Copyright 2004 Associated Newspapers Ltd.
The Evening Standard (London)

March 10, 2004

ANDR PAINE

A LEADING TV writer has admitted taking liberties with history to spice up a new drama about Guy Fawkes.

In Gunpowder, Treason and Plot, Jimmy McGovern shows the attempt in 1605 to blow up Parliament as being provoked by James I lying to a male lover.

He also portrays the king's mother - Mary, Queen of Scots - as a murderer.

The BBC2 drama, which begins on Sunday, stars Robert Carlyle as James I, French actress Clemence Poesy as the young Mary and Michael Fassbender, from Band Of Brothers, as Fawkes.

But Cracker-writer McGovern's take on history threatens to overshadow their performances.

It is generally accepted that the plot was an attempt by Catholics to depose a Protestant monarch who reneged on promises of religious tolerance.

But McGovern's version suggests James I was bisexual, and had offered tolerance in exchange for sexual favours from Catholic Thomas Percy, who then tried to take revenge.

McGovern said: "We know Percy secured a promise from James of an end to persecution.

How he secured it we simply do not know.

"I'm probably wrong about the oral sex. But dramatically it gives a major character tremendous motivation."

It is historical fact, meanwhile, that James I's father Lord Darnley was murdered.

But historians have long been divided about who killed him.

In McGovern's version, Mary is the guilty party.

McGovern defended his dramatic licence: "They have been dead for 400 years. Nobody's going to get hurt by what I write. And nobody knows the truth."