Tudor Book Reviews

Posted By Claire on August 20, 2010

“The Queen’s Pawn” is Christy English’s debut novel and is a delight to read. Author Jeane Westin described it as a “jewel of a novel” and I have to agree. It was wonderful and I was disappointed when I finished it, it had been wonderful company for a few days.

The Queen’s Pawn tells the story of two wonderful medieval women - Eleanor of Aquitaine and Princess Alais of France - and it is told through their eyes, with each woman having a voice in the novel. The novel opens with Alais finding out that her father. King Louis VII of France, is sending her to England to marry the son of the woman who broke his heart, his ex-wife Eleanor of Aquitaine, the present wife of Henry II of England. Alais is understandably worried about going to the court of the woman who she has always though of as a “devil”, but she knows she has to do her duty to her father and France, and play her part as a pawn on the chessboard of Europe.

When Alais arrives in England, she meets Eleanor and falls under her spell, coming to love her as a mother. Although Alais is simply a pawn, a tool that Eleanor can use to further her son Richard’s ambitions, Eleanor comes to love this innocent girl and takes her under her wing. The two women form a deep friendship, a real bond of love, but this is threatened when Alais feels betrayed by Richard and by the woman she has come to look on as a mother. Eleanor has taught Alais well and Alais uses her new found power to punish those who’ve hurt her and to make her own way in the world. From friends to bitter rivals, can these women ever be friends again?

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Category: Eleanor of Aquitaine, Fiction
Tags: Christy English, Eleanor of Aquitaine

Posted By Claire on August 16, 2010

A few weeks ago, I did a post about recent and upcoming historical fiction books and today I’m going to focus on non-fiction history books and biographies of historical characters within the  Tudor and Elizabethan periods:-

Margaret Beaufort: The Mother of the Tudor Dynasty by Elizabeth Norton - Due to be released in the UK on the 1st September - click on book cover for details. Book blurb from Amazon UK: Divorced at ten, a mother at thirteen & three times a widow. The extraordinary true story of the ‘Red Queen’, Lady Margaret Beaufort, matriarch of the Tudors. Born in the midst of the Wars of the Roses, Margaret Beaufort became the greatest heiress of her time. She survived a turbulent life, marrying four times and enduring imprisonment before passing her claim to the crown of England to her son, Henry VII, the first of the Tudor monarchs. Margaret’s royal blood placed her on the fringes of the Lancastrian royal dynasty. After divorcing her first husband at the age of ten, she married the king’s half-brother, Edmund Tudor, becoming a widow and bearing her only child, the future Henry VII, before her fourteenth birthday. Margaret was always passionately devoted to the interests of her son who claimed the throne through her. She embroiled herself in both treason and conspiracy as she sought to promote his claims, allying herself with the Yorkist Queen, Elizabeth Woodville, in an attempt to depose Richard III. She was imprisoned by Richard and her lands confiscated, but she continued to work on her son’s behalf, ultimately persuading her fourth husband, the powerful Lord Stanley, to abandon the king in favour of Henry on the eve of the decisive Battle of Bosworth. It was Lord Stanley himself who placed the crown on Henry’s head on the battlefield. Henry VII gave his mother unparalleled prominence during his reign. She established herself as an independent woman and ended her life as regent of England, ruling on behalf of her seventeen-year-old grandson, Henry VIII.

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Category: Anne Boleyn, Elizabeth I, Elizabeth Norton, Josephine Wilkinson, Mary I, Non-fiction, Philippa Jones, Plantagenets
Tags: Non-fiction, recent releases

Posted By Claire on August 2, 2010

Having previously read and loved Jeane Westin’s “The Virgin’s Daughters: In the Court of Elizabeth I”, I was really excited when I found out that Jeane was writing an historical novel based on the relationship between Elizabeth I and her childhood friend and favourite Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester. Like many other people, Elizabeth and Dudley’s relationship intrigues me and I was keen to see how Jeane would handle it and I was not disappointed.

His Last Letter: Elizabeth I and the Earl of Leicester

by Jeane Westin

As soon as I received “His Last Letter” through the post I stopped reading everything else and spent my weekend reading it and not doing a lot else. I was hooked from the very beginning and I am not exaggerating when I say that the Prologue had me in tears! To be in tears in the first few pages just shows how Jeane was able to get me empathising with the characters straight away and how I was already part of their lives.

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Category: Elizabeth I, Fiction, Jeane Westin
Tags: Elizabeth I, His Last Letter, Jeane Westin

Posted By Claire on July 23, 2010

There are some wonderful historical novels around at the moment and some great ones due for release in the next few months, here are the ones which caught my eye:-

His Last Letter: Elizabeth and the Earl of Leicester by Jeane Westin - Released in the USA on 3rd August 2010 - click on the book cover to order. Book blurb from Amazon: One of the greatest loves of all time - between Elizabeth I and Robert Dudley - comes to life in this vivid novel.They were playmates as children, impetuous lovers as adults - and for thirty years were the center of each others’ lives. Astute to the dangers of choosing any one man, the Virgin Queen could never give her “Sweet Robin” what he wanted most-marriage - yet she insisted he stay close by her side. Possessive and jealous, their love survived quarrels, his two disastrous marriages to other women, her constant flirtations, and political machinations with foreign princes. His Last Letter tells the story of this great love… and especially of the last three years Elizabeth and Dudley spent together, the most dangerous of her rule, when their passion was tempered by a bittersweet recognition of all that they shared-and all that would remain unfulfilled.

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Category: Alison Weir, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Elizabeth Woodville, Fiction, Philippa Gregory, Uncategorized
Tags: historical fiction

Posted By Claire on June 24, 2010

Virgin Widow (UK cover)

This is not a book that I’d normally pick up, as I tend to stick to historical fiction about the Tudor era, but, boy, am I glad that I got to read this book!

I was hooked from the start and I read all 601 pages in one weekend, completely ignoring my family and the housework. I even told a few white lies, making excuses about why I had disappeared for half an hour at a time - I wasn’t really locked in the bathroom reading!! It’s one of those books which grabs you from the outset and won’t let you put it down until the last page. On the front, it has a quote from The Bookseller: “Better than Philippa Gregory” and that is so true.

The Story

Anne O’Brien’s “Virgin Widow: England’s Forgotten Queen” is set during the tumultuous reign of Edward IV, in the Wars of the Roses. The protagonist is Anne Neville, daughter of Richard Neville, the Earl of Warwick, a man known as The Kingmaker. Although she was both Princess of Wales and Queen of England in her lifetime, the name Anne Neville does not mean much to people, but this book seeks to rectify this by telling her story, albeit in a fictional novel.

In “Virgin Widow”, Anne’s life is far from easy. Her father’s power games mean that Anne and her sister, Isabelle, are used as political pawns and have no control over their future. One minute, Anne is betrothed to a man she has come to love and admire and the next she is forced to give him up and flee from her home and everything she knows and loves. At the French court Anne is at the mercy of Margaret of Anjou, wife of Henry VI and mother of Edward of Lancaster, and before she knows it, she has become embroiled in her father and Margaret’s plot to depose Edward IV and replace him with Prince Edward. As her father commits the ultimate treason, Anne’s future hangs in the balance, just what will happen to her as Lancastrians take on Yorkists.

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Category: Fiction, Richard III
Tags: Anne Neville, Edward IV, Richard III, Virgin Widow, Wars of the Roses

Posted By Claire on June 8, 2010

Historian and author Elizabeth Norton’s biography of Catherine Parr was published by Amberley Publishing earlier this year and, like her other books, it is meticulously researched and a great read. I had recently read Linda Porter’s book on Catherine Parr but although Porter’s and Norton’s books obviously overlapped (how could they not?), each author had her own take on Catherine and brought something new to the table.

After Anne Boleyn, Catherine Parr is my favourite wife. “Why?”, you may ask, “Why choose a woman whose life was so boring and who was nothing but a nurse to Henry at the end of his life?”. Well, that is the traditional picture of Catherine Parr, a picture that has been firmly blasted out of the waters with Elizabeth Norton’s book. As Norton says, on the very first page, “She was the most reluctant of all Henry VIII’s queens, but she was also one of the greatest”, and this biography does a great job of celebrating Catherine Parr’s life and telling her real story.

As many of you know, I don’t just review a book, I actually give a rundown of its content too so that you know what is covered. Here is a rundown on “Catherine Parr: Wife, widow, mother, survivor, the story of the last queen of Henry VIII” by Elizabeth Norton:-

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Category: Elizabeth Norton, Non-fiction, Six Wives
Tags: Catherine Parr, Elizabeth Norton, Katherine Parr

Posted By Claire on May 1, 2010

Because this book is an Anne Boleyn book, I have actually reviewed it over at The Anne Boleyn Files. Here is the beginning of my review and you can click on the “Read more…” to read it in full.

There has been lots of controversy over this new Anne Boleyn biography because, unlike other modern historians like Eric Ives, G W Bernard is of the opinion that Anne Boleyn may have been guilty. This theory has had Anne Boleyn fans around the world up in arms but I decided to read Bernard’s book with an open mind and refrain from judging a book by its cover, or rather all of the newspaper articles about it. I was pleasantly surprised and my blood actually did not boil once.

My history teacher used to say that you can argue any point of view in an essay as long as you back it up with evidence and Bernard has made a good use of primary sources in backing up his views.

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Category: Anne Boleyn, Non-fiction, Six Wives
Tags: Anne Boleyn, G W Bernard

Posted By Claire on April 15, 2010

It’s easy to tell when I have found a book useful for my research because it has pages turned down, post-it notes protruding from it, pencil scribbles and stars in the margins and book marks falling out of it, plus a rather worn appearance. Well, that pretty much describes my copy of “Katherine the Queen: The Remarkable Life of Katherine Parr” by Linda Porter! Useful? Incredibly so!

I was dying for this book to be released because I loved Porter’s book on Mary I (”Mary Tudor: The First Queen”), which, I would go as far as to say, is THE Mary I biography and a complete guide to the Queen. Porter’s book on Katherine Parr is just the same, a must-read for those who want to know more about Henry’s sixth and final wife, and a complete guide to Katherine’s life, from a background on her family to the discovery of Katherine Parr’s tomb at Sudeley Castle in the late 18th century. It covers everything, nothing is missed, and I heartily recommend it.

Rather than writing a straight review, I like to give a breakdown of what is covered in the book as I myself find that helpful when I’m considering a book. Here is a breakdown of what Porter covers in “Katherine the Queen”:-

Beginning

• Family Trees - Family trees of the Tudors, the Parrs and the Seymours.
• Prologue - The book’s opening scene is Whitehall Palace on the 28th January 1547, the day that King Henry VIII died. I love this prologue because it’s like the start of a novel and explores Katherine’s feelings about Henry, her stepchildren and Thomas Seymour.

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Category: Linda Porter, Non-fiction, Six Wives
Tags: Catherine Parr, Katherine Parr, Linda Porter

Posted By Claire on February 24, 2010

Seeing as this is my Anne Boleyn “Bible”, the book I can’t bear to be without and the one that I use more than any other, it’s funny that I have never actually reviewed it! So, I thought I would correct that glaring omission by reviewing this Anne Boleyn biography.

I think I might be Professor Eric Ives’s number one fan as I constantly recommend this book, along with his book on Lady Jane Grey, to Tudor fans. I’m always having emails from people asking for book recommendations, help with their homework, tips for Anne Boleyn projects etc. and this is the book that I always say is a “must-read”. Every Anne Boleyn fan should have it hand-cuffed to their wrist and sleep with it under their pillow, you just can’t live without it!

So, what makes “The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn” such a must-read and must-have? It is the fact that it is a comprehensive, detailed account of Anne Boleyn’s life based on real, solid historical evidence - not conjecture, rumour or myth - and Ives does a fantastic job of citing his sources, so it’s perfect for people like me who are researching Anne’s life and who want to go back to the primary sources, and it’s great for students writing essays or dissertations. Unlike some authors, the notes at the end don’t just say LP (Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII) and leave you to guess which part of which volume, Ives gives you the full reference, e.g. LP vi 700. This brilliant referencing, combined with Ives’s readable style, wealth of knowledge and balanced views, make this the number one Anne Boleyn book in my view and nothing comes close to it.

“The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn” - Contents

In the preface of “The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn”, Eric Ives says:-

“This book is structured in four parts. “Background and Beginnings” deals with Anne’s origins, her education, her launch into English court life and the reasons for the impact she made. That leads on to a discussion of the romantic relationships which she had or is supposed to have had, and hence to her agreement to marry the king. “A Difficult Engagement” looks at the oft-told history of Henry VIII’s attempt to free himself to marry, but with a focus on Anne which undermines male-dominated interpretations of tradition. Part III, “Anne the Queen”, examines Anne’s marriage and consequent lifestyle, offering a picture of what it meant to be the consort of an English king at a magnification well in excess of what is possible for almost all her predecessors. Illustrating this is is a nearly complete display of such visual evidence as has survived, which, in turn, supports detailed discussions of Anne’s portraiture, of her role as an artistic patron, of the day-to-day context of royal living and of her mind and beliefs. The final section, “A Marriage Destroyed”, concentrates on the closing months of the queen’s life, demonstrating the sudden and unexpected nature of her fall, the coup which precipitated it, the dishonesty of the case against her and the tensions of her last days.”

That is a pretty good precis of the contents of this 400+ page book (2004 revised version), but I know that some of you appreciate more detail, so here is a rundown - I’ve just listed what each chapter covers:-

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Category: Anne Boleyn, Eric Ives, Non-fiction, Six Wives
Tags: Anne Boleyn, Eric Ives

Posted By Claire on February 24, 2010

The full title of this book by Raymond Lamont-Brown is “How Fat Was Henry VIII? And 101 Other Questions on Royal History” and it’s a wonderful book which gives you answers to all those nagging royal history questions. It’s just perfect as a present for history buffs or as a treat for yourself as you’re guaranteed to learn something new from this book, whatever your level of history education.

You would be mistaken if you thought that this was a children’s book, although the title and cover may make you think so, because it is a serious, but highly readable, history book which sets out to sift through the mystique of royalty and separate fact from fiction, truth from myth, and history from legend. It does a wonderful job.

The book is divided into nine sections which each have questions within them, along with very detailed answers which draw on historical evidence. Here are the nine sections with some examples of the questions explored in them:-

• Royal Conundrums - Includes “How fat was Henry VIII?”, “Did King Canute harness the waves?”, “Why did Charles II hide in an oak tree?”, “What was the real relationship between Queen Victoria and her Highland servant John Brown?” and “Was Elizabeth I a Virgin Queen?”.
• Pretenders and Usurpers - Includes “Was Empress Matilda an early promoter of women’s rights?”, “Was Lady Jane Grey a rightful queen or a child victim?”, “Who was England’s lost queen?” and “Which rival queen disturbed Elizabeth I’s peace of mind?”

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Category: General History, Non-fiction, Royalty, history trivia
Tags: history trivia, How fat was Henry VIII, Raymond Lamont-Brown