Graven With Diamonds: The Many Lives of Thomas Wyatt. Courtier, Poet, Assassin, Spy

by Nicola Shulman

?A fluid, poised, quick-witted dance through the poetic and political career of one of the most elusive, glittering figures of Tudor England.OCO HILARY MANTEL ?These bloody days have broken my heart.OCO Thomas Wyatt Learned divines despised it, sober heads ignored it, but for Henry, the beau ideal of chivalry, poetry made things happen. It affected his wars, his diplomacy and his many marriages. It was at the root of his fatal attraction to Anne Boleyn, the source of her power and it was the means of her destruction. In this witty, intriguing, accessible account, Nicola Shulman interweaves the bloody events of HenryOCOs reign with the story of English love poetry and the life of its first master, HenryOCOs most glamorous and enigmatic subject: Sir Thomas Wyatt. Courtier, spy, wit, diplomat, assassin, lover of Anne Boleyn, and favourite both of Henry and his sinister minister Thomas Cromwell, the brilliant Wyatt was admired and envied in equal measure. His love poetry began as an elite and risqu(r) entertainment for the group of ambitious men and women at the slippery top of the court. But when the axe began to fall among this group, and HenryOCOs laws made his subjects fall silent in terror, WyattOCOs poetic skills became a way to survive. He saw that a love poem was a place where secrets could hide. "

Genres: History, Biography, Nonfiction, Poetry, Tudor Period

320 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 5, 2013

Reviews

[Roman Clodia · Rating 2 out of 5]

What if 'mine heart' is also an actual object, a heart-shaped envelope made of cloth with a balloon, or squeaking thing inside? Now the poem comes to life ... Was it part of a dance or a word game, or did everyone run around trying to find it? ... We will now have a very different response to a song beginning sadly... when we picture Wyatt declaiming it to a circle of laughing partygoers, while holding up a bladdered heart and giving it comical squeezes. Alas, I find thee faint and weak! (squeak!). Then... he would pop it at the end.

The quotation above indicates what I liked and, perhaps more importantly, disliked immensely about this book: Shulman is astute enough to understand that poems were material objects in this period, scribbled in isolation from each other and circulating by hand amongst a court coterie - but her silly fantasy of party-games in Anne Boleyn's chambers with Wyatt (Wyatt!) ridiculing his own intense and dense verse with a Tudor squeezy balloon is precisely that - fantasy. Not just flimsy evidence, but no evidence whatsoever.

This is undoubtedly an entertaining read but I suspect the less you know about either Wyatt or the Henrician court the more you might like it. As fascinating as Wyatt probably was, there's very little evidence about his life, certainly not enough to fill a biography or what Shulman calls, in prevaricating fashion, a biography of his poetry. In fact, for large tracts of time, both are forgotten as we re-hash (again!) the Henry VIII/Anne Boleyn story with Wyatt a mere shadow on the sidelines.

And once Anne is dead, what vitality there is seeps away even though Wyatt's life perhaps gets more interesting, and his poetry remains complicated. Shulman is really only interested in the love poetry, not the satires - and tries to have it both ways by saying (rightly) that we can't equate the lyric 'I' unequivocally with Wyatt the poet, then going on to do precisely that, confidently unpicking Wyatt's love affair with Anne Boleyn and his rivalry with Henry VIII from the poetry. The readings are all about uncovering 'the key to this poem', predicated on ideals of recuperating authorial intentionality ('this interpretation is very probably what Wyatt intended') as if poetry must have a single fixed and unwavering meaning, laid down at its conception, immune to textual autonomy.

The writing is entertaining in an anachronistic, jaunty way: Henry VIII is a 'Tudor Stalin' (despite not ever quite having control over his own family and court, let alone the rest of England, and certainly not guilty of sending millions to their deaths), and the Devonshire manuscript, a kind of courtly miscellany, is 'the Facebook of the Tudor court'.

Shulman has certainly done her research but this remains a popular book that sits unhappily alongside more academic approaches to early Tudor poetry, and Wyatt's work specifically. It's a fun read but also frustratingly loose and lax in its assertions.

[Quirkyreader · Rating 3 out of 5]

The tittle of this book is a bit deceiving. It is more about intrigues and doubling dealings in the court of Henry the VII.

You learn about Thomas Wyatt and get to read some of his poems. I hope that if Shulman ever revises this book she will add more information about Thomas Wyatt. I didn't feel like there was enough information about him.

One bonus about this book is that it reproduces many of Hans Holbein the Younger artworks. Albeit they are in black and white.

If you are a Tudor junkie this is a good book to read. And it is a good accompaniment to The Wolf Hall books. Cromwell is mentioned more in this book than any of the other people around him.

[Nicky · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wasn’t really aware of Thomas Wyatt before I read this, and all I really know about him now is that he was a courtier and a poet, sometimes a diplomat. Overall, though, this book is less a biography of Thomas Wyatt and more an examination of the role poetry (including, and chiefly, his) had in the court of Henry VIII. I felt like I learned more about Anne Boleyn (whom the author frankly admires for her skill in dealing with her paramours and navigating the court) and Henry VIII than I did about Wyatt. Which is, to an extent, what the author promises in the introduction.

But, and you knew there was a ‘but’ coming, I found it hard to take the analysis entirely seriously given that the knowledge it was based on is faulty in basic ways. The author of The Romance of the Rose was not Chrétien de Troyes, but Jean du Meun and Guillaume de Lorris. In fact, The Romance of the Rose was completed ca. 1270; Chrétien de Troyes’ work was done before 1200. If you’re going to muck up a basic fact like that — you don’t have to know it by heart, but you do need to actually look it up — I’m not sure I trust you to steer between fact and fiction when it comes to the Tudors, who excelled at their own myth making.

So it was kind of interesting to read this author’s speculations, but I gave her pretty much no credence, as she didn’t earn it. Courtly literature isn’t just a throwaway thing here, but something which is important to how she discusses the Tudor court. Do your research.

[Christine · Rating 3 out of 5]

I guess for most people today Thomas Wyatt is that guy in Showtime’s the Tudors who wanted to get with Anne Boleyn so much that he dreamed of her in his bed. He had an affair with a lady of Katherine of A’s household who hanged herself. He attended Anne’s beheading and was never heard from again. He might have written some poetry, but that is really secondary, so who cares?

That is not Thomas Wyatt at all. He was a poet, true, but perhaps, as Nicola Shulman makes a compelling case for, the first great English poet since Chaucer. He was married and did repudiate his wife (she most likely had an affair, but no one is really sure), and he did have a long term affair with a woman named Elizabeth Darnell who most likely served Katherine but also Jane Seymour, so she didn’t commit suicide. He was courtier who did things, though we are not entirely sure what they were – he was a spy of some type. He was an ambassador of some type. He might have hired assassins.

Shulman’s book does go some way to making Wyatt more a person than a bit player and goes further in arguing for the importance of his poetry, not just in terms of the history of English literature but also in the current events of his day, more exactly Henry’s Great Matter.

Shulman’s thesis about the poetry is the most interesting part of the book, and it almost feels like the background about Anne Boleyn, Henry and Cromwell is there simply to provide ample pages for a book. Shulman’s thesis is that Wyatt’s poems, in part, where a comment not only on the whole Anne Boleyn might have been love affair, but also on the political situation of the day. The weakest part of the argument is the suggestion, which in fairness could have been an editing or wording error that the poems were read in other European courts. I mean if they were read by a small group of people and passed hand to hand would they be read so widely in the courts?

The second problem really isn’t a problem or at least complication is that source material is so scant that it can’t be a biography of Wyatt because the source material is just not there. All those crazy Anti Shakespeareans keeps saying that there isn’t enough proof about Shakespeare being Shakespeare confidently ignore the fact that William Shakespeare of Stratford-Upon-Avon has one of the better documented lives of the time. So to compensate the book is filled with Tudor history that most people already know. This makes the book conflicting. You really should only be reading this if you are somewhat familiar with Wyatt already, and I mean the real Wyatt and not the Showtime one, but a good portion of the information is already common knowledge for the reader who has read say Ives and other biographies of Anne Boleyn.

Yet, it is rather engrossing in terms of writing. Needs a better title though.

[Liam Guilar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reservations;
1) The title is misleading. This is not about "The many lives of Thomas Wyatt". he had one, it's not well documented. Katherine Duncan-Jones claim that Sir Philip Sidney is the first English poet who can be treated to a full length modern Biography probably stands.
A courtier, yes, which meant poet as well. He was a diplomat, which i suppose qualifies him as a spy but who wasn't a spy in Tudor England? And assassin? Where does he assassinate anyone? These are not lives, they were elements of his life.
2) The book needs proofreading.
3) The lack of real evidence for Wyatt's life was always going to be a problem, which admittedly allows for filling in with general history. But I wanted to know why everyone assumes he was Anne B's lover and the evidence doesn't seem to be very good.
4) The book feels unbalanced. The end comes very swiftly and the final summing up seems abrupt.

Having said that:

It's is well-written, and entertaining. It's enjoyable to read. There aren't that many good discussions of Tudor poetry that can be read through in a basically uninterrupted reading. Whatever the blurb writers claim, the book holds to its own purpose: a biography of Wyatt's poems...Shulman is very good at showing how Poetry worked in the court: how simple looking lyrics can be read in different ways depending on their contexts and in doing so develop depth. It works as a defense of the poetry by looking at how it was used and along the way provides some interesting readings of poems most Wyatt readers probably skip over.
Her final argument, that Wyatt's poems belonged in a small circulating MSS culture and were killed by print is a good one.

A very enjoyable book. there should be a system of rating books by the things you miss out on because you can't stop reading. This one would rate very highly on that scale.

[Orsolya · Rating 1 out of 5]

Could not finish.

[Natasha · Rating 3 out of 5]

People have talked about this book with good reason. I am also happy to see that my library has not listed it as a biography - and that it won the Writers Guild Award for Best Non Fiction Book and not Best Biography.

While it is an excellent book that cleverly ties Thomas Wyatt's poetry with Henry VIII court - it is definitely not a biography of Thomas Wyatt which is what the cover would lead to you to believe.

While Nicola Shulman does seem to take the same three poems and apply them to almost everything that went on in those tumultuous years - it does speak to the skills of Thomas Wyatt that is poems could be applied to so many different scenarios.

this book is more a snapshot of the reign of Henry VIII then it is a book about Thomas Wyatt. Wonderfully well written - but the synopsis and front cover are a bit misleading.

[Laurie · Rating 2 out of 5]

This has been slow going for me, not exactly compelling reading however it does what it sets out to do by illuminating the life of the poet and courtier Thomas Wyatt. The Tudors gives him a very romantic part to play and I wanted to learn how much of it was true and how much made up for television. As I am not really offended by entertainment doing what’s necessary to be entertaining, I much prefer the romantic version.

His verse has a way of saying nothing and saying everything at the same time and was intended to circulate around court. I did not know that. The book gives one more angle on the Tudor court- a devastatingly difficult place to survive and ultimately fascinating through the ages.

[Becky · Rating 2 out of 5]

Having read much about the Tudors, I thought a book from Wyatt's perspective would be an interesting change. I found the book to be mostly about Tudors with afterthoughts of Wyatt thrown in. I made it through Chapter 7. Even though I am very interested in these subjects, I didn't feel the book does any of them justice.

[Terri · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s interesting to read the Henry VIII history from a point of view of a supporting character.
Cf. Hilary Mantel “The Mirror and the Light” I wish I had kept the copy of this book as Wyatt is an interesting shadow throughout Mantel’s novel.

[Courtney Johnston · Rating 3 out of 5]

Over the past two years, I have become a (largely) unrepentant dog-earer. My husband has taken to glancing over at me in bed as the paper makes its tell-tale squeak under my fingers as I firmly fold the top corner over, and murmuring 'Vandalising public property again?' (I make no distinction between my own books and those from the library; I hasten to add that I would never desecrate a friend's book, unless I knew they shared my habit).

I use these dog-ears when I write these reviews. I've noticed that they also track my enjoyment of a book. It's my gut assumption that the more evenly distributed the dogears throughout the book, the more likely it is to have a high star rating here on Goodreads. A book that starts heavy on the dogears and then has few, if any, in the final half, probably gets a 2-3 star rating and maybe added to the 'Abandoned' shelf. (The quirk that spoils the data is that I dogear things I don't like as well, for later reference - like annoying writerly ticks).

'Graven with Diamonds' is one of those tailing-off books. I started it with breathless excitement and five dogears in the first chapter; the second half of the book warranted only two folds. This perhaps reflects something of the distribution of Thomas Wyatt's own (short) life: the first half of his adult life spent as a courtier to Henry XIII, supplying the Henrician court with the poems that flew from hand to hand and ear to ear; the second half as an ambassador overseas, more preoccupied with official correspondence and a lengthy defensive piece on the occasion of his second imprisonment. (Wyatt, despite these two brushes with potential execution, died in a distinctly unpoetical way, falling ill on the road while visiting friends, aged 39.)

I dogeared the very first page of the book's Prologue, which opens with lines Auden removed from his 1939 elegy In Memory of W.B. Yeats':

Time that is intolerant
Of the brave and the innocent,
And indifferent in a week
To a beautiful physique,

Worships language and forgives
Everyone by whom it lives;
Pardons cowardice, conceit,
Lays its honours at their feet.

Time that with this strange excuse
Pardoned Kipling and his views,
And will pardon Paul Claudel,
Pardons him for writing well.

Auden removed these lines out of tact, Shulman writes, but kept in the 'famous parting shot that liberated poets from their political responsibilities': For poetry makes nothing happen. He means, Shulman tells us, that poets do not have the responsibility of being right, or just, or brave, or good examples: their business is to write, and to write well.

Shulman opens with these lines because Auden kept cropping up as she worked on this book:

The pair of them are the lyric poets who bookended the period of England's political greatness; both are poets of unreciprocated feeling, of frenetic inertia, and of fear. But I think the main reason why these particular lines kept coming back to me was that Wyatt's posthumous career refutes them on every count.

Wyatt wrote poetry (and translated poetry) when poetry made things happen. Poems circulated through the Henrician court, key to the complex play of gossip and favours, playacted love affairs and political maneuvers, being re-used and recontextualised with each change in Henry's attitude towards courtiers, foreign countries and religion. While diplomats wrote letters, courtiers did not: Wyatt's poems - untitled, undated, unaddressed, seemingly unimportant - are among the few documentary records of the private inner life of the English court.

Wyatt's poems have not fared well in literary criticism (see C.S. Lewis's famous faint praise of the leading figure of what he termed the 'Drab Age' - "When he is bad he is flat or even null, and when he is good he is hardly one of the irresistible poets."). But nonetheless they have endured, and remain relevant; when the Guardian this year asked writers to nominate their favourite love poems for Valentine's Day, Wyatt's two best-known pieces were on the list:

They flee from me

They flee from me that sometime did me seek
With naked foot, stalking in my chamber.
I have seen them gentle, tame, and meek,
That now are wild and do not remember
That sometime they put themself in danger
To take bread at my hand; and now they range,
Busily seeking with a continual change.

Thanked be fortune it hath been otherwise
Twenty times better; but once in special,
In thin array after a pleasant guise,
When her loose gown from her shoulders did fall,
And she me caught in her arms long and small;
Therewithall sweetly did me kiss
And softly said, "Dear heart, how like you this?"

It was no dream: I lay broad waking.
But all is turned thorough my gentleness
Into a strange fashion of forsaking;
And I have leave to go of her goodness,
And she also, to use newfangleness.
But since that I so kindly am served
I would fain know what she hath deserved.

Whoso List to Hunt

Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind,
But as for me, alas, I may no more;
The vain travail hath wearied me so sore,
I am of them that furthest come behind.
Yet may I by no means my wearied mind
Draw from the deer, but as she fleeth afore
Fainting I follow; I leave off therefore,
Since in a net I seek to hold the wind.
Who list her hunt, I put him out of doubt,
As well as I, may spend his time in vain.
And graven with diamonds in letters plain,
There is written her fair neck round about,
"Noli me tangere, for Caesar's I am,
And wild for to hold though I seem tame."

These poems were not written for publication - they circulated around a group that contained only about 100 people. Instead, as Shulman writes, a Wyatt poem:

started life on a single folded piece of paper tucked purposefully into Wyatt's doublet, so it could be passed slyly to a friend as he was waiting in a crowded presence chamber, or left somewhere where a girl would find it. It might make its public debut on the programme of pastime amusements for the inner court. But it could also be borrowed, circulated and copied, quoted in part or whole, a line or two murmured into someone's ear while dancing or gambling.

The late 15th and early 16th centuries saw a craze for chivalry; it was as important as religion and the emergent humanism in the education of rulers. The customs of chivalry covered everything from sexual relations to personal conduct to the organisation of society to art, literature and the mad enthusiasm for games. England, as the home of the legendary Arthurian court, had form in this particular area. As well as bringing back tourneys, Henry encouraged the flowering of courtly love - carefully conducted titillating banter and amorous engagements - which was voiced through the poems of Wyatt, one of Henry's 'Esquires of the Body'.

Shulman's book is full of fascinating facts. One of the first I came across was the idea of 'pastime', in which these faux-affairs were played out. Henry set aside time in his royal day for 'crown-wearing' sessions, in which he would be seen by his subjects in the role of ruler; 'pastime' was the private side of these presentation efforts. 'Pastime' refer to forms of recreation like the elaborate formal masques and musical entertainments that displayed the glory and power of the court; it also referred to:

a more mysterious activity: a series of diversions and amusements played on the theme of courtly love, in which the players were not professionals but the members of the innermost court, and which ... might be described as the indoor, or feminised, division of chivalric games. Any attempts to describe it must proceed gropingly. The players were few and the rules were not written down. All that is left now is the poems, themselves counters in this game, many of them written by Thomas Wyatt.

If courtly love forms the context for Wyatt's poems, Anne Boleyn was the woman who created a good deal of that context. Returning to Henry's court from France as a shining, witty, sophisticated 17 year-old, it would be twelve years before she and Henry would be married. In that time however she superseded his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, and carefully managed her way into Henry's heart. How intimate she and Wyatt were has never been confirmed; the poems above are thought to be about her, and he was imprisoned in the Tower when she fell from grace under suspecion of being her lover, although charges were never pressed.

In a way, the 'realness' of their relations is beside the point. In Henry's court, all the young men were dying of love for all the young women (or at least professing it): these stage-managed love affairs (which presumably slipped over, at least occasionally, into the real thing) were a convention of courtly love that let young, attractive and sexually unavailable people blow off some steam.

Another fact that intrigued me were the 'diets', or daily rations, that were assigned to members of the court. Here's the diet of one 'right dere and wellbeloved Lady Lucy', which would be shared with her household, likely to be travelling with Henry as he moved about the country staying with various nobles:

Every morning 'at breakfast, one chine of beef, one cheat loaf and one manchet, and a gallon of ale; after noon, a manchet and a gallon of ale; at dinner, a piece of beef, a stroke of roaste and a rewarde, a cast of cheat bread, and a gallon of ale; at supper, a mess of porrage, a piece of mutton and a reward, a cast of cheat bread and a gallon of ale and a half gallon of wine at our cellar bar'. Every morning 'at our woodyard', four tall 'shyds' and two faggots; 'at our chandler's bar', in winter, every night, 'one pricket and four sizes of wax', with eight candles, white lights and one torch; 'at our pitcherhouse' weekly six white cups; and 'at every time of our removing one whole cart for the carriage of her stuff'.

What does that mean? 'Cheat loaf' was wheaten bread, made of flour a cut below that used to make 'manchet', a slice of roast beef plus an extra piece or 'reward'. A 'cast' was a certain quantity of bread or ale - the amount has not come down to us - likewise, what a 'shyd' is in terms of firewood. A pricket is a spiked candle-stick, and a size a small candle.

Another section that really struck me was about the lack of trust the Tudors had in the English language. It wasn't quite good enough for them - or they were not quite good enough at it yet. It was not seen as a fit tool for complex ideas, and this gave rise to a ponderous style of prose writing where words were laden upon each other to ensure the point would not be lost: things were not said, they were declared, said and spoken; 'permitting' was not sufficient - something must be 'suffered and permitted'; a bag was a 'pouche or sack'. Hence we have inherited passages like this:

the extirpation abolition and extinguishment of such abuses errours and enormities, as have long been violently maynteyned to the obtuscation of goddes holy and indeficiable [indivisible] truth.

It explains a lot about where legalese comes from.

Overall, the first half of this book i enjoyed enormously, once I realised that the poems (and fragments thereof) were occurring over and over in different contexts because that's what they did at the time. (An appendix with the full text of the poems that were discussed would have been handy, and satisfying to read once you'd gotten used to unpicking them.) The second half becomes dull however, as we travel with Wyatt and get embroiled in his various political endeavours. The book declares itself a biography, but it's real strength is in the description of the complex play of poetry in the complex setting of Henry's court; limiting herself to this material would have also cut down on the amount of time Shulman spends paraphasing secondary sources in the later chapters. And I'm not sure about some of Shulman's contemporary phrasings, such as when she describes Henry as a man so sincere in all his doings that 'if he were alive today, he'd be Canadian'.

So - a book for fans, rather than those looking for a bodice-ripping textual version of the Tudors television series. But even if I trailed off at the end, I've been enriched by the reading. And now to smooth out the dogears before I return it to the library.

[David Jacobson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This readable historical account sets itself the difficult task of bringing to life the courtly love poetry of Thomas Wyatt, who was revered as one of the fathers of English lyric poetry but whose works now read as trite. Nicola Shulman does this by interweaving a selection of the poems with Wyatt's story and the story of court life in the reign of Henry VIII. She shows how Wyatt's poems were ingrained as a kind of currency of court life, passed from hand to hand and mouth to ear, conveying in oblique language messages that could not be written plainly and that could only fully be understood in their contemporary context. She meticulously reconstructs that context, to greatest effect through a series of poems that she reads, first, in the context of "courtly love" in the Henrician court and, later in the book, in the political context of Wyatt's embassies to Spain and France.

Aside from the great sonnet from which the book's title is drawn, and which has such an entrancing cadence in its final six lines, this book engendered no love on my part for Wyatt's verse. But, it did give a vivid window into the early aristocratic circles in which Wyatt traveled and which, Shulman argues convincingly, his poetry shaped.

Those final six lines that I have enjoyed reading out loud many times?

[...]
Who list her hunt, I put him out of doubt,
As well as I may spend his time in vain.
And graven with diamonds in letters plain
There is written her fair neck round about:
Noli me tangere for Caesar's I am
And wild for to hold though I seem tame.

[Saxon Henry · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book in order to do research for an essay in my book “The Modern Salonnière.” I was inspired to look for a book about Sir Thomas Wyatt because he was one of the most savvy players when it came to chivalry during the Tudor era. This book was spot-on for my research. According to Shulman, the show of pageantry involved in chivalry became a habit: “During celebrations Henry and his varied queens would sing lyrics after jousting tournaments to celebrate his sexual prowess and virility. The King got a bit carried away during one such ceremony, singing, ‘I hurt no man, I do no wrong/ I love true where I did marry.’ He was still on wife one, Catherine of Aragon, at the time!” If you'd like to see how ga-ga Henry VIII was about jousting and chivalry, I've excerpted a post from the book here: https://bit.ly/3bEcuXF

[Caroline · Rating 4 out of 5]

Entertaining. Shulman reviews the short (didn't live to see 40) career of this Tudor poet, courtier, and diplomat with due attention to the many ways his poetry can be read to shed light on all of those roles. An interesting counterpoint to the "biography" of his poem that I just read. (Also a salutary reminder that however much we liked Cromwell after reading Hilary Mantel, he was a ruthless man among ruthless men.) I don't think she is a historian but she does cite real historians. Sometimes witty, sometimes a little flippant, but gives Wyatt his due. I am not sure where she gets her ideas about how the courtiers played with poetry...

[Jane · Rating 3 out of 5]

Intricate is the word that best describes Shulman's careful interpretation of Wyatt's life and poetry. She uses his poems to throw light on the social and political doing of the Henrican court, and they prove an excellent guide to a lot of hidden jockeying and Machiavellian backstabbing. Henry and his wives are a well-trodden field, but Shulman's interpretation - that he was obsessed and driven by his ideal of courtly love - is refreshing and believable, and Wyatt's poems provide an excellent way-map.

[Moira Walshe · Rating 3 out of 5]

I started this some years back and returned to it. As others have said, this is not a book about Thomas Wyatt, although it does give some details of his life story. It is about his poetry and how it could be read to apply to machinations at Henry VIII’s court at a variety of times. I found it very hard going and not an easy read although I could appreciate the amount of research, knowledge and detail that it contains and it imparts a real feeling for the way Henry’s court existed, the play on courtly love being one central theme. I gave it three stars because the style was not very readable.

[Livia Wren · Rating 3 out of 5]

This just... Wasn't for me, I suppose. While I think this was probably very well written if you're into Tudor-era poetry, unfortunately, I am not, and so it landed a bit flat. I certainly enjoyed the portions that revolved more heavily around Henry VIII's personal life and his wives, but struggled through too much of the rest of the book to really enjoy it.

[Patricia Monger · Rating 4 out of 5]

Shulman is a very good and entertaining writer, and this is a very unusual book in both idea and structure.

[Susan Yuska · Rating 3 out of 5]

An amazing and short life of Thomas Wyatt. Another view of the court of Henry VIII.

[Jenny · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fast becoming a freak for Thos. Wyatt.

[Gaele · Rating 4 out of 5]

AudioBook Review
Stars: Overall 4 Narration 5 Story 4

I had the opportunity to review this title before it was released in print last year. I jumped at the chance to review the book in AudioBook form, while the 389 pages of text are layered with references, poetry and fact, I wanted the chance to see if hearing the words would be easier or more difficult to affix references and information than the easy flip-back a page or two which can be done with the book in written form.

As with my first review, the book starts with a bang using poetry as it was used in the time of the Tudor court: information sharing, poking fun, setting alliances, all used very much in concert and context with the affairs of the court and courtiers of the day. Narration provided by Paul Fleschner is both mellifluous and crisp, providing nuanced recitations of the poetry that enhances the phrasing and provides structure and emphasis to lines that are further used to elucidate the author’s points as she puts the information into a context.

This really is a wonderful listen for fans of the Tudor Era of England, particularly the years of Henry VIII and his penchant and predilection for lopping off the heads of those who were once close confidantes yet later were to displease him. The use of poetry and repeated or excerpted lines to expand upon a specific point of history or a moment, and showing the changes to that poetry as it is repeated and shared by people with often differing agendas. While there is plenty of the poetic, we are also provided with text from Wyatt’s letters while serving as diplomat: far less rhythmic in pace but still interesting for the construct of what is said, against that left unsaid and filled in by the author’s diligent research and cross referencing.

What is important to note is that Wyatt is a man whose more literary endeavors are not as well-known or referenced as his time in the service to the crown as his alleged status as lover to Anne Boleyn, the story manages to provide an interesting light into the lesser explored perspectives of Henry from a courtier, subject, sometimes friend and often puppet of the king.

Far more smoothly constructed and easy to follow in the earlier chapters, the story does start to become more ponderous as the lyrical and often playful phrasing of the poetry takes a back seat to more ‘official’ information in the form of diplomatic treatises and the often convoluted notations from a man engaged in spying. Overall, this is an engaging story that is only enhanced by the smooth delivery and tone of its narration.

I received an AudioBook copy of the title from the publisher via AudioBook Jukebox. I was not compensated for this review: all conclusions are my own responsibility.

**************************************
13 March - 2013 - eArc version of title
I originally was excited by this title, for I am a bit of a Tudor junkie, and find the machinations and intrigue of the court to be an interesting study of human behavior. To add in the poetry of Wyatt: placing the poems into the context of their crafting was just too good an opportunity to pass up.

Most poetry of this time was highly contextualized, and was not meant to stand the test of time, so deeper examination of the Tudor court, with the author’s ability to separate fact from fiction, and present the information in a format that is pleasant to read and that does serve its contextual purpose for the poems that are included.

While the book starts off with quite a bang, focus on the poetry and commentary provided by Wyatt through his poems documents the events in court; gossip, flirtations, intrigue and petty jealousies that are not documented in the more specialized record of diplomatic or court appointment books. However, Shulman does include this information in a way that only people familiar with Henry VIII’s habit of lopping off heads can enjoy.

Sadly, the book does tail off as Wyatt’s short life comes to an inglorious end as he dies quite young, even for the time, at 39. In the few years prior, we are embroiled in Wyatt’s attempts at diplomacy and espionage, and the sharp and well defined tone when poetry was at the forefront does diminish. The text reads far more ponderously and isn’t as well integrated with the bits of gossip or intrigue.

All in all, this is a very enjoyable book for the most part: the genius interweaving of the poetry and the context, finding specific stanzas and pieces of the poems that are oft quoted, reused and twisted as they pass from person to person in whispers and giggles. Shulman has a knack for bringing the past to life, and has accomplished that with few missteps.

I received an eBook copy from the publisher via Eidelweiss for purpose of honest review on I am, Indeed. I was not compensated for this review. All conclusions are my own responsibility.

[Sarah-Hope · Rating 4 out of 5]

Poetry and Fascism, Tudor Style

O.K., the title might seem a bit of a stretch, but if you stop and think about what life must have been like in Henry VIII's England, fascist isn't inappropriate. Loyalty to the nation meant unquestioning loyalty to the crown. This was "Christian" state in which the meaning of Christian changed regularly and was determined by the crown. Dissent was a capital offense.

This is the setting for Nicola Shulman's highly engaging Graven with Diamonds, The Many Lives of Thomas Wyatt: Poet, Lover, Statesman, and Spy in the Court of Henry VIII. Wyatt's poetry was wildly popular during his life, but has been looked on less favorably ever sense. It's sort of an obscure, but obligatory stop along the road that runs from Chaucer to Shakespeare.

What Shulmam does is to look at the politics of Wyatt's time in order to understand the popularity of his poetry and to shine light on some of the less well-known aspects of his life. Anyone who reads much Tudor history will recognize Wyatt's name because he was one of the men confined to the Tower at the time of Anne Boleyn's fall—and the only one of that group to make it out alive. What fewer people know is that Wyatt went on to a career as a diplomat and, despite repeated political intrigues against him, managed that rarity (yes, yes, I'm exaggerating) for a courtier in Tudor England: a natural death.

What's brilliant about Shulman's book—and it is a brilliant book—is the way Shulman combines genres in order to think about Wyatt, his times, and his work in genuinely new ways. This isn't just an individual biography, isn't just portrait of an era, isn't just a critical study of a minor poet. It's all of these and something more.

In Henry VIII's fascist England ( and fascist is my term, not Shulman's) the game of courtly love was played for deadly stakes. As Shulman puts is, Wyatt "like Mandelstam or Akhmatova, was a poet writing under tyranny." To be a success at court, one needed to master courtly love, while at the same time never engaging in behavior that might come back to be used against one. Anne Boleyn and the men she flirted with, but most likely did not have sex with, learned this lesson the hard way. What was an enjoyable intellectual and emotional play-acting could become deadly real as the mood of the King, and therefore the mood of the time and law, shifted.

This situation—the need for language that was vividly emotional, but topically ambiguous—was ideal for a poet like Wyatt. As Shulman shows us repeatedly, not only could any one of his poems serve as a window into more than one event in his life, his poems could also serve as windows into the lives of others and were used in this way. Wyatt's poems were copied out by hand, passed among courtiers, used as occasional pieces, with minor modifications as needed. That interpretive plasticity is what made Wyatt so popular. Whatever a courtier was feeling, there was a Wyatt poem that covered it.

One of Shulman's central claims is that Henry's court was so dangerous because Henry himself took love so seriously. Others played at courtly gestures; Henry lived them. This meant that when one of his wives fell from grace, all those around her were at risk as well because they all had, as courtiers did at the time, engaged in badinage that suddenly could be taken literally.

For those inclined to explore the sort of musings Shulman offers, this book is a delight throughout. It enables one to imagine life under Henry in a way that standard histories do not. If you currently think of Wyatt as an unimportant figure or his poetry as inconsequential, you'll have reconsidered that thinking by the end of the book.

This book is a delight not just because of its intelligence, but also because of Shulman's knack for finding slightly whimsical, but perfectly apt, ways of describing people and situations. Catherine of Aragon had "a little pointed chin like a lemon." She characterizes the continental linguists of the era as perceiving "English in its current state... [as] a shaggy and hopalong means of expression." At one point, in a comparison I find more entertaining than accurate, Shulman depicts Henry as "sincere in all his doings. If he were alive today, he'd be Canadian." In other words, reading this book isn't just interesting, it's fun.

*****

In the interests of full disclosure, I will acknowledge that I received an electronic review copy of this book, but I don't think that influenced my evaluation of it.

[Koit · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am utterly spellbound in the way the author made sir Thomas Wyatt more accessible (and more regular, in the good sense of that word) than Wordsworth or Yates or Byron ever were. This must be the finest non-fiction book I have read in a while, if only due to the way the author combines humour with education and literature criticism. There are digs against the Americans and Canadians, as well as everyone else, while the reader is slowly brought up to speed on the meaning of being a member of the Henrician court, and even more -- being a member of the Henrician court who could use the English language as it was at that stage to broadcast thoughts.

[Newtown Review of Books · Rating 4 out of 5]

What happened to English verse between Chaucer and Donne? The answer is in this book – courtly love and lyric poetry. The best practitioner in this mode was Sir Thomas Wyatt and his best known (and best?) poem, ‘They Flee From Me’, is familiar to anyone who ‘did’ English at university when recognisable courses in literature were still being studied.

Read full review here: http://newtownreviewofbooks.com/2012/...

[Kathy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent biography made even better by the author's asides. Of Henry the Eighth, for example, she remarks that if he was alive today, he'd be Canadian. My only quibble is that the subtitle is a bit misleading. It calls Wyatt poet, lover, statesman and spy but the closest he comes to being a spy is sending back reports during his tenures as ambassador on the Continent. Then again, the subtitle tacked onto my forthcoming novel, Murder in the Queen's Wardrobe, is "an Elizabethan spy thriller" when I'd define it as a historical cozy! Cover copy doesn't always come from the author!

[M Haeg · Rating 2 out of 5]

Having read much about the Tudors, I thought a book from Wyatt's perspective would be interesting. I found the book to be mostly about Tudors and afterthoughts of Wyatt thrown in. I made it through Chapter 7. Even though I am very interested in these subjects, I didn't feel the book does any of them justice.

[Lauren Albert · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found the book a little irritating, especially towards the end. I think that Shulman makes too much of the poetry (what it is saying, what it is doing). Keep in mind that this is not at all a biography though most of his bio is in there--it is a history of the time as it related to him and to his poetry.

[Becky · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book manages to be both highly informative and incredibly interesting throughout. It covers the subject matter in great depth, and provides a wonderful insight into the poetry, and life of Sir Thomas Wyatt. As well as giving a strong overview of the Tudor Court. Wonderful.

[Lezley · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had some trepidation about tackling this book as I haven't read English poetry since university days 40 years ago. I'm so glad I decided to read Craven with Diamonds. It's a wonderful, witty read and such a pleasure to examine Wyatt's poems within a historical context. A definite "must read".

[Lauren Wyatt · Rating 5 out of 5]

I may be (read: am) biased because I am a Wyatt, but I found this fascinating. Although I skilled around the parts that focused mostly on poetry, I found it fascinating to learn about Thomas Wyatt and his relations. I had never heard of him until recently, unfortunately. This was great!