New Adquisition: Food and Cooking in 17th Century England

Title: Food and Cooking in the 17th century: History and Recipes by Peter Brears.
Bought at: Amazon.co.uk
Price: 0.01 pounds (+ 2.75 shipping)

I am aware my research method has very little of method. I'm all over the place, to be honest. But it's not just because I'm lazy and with a very limited attention span. I truly believe one does not have to know every little stat of the socio-economic situation of England in the 17th century. Good research does not equal good writing. Specially if you are not trying to write a realistic, 100% accurate novel about the period. And I'm not. From the first line I wrote I knew I wanted a novel that was experimental and subjective, about feelings and perspectives, about the tricks of memory rather than the actual reality of the time. I have not just one but two unreliable narrators - and not-really-veiled 21st century voice carrying the story. There's nothing I hate more than those historical novels with colourless 3rd person omniscent narrators void of personality or style. But I also wanted to do enough research so that any mistakes and anacronisms would be conscious and intended.

Most of my research I want to be focus on "mood research" - that is, I really wanted to experience the world of my characters as much as I could, going to the places of my story, seeing the objects of their everyday lives for myself rather in a picture in a book. I want to hear the music of the time and see the paintings.

This little book helps with that - it's important to know what the people of the 17th century were eating (and who knows, maybe I'll try one of the recipes myself one day, if I'm brave enough to try and cook it), it helps when it comes to putting yourself in their shoes. So that's why this little cute book is a lot of help. Specially because it's easier to find out what the high classes and royalty were eating in those days but not so easy to find depictions of food for the average people. And this is exactly it: everyday, easy recipes of the 17th century. It offers a brief and concise story of cooking during the period and then many examples of traditional recipes.

To make a Shropsheere cake: Take two pound of dryed flour after it has been searced fine, one pound of good sugar dried and searced, also a little beaten sinamon or some nottmegg greeted and steeped in rose water; so straine two eggs, whites and all, not beaten to it, as much unmelted butter as will work it to a paste: so mould it & roule it into longe rouses, and cutt off as much at a time as will make a cake, two ounces is enough for one cake: then roule it in a ball between your hands; so flat it on a little white paper cut for a cake, and with your hand beat it about as big as a cheese trancher and a little thicker than a past board then prick them with a comb not too deep in squares like diamons and prick the cake in every diamon to the bottom; so take them in a oven not too hot: when they rise up white let them soake a little, then draw. If the sugar be dry enough you need not dry it but searce it: you must brake in your eggs after you have wroat in some of your butter into your flower: prick and mark them when thy are cold: this quantily will make a dozen and two or three, which is enough for my own at a time: take off the paper when they are cold.

A really good buy. And economical - it was second hand but in perfect condition.

The author has a bunch of other books on the subject that I'm dying to check out (there's only a couple of them available in the Kensington libraries so tough luck).

Hilary Mantel - Author, Author: Unfreezing antique feeling

Wonderful article for the Guardian by Hilary Mantel on the presence of the past in our lives, and how some people are more atuned to the traces of time.

I have been reading enthusiatic reviews and raves about Mantel's latest book, Wolf Hall, winner of the Booker Prize. I am anxious to pick up a copy but poor and bohemian as I am I have to wait until second-hand bookshops quench my thirst or my local libraries have some copies available. I loved Mantel's Beyond Black and Thomas Cromwell is a figure I am intrigued by but know little about, so it should be a great ride.

The article is very unassuming but I think it raises a fine point about writers being in synch with the world in stranger ways than other people. I refuse the notion of writers somehow being "special" but I feel understably mystic about my profession sometimes, or at least about myself - being in the business of painting the world with words is an odd affair, moody, and sometimes we find ourselves weeping over ancient stones like fools. That's what I like about the article.

Inspiration: The poetry of Andrew Marvell

Andrew Marvell is an intriguing one might even say mysterious figure, like some kind of 17th century's answer to Christopher Marlowe. He was a spy and politician, a womanizer, and the author of the famous poem "To My Coy Mistress". But he also witnessed the ups and lows of the English Civil War in first row. He was friend and colleague of John Milton, and together with him, he served under Oliver Cromwell as Latin secretary.

From Parangon Review: "Little is known about Marvell's early life. He was born in 1621 at Winestead, Holderness, where his father was rector. He was probably educated at Hull Grammar School, though there is no firm evidence for this. He went to Trinity College, Cambridge, as a sizar and graduated in 1638. He seems to have stayed at Trinity, but left before the opening of the Long Parliament in 1641. The next ten years of Marvell's life are obscure. He probably spent the years 1642-1646 abroad, but historians are only able to suggest his return to England by 1649 because of the publication of two of his poems in that year. In 1650 he was appointed by Thomas Fairfax as tutor to his daughter, Mary, and so Marvell returned to Yorkshire, spending two years at Nun Appleton. His association with Fairfax brought him into close contact with Cromwell and the political machinations of the Commonwealth. After years on the continent Marvell was a fine linguist and on 21 February 1653 Milton recommended that Marvell be appointed as his assistant (Milton was blind by this stage) in the secretaryship for foreign languages. He was also appointed by Cromwell as tutor to William Dutton, his ward.

Marvell's support for Oliver Cromwell was made most evident in his Horatian Ode upon Cromwell's return from Ireland written in the summer of 1650. However, it has been argued that one stanza of this poem indicates his Royalist rather than Cromwellian sympathies. And the fact that Marvell first became MP during the Interregnum but went on being an MP after the Restoration has kept the debate about his political sympathies alive. Marvell's letters as MP, written to the Hull Corporation, as well as to the masters of Trinity House Hull, survive in far greater number than his personal letters. However, as a source of information about Marvell's political and religious inclinations they are not very revealing. This has made historical research into Marvell's politics and religion difficult and the results are often controversial."

Horatian Ode upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland

The forward youth that would appear
Must now forsake his Muses dear,
Nor in the shadows sing
His numbers languishing.

'Tis time to leave the books in dust,
And oil th' unused armour's rust,
Removing from the wall
The corslet of the hall.

So restless Cromwell could not cease
In the inglorious arts of peace,
But through advent'rous war
Urged his active star:

And, like the three-forked lightning, first
Breaking the clouds where it was nursed,
Did thorough his own side
His fiery way divide.

For 'tis all one to courage high,
The emulous or enemy;
And with such, to enclose
Is more than to oppose.

Then burning through the air he went,
And palaces and temples rent;
And Caesar's head at last
Did through his laurels blast.

'Tis madness to resist or blame
The force of angry Heaven's flame;
And, if we would speak true,
Much to the man is due,

Who, from his private gardens, where
He lived reserved and austere,
As if his highest plot
To plant the bergamot,

Could by industrious valour climb
To ruin the great work of time,
And cast the Kingdom old
Into another mould.

Though Justice against Fate complain,
And plead the ancient Rights in vain:
But those do hold or break
As men are strong or weak.

Nature, that hateth emptiness,
Allows of penetration less;
And therefore must make room
Where greater spirits come.

What field of all the Civil Wars
Where his were not the deepest scars?
And Hampton shows what part
He had of wiser art;

Where, twining subtle fears with hope,
He wove a net of such a scope
That Charles himself might chase
To Carisbrook's narrow case;

That thence the Royal Actor borne
The tragic scaffold might adorn:
While round the armed bands
Did clap their bloody hands.

He nothing common did or mean
Upon that memorable scene,
But with his keener eye
The axe's edge did try;

Nor called the Gods with vulgar spite
To vindicate his helpless right;
But bowed his comely head
Down as upon a bed.

This was that memorable hour
Which first assured the forced pow'r.
So when they did design
The Capitol's first line,

A Bleeding Head, where they begun,
Did fright the architects to run;
And yet in that the State
Foresaw its happy fate.

And now the Irish are ashamed
To see themselves in one year tamed:
So much one man can do,
That does both act and know.

They can affirm his praises best,
And have, though overcome, confessed
How good he is, how just,
And fit for highest trust;

Nor yet grown stiffer with command,
But still in the Republic's hand:
How fit he is to sway
That can so well obey!

He to the Commons' feet presents
A kingdom for his first year's rents:
And, what he may, forbears
His fame to make it theirs:

And has his sword and spoils ungirt,
To lay them at the Public's skirt.
So when the falcon high
Falls heavy from the sky,

She, having killed, no more does search,
But on the next green bough to perch,
Where, when he first does lure,
The falcon'r has her sure.

What may not then our Isle presume
While victory his crest does plume!
What may not others fear
If thus he crown each year!

A Caesar he ere long to Gaul,
To Italy an Hannibal,
And to all states not free
Shall climacteric be.

The Pict no shelter now shall find
Within his parti-coloured mind;
But from this valour sad
Shrink underneath the plaid:

Happy if in the tufted brake
The English hunter him mistake,
Nor lay his hounds in near
The Caledonian deer.

But thou, the War's and Fortune's son,
March indefatigably on;
And for the last effect
Still keep thy sword erect:

Besides the force it has to fright
The spirits of the shady night,
The same arts that did gain
A pow'r must it maintain.

More: Andrew Marvell is the lead character of the wonderful novel The Green and the Gold by Christopher Peachment.

New Book: "Cromwell to Cromwell"

The History Press has just published "Cromwell to Cromwell: Reformation to Civil War". From their website:

The English reformers of the 1530s, with Thomas Cromwell at their head, continued to have a strong belief in kingly rule and authority, despite their radical approach to the power of the Pope and the Roman Catholic Church. Resisting the king was tantamount to resisting God in their eyes, and even on a matter of conscience the will of the king should prevail. Yet just over 100 years later, Charles I was called the 'man of blood', and Oliver Cromwell famously declared that 'we will cut off his head with the crown on it'. But how did we get from the one to the other? How did the deferential Reformation become a redical revolution? Following on from his biography of Thomas Cromwell, John Schofield examines how the English character and the way it perceived royal rule changed between the time of Thomas Cromwell and that of his great-great-grandnephew Oliver.

It's an interesting concept for a book, and if I had the money I'd run to buy this at the nearest bookshop. Both Cromwells were key figures in the shaping of Modern England, both leaders of religious revolutions that ultimately benefited the land-owning middle-classes.

John Schofield is the author of "The Rise and Fall of Thomas Cromwell: Henry VIII's Most Faithful Servant" (the hyperbolical title almost makes me smirk) to which this "Cromwell to Cromwell" serves as sequel.

Prologue: How did I get here?

York, Sunday 30 August 2009

It's half past four in the morning and I'm in the train station at York, having just got off the coach from London. There are no lights in the sky and dawn won't break for another hour or two, I'm afraid. I'm tired, I'm cold and I'm slightly scared by being in a strange town in the pitch black night and with nobody in sight. There's nobody in the streets and on top of that it's Sunday. As a Spaniard with a very basic knowledge of British geography right now I could pinpoint York on a map just because I bought a slim tourist guide before I came here.

How did I get here?

By becoming the kind of person who goes to English Civil War battles re-enactments. One year ago I would have been quick to mock the people who spend time in such events. And yet here I am, the last weekend of August, six hours of bus from London, cold and frightened in foreign and dark York, just to check out the annual re-enactment of the Marston Moors Battle, by The Sealed Knot Society.

Of course one year ago I couldn't even begin to predict that I would be writing a novel about the English Civil War myself.

After one hour or so hanging out in the train station - feeling slightly safe in the knowledge that there was a guard patrolling the whole place, but cursing that the cafes wouldn't open until 7 - I decided to venture into the city, suspecting the first lights. As it turns out it's a very beautiful town, and for a couple of hours I had it all to myself. That's the advantage of arriving in the middle of the night. The deserted city looked even more beutiful, ancient and haunting. I spent a great deal of time walking around the York Minster - appealingly gothic - before the cafes opened for a Full English breakfast.


I was trying to get myself all inspired and I had brought along some Ted Hughes volume for its sounds, reading to myself and wandering among the ruins of St.Mary's Abbey. I had always been curious about THE NORTH and since the main characters in my book it was decided would be Northerners, it was a good excercise in place-inspiration to breathe the air of these parts.


From my notebook of those hours (not even a day): "It feels a priviledge (& a small wonder) to be here and feel the air of the centuries, the birds in flight a rustle of feathers louder than the minster's bells. To be here and stare at the decay of things made by men, and their strange resilence too, for nothing is lost here, everything is skin-deep carved into these stones, the sorrows and the joy."



I walked and wandered, searching for clues on the city, hints of why I was there, why I had come to far and was I right in doing so?

Although the place was well signaled - or rather, I had printed out various maps, from Google Maps to the own Sealed Knot Society indications, I must have looked a bit ridiculous walking around checking all those papers - it took me quite a while to get to the site, the York racecourse. For one, I had no idea what an empty racecourse looked like, or what a british racecourse looked like, for that matter. But I turned left on a street and I found some open ground and as gloomy and gorgeous clouds filled the sky, I knew I was in the right place. The horizon started drawing tiny figures of people and tents and cars and there was smoke here and there.

And then I heard drums.

I had arrived.


Thanks to the running commentary (a modern-day solution to the confusion of watching the battles unfold) we could follow the various figures on the battlefield; we had one Cromwell, of course, and we even had a Thomas Fairfax.

"Here learn, ye mountains more unjust,
Which to abrupter greatness thrust,
That do, with your hook-shouldered height,
The earth deform, and heaven fright,
For whose excrescence, ill designed,
Nature must a new centre find,
Learn here those humble steps to tread,
Which to securer glory lead."
Andrew Marvell, UPON THE HILL AND GROVE AT BILLBOROW.

It was an eye-opening journey, but also a confirmation of faith. It was what I had hoped it would be, but in ways I never imagined it would be.