It was the curls that did it (From The Oxford Times)

It was the curls that did it

7:30am Thursday 27th October 2011 in Features By Reg Little

Kate Bush or Emily Bronte? Rock chick or writer? Fiona Mountain was never really able to decide which path to take in life. But it is tempting to believe at 40 she has managed to get the best of both worlds since leaving home at 18 to get a job on Radio One.

Having worked for the likes of John Peel and Steve Wright as a press officer at the BBC and hung out with rockers such as Bon Jovi and Guns and Roses, she is now going hell for leather in pursuit of success as a writer of historical fiction.

She has spent the last two years working on her new book Cavalier Queen, set in the English Civil War, which tells the epic true story of Charles I’s French wife Henrietta Maria and her chamberlain and confidante, Henry Jermyn, Earl of St Albans, after whom Jermyn Street in London is named.

While her years at large with the Radio One summer roadshow might suggest she will not be offering her readers any new interpretation of puritanism in the 17th century, Ms Mountain’s book provides a new take on the marriage of Charles and Henrietta, who spent much of the English Civil War together — though based at different colleges — in Oxford.

She giggles at the memory of being asked at a literary festival about what had attracted her to the 17th century.

“I could have said that it was a period of turmoil and violent political change. But instead I admitted I like men with long curly hair, lacy sleeves, thigh high boots and skin tight breeches. I mean, what’s there not to like?”

Jim Morrison of The Doors or Prince Rupert of the Rhine, yet another tough choice, it would seem.

But for all her self-deprecating humour, it is clear that Ms Mountain, who lives in Kingham, has immersed herself in the story of Henrietta Maria and the court of Charles I.

The novel highlights the huge part in the Queen’s life played by Henry Jermyn, her life-long favourite and supporter, who was to remain devotedly at her side in France until her death, long after her husband’s execution in 1649.

Ms Mountain said: “Henrietta’s love for Charles I is one of the most famous love stories in history. But there were contemporary rumours that she and Henry were lovers. It was he who went with her into exile, who rode with her at the head of her army and remained devotedly by her side all his life, even when he risked being hanged as a traitor.”

Their life-long closeness inspired gossip that they were secretly married and that Henry Jermyn, not Charles I, was the true father of Charles II. It is true that Charles II, like Jermyn, was viewed as a giant of a man, with both well over six feet tall. Charles I is believed to have been just over five feet tall.

“Most of my books are based on facts,” she told me before a visit to Merton College, where her heroine set up home during the English Civil War.

“My rule to myself is to only invent when the facts are not known. With this book I stuck as closely to the facts as I could.”

Her admiration for Henrietta Maria, however, is obvious — a queen whose Catholicism, political ineptitude and endless interfering helped bring about her husband’s ruin in the eyes of most historians.

“I believe Henrietta is a much-maligned character. The general perception is that she was very proud, not interested in politics, caused trouble and played a part it causing the English Civil War in the first place. But for me she was a remarkably plucky woman.

“She was a French princess, married to a king she had not met, at the age of 15. She could not even speak the language when she first arrived in England and initially Charles treated her appallingly. In a way she was the Princess Diana of her day.”

During the Civil War she devoted herself to her husband and his cause, raised money in Europe for an army and braved storms and attack from Parliament’s warships to return to her husband’s side in Oxford.

Ms Mountain was 100 pages into her book, after eight months of research, when she read Anthony Adolph’s biography of Henry Jermyn. Up until then there had only been two people in the marriage.

“I had a tight deadline but it led me to abandon what I had written completely. I realised I was writing the wrong story. I needed to tell the story of Henrietta and Jermyn. I just could not believe that it had not been told before.” She now strongly believes that the pair were, indeed, lovers.

“They were so close together over so many years. She was pretty and vivacious and they were alone together for years.”

Following Charles I’s execution he was to live with her at her chateau at Colombe in France.

“He never married. When she died he said, ‘I have no tears left to cry — love has cost me too much’.”

Henry Jermyn, later created 1st Earl of St Albans, was to be richly rewarded by Charles II after the restoration and given substantial land in central London. He built St James’s Square and developed the area that is now Regent Street, leading to him being dubbed the creator of the West End.

Ms Mountain, a mother of four, who is separated from husband Tim Mountain, the composer, addressed the love story of Bounty mutineer Fletcher Christian and his cousin Isabella Curwen in her first book, which was shortlisted for the Romantic Novel of the Year Award in 2000.

At school in Sheffield she admits to having been obsessed with a varied assortment of characters from history including aviator Amy Johnson and Prince Rupert.

But she was not to go to university. Instead she headed to London to pursue her other great obsession — music.

“I always wanted to work for Radio One. I had this massive crush on David Essex.”

Essex was to be the first man she ever kissed, she reveals with no little pride — a promise she made to herself and typically kept.

“I wanted to be Kate Bush but the next best thing was going to work in the music business.”

She was to handle the PR for all the station’s DJs on Radio One.

Working for Peel was the highlight. “He was adorable; not in the least egotistical, just in it for the music. He had massive respect across the music industry. People thought he was God.”

She also loved the roadshows.

“We’d pitch up in different towns. It really was like being on a rock n roll tour.”

But the golden age of Radio One was ending before her very eyes and Ms Mountain decided the time had come to keep another promise to herself to write a novel. When she returned to Broadcasting House, it was to be interviewed herself. Everything and nothing had changed.

She was a bestselling author, but still wearing a leather jacket and studs, and more than ready to gossip about men with long curly hair.