Graven With Diamonds

“These bloody days have broken my heart.” 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 Henry’s reign with the story of English love poetry and the life of its first master, Henry’s 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 risqué 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 Henry’s laws made his subjects fall silent in terror, Wyatt’s poetic skills became a way to survive. He saw that a love poem was a place where secrets could hide.

WINNER: WRITER’S GUILD BEST NON-FICTION BOOK 2011

“Masterly… the best work of history this year” AN Wilson, Book of the Year – Evening Standard

“One of the most persuasive and pleasurable accounts of English Renaissance poetry to appear in years” Boyd Tonkin – The Independent

“Beautifully intelligent and lucid” John Lanchester, Book of the Year” New Statesman

“Shulman’s lyrical prose creatively matches that of her extraordinary subject.”  The Times

“Sharp, dangerous and exhilarating… bursting with drama as well as being scholarly and full of surprises” Geordie Greig, Book of the Year – Evening Standard

“Graceful and intelligent… This finely considered, silver-veined biography is a decorous and wise monument” Philip Womack, Daily Telegraph

“A thrilling book that manages to be both scholarly and wonderfully readable’ ***** Kathryn Hughes, Mail on Sunday

“Utterly captivating… a marvellous achievement.” The Literary Review

“One of the most persuasive and pleasurable accounts of English Renaissance poetry to appear... in years”
Boyd Tonkin, The Independent

“A brilliant example of literary rehabilitation... A narrative full of scheming courtiers, amorous women, slippery foreigners and a cruel but oddly earnest king who worshipped poetry... What is so compelling about Graven with Diamonds is not the just the story Nicola Shulman tells, but the way she tells it... The result is a thrilling book that manages to be both scholarly and wonderfully readable ”
Kathryn Hughes, Mail on Sunday

“CS Lewis may have found Wyatt drab, but in Shulman's company he is utterly captivating. Graven with Diamonds revives the contexts and conversations that shaped, and were shaped by, the poetry... Inasmuch as is possible after almost half a millennium, Nicola Shulman has done a superb rewiring job. The poems glisten again, illuminating everything and everyone around them. It is a marvellous achievement and a lovely book.”
The Literary Review

About Nicola Shulman

Nicola Shulman is a writer and reviewer for publications including the Sunday Telegraph, The TLS and Harpers & Queen. She lives with her family in London and in Yorkshire. She published A Rage For Rock-Gardening. The Story of Reginald Farrer, gardener, writer and plant collector with Short Books in 2002.