AmeriCymru: Hi Terry and many thanks for agreeing to be interviewed by Amri Cymru. Care to tell us a little about your recent book Everything You Wanted To Know About The Tudors But Were Afraid To Ask ?
Terry: I wasn’t keen on the title, but it’s what the publishers wanted. After my books upon Richard III and Jasper Tudor I was suddenly one of their ‘Tudor experts’. Of course, being Welsh, they are my favourite dynasty, despite Henry VIII, who was fairly repulsive in every way. If his elder brother Arthur had survived, history would have been very different – perhaps Catholicism would still be the main religion. I wrote the book as one that I’d like to read – entertaining and informative. I’ve had dozens of emails and letters telling me that it’s kept people up at night. One 84-year-old scientist emailed me that he was reading it on a train to London from Portsmouth and kept laughing. By the end of the journey the three strangers sitting at his table on the train all said that they would buy it, as he read out bits to them. Books Monthly reviewed it and also commented on the title: ‘A different take on the Tudors – this magnificent collection of facts and figures is a little like a Pears Cyclopedia of Tudor information – the title is the only unwieldy thing about this book, the contents are brilliant and well packaged, meaning you can search to your heart’s content and come up with the information you want or need. A fantastic idea, one of the best history books I’ve encountered!’
It asks whether Henry VIII composed Greensleeves. What were Thomas Cromwell''s bizarre toilet habits? Did Anne Boleyn have six fingers on one hand? We all know the old nursery rhyme: Mary, Mary, quite contrary, How does your garden grow? With silver bells and cockle shells, And pretty maids all in a row . Did you know that this is Mary Tudor, and her garden is an allusion to graveyards which were increasing in size with those who dared stay Protestant? The silver bells and cockle shells were instruments of torture, and the maids were a form of guillotine. Peasants had never heard of ‘the Black Death’. Henry VII was the first English king with British (i.e. Welsh) blood, from his father Edmond. The Tudors could have been called the Merediths or Bowens. The Tudor line did not die out with Elizabeth I. The first National Lottery was in 1569, discontinued in 1826 because of religious feelings. Elizabeth liked appearing topless as an old woman. And so on – it includes brief biographies of all the rules as well.
AmeriCymru: You have also written recently on Jasper Tudor: Dynasty Maker . How important was Jasper in British and Welsh history?
Terry: I had to fight for this title, as the publishers wanted ‘ Jasper Tudor: The Man Who Made the Tudor Dynasty’. The reason is that every English student has heard of Warwick the Kingmaker , but Jasper was far more important in the history of the country. Hardly anyone has heard of him – mainly because he is half-Welsh and half-French. On his father’s side he is descended directly from the Tudors of Penmynydd who fought for Glyndŵr, and his mother was Catherine of Valois, the widow of Henry V and sister of the French king. His father Owain Tudors’s ancestors had nearly all fought the English since well before the time of Ednyfed Fychan, around 20 generations fighting for Wales. His great-grandparent Maredudd Tudor lost his two older brothers fighting for Glyndŵr. They were integrally important in the 15 year war against England. It is very rare to come across an unknown true hero – he was the only peer to fight from the first battle of the Wars of the Roses, to the last at Stoke Field – 32 years of fighting, being exiled, hiding and fighting again.
AmeriCymru: What line does your recent book on Richard III take regarding his historical reputation? Was he a monster or was he a victim of Tudor propaganda?
Terry: Most so-called ‘Tudor propaganda’ was perpetrated by the followers of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, otherwise Henry VII would be regarded as possibly the greatest King of England. Everything Henry did was aimed at solidifying a new dynasty.
Richard III: The King in the Car Park is a comparative analysis of the lives of Richard Plantagenet, a usurper king, and Henry Tudor, demonstrating the cruelty of Richard throughout his career and his arbitrary executions to take power. Ricardians fail to see that so many Yorkists deserted his cause in his two-year reign, and so few peers turned up to support him at Bosworth Field. He was not liked by peers of people, even in the Yorkist stronghold of London. He made Edward V and Prince Richard illegitimate when he imprisoned them and seized the throne, while Edward IV’s widow fled into sanctuary. He murdered Edward V’s bodyguard and Edward IV’s best friend Hastings. From sanctuary with her daughters, Queen Elizabeth Woodville plotted with Henry Tudor’s mother Margaret Beaufort to bring Henry to power, once she knew her sons had been murdered in the Tower in June 1483. Richard’s greatest ally, Buckingham, rose against him in the first year of his reign. Elizabeth Woodville’s remaining male family joined Henry in exile, along with hundreds of disaffected Yorkists who had rebelled across the south of England. Richard’s history from his time as a young man until king demonstrates a ruthless personality. Henry never displayed any vengeance in all his lifetime, and European ambassadors reported their astonishment at his treatment of his enemies after Bosworth and throughout his reign. Those that believe that Henry VII killed the ‘princes in the Tower’ are very misguided.
AmeriCymru: You recently contributed an article titled The Wind Follies of Wales to the AmeriCymru site. Have there been any further developments on that front? Anything you would care to add?
Terry: Wales is still being despoiled – near me great forests are being cleared at Brechfa for more of the pointless things, but even bigger than previous generations. Unfortunately all political parties in Britain see them as some sort of answer to a possible energy problem, ignoring fracking potential. They also seem to think that climate is controlled by man, not wishing to look at historical variations caused by Milankovic Wobbles, which I explained in my ‘Breverton’s Encyclopedia of Inventions.’ It baffles me, with an engineering background, how people call wind turbines ‘renewable energy’ – it’s just lies as no energy is renewable, only transferable with a loss of efficiency. And as for wind farms, again it’s marketing-speak – what about coal farms, gas farms, nuclear farms and oil farms? I fear that the Western World is killing itself economically with all this climate change garbage – climate is always changing – just read any history book. Gore’s Nobel Prize was based upon a statistical untruth – the Mann Hockey Stick graph. An analogy would be that a team wins three games in a row, so will always keep winning. Nonsense.
AmeriCymru: What''s next for Terry Breverton? Any new titles in the pipeline?
Terry: Henry VII: The Maligned Tudor King is on its way for next Summer, showing how his position as y mab darogan , ‘the son of prophecy’, was vital in his taking the crown by marching through Wales and amassing an army. There was no opposition as Yorkists and Lancastrians alike flocked to his banner. It’s a great story of being in danger nearly all of his life to taking the crown in his first ever battle in his late twenties. Then he changed England and Wales to solidify the power of the monarchy against nobles and made the country economically sound, while beginning the British Empire. A recent prize-winning book, The Winter King , was a hatchet job to sell copies and I want to readdress the balance. It was the last successful foreign invasion of England – Welsh and French armies – but historians still follow the line that 1066 was the last. I have no idea why many historical writers just follow their feelings and what they have read – instead of truth.
AmeriCymru: Any final message for the readers and members of AmeriCymru?
Terry: I’ve been to the National Festival of Wales in Vancouver and Washington, and many of our countrymen on the American Continent have a lovely, nostalgic view of the Wales they knew. It has changed massively in my lifetime – I’m now 68 and remember when living standards were on a par with those of England and far above those of France and Italy. Wales is struggling desperately economically… you have to be aware that the Wales Assembly Government has no answers. Like Westminster it is full of unemployable placemen and women who have never had a proper job in the private sector. Their major advisors, quango leaders and civil servants are equally dense as regards the Welsh situation. Some Assembly members refuse to answer any questions directly unless they get them in advance for a team to write an answer. As well as zero knowledge of how to restore the nation to parity with England and the rest of Europe, they have limited awareness of what is happening across Wales – the dying of the language and the disintegration of the infrastructure – as they are insulated from the people. We can add to this their ignorance of what the past means to Wales – there is little interest in how our heritage can really stimulate tourism. I’m a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing and of the Institute of Consulting, with a track record in international strategy and consultancy, but there seems to be no-one advising Welsh MPs or AMs with any understanding of private industry.
Astonishing amounts of funding is thrown at non-Welsh companies on its north-eastern borders, employing English commuters, to no benefit to the Welsh economy. The Labour administration is intent upon building more and more houses when there are no real jobs – all this does is attract incomers who rely on benefits, or retirees. 90% of Welsh population growth for the last 20 years has come from incomers – they do not come here to work. The population has grown from two to over three million people in my lifetime, and over a third of the people now say that they are not Welsh. Perhaps another sixth are the children or grandchildren of incomers. I believe that the true Welsh people are down to about 1.5 million people, less than half of the Moslem population of Britain. Millions of pounds are thrown into promoting multiculturalism, while the relict British population exists on something similar to a Native Indian reservation. I have called Wales ‘Europe’s Tibet’ in the past because of the displacement of the population. The best have to go to England or overseas to work. They are replaced by incomers. The unemployed want to be relocated to Wales – they get free housing and benefits in the full knowledge that there are no jobs that they can be forced into. The elderly ‘white flighters’ escape multicultural England to moan about the language and become an increasing drain on the health service. Upon all socio-economic parameters, Wales constantly falls against the rest of Europe. Labour does not care, as the unemployed, elderly, ill, benefits-seekers and immigrants are overwhelmingly Labour voters. And the Welsh vote Labour as if we have been ovinified. If we voted tactically, perhaps more attention would be paid by Westminster.
It is a sad story but I see no end to our problems. If we were a more violent nation, like the English, Scots and Irish, perhaps we might get somewhere, but we have always been pacifist. If you visit Wales, please travel across the land, and write to the press about what you see. Outside Cardiff, there are deprivation, poor housing and low incomes. Our tourism industry hardly exists. The seaside towns along the North Wales coasts have hotels now converted to social housing. The west coast is very underdeveloped in terms of good places to stay, unless you want to stay on one of the ubiquitous caravan sites cluttering virtually every mile of coastline across the country. In South Wales it’s the same story. Across the land there are very few good hotels for a touring holiday. I apologise for being so downbeat about a nation that I love but you will not get politicians telling the truth. I lived and worked for most of my life outside Wales, and can see the reality from an external view. There is poverty here, not just in terms of housing stock and people on benefits, but in terms of any politicians taking a long-term view of how Wales can get out of the mess it’s in.
We desperately need a dose of reality. This is a letter which I recently sent to the press but was never published:
‘I cannot believe the political squabbling about Wales being granted £2 billion by the EU because it is one of the poorest parts of Europe. Welsh politicians should have been trumpeting this poverty for decades, as the nation has consistently fallen behind upon all socio-economic indicators. I am a Fellow of both the Institutes of Consulting and Marketing, have written over thirty books upon Wales and have published criticism of politicians and the Welsh economy for over two decades, so have some inkling of what is going on. [John Redwood, when Welsh minister, famously and moronically refused much-needed EU monies upon ideological grounds.] If that quagmire of bureaucratic idiocy, that represents EU policy, recognises that Wales has very serious problems, why cannot our politicians? Wales has missed out upon billions of pounds under the flawed Barnett Formula, but why has it taken until now for any senior politician to think about raising the subject? Why do politicians moan that the EU has at last discovered that the nation has serious problems? These are problems that the WAG should have been addressing, not pouring money into English Deesside and pointless ‘aeroscience’ parks.
We have poor and underfunded education, from schools to universities. We have among the poorest health statistics in the Western World. There are no real private sector job prospects, and little help for indigenous companies. Our towns and villages are mouldering outside Cardiff and a very few places like Narberth, Cowbridge, Abergafenni and Hay. It will be interesting to see how the £2 billion is dispensed (i.e. lost) among and by committees, quangos, councils and the Assembly – do not hold your breath for it to be allocated in a cost-effective manner, by politicians, civil servants and their advisors who have never had a real job. It must be spent upon building up a tourism infrastructure - tourism is Wales'' primary hope for its decimated private sector. A serious reallocation of the Barnett Formula can start readdressing major health and education issues. Welsh politicians must seriously argue for more British Government funding to help its indigenous people, not consistently conform to Whitehall and Millbank policies. They should begin to represent the interests of Wales and the Welsh, not London parties as in the past.’
I realise that this sort of stuff in unpalatable – but my career was in corporate strategy and international consulting, so I’m not constrained by what happens across the road or what someone else repeats. I have an odd background for a historical writer, but it gives me a better perspective that our politicians who have never worked in the private sector. We have to compare Wales to other countries, benchmark what happens here, and unless we get this dose of reality we’ll get nowhere. And we have to begin with better protecting our heritage, culture, landscape and language - Hwyl
