I have to say I've really, I read your first book, Arrow of Sherwood, and yeah, and I really

really enjoyed that.

I stayed up far too late for about three nights in a row to finish it, so.

Oh, I'm really glad.

Yeah.

Yeah, no.

Thank you for writing it.

Um, so now your new book jumps forward a couple of centuries to Henry the 8th in 1509 and it's so great a prince and it's about a year.

You almost kind of do like a slice of life

um in 1509 and can you explain to me kind of 1509 is this crossroads for you it seems like can

you explain how you came to that and why you picked that year yeah well obviously it's um it'sudor book. It's the book about the first year of

King Henry the Eighth's reign. And for me personally, when I thought of the Tudors initially,

I was kind of thinking of, you know, the Shakespearean version of the Tudor era, I think. I had in

my head Protestants and playwrights and printing and all of those sort of things.

And Henry's break from Rome and all of the changes.

And what was really interesting as I was exploring 1509 was that actually lots of that is not there yet.

This is very much still a medieval world.

And yet when we're taught history in schools, we're kind of told, right, 22nd of August, 1485, the Tudors come to the throne, that's the

beginning of the modern age, that's the end of it. And yet it wasn't like that at all. Still,

the rituals of the year were based in religion, they were based in agriculture.

There was so much about it that was sort of strange to me and kind of bewitching as a result of that.

And because it's really clearly represented in the fact you go from a very clearly medieval king

...