A taste of My new romance story on Anne Boleyn

THE DARK LADY – A ROMANTIC TALE OF ANNE BOLEYN

By Nadine Sutton

Part I
Anne bent over the figure in the narrow bed, in the small room off her own larger bedchamber

“Isabel,   Isabel.  Wake up.  But you must keep silent. ”
The younger woman opened her eyes to find her cousin standing by her bed, dressed still in her bed-gown. “What is it -Nan?” she asked sleepily.

“You must help me to put on my gown.  Madge is asleep and I would not wake her.”
Isabel shook her head to wake herself. Madge Shelton was on duty as Anne’s lady, that night and would be sleeping on a pallet in her friend’s room.  She climbed out of the bed and fumbled for her own gown.  Her own tire-woman, who helped her dress, was probably asleep in an alcove just outside the door.   From the light in the room, it was early in the morning.

“Nan, what is it?  Why are you awake so early?”

“Help me to dress. Here.”   

Anne Boleyn picked up a formal tawny coloured gown of rich satin, and a petticoat of white lawn, which lay atop a wooden press.  Holding them in her arms, she looked keenly at her friend over the crushed materials.   She spoke abruptly.  She was always imperious in her bearing.
“Help me take off this bed-gown and put this on.  Fetch me a smock.”

“Anne, why cannot Madge help you to dress?  Or Bess?”
“Because I require discretion, you foolish wench.  You have always been the most sensible of my cousins.”

Isabel tried to think of something to say.
“Enough prattling, Isabel.  I must be ready to meet the king as soon as maybe.  Help me to put on my kirtle and gown, and stockings and slippers.  Then, you can call Bess to help you. “

Isabel hurried to the press where Anne’s undergarments were kept and took out a smock, and stockings.   She began to help her cousin to put on her clothes.  Since her cousin had become the King’s constant companion, several years earlier, she lived in almost royal state, with her own apartments, finely decorated.  She had ladies to keep her company and wait on her.  Of course there were servants to do the more menial tasks.

Some of her ladies felt that she was overly haughty, in her manner towards them, but she was the King’s companion and likely to be his wife, so it was an honour to serve her. Many were cousins of hers; others had once been in service to queen Katherine. 

Isabel Bladon was one of the Duke of Norfolk’s many relatives.  She had known Anne, since they were children.  She was a few years younger than the Boleyn girl.  When Anne was finally gowned, she adjusted her French hood headdress, with its edging of small pearls.

“So now, cousin, you may go to call Bess.  I shall wait in my closet, until you are dressed.  But none of them must know where we are going.  Hurry, Isabel... we will be meeting the king.”

Isabel started, but she knew that it was wisest to do Anne’s bidding.  She awakened the old tire- woman.  Bess was far from young, but she was an experienced dresser. She didn’t care why Isabel was awake and requiring her clothes.  She helped her mistress to dress, swiftly and when she had returned to her trundle bed, they slipped out, and quietly moved along the passage to the staircase at Whitehall.

“My lady,” Isabel asked, as they began to climb the stairs, “Pray, where are we going, so secretly.”

She addressed Anne by her formal title of Lady Marquis of Pembroke, now that they were away from the private rooms.

“Hush, coz, come up. I‘ll tell thee, when we are safe. “

Isabel hurried up the steps. It was a cold January morning and she was eager to find out what was happening and return to a warm fire.
“You are to be my attendant, dear cousin.  I rely on your discretion.” Anne said in a soft voice. “I am to wed the King.   This morning, in secret.”
“Anne!” Isabel was startled into speaking loudly. “Is this true?”

Anne angrily put her hand over her mouth.  “Cousin, did I not warn you?  I thought you had more sense.” 

Chastened, Isabel fell silent and they walked along a dark passage to a small chamber where the King was waiting.  He took Anne in his arms and kissed her, before calling a man from the shadows in the corner of the room, to “haste and make them man and wife.”

She was to be a witness of the marriage, together with one of Henry’s gentlemen, Sir Henry Norris.  George Boleyn was also present.  The priest came forward, and began to recite the words of the wedding service. Isabel looked sideways at her cousin.  Anne looked a little puffy faced and tired. She was fortunate in having an olive complexion; this meant that she rarely looked pale, but her dark-brown eyes were not as lustrous as usual; she looked as if she had not slept.   Her beautiful black hair, where it showed under her hood, was still shining and lovely but there was a look of weariness about her.

Rough Music a band story

 I started to write Rough Music quite some time ago; and then I wrote a sequel. It is a rather downbeat tale and I felt that a publisher wouldn’t be interested in it.  So I decide to publish it myself and hoped that some people would like it, even if it is not a romantic story.  So I amalgamated the 2 stories and rewrote it.  It is a story about friends rather than lovers, and it’s not really about romance at all.  Jeff Randles is a musician of the late 1970s, who has moved from having a small time band to moderate success, with his friend Brandon, who is a singer and guitarist.  They both grew up in post war America and began their career in the 1960s, working and traveling through the USA.  Now in the late 1970s’they are on TV at times, their records are doing well and they are making reasonably good money, but it never seems to be enough, and they are a bit jealous of the bands who have achieved big time status.
 They have a good friendship which has kept them together and helped them go on working hard till they achieved some real recognition.  But the pressures of their work often get them down. 
The other musicians are jealous of Jeff’s being the front man of the band.  Their manager wants them to do commercial work rather than the sort of rock and country they want to do.  They both have wives, but neither of them is faithful because they are on the road most of the time, and their wives are getting fed up with it. Jeff’s wife Lacy is increasingly tired of her husband’s absences, of his infidelities and his lack of interest in a fashionable lifestyle such as she wants to have.  She doesn’t care about his music, and he is not interested in her wanting to have a career or even to have a fancy home.  Brandon’s wife Angela is a bit bored being at home with their small child, and she too has little interest in Brandon’s feelings about his music.  But she is less fed up than Lacy.
Jeff finally gets the nerve to tell his wife that they don’t have anything in common anymore.  And they reach an agreement to get a divorce, at which point, he discovers that he is going to be a father.  One of the girls he has seduced on the road has become pregnant.  He is at first shocked and then pleased, because he always wanted children.  He agrees to marry the girl, although he hardly knows her, and she is rather shy and several years his junior.   But Like him, Claudelle is from the South and when they get married, she wants to live there so they settle In Nashville but Jeff is still away much of the time.  They have a son, whom they love but Jeff realizes that his second marriage has a lot of difficulties, even if it is not as bad as his first one. It has a wry conclusion, with both Brandon and Jeff going on with life, living from day to day and knowing that the perfect marriage doesn’t exist, nor does the perfect career.
I know that many people don’t like stories that don’t end happily but while we can give our favorite characters happy endings, in fiction, it isn’t for real. And it may help some people to realize that there aren’t any easy answers or perfect lives.  And I wanted to make the men more realistic than the sort of “very good apart from being rakes” kind of men one sees in a lot of historical fiction…
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Rough-Music-Nadine-Sutton-ebook/dp/B01AEQS0G0/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1452977780&sr=8-1&keywords=nadine+sutton

Civil Contract and Heyer

This in my opinion definitely Heyer’s best novel.  In fact as some have said, it is not really a “regency romance” at all but a “real serious piece of fiction.”

Heyer’s plot of a convenient marriage between a rich Cit and an impoverished aristocrat has now been copied by many other writers in the regency genre, but she did it first and with so much depth and reality without sacrificing some of her usual wit and charm.  There is also good laugh out loud fun in the gloriously  OTT Mr Chawleigh, Jenny’s merchant father who is shrewd, vulgar, and warm hearted and kindly, but with awful taste in clothes etc... with one exception. His love of fine china.

Heyer sets up a scenario where Adam’s late father has dissipated the family fortune and to save his home and help out his mother and sisters, he has a chance to marry money, the daughter of a wealthy merchant. Jenny is plain and shy and at times awkward, and she is the friend of Julia, the beautiful and foolishly sensitive daughter of Lord Oversley who is Adam’s first love.  Heyer takes us through their first year of married life, the birth of their first child, Giles and Adam’s lucky break when he makes some money speculating on the Stock Market, over Waterloo…

There are ups and downs, occasional quarrels and both sides have to adjust.  Jenny grows to love Fontley, the family country house and finds a useful role for herself there, managing the house and gardens, visiting the tenantry and assisting Adam with his plans for the farms. Adam begins to realise that Julia is too silly and spoiled and over emotional to be much help to him in his life as a farming landlord and that her faints and dramas would soon irritate him. And as he generously says she would find him a dead bore as a husband because he would not have been very romantic.

Heyer does have two other novels where there is a certain similarity of theme, where 2 women friends are from different backgrounds and are very different in temperament, but are rivals for the same man. in Devil’s Cub. Mary Challoner, the pretty but not beautiful daughter of a Cit has had a school friendship with the flighty Juliana Marling, who is pretty, dazzling, flirty and form an aristocratic background.  Mary is one of the sensible heroines who win the heart of Lord Vidal by being calm and  practical, when he abducts her.  Juliana, who is Vidal’s cousin, drives him mad with her dramatics.  She has fallen out with her admirer, Frederick Comyn, who then proposes to the sensible Mary…to rescue her from a difficult state of affairs, where she is almost forcedto marry Vidal, , and Juliana becomes jealous!

This mixing and matching all ends happily because the tone is lighter In Heyer’s earlier books.

Similarly in Friday’s Child, Lord Sherringham, a good natured but immature young man, is in love with Isabella Milborne a recognised “Beauty” who is rather spoiled but essentially good natured.  He asks her to marry him but she refuses -and in a temper he swears he’ll marry the first woman he sees.  He is partly driven by practical motives, because he will not come into full control of his estates for another 2 years unless he marries.  So he marries the young and naïve Hero Wantage, who is inexperienced in society, but is a neighbour of Sherry and Isabella and has been childhood friends with both of them.

 It isn’t quite the same situation as Civil Contract, since in Contract both Jenny and Julia in their ways genuinely love Adam... and are both a bit saddened by the fact that their friendship is damaged by their feelings for him.  Julia marries another man, whom she is very fond of, and will probably grow to love him, because he understands of her dramatic nature.

 Whereas Isabella is not in love with Sherry;  she is fond of him, and he of her, but she knows that her real love is for George Wrotham, his friend, who is not very rich. So in the end, Sherry realises that he was never really in love with Isabella, that he does love his wife and she loves him.Isabella finally admits that she loves George, and marries him.  It’s a happy ending, with a lot of comedy.  Sherry and Hero have their ups and downs, settling into marriage, as Hero is so naïve that she makes a lot of mistakes, unlike Jenny Chawleigh.  However, there is less realism in Friday’s Child, like most of Heyer’s earlier works. 

But Civil Contract is realistic and it’s none the worse for that.  We see the difficulties of marriage, especially one where the couple don’t know each other well, and only one of them is in love. We see the problems of Adam’s feeling “bought” by Mr Chawleigh, but his development of a gradual affection and admiration for the man.  And his sadness at giving up the life of a soldier which he loved and settling down to improving his estate.  We see Jenny’s finding a satisfactory role in helping to run Fontley, and make it comfortable and pleasant to live in, and preserving some of the historical beauty.  But she also is at times bewildered by the ways and thoughts of her new family as when Charlotte says that the Deverils love Fontley even for its very shabbiness, whereas her attitude is that if you love a place, you want to make it better and smarter looking.

It is funny in places but Heyer is able to fit in the realities of people’s psychology, the inconsistencies, the way we love and hate at the same time... Or have moments of anger against the people we love…I love the earlier stories, where Heyer tries out the situation of 2 friends and their being rivals and being friends from different classes. And I feel that both Friday’s Child and Civil Contract handle the situation beautifully in different ways.  

Philip Fletcher Simon Shaw's actor murderer

Philip Fletcher is an actor around 40 who has never made it big.  He has managed to stay in work and make a living but he sees other actors, less talented than himself, being more successful, getting the big parts and making money.  He’s not bitter, but he’s cranky about this. He’s particularly annoyed that Gordon Wilde, a gay actor whom he considers much less talented is always getting better parts than him.  One evening, he decides to ask a favour of his nemesis, and it all goes wrong.  He kills Gordon, almost accidentally.  And he gets away with it. And his career prospects begin to improve as If by magic.  He has a new girlfriend; he stars in a successful TV series. and he has developed a taste for using crime to get what he wants….its a very funny book with a light hearted picture of the British theater, and Philip’s use of his acting skills, for nefarious purposes..

Sheila Kaye Smith

Sheila Kaye Smith was born in to a middle class family, conventional, and respectable in Sussex in 1887.  Like most girls of the time, she did the social round and was expected to have no other career but marriage and motherhood.  However, she was a shy rather intense young girl and had ambitions that were unusual.  Her father, a doctor, wanted her to go to university, because he felt that her intelligence deserved training.  Middle class girls were beginning to go to college, and occasionally to start earning their own livings. This probably came as a relief for some middle class professional fathers, who would have less need to provide some kind of income for their daughters, should they not marry.

Sheila wrote later that while she fell in love at times, she had no real desire to marry, although her parents were very happily married.  She liked the idea of being able to live and work as she chose. She began to write for publication after leaving school and had a modest success. Her books were set in rural Sussex, where she lived most of her life, and were often about farming and working people.  Some were set in the Victorian era and others in her own time, but she was admired as a rural novelist who was capable of writing accurately and interestingly about Sussex farming people. Her novels began to sell well and she was making a comfortable living from her writing.

She also was interested in religion and studied the subject, for many years. She read up on different philosophies and then became devoted to the High Anglican wing of the Church of England.   In 1924, married Theodore Penrose Fry, an Anglican clergyman.  They had no children.

Later, however she and he were received into the Roman Catholic Church.  They moved to Sussex permanently and since they found that there were many Catholics in that area who didn’t have a church close to them, they build a chapel dedicated to St Therese Martin, on their land.   As time passed Sheila wrote more on religious themes, in fiction and nonfiction. However she was never narrow minded, and she was unpretentious about her work, seeing herself as a novelist who was not of the first rank.

I’ve read most of her novels, including her most famous Joanna Godden and Sussex Gorse, but my favourite works by her are her books on Jane Austen, she and her friend GB Stern, wrote light but interesting literary criticism of their favourite author. I find that many of my ideas on Jane Austen have come form those 2 books, which I frequently re read.

Hank Williams 3 Punk and country musician

Shelton Hank Williams aka "Hank Williams III," or "Hank3", was born in Nashville, in December 1972.  He is the eldest child of Hank Williams Junior and grandson of Hank Williams Senior, the “hillbilly Shakespeare”…and a seminal figure in country music.

Hank 3, was born into a stormy marriage. His parents were not very happy together and his father was deeply depressed because of feeling that he was “living in the shadow” of his famous father. His marriage to Gwen Yeargain was short lived and by the time  when their son was born, things were not well between them.  Hank Junior was working hard, and when he came home, he wanted to stay home and relax... whereas his wife wanted to go out.  His depression and drug problems drove him to a suicide attempt and when he recovered his marriage was well and truly on the rocks.  He then had a serious mountaineering accident, which left him injured, with scarring on his face and a deep trauma.

 He and Gwen divorced and Shelton was mostly in his mother’s care... He beleived then that his father was too wrapped up in his own problems and his own life to spend a lot of time with him.  He spent time with his mother’s family on their farm and had a deep love of country life and sports. Also, not surprisingly he loved music and started playing drums with his father at times.  He also played in punk rock bands.
 Shelton was a rebellious teenager, traumatised by his family’s problems.  He was good at athletics at school, but did not do so well academically. At 17 he fathered a child, but didn’t learn of it till a few years later when the mother brought a paternity suit.  He realised he had to start serious work, to provide for his son. He began to capitalise on his family name.  He had a strong resemblance in looks and voice to his grandfather Hank and made use of it. Most people feel that he has a startling look of Hank Senior, which caused Minnie Pearl, an old friend of Hank’s - to say to him “Honey you’re a ghost”. 
 As he developed musically, he began to incorporate punk and metal into his act, and his “hell-billy” ramped up kind of country music, rather than his grandfather’s more traditional work.   He quarrelled with his record producers and went independent, in hopes of doing the music he wanted, rather than what was commercial.   He has been criticised for his raucous fast punk style of country, and for his use of vulgar language and "wild man" attitude, but he has shown that he has great talent as a singer and song writer… and in the work that he has done, he has adhered to the “Family Tradition” of the Williamses, of drinking, smoking drugs, pill taking and womanising.  He may be cruder in language than his father and grandfather but the subject material of his songs is basically the same, love, drinking, women and pain. 
He has also been like his father and grandfather in that he has had drug problems, and has at times been a “no show” at gigs.  In later years, he has settled down and become a hard working performer whose concerts last often for 4 or 5 hours.  He provides a choice of genres, from traditional country, to hell billy to his “Assjack” band, which does punk. He also makes a big effort to interact with his fans, spending hours after a concert signing autographs and posing for pictures. 
He hasn’t achieved the great fame that he might have done, had he been willing to play the Nashville game but he has a loyal following. And his talent shines forth in his lively energetic performing and his list of great songs….

Wives and Daughters

This is Elizabeth Gaskell’s last novel and was not quite finished.  However it was so close to completion that it only would have required possibly one short chapter to finish it.

It is my favourite of her novels.  While I admire her work about social conditions in Manchester -and think highly of her for wanting to use her writing to help the poor, I can’t help feeling that she  was better at novels about country town life and “ordinary people”, especially set in the recent past. Wives and Daughters draws on her memories of her country girlhood.  It also draws on her past family life, with a stepmother.    Molly Gibson is the daughter of a country doctor, who is in the middle ranks of society.  He’s above the poor and the farming classes, but lower than the gentry or aristocracy who own land in the Hollingford area. But his work means that they are connected to all classes.  Dr Gibson is a widower who remarries, because he believes that his daughter, now a teenager, needs a mother’s care to bring her into society and look after her.  But the marriage is a mistake.  He chooses Hyacinth Kirkpatrick – a former governess and now a widowed lady of middling rank, like himself. She has a pretty daughter of Molly’s age but she herself is foolish and selfish, a Mrs Benet type. Like Mr Bennet, Dr Gibson soon finds her folly and selfishness aggravating, and her daughter has been brought up in a haphazard manner.  Cynthia is beautiful charming and accomplished and sweet tempered but she has a limited moral sense.  She is flirtatious because she has a desperate need for love, since her mother has never been very affectionate to her.  And like her mother, she hopes for security from a good marriage. Cynthia manages to entangle herself with several suitors, during the course of the novel.

The novel is very long, and covers many areas, such as the rise of the middle classes, the increased respect and status of for the medical profession, which is becoming more scientific.  There is also exploration of the differences between the landed gentry, as represented by Squire Hamley and the wealthier titled part of the aristocracy, represented by Lord and Lady Cumnor and their family, including the lively Lady Harriet. The plot covers the love affairs of Cynthia and Molly and their interaction, and Molly’s attempts to rescue Cynthia from a selfish stalking admirer, Preston, which result in social ostracism for her, for a time.

If you Dont like Hank Willliams

Hiram Williams was born in to a poor family in Alabama in 1923.  He died on New Year’s Day 1953, at the age of 29.
As a boy he befriended a black street musician, who taught him about music, and to play guitar, and he began to dream of working in that field.  It was one of the few ways out of poverty for a country boy, of that era.   He changed his name to Hank -feeling that it better fitted his image as a would-be country musician.  In 1937 he started his career by performing on radio, and hosting a 15-minute program.  His backup band was the Drifting Cowboys, and his mother assisted by managing the band.  He was very close to his Mother.  His father had been injured in World War One and became an invalid, so his mother had had to work and provide the family with an income.   In the bleak 1930s she worked keeping a boarding house, in factories and as a nurse. 
Hank dropped out of school, to work full time at his music, never having been very academic.    He had no interest in learning...
He was unable to read music very well, but he had a talent for performing and writing.  However he had serious health problems, which made him turn to pain killing medication and alcohol, and these became addictions...    
When America entered World War Two, Hank was classified as 4F but his band members were drafted and he had to find replacements.  His increasingly serious alcohol addiction made him hard to work with. He was fired from the radio show and spent time working in a shipbuilding company -but he continued to sing to soldiers. In 1943 he met Audrey Shepard who was separated from her soldier husband.  She wanted to divorce him and marry Hank.  Their relationship was to prove a very stormy one, due to Hank’s drinking and Audrey’s strong willful personality. 
Their marriage was illegal at first because Audrey had not secured a legal divorce form her husband, but she and Hank remained together and their marriage was regularized.  In 1949 their only son, Randall Hank Williams – now famous as Hank Williams II and “Bocephus”, was born. 
Hank took care of Audrey’s daughter from her first marriage, but he and Audrey were often unhappy... Their up and down relationship however fuelled many of the songs he wrote which have become country classics.

Audrey was seen as overly ambitious and wanting to take too great a part in Hank’s career, but she had to put up with a lot of pain from his alcohol and drug problems.  He was immensely popular but an unreliable and often drunken performer.   His songs about poverty and loneliness and cheating, appealed to working people, who saw in them something of their own hard lives and problems.   His great works including “Your Cheating Heart”, “Jambalaya”, “I’ll never get out of this world Alive”, "I Saw the Light", “Setting the Woods on Fire”, and “Cold Cold Heart” are still performed and loved.   

He had initially received 6 encores at his first appearance at the Opry in 1949 and he took part in one of their post war European Tours, playing at Military bases in Germany, England etc. But he was often drunk and spent time in sanitaria, trying to find a cure for his addictions. As time went on, his health, always poor, was declining and the strains of his marriage exhausted him still more. An accident on a hunting trip, in 1951 left him with severe back pain, and after an operation, he began to consume more painkillers, including morphine. His musical career was successful, in spite of his problems.
However his marriage was failing and eventually Audrey was worn out and sued for divorce in 1952.  Hank had a relationship with a young woman which resulted in the birth of a daughter now known as Jett Williams… 
But he then married Billie Jean Jones Eshliman, a young “Girl singer” of 19, who had been introduced to him by her then boyfriend, singer Faron Young.   
But Hank’s time was running out.  He had been working at the Louisiana Hayride and touring, and his dependency on pills was continuing.  He was attended by an unqualified doctor who prescribed medication for him- and on New Year’s Day 1953, he died. He had been drinking during the car ride to his last gig, and on the journey he was in the back of his car, probably semi-conscious. At Oak Hill, West Virginia, his driver stopped for gas and realized that he was dead.
His death was tragic, he was only 29…but his body was worn out.  Still, in his short life and career he wrote so many great songs and brought his music to thousands of people.  He was one of the first Kings of Country Music.  His songs are still famous and he drew from his real life for his inspiration and he spoke to the people of America…. and other countries.  Country is said to be the White Man’s Blues and Hank, like other country singers, learned some his music from an old black man….
His marriage to Audrey produced his son Hank II, who initially started by singing his father’s songs, but broke away and turned to his own genre of Southern Rock… and he has been as famous as his father.  His son Shelton Hank, known as Hank III has also moved between genres, doing country, “hellbilly”, and punk and metal…

George Jones (1931 -2013)

George Glenn Jones was born in 1931, in Saratoga, Texas.    He was the son of a shipyard worker, who liked to play music, and his mother played the organ in church. His father was a heavy drinker and was often abusive to his wife and children.   At 16, he left home and went to work at a radio station in Jasper, Texas.
He next did a hitch in the US marines, in the early 1950s, and on leaving, he married his second wife, and began his recording career.  He met Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash who became a lifelong friend.  He acquired the nickname “Possum” because of a fancied resemblance to possums.  

George was one of the most wonderful interpretative singers in country music.  He wrote many of his own songs but he could put his “mark” on any song that he undertook to sing.  His voice was beautifully expressive and he was perfect at singing “love and pain” songs, like the big country weepie “He stopped loving her today”.  He toured with the Jones Boys, many of whom were very talented musicians in their own right.

His most famous marriage was to Tammy Wynnette, another very well-known singer.  Their marriage was stormy and ended in divorce… George had alcohol and drug problems and was a very wild man, at times.  His drinking and erratic behaviour began to affect his health.  He and Tammy had one child, Tamala and soon after her birth, he was committed to a padded cell, to recover from a serious drinking bout.
 When he and Tammy divorced, she accused him of shooting at her.  He was such a heavy drinker that he frequently didn’t turn up at concerts or was too drunk to perform well and he got the nickname of “No Show Jones”.
In the late 70s he took to using cocaine as well, and he became increasingly incoherent and ill. Friends like Johnny Cash helped him financially – he had declared bankruptcy - and he tried to give up drink and drugs, but with limited success.  When sober -he was shy and friendly but when he was drunk, he could be impossible.  But when he overcame his nerves sufficiently to do a good live show, he was a wonderful performer and the crowds loved him.  His fans ranged from grandparents to kids.
In the 1980’s he met and married Nancy Sepulvado, a 34-year-old divorcée.  She helped him to clean up and give up drinking, and as he became more settled in his life he began to include a humorous song “No Show Jones” in his repertoire, making fun of his tendency to not turn up…It lists the nicknames or well-known traits of all the big country singers, such as Loretta Lynn, the Coal Miner’s daughter, Kenny Rogers being the Gambler. Johnny is the Man in Black…. And George is only known as “No Show Jones.”   He performed the song with Merle Haggard, or with Ron Gaddis of the Jones Boys.   Another novelty song of that era was his “I don’t Need no Rocking Chair.”  He had a huge hit with “He Stopped Loving her today” which helped his finances.

He was ashamed of his “no shows” and disappointing his fans and tired to make up for this by playing free shows.  He remained sober most of the 1980s and had an occasional lapse in later years.  His health grew poorer, and in 2012 after an illness, he announced his farewell tour. Towards the end of April 2013, he became ill again and died of respiratory failure, at the age of 81.   He is greatly missed.

Kate O’Brien An Irish writer

Apart from Joyce, Ireland has not produced that many novelists in bygone days.  It is a land of writers, but usually they wrote poetry or plays or at best short stories.  Kate O’Brien, who came from a middle class family in Limerick, was born in 1897, and she is one of the best known women writers of her time.  Its said that the novel is a middle class form of writing, usually giving a semi realistic picture of society and romance.. and so it isn't that popular in a society that lacks a middle class.  Ireland until the later 19th century, didnt have a very strong or populous middle class.... the country was divided between a large and impoverished rural working class and an upper class who were Protestant and of English origin and so not close to the peasantry.  In the later 19th century however, the farming classes began to buy out their farms, and the Catholic middle class of professionals and business people began to expand.  (Kate's father had risen form poverty to running a successful horse trading business).

Kate moved to England as a young woman and started a career in journalism and writing.  Her novels were usually about young Irish women, trying to find a role in the world.  They were usually love stories and many of them turned on some kind of illicit love.
Kate O’Brien was brought up Roman Catholic but as a young woman, although she retained an interest in the faith, she lost her religious beliefs and became agnostic, but one who had sympathy with Catholicism.  She married, in England, but her marriage was not a success and ended in divorce.  Afterwards Kate began to engage in relationships with women.   
So in some ways, her novels may have used illicit affairs as a coded way of dealing with her own socially unacceptable sexual feelings. 
   Most of them were banned in Ireland, because of their shocking subject matter and while she lived in Ireland at times, she spent much of her life in England and died there at the age of 76.
In “Mary Lavelle”, her novel about Spain, she writes of a love affair between Mary, a young Irish woman and a young Spanish man who is married.  Like many girls of her time, Mary went to Spain to work as a governess/chaperone to the girls of a Spanish aristocratic family.   It was common for girls to do this as a job for a few years, and some of them stayed and worked as duennas for a lifetime. Some found husbands.   Mary is engaged to an Irish man, but finds love and sexual awakening with Juan, the son of her employer, but he is married and cannot wed her.  But her feelings for him, help her to mature.
In another novel, The Ante Room, Agnes Mulqueen, a young Victorian Irish woman, falls in love with her sister’s husband and they admit their feelings to each other, but the affair is not consummated.

O’Brien also began to write, with increasing openness, as time went on, about homosexual love.  In “Land of Spices”, one of her best works, she writes of a woman who becomes a nun, when she finds that her father is a homosexual.  Later, the nun, Helen Archer, takes on a role of helping one of her young pupils, Anna, who wants to go to college but whose family don’t want to help a daughter to gain an education.   

Helen Archer has a feminist role in assisting her young protégée.  Kate O’Brien was a feminist writer and critical of the conservative and puritanical Ireland of De Valera.  Most of her books involve friendship and supportive relationships between women.   Mary Lavelle gives a picture of the “misses”, Irish women who work as governesses, who have a network of help and support for each other.  In the Ante Room, Agnes gives up her love for Vincent, her brother in law, out of love for her sister, Marie Rose.  In her last novel, "As Music and Splendour", O’Brien portrays 2 Victorian Irish girls, Claire and Rose, who train as opera singers and who also have a mutually supportive relationship, in their work. In addition, in this novel, she writes about openly lesbian relationships among the opera women, and of illicit heterosexual love affairs.
She is a very interesting person and an interesting writer, and her novels have now been republished, and her life and work studied by writers and academics.

Johnny Cash (1932-2003)

Johnny was born in Arkansas and originally named “JR Cash”.  He was one of a large family of poor farming people, and when he was a child, the family moved to Dyess, Arkansas to take part in a government project to help farmers.  His family took on a cotton farm, during the Great Depression and made a bare living.  Johnny was devoted to his older brother Jack, who wanted to become a preacher.  His young life was deeply traumatised when Jack died in an accident at a sawmill, at the age of 15.   Johnny’s relationship with his father was always difficult and stormy… His father was a man who had lived a hard life and he was often harsh with his son.

Johnny went into the army at the age of 18, and served in Germany.  He got engaged to a young woman called Vivian Liberto, and maintained their relationship by correspondence.  He was extremely fast at sending and translating Morse Code, so he worked as a signal operator, and during this time in Germany he began to toy with the idea of a musical career.  He had a strong and beautiful voice and his family like many of the rural community, sang gospel songs at home….and in the Army he sang and took part in a band…

So on his leaving the services, he returned to America and married Vivian, but his longing to become a singer became stronger.  Vivian was never as keen on the idea. He found a job as a salesman, in 1954, in Memphis Tennessee, and they started their family.   They had 4 daughters, Roseanne, Tara Kathy and Cindy.
Johnny began to sing, with a new band, the Tennessee Two, and got a contract with Sam Phillips and Sun Records.   Increasingly country singers had begun to write their own material and he was a brilliant and prolific song writer.  His songs spoke of his family background, about poverty and marriage, about love and hate.    He had a deep and powerful almost unique voice.   He gradually went on from being a small time band to greater success.  But the success came at a price.  He was working extremely hard and spending a lot of time away frorms his wife and children.  To keep going, like many touring musicians, he took to using pills, which were not illegal drugs, but which were highly addictive. And he was tempted by other women, and gradually he and his wife became unhappy and estranged.  She didn’t like the musical career, which entailed separations and made it easier for Johnny to justify taking drugs.  Over time, his drug use began to affect his performances.  He didn’t show up for concerts or was so drugged that it affected his voice... He was banned from singing at the Opry for kicking out a line of footlights.

In spite of his faults, of wild behaviour, and drug abuse and marital problems, Johnny was at heart a decent man who never abandoned his Christian faith and struggled to overcome the problems in his life that made him act badly.   He became involved in a relationship with June Carter, who worked with him, and was a talented singer in her own right.  She was a member of the famous Carter music family and was married… but the relationship became the most important in his life. His wife didn’t want to give him a divorce but eventually she did and June, who had tried over the years to help Johnny to quit drugs, became his wife in 1968.   She and Johnny had a stormy marriage.  June was devoted to him but he occasionally flirted heavily with other women and he never completely overcame his dependence on drugs. They had one child, a son, John Carter Cash, and between them, they had a family of 7.  Johnny's four daughters by Vivian and June had had 2 daughters, Carlene and Rosie, by her previous husbands. (Both of June’s daughters used the name Carter professionally and both were singers).

He also had a career as an actor, taking part in TV movies and TV shows such as Dr Quinn Medicine Woman, and an episode of Colombo.

As Johnny grew older, his health began to be affected by the drug and alcohol use, but he still worked hard and was always willing to spend time with his fans.  He was involved in charity works, taking a particular interest in the cause of people in prison and the Native Americans. He was famous for his prison concerts and he felt an affinity with people who had done wrong and gone to prison, because he was conscious of his own flaws and mistakes.

He was like most people of his generation brought up in a conservative environment, in the South, but he overcame many of the prejudices that he had learned.  In the 1960s, he was unsure about the Vietnam War, understanding the views of the students who protested and feeling that the war might not be justified, but still supporting the soldiers.

in the 1980’s he teamed up with 3 other great singer-songwriters, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and Kris Kristofferson to form the “super group” The Highwaymen, which toured extensively –.

In his 60s, Johnny, having become something of a “back number” in the charts, had a resurgence of interest  with the general public because of his “American Recordings” and his famous video for the Nine Inch Nails song, “Hurt”.  He used a new producer Rick Rubin -and recorded several albums with a very simple arrangement…

In 1997, he had to give up touring abroad, because he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease but he continued to work and record, although his health was declining.  He almost died of pneumonia but survived. He and June spent more time In Jamaica at their farm there, but he could never abandon his work.  He was later told that the Parkinson’s diagnosis was wrong, and that he had a neurological condition called Shy Drager Syndrome, which affected his nerves and made it hard for him to walk and to play guitar. The diagnosis was later again altered to autonomic neuropathy associated with diabetes.  His eyesight was also getting poor because diabetes….and he began to have to use a wheelchair.  But in spite of health issues that might have made most men retire, he kept on working as best he could.  June began to have some health problems, but their marriage remained loving and strong.  Finally in 2003, June died during a routine heart operation, and Johnny only survived her for 4 months.  He went on trying to work, in the months after her death, but he was clearly distraught at losing her.  In September 2003, he died, leaving a legacy of wonderful songs and singing…

Michael MacLiammoir Gay Icon and actor

Michael Macliammoir with his partner and live in companion, Hilton Edwards, were highly important figures in the history of Irish Theatre in the earlier 20^th Century.

The 2 men lived together as a gay couple, at a time when homosexuality was illegal in both Britain and Ireland.  Like many men of that era, they were open about their sexuality but in such a way that did not impinge on more conservative people, so most tolerated them as a couple.  They were popular figures and their talent and charm helped to make their sexuality less of an issue than it might have been.

They were playwrights, actors and directors and Michael was a fluent Irish speaker who wrote several volumes of diaries in the Irish Language which were translated into English and published.  They founded the Gate theatre in Dublin which attempted to bring foreign and avante garde theatre to the Irish people, while the Abbey Theatre promoted Irish works.

MacLiammoir claimed that he had been born in Ireland but that his family had then moved to England.  However, he was born Alfred Wilmore in the London suburb of Kensal Green, in 1899.  His family were English, middle class and he had no Irish connexions at all.  As a boy he became a theatre actor and worked with Noel Coward.

 He was interested in the arts and in writing, as well as acting, and as he grew older, he became aware of his sexuality.  As a young man, he became interested in the Celtic Literary Revival, which had been popularised by Yeats and other Irish writers.  He learned to speak and write Irish, and studied Irish literature.   He changed his name to “Michael” and translated his surname “Willmore” to MacLiammoir, a roughly Irish equivalent.  Many believed that he had been born to an Irish family living in London…

He moved to Ireland during the war years, partly to avoid conscription, and had formed a close loving relationship with a young woman which was platonic.  She later died of consumption.

He and Hilton formed a partnership in the 1920’s and lived together, working for the theatre.   He worked with Orson Welles, who also started his theatrical career in the Gate, and later Michael played Iago in Welles’ film “Othello”.

His acting style was very theatrical and might be considered “hammy” by today’s standards, and he continued to play “young man” parts even when he was well into middle age.  He was however talented and greatly beloved in the world of theatre and in Dublin.   He became almost blind in later years.  He died in 1978 and Hilton died a few years later. 

Emily and Wuthering Heights Part 1

Emily is famous for one novel and her poetry, unlike her sisters, she only wrote this one work.  And it does not appeal to everyone.  Charlotte, who lived almost to the age of 40, wrote and published four novels, many stories and some poetry.  Anne, who died around 30, also wrote poetry and 2 novels, Agnes Grey and Tenant of Wildfelll Hall.
It has been said that critically speaking there is only one Bronte –Emily.  Many critics feel that Charlotte’s novels are uneven and in some ways wish fulfilment, and that Anne’s works are slight. But Emily’s one work is a great novel.
I tend to agree. I think that Anne’s works are slight and overly moralistic and that Charlotte (while she has real talent) was often downright preposterous. Jane Eyre has wonderful early chapters about Jane’s childhood, but the later plot shows her lack of knowledge of the upper classes and the bigamy situation, which is probably meant to make Rochester more sympathetic, only makes him ridiculous. Her experience of the world was limited, but she chose to write novels that demanded such knowledge or experience.  She never mixed in “high society” except for a brief time after her first novels were published.  As a child, she wrote from imagination and reading the newspapers, and in Shirley, she made an admirable attempt to write about the Luddite riots earlier in the century, which meant researching into the industrial and social history of Yorkshire.
However her mixing of stories based in “society” and “real life” with the passionate and wild emotions that were very much part of her character, and which she had written about in her earlier Angrian writings, tended to create very uneven works.
Emily’s one novel is more unified and “all of a piece”.  Unlike her sister, she didn’t bother very much about “normal” social life.  She lived contentedly as almost a recluse, only mixing with her own family… and knowing little of the world other than what she had learned from her short times as a teacher or in Brussels.   So there is not the same divergence between 2 different sorts of writing, in Wuthering Heights.
The novels Is “Gothic” to a large extent but unlike earlier Gothic novels, it is not set abroad in some exotic location, but firmly rooted in Yorkshire. Charlotte and Mrs Gaskell have said that Emily knew nothing of the “world” but she heard old stories of life In Yorkshire, of the well to do farming and small gentry class, at a time when rural Yorkshire was very isolated and people lived in a small circle, and were often obsessed by family feuds going back for years. So the fact that the Earnshaws and Lintons were the only 2 “well to do” families of any social standing, around Gimmerton, is not unrealistic.  By setting her novel in the late 18th century and in the rural wilds of the county, Emily avoided having to deal with “society” which she knew very little about.

Rough Music, sex and drugs and rock and roll

I have now published “Rough Music”.   It’s not a romance; it’s about people who are a bit older than the “very romantic” age, who are 30-ish and trying to sort out problems in life, rather than looking for a perfect love affair or marriage.   Jeff and Brandon are two guys, who are good friends, and work together.  They are both trying to work out how far they compromise in their work lives and how they try and manage a music career, with its frequent traveling and still maintain contact with their wives and families.  They want to do real music that they love, rather than concentrate on commercially successful stuff, but they also need to earn a living.   This is in its way a historical story, set in the late 1970s, so attitudes are not the same on many issues as they are now, but there’s fun, sex and I hope some real life in there! I find writing about older people, who are not at the age when love and finding the perfect partner are all important.  Jeff and Brandon are married, they have children, they have work problems and problems with friendship. I know that some readers wont like their attitudes, but they were of their time....

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Rough-Music-Nadine-Sutton-ebook/dp/B01AEQS0G0/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1452977780&sr=8-1&keywords=nadine+sutton