This is an interview I published in Solander back in 2005. Since Margaret George's new novel about the late reign of Elizabeth I comes out next year, I figured it's worth a rerun:
Margaret George's internationally-bestselling novels have so far spanned 1st-century Egypt, Biblical-era Palestine, 16th-century England and Scotland, and ancient Greece. Though George is known for her portrayals of controversial historical figures such as Henry VIII, Mary, Queen of Scots, Cleopatra, Mary Magdalene, and Helen of Troy, they all have one thing in common: they are simultaneously larger than life and shrouded in misperceptions and misunderstandings. Big names do not intimidate her: "How else can I find out what it's like to be the most beautiful woman in the world? she jokes.
"[Helen] has been a mystery for over 2,500 years," George explains. "Even Shakespeare didn't know what to make of her...Marlowe contributed the `face that launched a thousand ships' to our quotations about her, and even Poe wrote a poem `To Helen.' I wanted to get to know her better. History is coy about her. The best way to approach her was through art."
George's determination to bring Helen to life has led her to university courses on the history of Troy, the annual meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America, museums around the world, and the site of Troy itself in modern-day Turkey. While film and dramatic depictions of famous historical figures sometimes influence her (she especially admires Robert Shaw's portrayal of King Henry VIII in A Man for All Seasons), George typically prefers a more traditional approach to research. She remains unimpressed with the recent Hollywood film Troy, though she notes that it did "give rise to a number of documents about Troy that I found helpful, including one in which a new Trojan horse was built and testes to see how many men could fit inside it, how it could be rolled and what its maximum size could be. Conclusion: not very large and not very many men."
Details such as these give George's works their characteristic feel. Selecting the right "writing music" for each book also helps re-create the atmosphere of the time and place. "As usual, Helen was a difficult lady to capture," she says. "I wanted something `ancient,' but nothing was quite right."
So what mood-music finally helped her to conjure the greatest epic of the ancient world? "It's embarrassing to admit this, but the soundtracks from Pirates of the Caribbean and The Time Machine were quite evocative."
This seeming paradox only reinforces George's conviction that fiction--historical or otherwise--is more about connecting to the reader's emotions than getting the physical details scrupulously exact. "I think historical novels resonate when they tie into human concerns. We don't read them for facts, really (nonfiction is better for that), but to understand what the facts mean, emotionally, to us. Henry VIII, to me, wasa a study in what happens to someone who doesn't live up to his gifts. Now that is something we can all relate to; we don't have to be royalty to understand this dilemma. It's one each of us faces--how do we use what we've been given? Draping it in the form of Henry VIII makes it an `historical novel,' but really it's a morality tale."
Still, fidelity to time, place, and character remain particularly important in the historical genre. George notes the controversy among writers, readers, and publishers about whether to use "slagy language in an attempt to make the long-ago seem more accessible...in my opinion it doesn't work. I dont' accept Agamemnon saying, `We've gotta have a plan, guys!' or the like. It sounds absurd, and actually has the effect of distancing you from the characters, rather than what the writer intended. Dialogue doesn't have to be purple prose or too formal, but it should echo the times, if possible."
George also cautions historical writers against the "slice of life technique"--telling only a relatively small part of a famous person's life. "I know why writers are doing it--we are all under pressure to make things byte-size and have the books smaller--but these are not byte-size people and don't lend themselves to that treatment." Still, she acknowledges that the realities of the marketplace must sometimes intervene. "In spite of myself, I'd have to say f you can make it reasonably short and portable, that would be something to aim for. People travel so much now, they want something they can tote along. I can't manage to do that, but maybe you can." since each of George's books weighs in at 800-plus pages, she's aware of the irony of the advice: "Do as I say, not as I do!"
Perhaps not surprisingly, George offers Shakespeare as a model for modern writers. "He was amazingly accurate in his facts, considering the resources available to him, but he never sacrificed action and character to them. And of course, being Shakespeare, he managed to make them short as well."
So where does the divide between historian and fiction-writer lie? It can be a difficult gap to bridge at times, even for the most talented in both fields. "We historical fiction writers would like to think we influence `real' historians," says George, "but outside of a very few instances, they ignore us, the careful and the sloppy alike. I think Robert Graves's I, Claudius was respected by historians, but then Graves was a scholar himself. Shakespeare is of course the exception as he is in everything else. However, he fell down on the job with Helen of Troy. He wrote about her in Troilus and Cressida, but for once he failed to capture the essence of an historical character. She was too much even for him." Hey, it happens to the best of us.
Seasoned and beginning writers alike can benefit from some of the strategies that have helped contribute to the success of George's books: "Choose someone who's already well-known rather than an obscure person, because it helps if your reader already knows who your character is. Don't make your potential reader guess what your book is about--and don't give it a vague, nondescriptive title,or an overly literary one. People may not get it on first glance and move on to the next book on the table. Never automatically assume your reader will be interested in your story. It is your job to make him or her interested. Just imagine someone tired and yawning when they pick up your story and try to overcome it. It's a good exercise for writers."
"Write about what excites you. That way you will enjoy coming to work each day, and the journey will be an adventure."
You can learn more about Margaret George, her adventures in research, and her books at www.margaretgeorge.com
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