More About the Mask

Why did you give away the secret that d’Artagnan became the Man in the Iron Mask instead of allowing people who bought your book to find out for themselves?

Originally I just intended to write a cliff-hanger for History Today about the real Musketeers but the editor persuaded me to reveal the secret of the Iron Mask in my article. I feel sure his instinct was correct: it would have been almost impossible to keep this discovery out of reviews and interviews about my book. However, there are more surprises in the book itself. For example, I reveal the identity of Eustache Danger, hitherto the last surviving credible candidate to be the Iron Mask, and a man of whom nothing previously was known, and I explain why he could not be the solution. I also explain how there were two secret prisoners, not one, and that the second was Fouquet, Louis XIV’s finance minister, whose purported death in 1680 was faked, just as d’Artagnan’s had been. And, of course, what happens to d’Artagnan in the end.