Tag Archives: Tudor history

Elizabeth I and her world by Susan Watkins – 20 Books of Summer 2023

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Elizabeth I and her world by Susan Watkins is a lovely book with sumptuous photographs by Mark Fiennes. I borrowed this one from the library just last week, I must admit that it was the photos that really attracted me and I had intended just drooling over all the Tudor portraits, grand buildings, jewels, gardens and paintings of various scenes, but when I began to read it I quickly realised that I wanted to read it all. Despite knowing quite a lot about the Tudor courts and Elizabeth there was still a lot to learn from this book. Elizabeth may have made some mistakes as a youngster but she certainly learnt from them and seemed to know intuitively how to stay on the right side of her people.

This was a great read. It was first published in 1998 and then again in 2007 in paperback.

Rival Queens by Kate Williams – The Betrayal of Mary, Queen of Scots

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Rival Queens which is subtitled The Betrayal of Mary, Queen of Scots by Kate Williams was published in 2018. I borrowed this one from the library, and I swithered about taking it as I’ve read quite a few books about Mary, Q of S – what more could there be to say? Well it turned out that there’s quite a lot in this book that was new to me about Mary and Elizabeth. I had thought that Antonia Fraser’s Mary, Queen of Scots couldn’t be topped, but the author seems to have far more insights into both personalities, although it’s Mary and her predicaments which are to the fore in this book. The writing style is very relaxed somehow,  it flows so clearly and is never heavy going, and Kate Williams is just like her readers would be – enthralled and sometimes almost amazed by the fact that she has access to historic  letters and documents that she has been able to study during her research for the book. Other historians have been a bit reticent on the reasons that Mary ended up marrying Bothwell, but Williams seems in no doubt that she had been raped by Bothwell, and was pressured into marrying him.

I hadn’t quite realised how much Mary had been used by her various relatives, with them seeing her as just a way for  them to grab more power and kingdoms in the future. I don’t remember reading that the four wee Marys who sailed to France with Mary Stuart to be her playmates had been separated from her almost immediately. The Scottish side of Mary was going to be stamped out so that she would be a completely French queen when the time came.

Both queens suffered from a lack of the respect which would have been automatic for any young king, simply because they were male. With both women having so much in common it’s a tragedy that they never actually met, but Elizabeth couldn’t be persuaded.

I’ve always thought that Mary was at a disadvantage where men were concerned as her father died when she was just days old, it meant that she never had a man in her life that she could judge any possible husband against – for good or bad. I’m sure that’s a disadvantage.

As it happens I’ve visited almost all of the places that are mentioned in the book, some of which she escaped from.

Anyway I enjoyed this book so much that I’m going to track down anything else that Kate Williams has written, both non-fiction and fiction.

Elizabeth and Mary edited by Susan Doran

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Elizabeth and Mary – Royal Cousins, Rival Queens – which is edited by Susan Doran is a lovely book and I was lucky enough to be sent a copy of it by British Library for review. Among many things the book contains contributions in the shape of essays by 14 academics, mainly historians, as you would expect.

This is a really sumptuous book with beautiful photographs of historic portraits, jewels and religious works, maps and drawings of castles, but by far most of the photographs are of letters sent by and to Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots to each other and to many of the prominent people of the times.
It’s not all letters though, there are also poems and speeches written by Elizabeth and Mary and even John Knox makes an appearance.

My only gripe is that most of the documents are not big enough to be able to read, but as many are in French or Latin possibly it was thought that readers wouldn’t want to read them for themselves. I must admit that it’s quite some time since I was sent this one for review, but it isn’t really the sort of book that you sit down and read quickly from cover to cover, it’s the sort that you dip in and out of and savour over quite some time.

This book was produced by British Library to accompany an Elizabeth and Mary exhibition, which I so wish I had been able to go to, but this book is the next best thing I suppose.

Thank you to British Library for sending me a copy of the book.

Henry VIII: The Heart and the Crown by Alison Weir

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Henry VIII: The Heart and the Crown cover

There have been plenty of books, fiction and non-fiction about the wives of Henry VIII, but in Henry VIII: The Heart and the Crown the author Alison Weir has chosen to write from the perspective of King Henry himself. He’s usually portrayed as a monster, certainly a nightmare of a husband, but he didn’t have his troubles to seek. The first thing any monarch wants is ‘an heir and a spare’ and in the Tudor court girls just didn’t count. There’s no doubt that the pressure to keep the Tudor dynasty going weighed heavily on Henry for his entire adult life, as can be seen in this book. I lost count of the number of miscarriages that his wives (and he) suffered, but I think it was at least 15 deadly sorrows and disappointments – lost futures – all of them. No wonder he thought that his god was against him.

I really enjoyed this book which I have no doubt was well-researched. If you’ve already read some of the many books about Henry’s court then you would have realised how much he allowed himself to be manipulated by the various factions within his court, despite having apparently been warned about that likelihood by his own father before he died. No doubt Henry was happy to agree with his dukes if the end result suited him, then he could blame them for the outcome, such as the execution of Cromwell, and other people he had regarded as friends. That helped salve his conscience.

This was a time of huge changes within England which tend to be ascribed to Henry’s need to get rid of his first wife Katherine, however I suspect that all those religious changes would have taken place anyway, but maybe just a bit later. Henry needed the vast amount of money that the Roman Catholic church generated (through selling indulgences and such) and sent to Rome, instead of it being kept within England. The Roman church at that time was mired in chaos and scandals and with Martin Luther doing his thing in Europe, there was change in the air.

As ever though what strikes me most is what a tiny fish pond that Tudor court was, with just a handful of families who were all related to each other being at the top of the pile. It might help explain all those miscarriages!

I’m grateful to the publisher for giving me the chance to read and review this book in digital form via Netgalley.

I’m a bit previous with this review as the book isn’t due out until May the 9th, 2023.

The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel

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The Mirror and the Light cover

The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel is the last book in her Thomas Cromwell trilogy which was published in 2020 and this was a re-read for me as I had been waiting impatiently for years for its publication, unusually for me I bought it as soon as it hit the bookshops. At 882 pages it’s a tome and a half. I think that Mantel said that she was putting off the inevitable execution of Thomas Cromwell as she had become so close to him.

However there’s a lot to fit in from 1536 to 1540 – three of Henry VIII’s marriages, one annulment, unrest within the population due to many of them not wanting to give up their Roman Catholic saints and holidays, and wanting to cling on to the comfort of their beliefs, things get violent. I think that the book should probably have been edited to slim it down a bit, but that was never going to happen. Although I enjoyed this book I don’t think I loved it as much as I did at my first read of it, but that’s possibly because I had been anticipating it for years. You can read my original and more detailed blogpost here.

There is a mistake of sorts on page 561 when it’s written that Madame de Longueville (Mary of Guise, the mother of Mary, Queen of Scots) has landed at the town of Fife. In fact Fife is a county and it was the village of Crail in Fife that she sailed to after her proxy marriage to the Scottish king James V.

Elizabeth and the Prince of Spain by Margaret Irwin

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Elizabeth and the Prince of Spain cover

Elizabeth and the Prince of Spain by Margaret Irwin was first published in 1953 and it’s the third in the trilogy which begins with Young Bess with the second one being Elizabeth, Captive Princess.

Although I really enjoyed this one I didn’t love it as much as Young Bess, I’m sure that that is because the subject of that one is more interesting and speculative as well as suspenseful. Mind you there is always suspense, or certainly there would have been for Elizabeth herself as her life was held in the hands of Queen Mary, her rather flaky half-sister. Not that Mary Tudor really acknowledged her as she preferred to believe – or pretended to believe – that Elizabeth was not Henry VIII’s daughter but was the daughter of Smeaton, the music teacher who had been accused of adultery with Anne Boleyn.

Anyway, this one begins in 1554, Philip has been told that he must marry Queen Mary Tudor, he’s not keen to do it, she’s years older than him, sickly and he’s happy with his own choice of woman with whom he has had several children. The prospect of living in the notoriously damp and cold England doesn’t attract him either but it’s a political marriage, forming an alliance between England and Spain against France. It would also strengthen the English Catholic ties to Rome which had been broken by Henry VIII.

Philip’s father had been keen on Princess Elizabeth being executed before Philip sailed for England, he saw her existence as a threat. When Queen Mary died he wanted Philip to become King of England which wouldn’t be so easy with a daughter of Henry VIII in the foreground.

We’ll never know what the relationship between Philip and Elizabeth was but as Elizabeth survived I think it’s fair to say that she must have exerted her charms and her political instincts to do so, at the same time as managing to keep on the right side of Mary who was an awkward character at the best of times but as she was always ill and was jealous of her beautiful half-sister then Elizabeth must truly have felt that the sword of Damocles was constantly hanging over her.

Despite obviously knowing the outcome of this story the author managed to create an atmosphere of fear and suspense.

It was a surprise to me that Philip II was described as being silver fair, not at all as I had imagined him, or he had been portrayed in any TV adaptations.

Phillip II of Spain

Young Bess by Margaret Irwin

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Young Bess cover

Young Bess by Margaret Irwin is the first book in a trilogy about Queen Elizabeth I of England. It was first published in 1944. I’ve been reading quite a lot of historical fiction recently, I think it’s because they take you well away from the worries of today and Covid-19 although having said that they do often mention plagues and fevers. I thought that maybe this book would be disappointing after reading The Mirror and the Light – but it wasn’t, I really enjoyed it and have ordered the next one in the series.

I’ve read a fair amount about the Tudor period but hadn’t read anything about the early life of Elizabeth, who was known as Bess and I was really pleased to read that Margaret Irwin was well known for the accuracy of her historical research.

The book begins when Bess is 12 years old and her father King Henry VIII is coming to the end of his life. Henry seems to have accepted that he will only have one son – the nine year old Edward to keep the Tudor line going and is rather dismissive of his two older daughters, both of whom have been deemed to be illegitimate.

Bess is very aware of what happened to her mother, Anne Boleyn. She’s keen to hear what her mother was really like from people who knew Anne. She realises that only her sickly half brother Edward and her sister Mary stand between her and the throne. But when Tom Seymour, brother of the late Jane Seymour begins to flirt with Bess and her step-mother Katherine Parr his actions incense those in the highest circles. They can see that he’s determined to grab power one way or another. It looks like madness but as his brother Edward Seymour had made himself ‘Protector’ of the young King Edward after the death of Henry, presumably Tom thought he had some protection himself. He couldn’t have been more wrong. This was a great read.

Again I had to resort to reading my copy of the Chamber’s Biographical Dictionary to remind myself what actually happened in the end to some of the characters in the book, I just couldn’t wait to see what happened next. I’m so looking forward to getting the second book in this series – Elizabeth, Captive Princess.

The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel

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I finished The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel this afternoon, so that took me eight days to read the 882 pages, I could have been faster, but I savoured every word. This last book in her Thomas Cromwell trilogy was well worth waiting for, but I can hardly believe that it has been eight years since Bring Up the Bodies was published. I don’t go in for much in the way of re-reading but I intend to read the whole trilogy again at some point in the future.

If you’re at all interested in the history of the Tudors then you obviously know how this story ends, but despite that 874 pages before Cromwell’s execution are still a riveting read and from about half-way through I slowed down my reading, not wanting the book to finish and at the end I felt quite bereft, knowing that I was going to miss being in Cromwell’s company.

Well, none of us is perfect and he had a lot of flaws, but given the circumstances he could have been an awful lot worse than he was and in the end it was his lack of brutality and cruelty to others at Henry’s court that brought his downfall.

Cromwell had always been able to see that given Henry’s nature the possibility of swiftly falling out of the king’s favour was almost inevitable, he could have sailed to Italy or some other European country with some of his wealth, but he left it too late as he loved being at the centre of power.

Throughout the book Cromwell thinks back to scenes in his life from his childhood on, replaying the abuses that he had to put up with from his blacksmith father Walter, and his life in Italy as a young man, the loss of his wife and daughters and before that the loss of his ‘Anselma’, for me this had the effect of a man drowning and seeing his past life playing out in front of him. He could clearly see where he had gone wrong, what he should have done differently in his incredible career but at the time he didn’t think he could do anything different. In reality though he knew that if Henry wanted rid of someone it was going to happen, there was no getting away from it.

I was really glad that Hilary Mantel wrote three and a half pages of author’s notes explaining what had happened to many of the other characters in the book, as it saved me from having to look them all up. She explained that she had been given encouragement from many historians, academics, curators and actors over the years which had included many distinguished names but had decided not to compile a list of acknowledgments. She thought that it would be like a vulgar exercise in name-dropping. I think that’s a bit of a shame as I imagine that if I had been one of those people I would have been expecting such an acknowledgement, and as a reader I would have been interested to know who had contributed help over the years.

Anyway, I suspect that this one will also win the Booker, it’s a great read.

Innocent Traitor by Alison Weir

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Kate Saunders of The Times says on the front of Innocent Traitor by Alison Weir ‘If you don’t cry at the end, you have a heart of stone’ So there you go, I have a heart of stone, in fact I’m as hard as nails – did I tell you I come from Glasgow?

Anyway, I knew the story of Lady Jane Grey so nothing was a surprise and for me that was the problem with this book, I think if you don’t know much about the subject then this is the book for you. I knew most of the history involved, if not all and I found the massive info dumps annoying.

The tale is told from several different characters’ perspectives and I don’t think that that was well done as they all had much the same voice as far as I was concerned’ which is definitely not something that happens with real people.

It is about one of the most tragic occurrences in English history, a young girl used and abused by the very people who should have nurtured and loved her most. That they only saw Jane as an object for their own advancement was shameful but probably not that surprising to the people around them at the time. In fact if you have a look at the news reports there are plenty of abusive parents around now.

That’s probably me being a right grumpy besom but I think for some reason I have a problem with Alison Weir as a fiction writer, I intend to have a go at one of her straight history books as I think I might prefer those. I see that her history books veer mainly towards the Tudor period, I fancy trying her Eleanor of Aquitane, but the question is – will she be as good a historian as Antonia Fraser? No doubt I’ll find out. Have you read any of her non-fiction books?

Mary Boleyn – The Great and Infamous Whore

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I haven’t read anything by Alison Weir before and I had been under the impression that she only wrote fiction so I was surprised to find Mary Boleyn – The Great and Infamous Whore in the history section at one of my local libraries. Interestingly this book seems to be subtitled The Mistress of Kings on Goodreads, maybe that was for American sensibilties!

Anyway, when I saw this book sitting on the library shelf I immediately wondered if there really was that much known about Mary Boleyn – enough to fill a book, and now that I’ve read the book I can tell you that indeed there is very little known about Mary Boleyn at all.

This book is full of question marks. Pages and pages are devoted to the fact that it isn’t even known which year she was born or even if she was the eldest of the Boleyn daughters or if Anne was. These pages all point out that previous writers have stated facts which couldn’t be correct. I’m afraid I almost gave up, so annoyed was I with it, after all it is really an irrelevance – whether Mary or Anne was the eldest daughter. Although I reckon that any psychologist would tell you that Anne displayed all the classic qualities/faults of a middle child. She wanted to be the centre of everyone’s world. Mary seems to have been disliked by both of her parents, I think by her father because she resembled her mother’s side of the family – the Howards. And probably disliked by her mother because her husband Thomas Boleyn blamed his wife for Mary being a disappointment, she wasn’t a manipulative schemer and that was really what he admired in people, Mary didn’t do anything to help promote her family’s position.

I did plough on to the end and the book does throw up interesting facts about Tudor life which I didn’t know about – such as: that sweating sickness which seemed to be so rife was not the plague as I have previously read. It seems to have been an illness which must have mutated over the years until it was no longer the killer it had been. At the height of its strength it could kill people within a couple of hours of the victim feeling ill. It sounds like a very virulent flu to me.

Inevitably sister Anne makes an appearance in the book and as ever I was struck by how patient Henry VIII had been, I think Anne should have counted herself lucky not to have got the chop a lot sooner than she did, such as immediately after Henry realised that she wasn’t the innocent virgin she had been making herself out to be in the six years or so that she had been holding him at bay!

If you just want to immerse yourself in things Tudor while you wait for the next instalment of Wolf Hall coming around you might enjoy this book, but at the end of it you won’t be much the wiser about Mary Boleyn’s life, although she was much maligned by the sound of things as she doesn’t seem to have been any more promiscuous than the rest of them.

Have any of you read any of Alison Weir’s fiction books and if so what did you think of them?