Where did she stand when her son Richard took over the country, amid rumours he had murdered his nephews, her grandsons, the ‘Princes in the Tower’? Or when her eldest son Edward ordered the death of his next brother Clarence (in the famous butt of Malmsey according to Shakespeare)? But the questions that remain are extraordinary. We know that in youth, stories said she had an affair with a common archer, and that in old age she lived a life of extraordinary piety. We know Cecily Neville lavished a fortune on clothes, and ordered a specially padded loo seat. I wrote about seven women in my book Blood Sisters, but Cecily is the one who most fascinated me – the one who best illustrates both the pleasures and the pains of writing about the late fifteenth century. The mitochondrial DNA which may make the identification is passed only through the female line from Richard’s mother Cecily Neville to her eldest daughter Anne, and on through seventeen generations to descendents living today. If the hope turns out to be a certainty, then it will be thanks to the distaff side of fifteenth century history - through a descendent who shares with Richard his mother’s DNA. Then there is the ongoing saga of the bones unearthed in the Leicester car park, hoped to be those of Richard III. First was the news that the BBC, with its eyes firmly fixed on the market that gobbled up The Tudors, are filming Philippa Gregory’s novels about the Cousins’ War.
You wait for a news story on the women behind the Wars of the Roses, and then two come along at once. Who’d have guessed it? – same as buses, really. She is married to film critic Derek Malcolm and lives in London and Kent. She was born in Kent and read English at St Anne’s College, Oxford University.
Sarah Gristwood is the author of a number of books including the Sunday Times best-seller Arbella: England’s Lost Queen, Elizabeth and Leicester and the novel The Girl in the Mirror. Our guest for this month is Sarah Gristwood, whose latest book, Blood Sisters we reviewed here on 1st October.
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