ben Jonson’s notes on all her masques, with his original annotations!

Ben Jonson (Wikimedia Commons)

Q: What lessons do you hope readers learn once they finish Anna’s story? What are other books you recommend about the first Stuart Queen?  

I hope readers will discover Anna was intelligent, creative, and ahead of her time. She became a devoted mother, and I began to understand her as I followed the extreme highs and lows of the stories of her children. Most important is the wider lesson of looking beyond the popular view of our history to see how influential these women were. I recommend Steven Verrapen’s excellent book, Anna of Denmark: Queen in Two Kingdoms, which became my ‘touchstone’ on historical details and timelines.

Q: If you were able to go back in time to interview Queen Anne & King James, what questions would you ask them & why?

I would like to ask Anna if she seriously considered returning to Denmark, and James what he would like to be most remembered for. I expect Anna would have been tempted if it hadn’t meant leaving her children and risking the perilous sea crossing. I think James would have been pleased to know we still refer to the ‘King James Bible’, which helped shape the English language, united the Protestant church, and offered ordinary people access to scripture, becoming a permanent feature of Western culture.

Title page to the 1611 first edition of the King James Bible, (Wikimedia Commons)

 

Author Bio

 

Tony Riches is a full-time UK author of historical fiction. He lives with his wife in Pembrokeshire, West Wales and is a specialist in the lives of the early Tudors. As well as his Elizabethan series, Tony’s historical fiction novels include the best-selling Tudor trilogy and his Brandon trilogy, (about Charles Brandon and his wives). For more information about Tony’s books please visit his website tonyriches.com and his blog, The Writing Desk and follow his podcast series, ‘Stories of the Tudors and Stuarts’  

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