My review of Honey Trap, by Anthony Summers and Steve Dorril

Honey Trap

by Anthony Summers and Stephen Dorril

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

The Profumo affair – one of Cold War Britain’s most famous political scandals – is an indelible flash in my early childhood. Framed by so many vivid, epochal images of my formative years, this fiasco became a defining mark of my generation. For this reason, reading Honey Trap was an irresistible lure down memory lane. 

A neighbour passed on to me the browned and curling paperback, which he had scored for fifty cents in a leisurely browse through our local op shop. Two distinct passages of time come into play here: the twenty-five years approx. between the events the book covers and its publication, and the thirty years between its publication and my getting around to reading it. As if two lifetimes divide the present from the story of Honey Trap. 

This staggered chronological detachment sets an intriguing and reflective context from which to revisit the scandal, which saw Britain's War Minister John Profumo and Soviet Embassy naval attaché cum spy Yevgeny Ivanov sleeping with the same woman, 19-year-old Christine Keeler. The affair's exposure and alleged resulting friendship between Profumo and Ivanov forced Profumo’s 1963 resignation from Government. 

As with other such investigative books, I saw the movie it inspired ('Scandal' 1989) long before reading this. Sir John Hurt stars as sleazy but lovable Establishment scapegoat, bon-vivant Dr Stephen Ward, who introduced the lethal Profumo affair trio and was later hounded to suicide. Sir Ian McKellen plays disgraced War Minister John Profumo. Joanne Whalley is showgirl-turned unwitting spy mistress Christine Keeler, with Bridget Fonda shining as Keeler's sharp cohort Mandy Rice-Davies. Authentic '60s & '70s glamour puss Britt Ekland is fellow seductress Mariella Novotny. Veteran screen legend Leslie Phillips graces the project as Conservative hack Lord Astor. Its haunting soundtrack includes the delectable Dusty Springfield/Pet Shop Boys hit 'Nothing Has Been Proved'. 

The movie's scenes, paired with the original media events they depicted, replayed through my visual memory as I turned each moldy page in wonderment, sneezing at the confetti of dust sprinkling my pillow yet compelled to pursue this nostalgic trip, kept awake into the small hours of three gruelling, impetuous nights.

As per its genre, Honey Trap is more a gripping factual account than a literary experience, so I had adjusted my expectations accordingly (these pieces I find intersect for comfort and convenience with heavier/fictional reads).   

While devouring it as I might a cold pizza on a Sunday morning, I could only ponder in astonishment at what a fuss was made of this tawdry diplomatic bedroom farce, while feeling so sad for Stephen Ward. Of course, certain classified intelligence files would now be accessible that had not yet become so when Honey Trap was penned, outdating various lingering question marks. Yet we hear very little in this wake, as if this book's authors had indeed concluded all there really was to conclude. In that sense, Honey Trap may never become truly outdated. *

Whilst I found Honey Trap's incessant meandering back through certain characters' darkened pasts irksome, along with the sheer volume of these incidental characters, this loss of momentum is often the price for the requisite thoroughness. Even so, the authors (or publishers, or both) seem set on burdening us with the bedroom quirks and petty agendas of a whole establishment rather than three of four main characters. This is my common issue across much reading, non-fiction and fiction alike. If more authors would just stay focused, instead of rambling off track with scarcely related trivia that consumed them in their quest for background padding! We, the reader, are unconcerned with such superfluity. We don't want to be led in pointless circles just to hear about some secondary character's spouse's sibling's boss's partner's irrelevant part-time sexual fetish, just for that extra shot of shock value. 

These gratuitous muckraking delays border on cheapening the effect of the mighty yarn that is Honey Trap. Such, however, is the gossipy nature of this beast. It's perhaps inevitable that the telling of a scandal will be over-embroidered with such, like an ornate cake with too much icing (is there such a thing, some might argue). There's an art to gauging enough titillation then stopping, before tabloid quality looms.

That said, anyone who remembers these times may well tut along with me at Honey Trap's vaguely tacky sentiment, while hypocritically slurping it up anyway. I plead guilty as charged. I'll read it again too.

An essential retrospective read for those who remember these events, a great modern history lesson to those who don't!

*A more recent publication, Distant Neighbours: A New History of Soviet Intelligence by Cambridge historian Professor Jonathan Haslam published in 2016 by Oxford University Press, reveals how the Profumo affair was a higher threat to UK security than previously thought. It finds that the Russian, Ivanov, was able to photograph top secret documents left out by Profumo after being shown into Profumo’s study by his wife, actress Valerie Hobson. Those documents concerned US tactical nuclear weapons and vital allied contingency plans for the Cold War defence of Berlin. Yet little else has emerged, especially concerning the MI5 and MI6's possible roles in Stephen Ward's 'suicide'. Nor has it ever been clarified whether Ivanov aimed to use Keeler to entrap or obtain information from Profumo. Haslam's new research shows Ivanov did not need to use Keeler thus, ultimately being able to steal information directly from Profumo. This resulted from Profumo's lack of office organisation and security protocol. Profumo left top secret documents visible on or in his home desk while out of his study, failing to secure the room or instruct family members to guard against entry. Consequently, when Ivanov visited Profumo’s home socially, Mrs. Profumo invited him to wait alone in her husband’s study. Ivanov merely needed to pull out his spy camera and take snaps, including of highly classified specifications for the X-15, a top secret experimental high-altitude US spy plane. But that's another book, decidedly more academic and less concerned with the sordid lust triangle that Honey Trap focuses on.

My review of Sybil Thorndike: A Star of Life, by Jonathan Croall

Sybil Thorndike: A Star of Life

by Jonathan Croall

My rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Though a name seldom heard in today's popular culture, Dame Sybil Thorndike lives on in the theatregoing psyche with the likes of Sarah Bernhardt and Ellen Terry, considered by many as one of the 20th century's greatest actresses. 

A quintessentially English figure, she was a humanitarian of global proportion, working tirelessly offstage and on, bolstering endless philanthropic causes and mentoring an entire generation of great classical actors - Lord Laurence Olivier called her his surrogate mother. 

A staunch unionist, she was involved in the early days of British Equity. A visionary and an innovator, she was involved in establishing The Arts Council, The Old Vic, the National Theatre, Chichester Festival Theatre and the Thorndike Theatre in Leatherhead. 

The First British actress to appear on a postage stamp, her ashes are buried in Westminster Abbey.

Bernard Shaw wrote Saint Joan for her, in which she starred to major acclaim in London in 1924, not long after the Roman Catholic Church's canonisation of Joan of Arc. Having first played 19-year-old Joan at almost 32, Sybil reprised the role periodically for various recitals throughout her long and distinguished career. 

Made Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1931, then Companion of Honour in 1970, she was awarded an honorary degree from Manchester University in 1922 and an honorary D.Litt from Oxford University in 1966. 

Never a raving beauty, she was known for her loathing of dressing-up (yet also for mingling with royalty). An arch-eccentric, she was a self-proclaimed 'Socialist-Royalist' (a contradiction in terms, some argued), who lived on a pittance for most of her life whilst quietly becoming an arts legend. 

Though perceived from afar as a formidable force, she had no airs or graces close-up and knew everyone's name down to the lowliest understudy or stagehand she worked with. She was in her element performing in the open parks and ancient ruins of Britain, Europe, Africa and the East without so much as a curtain, costume or stage. 

Most notably a great tragedienne, she also loved smaller, 'interesting' roles, light comedy and experimental theatre. Unlike many of her great contemporaries, ego was not her defining feature and it was to Sybil that many a teary, bullied greenhorn thespian turned for succour and encouragement. 

Irrepressibly ebullient, she saw only the best in people, places and situations. A whirlwind of positivity with distinctively precise diction and a voice like a great bell that readily filled any arena unamplified (this acoustic power, despite having damaged her voice on a 1905 US Shakespearean tour, with recurring vocal problems plaguing her for her remaining working life).   

Jonathan Croall's enthralling 584-page biography sits among the finest I have read of anyone. Riddled with priceless anecdotes both hilarious and heartwarming from start to finish, this theatrical time capsule is pure gold. Croall's historical research is meticulous, his literary craftsmanship sublime. His strong theatrical background shines through each rich paragraph. 

Why he has not been more prolific in this field in which he so excels is baffling. His talents have perhaps been well spent elsewhere, as co-founder and editor of Arts Express magazine, editor of the National Theatre's magazine StageWrite and Programmes Editor at the Old Vic. Croall's other works are now absolutely on my to-read list, headed by his extensive work on Sir John Gielgud. 

But Sybil ...

Born in Lincolnshire in 1882, this daughter of Rochester Cathedral's Canon lived and worked into her 90s, gracing the world's stages with some of the finest classical drama seen, often appearing with her husband Sir Lewis Casson. 

She had first trained for classical piano, commuting to London for weekly lessons at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. At 11 she debuted publicly as a pianist, but by 18 piano cramp had forced her to abandon that vocation. Only then, encouraged by her brother, actor-author Russell Thorndike, did she train formally in drama – though the sibling pair had since toddlerhood acted recreationally, hamming it up along with their younger sister. 

At 21, Sybil had her first professional contract, touring the USA with actor-manager Ben Greet's company. In four years she played some 112 roles. By 1908, understudying the title role of Candida in a production directed by that play's author, George Bernard Shaw, she met Lewis Casson, whom she married that December. The couple had four children, several grandchildren and numerous great-grandchildren, many becoming actors, directors or tutors. 

Sybil went to Broadway in 1910, then joined London's Old Vic Company from 1914–18 playing leading Shakespearean and other classical roles. She played Hecuba in Euripides' The Trojan Women (1919–20), then from 1920–22 with her husband starred in a British version of France's Grand Guignol directed by Jose Levy.

Thorndike and Casson were active Labour Party members with strong Leftist views. They preferred living in or around abject poverty to remain true to their craft rather than take on commercial success, which nevertheless constantly beckoned. 

Sybil especially preferred being away from London, touring the British provinces, kipping in their familiar seedy digs, performing to adoring throngs of miners and other unlikely labourers - regularly extending this ritual to far flung places like South Africa, Australia and New Zealand, relishing giving live recitals to natives in fields, pubs, historic sites, libraries, barns and civic halls. 

As a pacifist, Sybil was a member of the Peace Pledge Union and gave readings for its benefit. During WWII, she and her husband toured in Shakespearean productions on behalf of the Council for the Encouragement of the Arts, before joining Laurence Olivier and Ralph Richardson in the Old Vic season at the New Theatre in 1944.

At the end of WWII, it emerged that Sybil was on "The Black Book" or Sonderfahndungsliste G.B. list of Britons to be arrested in the event of Nazi invasion!

Though she mostly shunned the big screen, favouring live performance, she had made her film debut in Moth and Rust (1921), appearing in numerous silent films the next year, including Bleak House, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Macbeth, The Merchant of Venice and The Scarlet Letter. Her most notable film roles include Nurse Edith Cavell in Dawn (1928), General Baines in Major Barbara (1941), Mrs. Squeers in Nicholas Nickleby (1948), Queen Victoria in Melba (1952) and the Queen Dowager in The Prince and the Showgirl (1957) with Marilyn Monroe and Laurence Olivier, for which she was awarded the National Board of Review Award for Best Supporting Actress. She made her last film appearance – in a version of Uncle Vanya in 1963. 

Her last live performance was at the Thorndike Theatre (built for and named after her) in Leatherhead, Surrey, in There Was an Old Woman in 1969, the year Lewis Casson died. She continued with radio and TV recordings, her final screen appearance in the TV drama The Great Inimitable Mr. Dickens, with Anthony Hopkins in 1970.

I became so intensely hooked with this book, for several ecstatic weeks, I was reluctant to finish it. I shall certainly reread it, probably more than once. A reading treat to top all others, this is one of my all-time favourite biographies. 

Can't recommend it highly enough.

My review of The House of Mitford, by Jonathan Guinness with Catherine Guinness

The House of Mitford

by Jonathan Guinness with Catherine Guinness

My rating: 5 out of 5 stars

After this sitting considerably far down my Mitford history reading list, I was taken by its erudition. My expectations were cynical, knowing it was penned by family insiders: author Jonathon Guinness, 3rd Baron Moyne, is the eldest son of Diana Mosley (née Mitford) by her first husband Bryan Guinness; his co-author is his daughter the Hon. Catherine Guinness. My tainted expectations could not have been wider off the mark.

Not only is there a marked absence of family bias, but the wordsmithing outshines every Mitford biography I have read. He does his forebears proud, his craftsmanship a testament to this clever bloodline. His being schooled at Eton and Oxford, one might expect this standard, but others with similar academic foundations have produced less impressive works.

I did not find, as certain readers have implied, any pro-Conservative slant to the narrative (the author was a Conservative Party Parliamentary Candidate). Wary of rightwing undertones, I here found objectivity from start to finish. Graced with impartiality, the content may stop short of censuring history's political right, which is not tantamount to partisanship.

I did sense, in certain of Jonathon Guinness's references to his novelist aunt Nancy Mitford, subtle retributory tones on behalf of his mother Diana who spent most of WWII in prison partly thanks Nancy. That history, well documented by all Mitford biographers, goes like this:

After leaving her first husband for British Union of Fascists leader Sir Oswald Mosley, Diana spent time in Germany with Hitler and his inner-circle in the prelude to WWII, aiming for a Nazi-approved radio station for the BUF which never eventuated. When Mosely was imprisoned early in the war under 18B as a potentially dangerous person, Diana was initially left to do much of his bidding on the outside. Nancy was summoned by MI5 to comment on how 'dangerous' she thought her younger sister. Putting patriotic duty before blood, Nancy said she thought Diana 'highly dangerous', swaying the government's decision to lock up Diana too. Separated from her babies, Diana was accordingly detained without charge or trial for years, subject to the horrors of Holloway Jail. Diana never learned of this sisterly betrayal until late in life and Mosley never learned of it.

So, one could understand any tinge of injustice felt on his mother's behalf by this author, who as a youngster witnessed her long imprisonment. Yet this is barely evident, if only hinted at (how much of the text his co-author daughter Catherine contributed is unclear).

The telling of Mosley's career itself is presented minus the fascist-bashing righteousness of many, from a rational 'setting-the-record-straight' standpoint. That seems fair considering the author is Mosley's stepson. It carries no hint of the fascist apologist we might anticipate. 

(Prior to this book, after Mosley's death his birth son from his first marriage to Lady Cynthia Mosley, Nicholas Mosley, had written harsh volumes against his fascist father, for which Mosley's widow Diana never forgave her stepson.)

I confess to being least taken by the convoluted earlier histories and lineages of the Mitford sisters' two grandfathers, Algernon Freeman-Mitford ('Barty') and Thomas Gibson-Bowles. Even so these are more impeccably detailed than any other Mitford historian's efforts I've encountered.  

To call this author's archival prowess masterly is a gross understatement. This book, Mitford descendants can keep in stately libraries and others can consult through the mists of time. I wish I had read this particular Mitford history sooner as it surpasses all others. 

With Jonathon Guinness in his early nineties as I write this review of a book published forty years ago, there still feels to be some carryover from these remarkable sisters, all now long dead.    

A self-proclaimed Mitford aficionado, I now see this as the definitive biography of this canon.

My review of The Sisters Who Would Be Queen, by Leanda de Lisle

The Sisters Who Would Be Queen

by Leanda de Lisle

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Leanda de Lisle undertook a bold and lofty endeavour penning this. She triumphs gloriously.

Most Tudor readers know about the usurping 'nine days queen' Lady Jane Grey who, after her fleeting, reluctant reign, was beheaded under the rightful Queen [Bloody] Mary I. Jane, languishing in the Tower of London, might have lived had the ageing Queen Mary's unsettled marriage negotiations with Philip of Spain not looked diplomatically grimmer the more lenient she was towards poor Jane.

Philip's Catholic envoys wanted Protestant Jane's head off, which left Queen Mary's hands tied. Young Jane has been depicted in varying lights by recent biographers less sympathetic than those before who had handed her down to history as an innocent victim of others' dynastic scheming (primarily, that of her parents). 

Many Tudor aficionados, however, until this book, knew only scant details of Jane's two sisters who suffered so appallingly under Mary I's successor, Elizabeth I, the last Tudor monarch and irrefutable villainess of this piece.

The childless 'Virgin Queen' Elizabeth's reign became fraught with nervous speculation on her successor. Enter the two 'other' Grey sisters Katherine and Mary, maternal granddaughters of Henry VIII's younger sister Mary, 'the French queen'. (The latter had, on her husband Louis XII of France's death, married Charles Brandon, 1st Duke of Suffolk and produced four children, one being Francis, mother of these three Grey sisters).

All three Grey sisters were treated abysmally because of their positioning in the meandering line of Tudor succession. They are masterfully drawn as distinctly individualised characters: Jane Grey - headstrong, intelligent, yet martyred - was driven by her faith and principles, while torn by her sense of duty. The beautiful, romantically impetuous Katherine Grey was ruled by her heart, not her head. The plainer, diminutive Mary Grey, the least educated or threatening, just kept her head down aiming only to survive her piteous ride. 

The reader is lulled into empathy. We are left deeply moved, immensely informed and ravenous for more of this superb writer's magic. 

Never wanting to put this book down, I was saddened to reach its last page. And that's what great writing is about. A splendid achievement by a formidable writer and historian.

My review of Elizabeth's Women: Friends, Rivals, and Foes Who Shaped the Virgin Queen, by Tracy Borman

Elizabeth's Women: Friends, Rivals, and Foes Who Shaped the Virgin Queen

by Tracy Borman

My rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Some armchair critics have overlooked the immense task Tracy Borman undertook and successfully completed in writing and getting this published. In a literary avalanche of popular Tudor history dominated by old masters and current favourites, this comparatively unknown writer braved something extraordinary.

Like others, I turned to this after exhausting dozens of biographies on the key Tudor players and their epoch. We must keep our expectations realistic - as with any such addictive material, there is only a finite euphoric altitude we can maintain before desensitisation to the fix itself sets in. No use hammering away wanting the earth to move page after page so far into any such study (we can perhaps reasonably assume that few absolute beginners would turn to this particular title for introductions to the reign). These things considered, it's also impossible not to draw comparisons.

With voices like Alison Weir (and Antonia Fraser, if not specifically on this subject then characterising the genre itself) to compete with, one has to wonder how others conjure up the confidence to even begin. What makes popular historians popular is not just their detail and accuracy but their voices (some of the most meticulously researched, accurately presented history published is dry, soulless and unreadable).

Borman holds her own voice-wise, here. It may be interesting to compare her progress after twenty, thirty, forty years  (Fraser, for example, already had her distinctively sumptuous, compassionate style down pat by the time of her 1969 Mary, Queen of Scots and, while perhaps growing technically and conceptually since, has preserved what made her successful: it's not so much what she says but the way that she says it! 

Similarly, Alison Weir had her own defining style to begin with - with perhaps more emphasis on impressive citation and indexing that made her stand out from others.

There are countless others. Carolly Erickson, Alison Plowden, David Starkey, David Loades, Eric Ives, the list is as long as it is diverse, all riding high on stylistic hallmarking rather than just breaking even on factualist or conceptualist calibre alone. 

Tracy Borman is yet to demonstrate any such characteristic consistency across any substantial body of published work. She has made a commendable start though and this book deserves its rightful place on any good Elizabethan historian's shelf. 

Though each of Elizabeth's women discussed have been well covered before in greater detail, they are here effectively assembled in a unique and stimulating formation. Context is key, with each woman's positioning seemingly bearing particular relevance on the defining of Gloriana herself.

Great concept. Well written. Will definitely consider reading more of this author's fine work.

My review of Henry VIII: The King and His Court, by Alison Weir

Henry VIII: The King and His Court

by Alison Weir

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

I love most of Alison Weir's work and this is no exception.

The research is astonishing. The clothes, décor and meals of England's infamous catalyst-king of the reformation, his court and his six wives are wondrously detailed.

The journey of the golden-haired boy, the meaty young lion and the obese, middle-aged tyrant is sumptuously charted. His gargantuan ego and delicate insecurities are thoroughly fleshed out. The human side of 'God's anointed' is sensitively examined.

The extremes he went to for a legitimate male heir were steered by the notion that his daughters would be unable to sustain his father Henry VII's fragile new dynasty (established not by laws of primogeniture but by triumphing in the Wars of the Roses).

Great Harry's struggles with Rome over his insistence on discarding Queen Catherine to marry Anne Boleyn led to the severance of the Church of England from papal authority and the Dissolution of the Monasteries. As the first ruling Supreme Head of the Church of England, he remained a believer in Catholic teachings even after his excommunication from the Roman Catholic Church.

Though Henry VIII has often been depicted as a lustful, insecure tyrant, this is probably not the full picture. His contemporaries considered him in his prime to be attractive, educated and accomplished. Also an author and composer, he has been described as 'one of the most charismatic rulers to sit on the English throne'.

He became obese in later years. With a 54-inch waist, he required mobilisation by mechanical inventions. He probably suffered from gout and was famously covered with insufferable, stinking, pus-filled boils. His obesity and other illnesses went back to a jousting accident in 1536, in which he suffered a leg wound. All these ailments hastened his death at 55, in 1547, at Whitehall Palace.

He was succeeded by his son, the boy king Edward VI, who died at 16, making way for Henry's older daughter 'Bloody' Mary I. She lived only five years on the throne. Henry's younger daughter, Elizabeth I, was the last Tudor, whose forty-four-year reign brought England stability, helping forge its sense of national identity.

Alison Weir's superb biography explores Henry VIII's legacy and the reasons his magnificent offspring turned out as they did. Had Henry been a different man, history might have unfolded differently and today's English-speaking world would probably not be as we know it.

This masterpiece is to be slowly and thoroughly pondered in brief, leisurely sessions, sleepy weekends or long, late nights. It's as thick as a brick and worth a hundred times its retail value.

My review of The Other Boleyn Girl, by Philippa Gregory

The Other Boleyn Girl

by Philippa Gregory

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

The 2008 movie, starring Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansson, made this title familiar to many who would not otherwise have read the book. That mass publicity was a double-edged sword, with the movie receiving mixed reviews and criticism for historical inaccuracy. Indeed, the novel too suffered some disputed historical accuracy but has far greater subtlety and creative licence.

While Philippa Gregoory's novel makes requisite use of fictional elements, the film took it to extremes, discrediting the book it promoted. Though Gregory need perhaps not concern herself now, with the global success of her subsequent novels, the debacle must then have been tough for this talented, hardworking author. Certain historical details of this tale are black and white, others grey: 

Earlier historians claimed Elizabeth I's maternal aunt, Mary Boleyn, was Queen Anne's younger sister, but her children believed she was the elder, as does a growing consensus of today's historians. Regardless, legend strongly suggests Mary was thought the more beautiful of the two Boleyn sisters, going by aesthetic ideals of the day. With no less scandalous a public record than her beheaded sister Anne, poor Mary has undoubtedly been as much a victim of malicious press as Anne has been a victim of political propaganda.

A rumoured mistress of King Francis I of France, some historians believe tales of Mary's promiscuity exaggerated, while others deem them plainly apocryphal. King Francis's harsh reference to her as 'The English Mare', 'my hackney' and 'una grandissima ribalda, infame sopra tutte' ('a great slag, infamous above all), may have been merely sour grapes after a more innocently romantic public liaison: she did, after all, leave Francis and his court, and his hearing of her subsequent high profile amours could have simply bruised his royal pride.

When Mary returned to England in 1519, she was appointed a maid-of-honour to Catherine of Aragon, queen consort of Henry VIII. She then became Henry VIII's mistress from around 1521 to 1526. After later marrying wealthy and influential courtier William Carey, she was left widowed then secretly remarried for love to William Stafford, a lowly soldier considered beneath her aristocratic rank. This latter choice resulted in her banishment from court, and she spent the rest of her life in obscurity, dying in her early forties in 1543, seven years after Anne Boleyn's execution.

Many preferred this earlier Philippa Gregory book over her later one, The White Queen. This subject certainly holds more popular appeal, but to me that does not equal a better book.

Gregory's greater challenge was surely always going to be The White Queen, as readers are less familiar with that (infinitely more complex) history than with this story and its principal characters. Therefore, Gregory's greater achievement of those two is, in my opinion, the one which presented the harder challenge, The White Queen.

I nonetheless equally liked this, which makes for the more gripping read, its character list tighter and more focused than The White Queen's convoluted ensemble (that, I believe, is why some rubbished the latter, because they found it harder to follow due to their own lack of knowledge).

The Other Boleyn Girl is a good read by a classy, accomplished writer. Its sequel novel, The Boleyn Inheritance, tells the story of Anne of Cleves, Catherine Howard and Jane (Parker) Boleyn.

I like everything of Philippa Gregory's I have so far read.

My review of The Young Elizabeth: The First Twenty-Five Years of Elizabeth I, by Alison Plowden

The Young Elizabeth: The First Twenty-Five Years of Elizabeth I

by Alison Plowden

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

So many greats have come along since the emergence of Alison Plowden, who hardly pioneered but was undoubtedly among the key players instrumental in reshaping this genre into its popular modern form.

This first in what became collectively known as Plowden's 'Elizabethan Quartet' was my starting point, many moons ago, when it seemed that the only established alternatives were the plainest of textbooks, the thickest of dusty tomes or the most absurdly romanticised of fictional accounts.

In my first year at secondary school, I was so bored by so much ... except Elizabeth I, who intrigued me so much I talked my father into driving me around England to the many historic buildings she had lived in or famously graced with her regal presence. To stand beneath those same trees on those very grounds, touch those brick walls, tread on those same floors, gaze from windows Elizabeth had gazed from had me riveted to a subject I've never since left alone. Coming away from such sites left me with indelible memories which only reading Alison Plowden reinforced and kept alive in my restless, easily distracted but hungry young mind, which stubbornly never settled for just any old thing.

This first book also complimented and reinforced my then still fresh viewing of Glenda Jackson's Elizabeth R TV series, itself not recordable before the advent of video.

With much to thank this author for, after a lifetime of special reading she introduced me to, I occasionally revisit her pages which lull me into a haze of other, more personal, nostalgia while reminding me what a fine biographer she was.

For those just beginning the Elizabethan trip, or aficionados extending their coverage, this now comparatively basic piece, in what has evolved into a seemingly infinite genre, will, in my humble opinion, always make for sound, essential reading.

My review of The Six Wives of Henry VIII, by Alison Weir

The Six Wives of Henry VIII

by Alison Weir

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Some biographers are blessed with a voice that resonates, and Weir is an original of her kind.

This book I got around to after reading numerous other, individual, biographies on each wife. I had, therefore, turned to this after seemingly 'running out' of good material on this special genre (like withdrawal from an addiction, forever seeking to recapture that elusive initial elation).

Considering this was not new ground for me and had, since its 1991 publication, been vastly elaborated on by others I'd read, it did not disappoint. 

Proportionate to their lengthy marriage is the quantity allocated to Katherine of Aragon, Henry's most majestic and widely revered consort. If not for her childbearing misfortune the English-speaking world would perhaps have become vastly different to that of today.

Anne Boleyn is, as we'd expect, at times petulant, even spiteful, yet we rightly also pity her despite those famous shortcomings.

Plain Jane Seymour is less rounded here than I'd found her elsewhere, though she is typically the least dynamically portrayed of Henry's wives and had only a short time as consort.

Anne of Cleves is, as always, so very likeable, winning our respect with her combined humility and common sense.

Wild Katherine Howard I like more every time I read about her.

Erudite and sagacious, Katherine Parr is just as gracious, kindly and devoted as she should be and a little bit more.

It would be difficult to tire of this author. By her use of background and settings, décor and costume, foibles and mannerisms, she successfully makes a done-to-death topic seemingly fresh and inexhaustible.

This sumptuous 20+ year-old work has a stylistic and conceptual longevity. Avoiding the academic dryness of some and the gushing romanticisation of others, it has earned and maintained its place among the popular classics of its genre.

My review of Bloody Mary: The Life of Mary Tudor, by Carolly Erickson

Bloody Mary: The Life of Mary Tudor

by Carolly Erickson

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

A terrific biography of a much maligned and grossly misunderstood historical figure, a scapegoat for generations of vicious religious and political propagandists.

Though she burned and persecuted 'heretics', so did most European monarchs of her era, Catholic and Protestant.

After a splendid start in life, Henry VIII's half-Spanish, half-English heir to the English throne was treated cruelly and heartlessly throughout her youth because of her genes, her gender and her parent's reformation-triggering marriage annulment.

Her mother Catherine of Aragon was her only close ally, but King Henry eventually forbade mother and daughter contact. Her younger cousin-husband Prince Phillip of Spain, who she adored, would treat her little better than her father had. 

Her maltreatment, heartache over her parents' unprecedented marriage annulment, her humiliation of being for a time displaced from the succession for her 'bastard' stepsister, Elizabeth, plus Mary's archly devout piousness in a changing religious milieu explains much about this tortured soul.

This granddaughter of Queen Isabella I of Castile and King Ferdinand II of Aragon become a marvellously tragic, at times right royal neurotic.

Despite this, and seemingly possessing the mother of all death stares (she was actually vision impaired), the chronically misrepresented Mary Tudor had the heart and makings of a great anointed queen. History might have treated her more favourably had she had more time to establish herself rather than dying so prematurely - some said of a broken heart - just a few years after ascending the throne.

Her poignant tale is told with compassion and aplomb. Erudite and humane, Carolly Erickson pumps blood into Mary's veins like no other biographer, without apology for the monarch's infamous personal shortcomings.

An enlightening tragedy that peels away the cobwebs of centuries, leaving the reader relieved to live in today's world and historically informed.

My review of Anne Boleyn: A New Life of England's Tragic Queen, by Joanna Denny

Anne Boleyn: A New Life of England's Tragic Queen

by Joanna Denny

My rating: 3 out of 5 stars

I was drawn to this by the rumble of differing user reviews it generated. I was intrigued as to what had elicited such a polarised response. What I found was a well written, if sympathetically biased, take on this infamous consort.

Few would read only one biography of such a queen and consider it gospel. History was so changed over this one marriage that readers must strike their own balance of knowledge, expect to encounter differing biographical positions and respect the entire consensus spectrum. We must then make up our own minds given all the available facts.

I concur that Katherine of Aragon is done an injustice and that the author sounds anti-Catholic in certain passages. That is her prerogative. This is not journalism, which demands greater impartiality. All history is recounted with some subjectivity. Consider the vehement anti-Anne Boleyn bias that dominated such material for centuries with her apologists out on the fringes. It is no crime for contemporaries to seek rebalance to such entrenched propaganda. 

I allowed that it may not be so much Denny's pro-Protestant stance per se that is so glaring, but the sensitivity of her pro-Catholic detractors in their reviews? With neither Catholic nor Protestant leanings, I remained fairly indifferent to all this, an observer rather than a participant in the debacle, as I read Denny's fine work. 

It is well documented that, despite her partly self-serving zeal for religious reform, Boleyn died as devout as Henry did in their old, if preliminarily Anglicanised, faith. Henry balked at taking the Reformation all the way, leaving his son to oversee this. Even Henry and Anne's daughter, Elizabeth I, who so famously saw in the first shining light of the new faith in her Golden Age, took a more compromising, halfway position on Church of England ways than future monarchs would. So much so that the notoriously indecisive Gloriana was criticised for being neither one thing nor another. Neither Anne Boleyn nor Henry VIII called themselves 'Protestant' in their lifetimes.

I've perhaps elaborated disproportionately here on that debate, but that was the catalyst for my reading of this book which, religiosity and pro versus anti Katherine of Aragon aside, I found highly readable.

I would not rate this in the same important reference category as, say Eric Ives, whose masterpiece on Anne suffers such bookish dryness, despite its academic brilliance, that it perhaps falls outside the parameters of leisure study. I maybe even prefer Antonia Fraser's or Alison Weir's sumptuous stylistics (the latter published specifically on this queen, while both wrote books on Henry's six wives). I do feel, nonetheless, that Denny has earned her place with this book, in this seemingly infinite reading line. I have read far worse Anne Boleyn coverage than this. The quality is indisputably high.

For those seeking diversity of views on a contentious historical figure, I consider this to be as important and valid a take as other quality biography. Every angle is worth exploring and this one, in my opinion, is expressed stylishly and eruditely.

I enjoyed this passionate, courageously one-sided account of a woman we'll possibly never know certain vital adjudicating factors on. There were many fine Anne Boleyn biographies before this and will be others to follow, some not so good. This one definitely belongs on my 'good' shelf.

My review of Henry: Virtuous Prince, by David Starkey

Henry: Virtuous Prince

by David Starkey

My rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Being one of the more recent Henry VIII biographies, and being specifically about Henry's youth, this was a popular choice when widespread interest became fuelled by 'that' TV series with Jonathan Rhys Meyers. I checked it for comparison with the 5 others I've read on Henry.

I rate it on par with the good ones for dynastic background and incidental (impersonal) detail, but not for character study. If more drily and stuffily presented than personally accessible, this is academically fine and faultless in its fine detail.

Not the first Starkey biography I've read, this is his pet dynasty. He specialised in Tudor history at Cambridge, writing a thesis on Henry VIII's household. His knowledge, as would be expected, is impressive, while his reader-connection is standoffish. This makes for a drier, less authentic result than I seek in any biography.

Focusing on young Henry rather than his life, this might have been a more personal look at the 'spare' heir whose apparent destiny changed course for the better with the death of his older brother Arthur. No matter how meticulously researched and presented, personal supply inventories and monetary accounts do not suffice, in my mind, as 'personalisation'. Rather, a more intimate style of penmanship than Starkey's is the key.

While, admittedly, generalisations can be invalid, the notary female historical biographers I've read (mostly, not all) have achieved more evocative results than their male contemporaries. Such women have been criticised for being overly emotive in approach and Starkey seems to be making a point around this in his own more remote, albeit supremely erudite, style. If, like me, you like blood pumped into a study's cheeks, tones given to their voice, rationale explained around their more private decisions, then Starkey disappoints. 

Only fair to consider that the 'heart and soul' we might be prospecting for in this has been reaped over and over from Starkey's most formidable biographical predecessors - there was no point in his aiming to replicate, but rather to find an original take on this weightily covered topic. In this unenviable task he succeeds, leaving his own hallmark on the vastly sprawling genre of Tudor biography.

This slightly prickly addition to any Tudor reading shelf will contribute balance and sophistication.

My review of Rex v. Edith Thompson: A Tale of Two Murders, by Laura Thompson

Rex v. Edith Thompson: A Tale of Two Murders

by Laura Thompson

My rating: 5 out of 5 stars

It was known in its day as 'the Ilford murder'. 

Edith Thompson and Frederick Bywaters were British lovers hanged for the murder of Edith's husband Percy. 

Their 1922 Old Bailey trial became one of the biggest scandals of the still stuffy, Edwardian-minded era.

Edith's love letters used as prosecution material in court … and published in the national press for all to sniff at and tut over (journalist Rebecca West publicly tagged Edith 'a shocking piece of rubbish').

As the older married woman (a mere twenty-nine) to her twenty-year-old lover, Edith was smeared ('cancelled' in todays' patois) and demonised as an adulteress. A jezebel, a temptress. More or less a sorceress, who had bewitched naïve young Freddy and seduced him into killing her dull, disinterested yet violently jealous husband.

It happened thus:

On 3 October 1922, in the East London suburb of Ilford, Edith and husband Percy were walking home after a night at a London theatre, when an assailant leapt from the darkness and fatally stabbed Percy. 

When police tracked the murderer, merchant seaman Freddy Bywaters, and discovered his romantic link to the abruptly widowed Edith, she too was arrested as Freddy's accomplice. 

Both were found guilty and hanged in January 1923, he at HMP Pentonville, she at HMP Holloway. Edith's executioner, John Ellis, was reportedly traumatised by this finality, after she spent her concluding hours of life hysterically crying and screaming.

Each were buried in unmarked graves in their respective prison grounds, as was customary. Edith would later be exhumed with other executed women, under a prison rebuilding program, and reinterred at Brookwood. Freddy was not.

Edith was framed throughout the trial as a foolish, impetuous woman from humble beginnings, who had married more for convention than love. Only at the final hour did her plight draw brief public sympathy, with the hanging of women considered abhorrent (none had occurred in Britain since 1907). 

The case fleetingly became a cause célèbre.

Yet there was nary a skerrick of evidence to convict her, just the straitlaced prejudice (and perhaps veiled jealousy) of 'respectable' married ladies, institutional misogyny of a patriarchal judicial system, and prudish demurral to recognise a complex, intelligent woman aeons ahead of her time in a society still metaphorically trussed-up in stays and starched collars.

The lovers had a platonic history predating their romance. Freddy was a friend of Edith's younger brothers and had once lived with her family before moving out into the world. Returning in his late teens, he met her again through her family. Now married to Percy, the bright, career hopeful Edith introduced the two men who hit it off. 

She gradually saw the handsome, homecoming Freddy in a new light, potentially pairing him off with her sister Avis when the quartet holidayed on the Isle of Wight. 

But nothing eventuated with Avis and Freddy, and as a newfound friend of Percy, Freddy was invited to lodge with the married couple, the trio at first happy. 

Soon, however, Edith and Freddy's affair unfolded, at first secretly. As Percy grew suspicious, fireworks were sparked. Edith was flung across a room hitting a chair, her arm bruised black from shoulder to elbow. Husband and lover locked horns, with the latter sent packing.

She was by no means alone. The married upper classes and bohemian elite brazenly slept with who they liked, though it wasn't much talked about in polite society. But Edith's aspirant, lower middle-class breed had stiffer rules of morality to adhere to. The hypocrisy stank.

If this had happened a century later, post #MeToo, Edith's conviction would be laughed out of court, with global sisterhood protests erupting via social media teamwork.

Published in 2018, this astonishing dissection of a fatal extramarital tangle by Laura Thompson (no relation to Edith or Percy) delivers a 444-page forensic juggernaut, arguably unparalleled in scale or scope in its genre.

Admittedly, such fleshed out intensity may not be for everyone, especially those rushing to grab a lunchtime pulp read from a railway platform kiosk. It took patience at the outset, but once into the pace I was hooked.

This is surely among Laura Thompson's greatest works (I had already read and loved her earlier biographies Life in a Cold Climate: Nancy Mitford and Take Six Girls: The Lives of the Mitford Sisters).

On narrative power alone, she could write about Thomas the Tank Engine and captivate no less. Her incisive study of the human psyche is razor sharp, her absurdist tongue-in-cheek wit and droll asides hilarious.

Fellow author and biographer Kate Colquhoun describes this infamous case, on the book's back cover blurb, as 'another dark parable of society's vilification of women. Intelligent... A tantalizing investigation'.

I agree wholeheartedly. Highly recommended reading.

My review of Elizabeth and Essex, Lytton Strachey

Elizabeth and Essex

by Lytton Strachey

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Though not everyone's favourite book of this period, this retains its genre's benchmark status. 

Once considered the definitive piece after its 1928 release, it has in more recent times been superseded by works of academics and aficionados with the advantage of modern research methodologies. 

Yet this vital contribution by a master wordsmith in a class of his own cannot be overlooked by today's Elizabethan history buffs.

Perhaps Lytton Strachey never intended Elizabeth and Essex as primarily a detailed documentation of this turbulent royal liaison. He was, first and foremost, a supreme storyteller.

A graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge and founding member of the influential Bloomsbury Group of writers, intellectuals, philosophers and artists, Strachey notably established a new form of biography that saw empathy and personal insight meet wit and irreverence. 

He was influenced by Dostoyevsky, whose novels Strachey read and reviewed. Similarly, Sigmund Freud's influence over Strachey's work, particularly in Elizabeth and Essex, has been commonly noted. 

Whilst not to everyone's stylistic taste and lacking the 'popular' appeal of more recent Tudor histories, this retains an important place in its genre. I suspected my Elizabethan history reading incomplete before consuming this and on finishing it saw why.

Though I might never have been bought this thoughtful gift from someone dear, I was, and it undoubtedly broadened my literary scope. Having since read dozens of fine historical biographies, I still honour this with pride of place on my shelf.

My review of Bette Davis: More Than a Woman, by James Spada

Bette Davis: More Than a Woman

by James Spada

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Ryan Murphy's FX anthology TV drama Feud: Bette and Joan (2017) sparked renewed interest in the rival title characters. Bette was portrayed with aplomb by multiple award-winning Susan Sarandon. The pair's older fans, including myself, dusted off fading biographies, inevitably comparing pre-established accounts with Murphy's reimagined screen depictions of these legendary divas. A nostalgic journey of revision ensued.

James Spada is a superb biographer. I've read several Bette Davis biographies and find it impossible to rate one higher than the others. Inescapably, many details are rehashed across all of them. This one I liked, not much more or less than the others I've read. However, if I were recommending which ones to include in your coverage (there are so many), this would make my list.

All the fabulous comical caricatures have redefined our memories of this wonderful actress. Just watch her actual films, though, and you'll rediscover that she was nowhere near as over the top as you might have recalled, she had far greater dramatic subtlety and nuance than her impersonators have led us to believe. 

As a woman she was renowned for being earthier than her professional nemesis Joan Crawford and boasted of that, making her perhaps appear the more arrogant of the two, yet no less adorable. 

I like to make my own mind up about the subjects of biographies and usually can.

That Bette Davis was no saint becomes clear enough after covering a few biographies, that she was no monster either is also clear. She was a fascinating woman and a great, great star.

My review of Joan Crawford: The Ultimate Star, by Alexander Walker

Joan Crawford: The Ultimate Star

by Alexander Walker

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Ryan Murphy's FX TV anthology drama Feud: Bette and Joan (2017) sparked renewed curiosity in the rival title characters. Joan was portrayed (with notably finer nuance than Faye Dunaway's career-stalling 1981 Mommie Dearest caricature) by 'Triple Crown of Acting' champion Jessica Lange. The pair's older fans, me included, dusted off fading biographies, inevitably comparing pre-established accounts with Murphy's reimagined screen depictions of these legendary divas. A nostalgic journey of revision ensued.

I've read five Crawford biographies and usually find it impossible to rate one higher than the others. Inescapably, many details are rehashed across them all. This one I like, a little more than the others. It would be near the top of my recommendation list, not because of any unique informational content but because I like Walker's work generally, which I've read covering the lives of numerous illustrious names.

Joan Crawford became a divisive subject in the wake of daughter Christina's vicious 1978 exposé memoir Mommie Dearest after the star's death. Fans and apologists closed ranks, turning hyper-defensive while rallying to restore Joan's good name, some losing all objectivity. 

That's fine, any intelligent reader can see past this, we feel the passion of the authors which makes for good reading in itself.

I like to make my own mind up about the subjects of biographies and usually can. 

That Joan Crawford was no saint becomes clear enough after covering a few biographies. That she was no monster becomes just as clear. She was a fascinating woman and a great, great star.

Alexander Walker stands out from Joanie's other biographers. There is something marginally more personal about his coverage. I was left feeling more as if I'd known the woman that I did from the other four biographies (but then, by the fifth, one is more familiar anyway).

If you're a Crawford fan, as I am, you might not learn much new from this, but I certainly felt afterwards that it had been worth checking out.

A quality read with some great pics.

My review of Elizabeth & Leicester: Power, Passion, Politics, by Sarah Gristwood

Elizabeth & Leicester: Power, Passion, Politics

by Sarah Gristwood 

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

After thoroughly enjoying Sarah Gristwood's other historical biographies, it was with eager anticipation that I turned to this. The legendary courtship between my favourite Tudor monarch and her Master of the Horse, Robert Dudley (later knighted Earl of Leicester), has for centuries intrigued scholars and captivated the public imagination, my own notwithstanding. I have read every great biography on this iconic royal and, like others, feel a creeping dread whenever I finish another, of having exhausted all material to date. Many is the time I have scoured library after library in vain, only to end up rereading things. Such was the extent of my joy at finding this book one late Sunday afternoon, and by such a great writer.

So many of our favourite Tudor events are tied up in this passionate liaison between Elizabeth and Leicester. There was the early period our two protagonists spent imprisoned in the Tower of London, in their youth, which begs so many questions surrounding the formation of their bond. The later mysterious death of Dudley's wife Amy, early in Elizabeth's reign, made the queen and her favourite free to marry whilst, paradoxically, preventing them from so doing due to the episode's inevitable controversy. Elizabeth's infamous offer of Dudley as husband to her rival cousin Mary, Queen of Scots, scandalised royal courts across Europe. In maturity our star-crossed pair together oversaw the later entrapment of that scheming would-be usurper queen and the showdown of the mighty Spanish Armada in oratory scenes long immortalised. Robert became, in effect, the consort that never was, trailing companies of liveried servants and horsemen and entertaining his 'heretic queen' on a scale so lavish it as to become the talk of Christendom. Literature, drama, opera and ballet abound with these tales.

Their tiffs and tirades, too, often more oblique than overt, often more written than personally enacted, became the stuff of courtly legend. Robert involved himself in the plot to marry off the Queen of Scots to the Catholic Duke of Norfolk, placing Elizabeth's throne on potentially shakier ground than that on which it was already precariously perched. The widowed Leicester even twice remarried behind Elizabeth's back, arousing her jealously and ire as could no other favourite. As puffed up and proud as she, Robert was her egotistical match, even blatantly overriding her orders not to accept overlordship of the Netherlands whilst there as her representative in wartime.

Yet the pair remained ultimately inseparable. Robert's surrogate and stepson Essex, ungratefully snatching up liberties unthinkable to other courtiers in Elizabeth's dotage, never came close to enjoying the closeness of his predecessor, indeed lost his head on the executioner's block for overstepping his mark and attempting insurrection.      

I also enjoyed and appreciated the sixteen-page Appendix chapter on Arthur Dudley (who claimed to be Robert and Elizabeth's child), which precedes a fascinating examination of fictional portrayals over the centuries. 

For narrative style I preferred Gristwood's earlier books, Blood Sisters: The Women Behind The War Of The Roses and Arbella: England's Lost Queen. By comparison, I found this stylistically longwinded, its sentences too convoluted with dashes and parentheses. Hence my four rather than five-star rating. Even so, I loved it.

This book is thorough, accurate, impeccably referenced and error-free – hallmarks of quality – leaving no stone unturned. On an academic level it succeeds.

A must for all Elizabeth I readers.

My review of The White Queen, by Philippa Gregory

The White Queen

by Philippa Gregory 

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

I read this novel having exhausted much of the definitive fictional and non-fictional work on my favourite periods. Not my all-time favourite epoch, the more I read on the Wars of the Roses the more interested I become.

The White Queen is the first in Philippa Gregory's series The Cousins' War about the female figures of those 'wars' fought between 1455 and 1487 (with related fighting before and after).

This novel's title refers to Elizabeth Woodville who, as Sir John Grey's widow, was thought to have used occult powers to seduce King Edward IV, becoming his queen and widow. The legendary mystery of her little sons, the Princes in the Tower, is examined, and whether King Richard III had them killed.

Heavily featured is Anne Neville, Warwick the Kingmaker's daughter who will marry Richard III, briefly becoming Queen of England.

We also follow Margaret Beaufort, whose son Henry Tudor will marry Elizabeth Woodville's daughter, founding his famous royal dynasty. 

Whilst this makes no pretence of targeting the intelligentsia, it never stoops as low as hardline history pedants may presuppose. Gregory is first an historian and secondly a novelist. Accuracy to fine detail and meticulous research is evidently paramount, though without compromising literary calibre. That more than suffices for some reading purposes. Non-fiction histories of our less favourite periods can err on the dry side.

If I want to read a great novelist I will. Likewise with a great academic historian. But for deepening my familiarity with such a convoluted and not especially gripping episode, I prefer an accomplished historian who can fictionalise engagingly - not simply either a dashing literary wordsmith or a formidable date-spouting egghead.

If we had Proust, Dostoyevsky, Hugo or Virginia Wolf writing on this topic they would lack the specialised knowledge required of it. To make such a book work it must be done by an historian rather than a novelist. Imagine Barbara Cartland, the most read romance novelist, attempting this? Then again, would we really sit pigheadedly yawning through some dry, dusty old textbook purely for bare factuality's sake?

This genre therefore sits legitimately on the educational spectrum, veiled in a tissue of that popular sweetener: romantic spin. That was what I sought on this occasion and was what I found. I usually keep my literary fiction in one box and my historical fiction and non-fiction in two others. Expecting both combined can be unrealistic.

This is an impressively substantial, satisfying read by a woman who knows her material and was clearly aiming also for a popular TV spin-off. That eventuating ten-part 2013 BBC adaptation was said to have had, like so many of its genre, a cheapening effect, receiving mixed to negative reviews. Ms. Gregory would have nonetheless laughed all the way to the bank.

Although I tend to read more non-fiction history, skipping straight to the facts, this fictional piece marked a well-earned break from my borderline stuffy convention. Good for Philippa Gregory and may she reap all riches she's worked so hard for.

My review of Crown of Thistles: The Fatal Inheritance of Mary Queen of Scots, by Linda Porter

Crown of Thistles: The Fatal Inheritance of Mary Queen of Scots

by Linda Porter

My rating: 5 out of 5 stars 

If, like myself, you feel to have exhausted all biographical coverage of those two British queens in one isle, Mary of Scots and Elizabeth I, Crown of Thistles is the ultimate addendum. Exploring the background to, rather than the substance of, this fatal sisterly relationship, Linda Porter brings a freshly insightful perspective to a much-told tale, forever mesmerising in its many complexities and uncertainties.

There is no cut and dried version of much of this legend whose allure lies in its very reshaping, according to the teller and their biases.  The missing elements will probably remain so ad infinitum. These are: the defining rationale behind much of the Queen of Scots' perplexing decision making (and her level of complicity in her second husband Darnley's murder); the extent of Elizabeth's knowledge, jealously, rivalry and regal or familial integrity behind so many of her actions or inactions; and the related hushed discussions and covert activities behind so many closed doors across Britain between 19 August 1561 - when Mary returned home to Scotland, a stranger and teenaged queen dowager of France - and 8 February 1587, when her head was clumsily removed by an incompetent executioner at Fotheringay Castle, Northamptonshire. 

That final bloody act was cited by Catholics everywhere as religious persecution, as they rallied into action the Spanish Armada the following year. If successful, that crusade against the most dangerous enemy of their faith would have seen Protestant England invaded and Elizabeth become not the Great but the Ousted. History could and would have been very different.

Porter, like her predecessors, aims to interpret this history's blurrier aspects through rational reasoning and critical discussion which, as with all versions, makes for some stimulating speculation, in parts convincing and in parts not so. Yet regardless of our leaning, towards Mary being victim or villainess, we remain compelled to read every last word there is, so as to somehow draw or reinforce our own conclusions. Such are our reasons for restlessly revisiting this messily unresolved epic, time after time. We strain to see through the misty patches of this tantalising legend, such is its unending allure. With certain hard facts forever slipping elusively through our fingers, we remain irreversibly entranced.

Possibly no data here is newly published, just this author's formation of facts, her presentation of contributing factors in the half-century or so lead up to Christendom's first and most shocking royal judicial execution ('Regicide!' roared the Catholic church from one end of Europe to the other). This famously protracted episode's culmination made a female Catholic martyr of Mary at the hands of her excommunicated Protestant female 'heretic' cousin, Elizabeth. All at a time when women were already thought unfit to rule due to their lack of levelheadedness. No wonder this has become the stuff of romantic fiction, high drama, ballet and opera. 

Because of Mary's natural place in the succession and her son's successful claim of it, here, too, was the shaping towards a royal dynasty we know today, with its peculiar links to Norman antiquity. Mary Stuart is, after all, the historical monarchical link between medieval British monarchy and its current ruling house. It is, significantly, she, a Scottish Stuart, from whom today's English royals descend, the Tudors having reached extinction with the demise of Mary's great 'barren' rival queen, cousin and executioner, Elizabeth I.

Fans thirsting for those irresistible, heart wrenching fine details of Mary's interminable state confinement under Elizabeth will be sorely disappointed and may as well save their eyes and reading lamps the labour. None of that is here. At what point Mary's goals and priorities switched from regaining her own throne to being drawn towards conspiring to usurp Elizabeth's ... what fired Elizabeth at every delicate turn, how she truly coped with 'that' allegedly botched signing of Mary's death warrant ... barely a fleeting moment of this gripping drama is to be found within these pages. The substance of this book is, instead, the distant background to all of that. 

Porter cannot be fairly faulted for her reliance on conjecture, which is the case with all her predecessors and contemporaries. This is an uncertain story on so many levels. What Porter argues 'might have' steered choices, what 'perhaps' shaped certain events, even what 'must have' unfolded in private is the inevitable explanatory trajectory, without which there would simply be no accessible angle on much of the material. Every such historian falls back on this device of logical yet subjective reasoning in the absence of sufficient documentation to get an absolute picture of certain story points.

Every smallest historical detail was acutely relevant to me. I particularly appreciated the Stewart and Lancastrian/Tudor family trees preceding the Prologue and the fifteen-page Dramatis Personae following the Epilogue – features common to such histories but still vital quick reference points for even the most knowledgeable reader.

Though I have read more hotly emotive accounts and drier, less engaging ones, Porter's balance was, I felt, fine enough. I learned more and gained greater insight than had I not read it. The narrative style is possibly less engaging that in her earlier two books, which I thoroughly enjoyed (Mary Tudor: The First Queen and Katherine the Queen: The Remarkable Life of Katherine Parr) but this is counterbalanced by the riveting essential content itself. This story will always endure, regardless its teller, but by concentrating its particular background into one work, the author saves Mary of Scots fanatics much gruelling research.

Highly recommended.

My review of Elizabeth I and Mary Stuart: On the Perils of Marriage, by Anka Muhlstein

Elizabeth I and Mary Stuart: On the Perils of Marriage 

by Anka Muhlstein

My rating: 5 out of 5 stars

I relished this double biography of my favourite two historical figures, vastly superior to others I've read.

Ankha Muhlstein's exquisite voice took a couple of short chapters to shape my mind around, but that initial perseverance was more than worth the patience. Like other French born authors, I so admire, her distinct, erudite English, once briefly accustomed to, shines from the pages, a literary treat that retains academic soundness. Her word economy is excellent, her sense of form sublime.

Unlike popular favourites like Lady Antonia Fraser and Alison Weir, who are perhaps more able to ride on past success as they progress through lengthy careers, lesser-known historians must work harder to strike and maintain that delicate balance of high calibre referencing with engaging literary style. Few succeed as well as this writer, as qualified and experienced as the divas but perhaps just less drawn to the spotlight.

The narrative alternates, chapter and verse, between the two queens, dipping randomly into each one's perspective. This makes for an edifying comparison of two starkly contrasting icons who never met, their inextricable lives vividly juxtaposed in perpetual hindsight.

That I have never felt able to side with one queen or the other is perhaps what keeps me intrigued to dig ever deeper into their history. Despite both their personal shortcomings Mary is so irresistibly likeable, Elizabeth so formidably astute. Each became legendary. Both deserve the respect that saw them immortalised in marble, side by side in Westminster Abbey. 

A gripping journey all the way (if slow at the outset, the stage is thereby well set, with all background thoroughly fleshed out). The couple of brief editorial mishaps, typos which are not the author's fault, are forgivable in such a magnificent tome.

Loved this masterful piece of storytelling, meticulously detailed and faultlessly accurate, will definitely be tempted to read more of this author's historical biographies whatever the subject.

Seriously impressive.

My review of The Life of Elizabeth I, by Alison Weir

The Life of Elizabeth I 

by Alison Weir

My rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Published outside America as Elizabeth the Queen, this is my favourite biography of my favourite historical figure - and I've read almost every one published - by the UK's highest-selling female historian.

Alison Weir's detail and quality closely rivals the great Antonia Fraser who, before Weir in an earlier decade, wrote the now definitive work on Elizabeth's great adversary, Mary Queen of Scots, my next favourite historical figure.

With her mother, Anne Boleyn, executed when Elizabeth was two, and her parents' marriage annulled, she was declared illegitimate. At twenty-five this dogged survivor succeeded her half-sister 'Bloody Mary', who had imprisoned Elizabeth for almost a year on suspicion of supporting Protestant rebels.

Tagged the 'Virgin Queen', Elizabeth considered herself married to England, never settling on a groom when any choice of foreign prince could have worked politically against her favour. Her true great love, Robert Dudley 'the Gypsy', was beneath her in rank, of famously treasonous stock and of dubious public renown after the mysterious death of his wife Amy.

More moderate a ruler than her father and half-siblings, one of her mottoes was 'video et taceo' ('I see, and say nothing'). Her Religious Settlement evolved into today's Church of England. Her eponymous age saw English drama flourish, led by Shakespeare and Marlowe, with seamen like Francis Drake knighted as heroes.

Her forty-four-year reign, for many years politically shaky after she was branded a heretic by the pope, eventually brought England stability, helping forge its sense of national identity.

Renowned by detractors as short-tempered and indecisive, Elizabeth was also famously charming and no flibbertigibbet. On the contrary, she was a wily mistress of prevarication. Blessed with the 'common touch' she was hugely popular with her subjects, nicknamed 'Good Queen Bess' and 'Gloriana'.

The Spanish Armada's failure associated her with one of English history's greatest military victories. Her Tilbury speech to the troops, delivered wearing a silver breastplate over a white velvet dress, is legendary.

Whilst Weir's writing has been derided as 'popular history', the jealousy underlying such professional jibing is plainly evident. The Guardian's Kathryn Hughes wrote in 2005: 'To describe her as a popular historian would be to state a literal truth – her chunky explorations of Britain's early modern past sell in the kind of multiples that others can only dream of.'

In her website's Author Biography, Weir graciously shuns the derogatory connotation behind 'popular historian', remarking eloquently:

'History is not the sole preserve of academics. Although I have the utmost respect for those historians who undertake new research and contribute something new to our knowledge. History belongs to us all, and it can be accessed by us all. And if writing it in a way that is accessible and entertaining, as well as conscientiously researched, can be described as popular, then, yes, I am a popular historian, and am proud and happy to be one.'

This book is as thick as a brick, supremely informative and worth infinitely more than its considerable retail value. Kept me up burning the midnight oil for weeks. I reread it two years later, loving it just as much. Well worth the lost sleep. Can't praise it highly enough.