The first thing that struck me about this character was the name ‘Flambard’. It has the ring of a description more than a patronymic. ‘Flamme’ suggests fire, ‘flambeau’ a torch, ‘Flambard’, ‘one who flames, burns brightly’ etc. It can indicate someone’s personality: a heated temperament, perhaps, or someone with red hair, or a firebrand with a reputation of burning out the opposition. Perhaps it was simply a name coined for someone who loved colourful clothing.   By working out my own interpretation of this name, I felt I would have a way into this character.

Because not a great deal is known about him. His origins were humble, son of a parish priest in Bayeux. Through the Bishop of Bayeux, Odo, he was employed in the household of William the Conqueror from where he rose to a career of extraordinary eventfulness. The facts of his life are few and unreliable because the chroniclers, by and large, disapproved of him. But it is evident that he rose from poor provincial roots to become the adviser to kings. This upward mobility, this disadvantaged start in what becomes a life close to power, reminds me of Thomas Cromwell, chief minister to Henry VIII. Some startling comparisons can be made. For thirteen years Flambard was chief minister to William Rufus, but unlike Cromwell, Flambard never lost his head. He had his falls, but never a fatal one. Resourceful to the last, he enjoyed a long second career in the church.

I followed his steps from Christchurch in Hampshire, to Durham Cathedral, to Lisieux in Normandy, to the constantly shifting scenes of the royal progresses. Little remains now. But what fascinated me about Flambard as a leading character in a novel was that he led a novelistic life anyway. Some episodes are a gift to the creative imagination and the insufficiency of factual detail positively invites invention. He was not a sorcerer, as some of the chronicles allege, but a source of innovation, ingenuity and irrepressible resourcefulness. Reading between the lines of the defamatory chronicles, you can find scene upon scene of dramatic flair, derring-do and seriously cunning diplomacy.