Wise Words: Annie Garthwaite
Best-selling author, Annie Garthwaite, developed a passion to learn about the Wars of the Roses’ women as a teenager, studying at Manor Comprehensive in Hartlepool. Her inspirational history teacher, Keith Hill, brought the whole world to life and she has subsequently spent more than 30 years researching the powerful women behind the York and Lancaster thrones.
This tireless desire for knowledge held her in good stead when, after a successful career in global corporate communications, Annie achieved her ambition of writing her first novel, Cecily. It tells the story of Cecily Neville and her fight to secure her family’s fortunes.
She said: “I had always thought about writing a novel but needed to be financially secure and gave myself a goal of doing it at 55. When I hit that age I did a two-year, part-time, MA in Creative Writing at Warwick University and Cecily was completed by the end.”
This debut novel was published by Viking Penguin in 2021 and was a Times and Sunday Times ‘top pick’ and Waterstones Book of the Year. It has also been optioned for TV.
This summer Annie’s second novel, The King’s Mother, was released. It similarly sheds more light on Cecily and three rivals, powerful yet little-talked about women from that time - Elizabeth Woodville, Margaret Beaufort and Marguerite of Anjou.
The reception has been positive with similar acclaim to Cecily and it has also been named Times Book of the Month.
Annie said: “The seeds of creativity and my interest in history were sown very early. Both of my parents were avid readers and my mother, in particular, loved historical fiction.
“She really enjoyed a great story and, when I was a child, once she had done her jobs for the day, we would sit down and read together. The absolute pleasure of that time still stays with me today. We would read all types of novels, including Georgette Heyer and Catherine Cookson.
“One book stood out. Katherine by Anya Seton. It told the real life story of Katherine, mistress and later wife of John of Gaunt, the Duke of Lancaster, their turbulent affair and its implications. For the first time I was reading historical fiction that wasn’t purely a romance. This was a woman who acted with agency, on her own behalf, and I was really captivated by the whole idea.”
Annie studied English at the University of Wales and was the first person from her senior school to progress to higher education.
During her successful career her imagination kept taking her back to the Wars of the Roses, and how all the focus was on the men of the period.
She said: “I was interested in Cecily, the mother of Richard III but was told repeatedly there would be very little information about her. There were some details and misapprehensions, even from Shakespeare, who depicted her as very old, pious and dull, in his history plays. I was to find out that nothing was further from the truth.
“Cecily spent 80 years at the heart of the English politics, driving the action.”
In Annie’s working life, while reading about this period of history, she could see parallels between her own career and how the women in the ancient Houses of York and Lancaster had to operate.
She said: “I was often the only woman at senior management meetings and learnt how to get things done in the most efficient way, sometimes despite my male colleagues.
“My advice is, don’t wait for someone to give you power. Be sufficiently compelling with your influence so that your power is simply assumed. This does not mean being aggressive but being authoritative. I tell women developing their careers to not worry about being nice or meek above all else.”
Annie’s writing has been compared to Hilary Mantel who she describes as an absolute genius.
“Her sentences are of such quality I want to reread them time and time again. I find her books revelatory as she takes familiar historical characters that we think we know and shows them in such depth, rather than as cartoonish versions of themselves. I love the fresh approach to figures like Thomas Cromwell and her asking ‘who are they really?’”
Writing historical fiction is a very different craft to traditional novels. Annie said she is often asked how she creates suspense when people know what happens next?
She said: “The trick is to make your reader so invested they want to know what the characters felt in a particular situation, rather than describing the action.”
For pleasure she reads literary fiction and particularly liked Amor Towles books – two favourites are A Gentleman in Moscow and Lincoln Highway. Also among her favourites are Sebastian Barry, Rosemary Tremain, Barbara Kingsolver and Marilyn Robinson.
Her advice for other authors trying to get an agent and published is to take any opportunity to showcase their work.
Annie’s path to getting an agent and being signed was thanks to her MA. Each year an anthology was published by Warwick University and launched at Waterstones in Picadilly, London, to agents and publishers. Before her book was completed she was asked for a full manuscript by eight agents and signed with Imogen Pelham at Marjacq Scripts. A publishing deal with Penguin was secured a couple of months later.
She said: “I was very lucky to sign with Penguin in March 2020 just a week before the Covid pandemic lockdown as it could have been a different story afterwards. Cecily came out in July 2021.
“The thrill of being a professional writer is meeting readers who have been impacted by my books. For example, at The Bound in Whitley Bay I met a history teacher who said he couldn’t get his female students interested in the Wars of the Roses. He got them to read Cecily and they were hooked.
“I also had a very moving encounter with a father who had his young daughter about three years old, with him. He asked me to sign the book to her as she would need to be brave, like Cecily, as they were from Ukraine.
“Publishing your second novel is more terrifying than the first as the original one is travelling in hope. The second one has a lot more expectation riding on it.”
Her advice to any author getting writer’s block at a mid-point is to keep going. She explains she was stuck and felt she wasn’t writing anything good, but kept going and was then able to polish her text ready for publication.
A new project for Annie is writing and researching Isabella of France, wife of Edward II. She was typically depicted as either a she-wolf or a hapless silly victim, but the truth is much more complicated in Annie’s view.
The Stand-Up Mam has funny family stories. Do you have one to share?
When my mum and I were reading in bed, when my dad was on night shift, we would often be in tears at our novels’ sad parts. In the morning she would always get up and say ‘Well, that’s enough of that!’
Further information on Annie and her books is on her website anniegarthwaite.com and they are available from bookshops including Forum Books, The Bound, The Accidental Bookshop and Amazon.