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.

My review of Catherine of Aragon, by Garrett Mattingly

Catherine of Aragon

by Garrett Mattingly

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

A great biography of a great royal consort, England's beloved Queen Cate.

This daughter of Queen Isabella I of Castile and King Ferdinand II of Aragon was three when betrothed to Arthur, Prince of Wales, heir apparent to the English throne. They were then married by proxy in 1499, corresponding in Latin until Arthur was fifteen, when their parents agreed they were old enough to actually marry.

Henry VII sailed Catherine to England for the marriage. As Prince and Princess of Wales the couple resided on the Welsh borders. Several months later both became ill, possibly with the sweating sickness which swept the area. Arthur died aged fifteen in 1502, leaving Catherine alone in a foreign country, impoverished without a settled dowry. 

Henry VII tried avoiding his obligation to return Catherine's dowry, half of which he had not yet received, to her father. To settle matters, it was agreed that Catherine could marry Henry VII's second son, Henry Duke of York, five years her junior.

In 1509, seven years after Arthur's death, Henry became King Henry VIII with Catherine at his side from the outset. She was twenty-three, Henry a few days shy of eighteen.

Catherine's tenure as England's Queen Consort lasted almost twenty-four years. Such was her immense popularity that even her foe, Thomas Cromwell, said of her 'If not for her sex she could have defied all the heroes of history.'

A patroness of Renaissance humanism, Catherine befriended great scholars Erasmus of Rotterdam and Thomas More. She commissioned Juan Luis Vives' book The Education of Christian Women, which claimed women had rights to educations, and was dedicated to her. She also won widespread admiration by founding an extensive programme for the relief of the poor. 

In 1513 she became England's regent for six months while Henry VIII was in France. During that time, she played an important part in the England's win of the Battle of Flodden. 

After Catherine's many unsuccessful births and only a daughter (Mary) Henry set his eye on Catherine's Lady in Waiting Anne Boleyn, with ideas for a male heir.

Seeking to have his marriage annulled, Henry initiated England's schism with the Catholic Church. When the pope refused the annulment, Henry defied him, assuming personal supremacy over England's church. In 1533 Catherine's marriage was declared invalid and Henry married Anne.

Catherine always considered herself Henry's rightful wife and queen, never accepting him as the Church of England's Supreme Head. Her stance attracted popular sympathy, with the English holding her in such high esteem. Regardless, Henry would only henceforth acknowledge her as Dowager Princess of Wales.

After all those years of struggle to remain Henry's consort, poor Catherine was finally packed off to the country, where she lived out her days at Kimbolton Castle. She was denied contact with even her daughter Princess Mary who, at Anne Boleyn's insistence, was declared illegitimate and removed from the succession in favour if Anne's daughter, Elizabeth.

Sad and alone, Catherine dyed in 1536 aged fifty. The English people hated her usurper and mourned deeply for Catherine.

Heartbreaking material at times, about a widely adored woman of immeasurable human decency and royal dignity, this makes for essential reading for those interested in this period.

Catherine's embittered daughter becomes the infamous Bloody Mary, who we know will take out her troubles on all and sundry - especially Anne Boleyn's daughter, Elizabeth - when Mary wins the crown.

Garrett Mattingly's biography cannot fail to satisfy.

My review of The Lady in the Tower: The Fall of Anne Boleyn, by Alison Weir

The Lady in the Tower: The Fall of Anne Boleyn

by Alison Weir

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Alison Weir is a supreme historian and writer on the royalty and courtiers of this era. I always lose myself for weeks in her books.

This one gives us a closer look at Anne Boleyn's plight, with a peep through the bars of her Tower of London cell as she awaits her famous execution.

This character has polarised historians. Many have focused on her cunning, plotting side. Others have argued her innocence, making her a political victim. This split in opinion has seen Anne's personality written up as the schemer and the lamb to the slaughter. Perhaps there was a little of both in this nevertheless remarkable figure.

She was certainly used by her ambitious parents for dynastic and political elevation. She had her heart broken when prohibited the matrimonial love match of her choice. She was adored, while tolerating much, from the tyrannical yet romantic King Henry, but endurance was a two-way street in their marriage. She undoubtedly treated Queen Catherine and Princess (later Queen) Mary appallingly.

She could surely not have been guilty of every absurd charge pressed against her, leading to her death sentence. She may or may not have been a little unfaithful to her husband King Henry VIII. She may have been a mere flirt, or she may have been thoroughly set up by her detractors. 

In fiction no villainess is without her redeeming qualities and no heroine flawless. In non-fiction we hope to see these dimensional layers examined at length. Alison Weir delivers accordingly in this fine work.

My review of Jane Seymour: Henry VIII's True Love, by Elizabeth Norton

Jane Seymour: Henry VIII's True Love

by Elizabeth Norton

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

I enjoyed this take on Henry VIII's male-heir-bearing wife. Since 'Plain Jane' Seymour has been traditionally passed down to us as a bland, pious, selfless creature devoted to wifely obedience, this book makes for interesting reading considering that, like Henry's other wives, Jane was not so cut and dried as once thought. There are several sides to every historical monarch and consort.

While Jane was indeed pious and obedient, she could not only also mistily seduce but had a mind not heretofore sufficiently credited. She could perhaps be as shrewd as any aspiring queen consort, in her demurest of ways: as they say, 'it's always the quiet ones you have to watch ...'

Jane knew how to work the system minus the shrewish histrionics or diplomatic clumsiness of her bewitchingly beauteous but hard-faced predecessor, Anne Boleyn. Perhaps she had learnt close-up, on the job, from Anne's mistakes, being her silent but observant Mistress of the Bedchamber.   

What I particularly like about Elizabeth Norton's telling is the woman's eye view of her which, as I've argued a lot, gets us much closer inside the psyche of the subject than plain dry academia. Whilst much of this 'Jane must have thought/felt ...' material supplied here is, arguably, speculative, it is rationally reasoned and well sourced.

I was fascinated, left feeling more knowledgeable, with a more three-dimensional picture of the woman, and entertained while not to the point of feeling as if I'd sat through a melodrama. Thankfully this does not extend to sensationalism. It sticks within the boundaries of credible theory supported by hard enough data.

If Jane was as calculating as some now opine, then she clearly needed to be in a court where heads could literally roll at the drop of a hat. Whatever the truth about her she maintained dignity, composure and humility, the eternal mark of a smart and classy woman who commands our respect from the grave, from where she remains forever this legendary king's sweetheart and heroine in his glorious historic chapter.

My review of Anne of Cleves: Henry VIII's Discarded Bride, by Elizabeth Norton

Anne of Cleves: Henry VIII's Discarded Bride 

by Elizabeth Norton

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

The style of this follows a pattern across all Elizabeth Norton biographies I've read: skillfully researched, not too drily academic, and effectively enough written that we feel present in certain episodes.

This never-crowned queen consort, whose marriage was famously annulled, was passed down to us in a assortment of unkind and unjust ways, usually as an uneducated frump, the 'Flanders mare' whose looks and personal odours repulsed Henry VIII so much that he felt unable to consummate their marriage, paying her off with a wealth of palaces and income.

While this royal couple's chemistry was, evidently, all wrong, Anne was actually attractive and intelligent. Attractive enough to have had her admirers' remarks well documented and intelligent enough to negotiate probably the best deal of all Henry's wives, becoming an honorary royal 'sister' who remained in high favour and enjoyed her independence.

Neither formally well-educated nor culturally sophisticated, Anne was skilled in needlework, loved card games and considered 'gentle, virtuous, and docile'. Thought solemn by English standards, she perhaps appeared older than her years, but her paintings had undergone Holbein's 'treatments' to suit her much older king (these likenesses were famously accused of inaccuracies, blamed for overly flattering her to win Henry's approval).

The French ambassador described her as tall and slim, 'of middling beauty and of very assured and resolute countenance'. She was fair haired and was said by chronicler Edward Hall to have had a lovely face.

A sister of Duke Wilhelm of Cleves, Anne was a Roman Catholic who converted to Anglicanism to suit Henry but later reverted to suit his Catholic daughter Queen Mary I. A popular figure with the public and Tudor royal family alike, Anne had a great life and was universally liked and respected. The last of Henry's wives to die, she is the only one buried in Westminster Abbey.

Following the current trend of biographical amendments to Anne's reputation - from spurned, ugly foreign hausfrau to wily, highly esteemed great dame - Elizabeth Norton's contribution may offer no groundbreaking revelations, but her style is among the most accessible. 

Without lowering standards to the emotively driven novel-style of some, Norton strikes a fine balance granting us authentic entry into her subject's personal world without losing that all important scholarly perspective. Here she once more shows herself to be an erudite historian blessed with literary talent and a popular voice.

My review of Katherine Howard: A Tudor Conspiracy, by Joanna Denny

Katherine Howard: A Tudor Conspiracy 

by Joanna Denny

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Joanna Denny has brought dynamism to this erstwhile two dimensionally portrayed girl, who earlier biographers (with no more cited evidence than Denny uses here) wrote off as a juvenile delinquent, a whore, etc. Denny offers a more balanced, wider range of possibilities around Katherine's level of guilt or innocence than earlier writers took the trouble to flesh out.

I contest arguments that this book is best suited for beginners to the period. Beginners do not turn to detailed accounts of this fleeting young queen. They aim to see the outline of Henry's reign, the shape of his dynasty's epoch - in which, contextually, Katherine Howard (sometimes spelt Catherine) was barely relevant. We can only speculate on whether much would have unfolded differently had she survived the axe.

This is a book for those with the Tudors generally mastered but seeking deeper explanations lacking in the works of antiquated savants who grew academically lazy after enjoying higher acclaim from their fraternity than Denny so far has. She has dared offer diversion from the stiff consensus and been castigated accordingly for it. Denny has been made an easy whipping post for the unsubstantiated latter day academic snobbery of a handful of textbook greenhorns.

Those detractors, as they gain the wisdom of a mature readership rather than cramming in memorised indexes of names and dates, will see that all of history is drawn using some subjectivity, some opinion and some primary data. Much of it is dry, boring propaganda. Some of the most highly praised has been proven inaccurate with the passage of time, the opening of blinkered minds and the unearthing of new evidence.

I finished the this greatly entertaining work feeling I'd come to better know and understand this likeable girl, who has been so denigrated over the centuries.

Effective historical biography is a genre of its own, quite separate from plain academia, it strikes a fine balance between hard data and mere entertainment (if you want just data visit the archives or reference library, if you want only entertainment watch The Tudors). I found that special balance here.

Thank you, Joanna Denny.

My review of Katherine the Queen: The Remarkable Life of Katherine Parr, by Linda Porter

Katherine the Queen: The Remarkable Life of Katherine Parr 

by Linda Porter

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

The Firebrand (2023) movie’s media criticism of historical inaccuracies, anachronisms and ‘wild conjecture’ prompted me to revisit this book. Cited examples include Katherine (sometimes spelt Catherine) enduring a pregnancy and miscarriage to Henry VIII, which never happened or history would have recorded it, as with Henry’s many stillborn and miscarried heirs. 

I reread reliable sources as a form of revision and confirming doubt around misleading screenplays that leave unwitting viewers assuming to have learnt something and maybe spreading such bunkum via dinner party chat, online comments, etc. 

Other such screen examples include Mary Queen of Scots (2018) depicting ‘that’ meeting between Elizabeth I (Margo Robbie) and Mary (Saoirse Ronan) which famously never happened. And which saw formidable old Bess of Hardwick, one of England’s wealthiest and most powerful landowners, transfigured into a beautiful young Chinese counterpart (Gemma Chan). Or The Tudors TV series, with Henry VIII’s Tudor sisters Margaret, Queen of Scotland and Mary, Queen of France, amalgamated into one composite character (played by Gabrielle Anwar) and corpulent, decrepit Henry VIII portrayed by svelte young heartthrob Jonathan Rhys Myers.

I enjoyed rereading about Queen Katherine Parr who, like Henry VIII's other five wives, became somewhat misrepresented over subsequent centuries.

While Katherine has come down to us as Henry's 'mature' last queen, this fact has been overemphasised (possibly in gauging her against her teenaged predecessor, Katherine Howard). Young enough for Henry's first wife, Catherine of Aragon, to be her godmother, this last one was only 32 when she married him and dead at 36. 

Linda Porter dispels various myths, including that of Katherine having always been an ambitious schemer who as a child declared to her mother: 'My hands are ordained to touch crowns and sceptres, not spindles and needles.'

Katherine was certainly clever and on occasion resorted to subtle survival tactics that evaded Henry's previous queens (indeed she was the one who famously 'survived', outliving him while still married to him - Anne of Cleves also survived him but he annulled their marriage). Katherine was neither ruthlessly ambitious nor gratuitously underhanded and is rightly shown here to be of outstanding integrity and loyalty to Henry despite her discrete passion for further religious reform than he favoured.

Already widowed twice she was set to marry Thomas Seymour, brother of Henry's second wife Jane, uncle of the future King Edward VI. When the lonesome and ageing Henry proposed to Katherine Parr, a year or so after his fifth wife Katherine Howard's execution, she shelved Seymour to become queen then married him anyway after Henry's death.

She was considered brave for marrying Henry, who had notoriously disposed of four of his five previous wives by axe or annulment. Widowed again after Henry, pregnant Dowager Queen Katherine sent away her ward, the future Elizabeth I, from her Chelsea house after finding husband Thomas in a compromising position with her stepdaughter. She then died after having Thomas's baby.

It is in part thanks to Katherine that we have the Elizabethan era handed down to us as was, as she had helped restore Elizabeth to the succession and involved herself in the princess's famous education. Of course, few suspected Elizabeth's brother would die, so it seemed unlikely either of Henry's daughters would rule. This being so, they could have been swept under the carpet and married off abroad.  Henry might have been so inclined if not for Katherine's notable loyalty to her stepdaughters.

She also helped reconcile Elizabeth's half-sister Mary to Henry, restoring Mary also to the official succession ahead of Elizabeth. Had that not occurred Mary, too, might never have reigned and her infamous burnings of Protestant heretics might never have been a reality. 

Renowned for her erudition, diplomacy and dignity, Katherine was made Regent in Henry's absence as he led military campaigns. She was meant to rule as Regent after Henry's death, during young King Edward VI's minority, but new Edwardian court politics saw this plan instantly dissolved before Henry's body was cold.

The later Victorian myth of Katherine Parr having been a sort of surrogate nursemaid to the sickly older Henry has long been dispelled by leading historians, with whom Porter concurs. Henry had no shortage of such intimate carers that he needed his queen to become one.

Linda Porter's biographies are among the more recent ones published and have a freshness that does not sacrifice academic quality. I certainly enjoyed this one, a fine complimentary addition to other such works by Porter's great contemporaries.

My review of Lady Jane Grey, by Hester W. Chapman

Lady Jane Grey

by Hester W. Chapman

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

I have read widely for decades, tomes old and new, on Tudor royals and courtiers. Here was a girl forever pushed to the back of my reading cue. I, like many, knew Lady Jane Grey as 'that' girl who only reigned for nine days. That she was executed under Queen ('Bloody') Mary I whose ministers charged Jane with treason for usurping Mary. The knowledge I lacked involved the circumstantial details. Who was driving such a plot besides Jane's ambitious parents? Why? And to what extent Jane herself was a willing or unwilling participant.

Here is all of that explained plus more. We explore Jane's regal family background, her right royal education as an heir to Henry III's throne and her differing relationships with each of her three cousins, the main contenders for Henry's throne, who for much of Jane's life were ahead of her in the succession.

The succession became reordered along the way. By the premature demise of Henry's sickly primary heir, young King Edward VI, Jane's place had been manoeuvred, without her consultation, to the front. 

This, most know, was a religio-political move steered by powerbrokers fervent to keep the crown from Catholic Mary and 'bastard' Elizabeth.

What many are often left wondering is: why did the famously reluctant Jane go along with this at all? And why, when her famously forgiving cousin Queen Mary, after only nine days, successfully took back her rightful place from the 'usurping' Jane, did Jane end up with her head on the execution block? I had hitherto felt to have been offered a varying range of partly subjective explanations by historians seemingly wanting to gloss over it all in their quest to discuss greater icons.  

Like many of this period's complex, intertwined scenarios, this has a cast of thousands. That includes the religiously polarised English citizenry, Jane's dynastically ambitious family and the troublesome in-laws attached to her arranged marriage which could have been avoided. Not forgetting the wily foreign officials representing Queen Mary's husband-to-be, Philip of Spain. Queen Mary herself, it seems, had her hands tied and was not necessarily the all-vengeful monster history has passed down to us.

This is a meaty read for those seasoned in the main facts of Tudor England and wanting to fill in the classic gaps. Eruditely composed and researched, it escapes the trap of becoming too academically dry. Such are the makings of a high calibre, yet popular, historical biography. 

A well detailed, entertaining and informative accomplishment. I was all the better for having read it.

My Review of Elizabeth of York: A Tudor Queen and Her World, by Alison Weir

Elizabeth of York: A Tudor Queen and Her World

by Alison Weir

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

We hear relatively little from historians about this fascinating queen consort, whose blood claim to England’s throne was far greater than that of her husband, King Henry VII, the first Tudor monarch with whom she founded the famous dynasty. Her emblematic White Rose of York, paired with Henry’s Red Rose of Lancaster, formed the Tudor Rose, that great diplomatic solution to the Wars of the Roses which remains England’s official floral emblem.

Born in Westminster Palace, the oldest child of King Edward IV, it was because of her gender that Elizabeth was never considered for rulership in her own right. This biological ‘handicap’ would be rethought for her granddaughter and namesake, Queen Elizabeth I, the last Tudor monarch, for the politics of post-reformation religion. In Elizabeth of York’s youth there were too many male claimants, virulently competing, for women to be considered. Towards the culmination of the protracted ‘Cousin’s War’ it was every man for himself, and every woman put forward by her male guardian for politically advantageous marriage stakes.

Alison Weir has always been one of my favourite historical non-fiction authors. Here she again treads where others have not, using her characteristic inventorial detail and commonsensical personal reasoning to draw a literary portrait of an erstwhile somewhat two-dimensional figure. Traditionally drawn as a somewhat stiff, obedient character not unlike her future daughter-in-law Jane Seymour, Elizabeth had other sides explored at length in this entrancing biography. She was no dark horse, no villainess, but no bland Pollyanna either.

She was the older sister of the ‘princes in the tower’ who mysteriously vanished leaving room for their Regent-uncle Gloucester to become King Richard III. Once widowed, King Richard even considered marrying this niece, to strengthen his shaky claim to the throne. The incestuous notion, however, triggered mass repulsion, further weakening, rather than strengthen, his profile, already in damage control after so cunningly and callously usurping his uncrowned juvenile nephew. Elizabeth, not only having expressed no objection to the proposed match, was even put out when he decided against marrying her (astonishing, considering that, to justify his own coup, Richard had earlier declared Elizabeth's parents' marriage invalid, deeming Elizabeth and her siblings illegitimate and ineligible for the throne).

But such was Elizabeth's cool determination to claim her due place on the throne of an England offering princesses few independent choices. Regardless of whether as ruler or consort, she believed herself destined to sit there, as did the English people, who would in time come to revere her.

Almost married off to first George Neville, nephew of the 16th Earl of Warwick (‘The Kingmaker’), then to Louis XI of France’s son, the Dauphin Charles, her destiny had been uncertain for much of her early life. Eventually a mother of seven, she was reputedly pious, benevolent, dutiful yet quietly resilient, having endured much adversity during her mother’s early widowhood, when they lived in the sanctuary of Westminster Abbey after King Edward IV’s death at aged forty from an acute and unspecified illness. 

The daughter of the legendary ‘White Queen’, Elizabeth Woodville, Elizabeth of York was thought beautiful, inheriting her father’s good looks but most notably he mother’s fair complexion and distinctive red-gold hair, passed down to her infamous son, King Henry VIII, and grandchildren King Edward VI and Queen Elizabeth I (their elder sister, Queen ‘Bloody’ Mary I, had auburn hair, darkened perhaps by her Spanish mother’s genes). 

According to folklore, Elizabeth of York is the ‘queen ... in the parlour’ in the nursery rhyme ‘Sing a Song of Sixpence’; her husband, the famously parsimonious King Henry VII, being the ‘king ... counting out his money’. Her marriage, forged by dynastic necessity, became a rare true love match.

She died in the Tower of London, then still a royal residence, on her 37th birthday, following a postpartum infection from giving birth to Princess Katherine who lived for only eight days. Henry VII was so grief stricken he became ill, disallowing all but his mother Margaret Beaufort into his presence. His intense grief lasted for years, his reputation for miserliness and paranoia becoming markedly worse. The Tower of London was thereafter abandoned as a royal residence.

Afforded a more lavish funeral than even her father, Edward IV, Elizabeth lay in state at the Tower and was interred at Westminster Abbey's magnificent Henry VII Lady Chapel commissioned by her husband. She and Henry still lay there together, their graves topped with an elaborate bronze effigy.

The last Plantagenet to wear any royal crown (her uncle Richard being the last to reign), Elizabeth of York was titular predecessor and mother-in-law of Katherine of Aragon. She was a great-grandmother of ‘Nine Days Queen’ Lady Jane Grey and a grandmother, great-grandmother and great-great-grandmother to Scottish monarchs James V, Mary Queen of Scots and James VI and I of Scotland and England. An ancestor of today’s British royals, she is an important genealogical link of continuum between Norman rulers, from whom the Plantagenets sprang, and Queen Elizabeth II.

While this is not my clear favourite Weir biography, neither is its subject the most exciting historical royal. Just because their most glittering subjects are already covered does not mean any great writer such as this should cease working. Like the great Lady Antonia Fraser, Alison Weir displays uncommon bravery by taking on certain of history’s less widely popular figures, having already claimed her place as one of this genre’s contemporary giants. This was, overall, another truly absorbing, entertaining and enlightening addition to my ‘Read’ list. I closed the last page having come to know personally a great lady who should have been queen in her own right and today would have been.

My review of Sleep It Off Lady, by Jean Rhys

Sleep It Off Lady

by Jean Rhys

My rating: 5 out of 5 stars

The late Jean Rhys remains my favourite writer ever and this selection of her work shines as only her words can. There was no one like her before, nor has there been anyone since. Her wry, brutally honest, self-deprecating voice is so beautifully tormented she's irresistible whatever your gender. She grabs you by the heart, chews you up and spits you out, somehow leaving you begging for more.

The heart wrenching title story sums up the book brilliantly, an excellent tale to choose. As with most of Rhys' work, a common thread in this collection is the theme of the displaced woman, the foreigner, the outsider, the stranger to this strange world of ours. We so readily take her into our hearts, understand and empathise completely. Her issues are ones most people have had at some time or other, but few have conveyed so succinctly. 

These are the short works of an underrated enigma, in my opinion, who took my breath away from the first word of the first page of the first book I read of hers. This was the last of her fiction that I read, completing her life works. Unsurprisingly, she maintained her hypnotic hold over me to the last word. That was when I decided to start over and read her from scratch, every word, line, every book that she ever had published.

If you get one fleeting chance in a lifetime to read this cult status legend, you'd be nuts to consider letting it pass.

My review of Les Misérables, by Victor Hugo

Les Misérables

by Victor Hugo

My rating: 5 out of 5 stars

It gets no better than Victor Hugo's 1862 epic, considered one of the 19th century's greatest novels.

The masterpiece is a breathtaking reminder of the limitless extremes of human cruelty and generosity, as true for today's world as it was for Hugo's. The reader is seduced into caring deeply about the plights of these wondrous, intensely drawn characters.

Set between 1815 and the June 1832 Paris Rebellion, it follows various parallel lives, focusing on ex-convict Jean Valjean and his life of redemption. Although a force for good in the world, he cannot escape his criminal past. Reinventing himself as Monsieur Madeleine, he becomes a wealthy factory builder, parochially renowned for his benevolence and is, by popular demand, appointed Mayor.

Valjean, we wish was somewhere round our own corner, a man whose impossible decency we immediately warm and aspire to. His great adversary, fanatical police inspector Javert, is on an obsessive, unending crusade to recapture Valjean. Someone we wish dreadful events upon, Javert eventually meets an unsavoury end we'd perhaps prefer more terrible.

Haunting characters are tragedienne factory worker Fantine, whose fostered-out daughter, Cosette, Valjean rescues from cruel innkeepers Monsieur and Madame Thénardier. Raising Cosette as his own daughter, Valjean keeps his convict past as much a secret from her as from everyone else. Meanwhile, the Thénardiers' elder daughter, Éponine, a parentally pampered and spoiled child, ends up a street urchin, falling for revolutionary Marius. The latter, however, has eyes only for the now privileged Cosette, adopted daughter of Mayer Valjean, alias Monsieur Madeleine.

Not just these main characters, but the thousands of extras vividly crowding Hugo's rich, textured backdrop, earn our heartfelt concerns and goodwill. We know precisely why thieves thieve, why rebels rebel, why gendarmes, jailers and bureaucrats are to be avoided at all costs. We are, indeed, revolutionaries ourselves as we take this journey alongside them, all the way to the torch-lit, gun smoke-shrouded barricades.

Themes and topics include historical Paris, politics, moral philosophy, antimonarchism, justice, religion, and variations of romantic and familial love.

Comprising five volumes and approximately 1,500 pages in unabridged English-language editions, this is one of the longest novels ever written. Not one to be rushed, savour every line and take as many months as you need. The resulting immeasurable satisfaction is a priceless treasure.

My review of Home To Roost and Other Peckings, by Deborah Mitford

Home To Roost and Other Peckings

by Deborah Mitford

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

This not being the first Deborah Devonshire née Mitford book I had read (I loved Wait for Me! too), I knew I would like it. Because, despite her humility and self-deprecating humour, this youngest Mitford sister, having reached the highest rank of them all, was of fine intellect and simple charm. 

She was always quick to point out how eldest sister and arch-tease Nancy Mitford joked of Deborah never exceeding the sophistication of a nine-year-old (even nicknaming her '9'). This was about Deborah's young spirit and unaffectedness. Famously well adjusted, she treated everyone the same, from royalty to pop star to servant. 

Yet being a Mitford, Deborah was hardly conventional and drew from an extraordinary life in her many books. She grew up inventing the secret language 'Honnish' with next older sister Jessica Mitford, stowed away in an airing cupboard they called the 'Hons Cupboard', hidden away from adults in their father's drafty old Oxfordshire mansion inherited by her father, the 2nd Baron Redesdale.

Mostly home educated by governesses, from age 6 Deborah had a passion for chickens which stayed with her for life, becoming, amongst endless other things, a connoisseur of fine poultry, hence this book's title. She was also a keen horse rider and a talented ice skater, reaching professional levels but not taking it up due to lack of parental approval.

After her presentation at court as a debutante, Deborah fell in love with and was betrothed to Lord Andrew Cavendish, second son of the 10th Duke of Devonshire. They married in 1941. By the end of the WWII Deborah had lost two babies, her only brother Tom, four best friends and two brothers-in-law. She still had her famous big sisters though: the Fascist, the Communist, the Nazi, the novelist (and stud farmer Pam). 

Her husband Andrew now became heir to his father's Dukedom. In her years as Duchess of Devonshire she discovered a necessary talent for stately home restoration, learning on the job with her magnificent 16th-century mansion Chatsworth House, which her husband the duke inherited with a tax bill of nearly $20 million in the post-WWII years. Their only way of keeping Chatsworth was to restore and open it up to the public to pay for itself. 

They sold artworks, land and iconic historic buildings like Hardwick Hall to pay taxes of 80 percent of the estate’s value: around $300 million in today’s money. Deborah's transformation turned it into a self-sustaining family business.

They managed to retain Bolton Abbey estate in Yorkshire and the Lismore Castle estate in Ireland, both having been in the Cavendish family for centuries, Lismore Castle once home to Fred Astaire's sister Adele, wife of Lord Charles Cavendish (Deborah's great uncle-in-law).

As Châtelaine, Deborah entertained world leaders at Chatsworth, her husband serving as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations from 1960 to 1962, Minister of State at the Commonwealth Relations Office from 1962 to 1963, and for Colonial Affairs from 1963 to 1964. 

She received JFK and brother Bobby, to whom she was related by their sister Kathleen's marriage to Deborah's brother-in-law William (Kathleen and William died tragically young, with Kathleen buried with many Dukes of Devonshire in St Peter's Church, Edensor on the Devonshire family estate). Indeed, she was JFK's personal guest at his 1961 presidential inauguration and, more sadly, an attendee his 1963 memorial service. 

In the late 1950s and '60s it was not unheard of for the Queen Mother to invite Deborah to some event or other. Queen Elizabeth II herself had tea at Chatsworth. The then dazzling Princess Margaret's Chatsworth visits attracted other VIPs, movie stars such as Gary Cooper, literati figures like Evelyn Waugh (really an old friend of sisters Nancy and Diana), between which Deborah hobnobbed with the world's jet set, oversaw 35,000 acres of gardening, tended her famous hens and generally got her hands dirty. 

She wrote fascinating books, many about Chatsworth and her work there (she was even known to man the ticket office herself). Her Chatsworth books include Chatsworth: The House (1980), Farm Animals: Based on the Farmyard at Chatsworth (1991), Treasures of Chatsworth: A Private View (1991), Chatsworth Garden (1999) and Round About Chatsworth (2005).

Yet she remained the down-to-earth country girl who adored her many animals, kept on speaking terms with all her Mitford sisters even when the others were at loggerheads. Deborah never got into those Mitford feuds and fallouts. 'Their politics were nothing to do with me,' she said.  

She was perhaps the happiest and most grounded Mitford sister, despite her marked social elevation that set her somehow apart from her older siblings, having enjoyed a comparatively untroubled childhood then a stable lifelong marriage. 

Though minus that glaring Mitford rebellious streak, Deborah shared their sharp minds, penmanship skills, droll humour and regal 'Mitfordese' drawl ('Do admit!' 'Do tell!' 'Please picture!'). It was Deborah herself who as a girl started 'Do admit'. 

Yet simplistic in so many ways. Lucian Freud, who painted her several times, was a close friend. 'I see him when I go to London and I leave him eggs on the doorstep,' she said in an interview. 'He seems to like that. I really love him and I always have.'

Her candid patter of In Tearing Haste: Letters Between Deborah Devonshire and Patrick Leigh Fermor shows her capacity to chew the fat with a famous polyglot as if over beer and peanuts.

Just as her dotty banter in The Mitfords: Letters Between Six Sisters betrays an endearing almost vagueness, yet a deep personal loyalty. She is clearly the 'nice' one, with whom one would feel safest at a state banquet, country pig fair or couture salon hop.   

She was an ardent Elvis Presley fan. Interviewed in The Daily Telegraph, in 2007, she recounted having tea with Hitler on a visit to Munich in 1937 with her mother and sister Unity, the latter being the only one of the three who spoke German and therefore carrying on the entire conversation with Hitler. The Telegraph interviewer asked who Deborah would have preferred tea with: Elvis or Hitler. With astonishment she answered: 'Well, Elvis of course! What an extraordinary question.'

Being the youngest Mitford, Deborah outlived the others and indeed her husband the duke, becoming Dowager Duchess of Devonshire in 2004, having been appointed a Dame Commander of the Royal Victorian Order (DCVO) by Queen Elizabeth II for her service to the Royal Collection Trust.

She died aged 94 in 2014, survived by three of seven children, eight grandchildren (including fashion model Stella Tennant, whose Vogue Chatsworth shoot Deborah writes of in this book) and eighteen great-grandchildren. Her funeral at St Peter's Church, Edensor, was attended by family, friends, six hundred staff, the (then) Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall.  

Her anecdotes and ponderings in this slim volume are a heartwarming treat, written as if she's perched on the end of your bed, an old, old Dowager Duchess, telling you a few wise tales. 'When you are very old,' she once said, 'you accept what has happened. You cry over some things, but not a lot. It's too distant.'

Pure pleasure.

Showcase: Spark, from Tale Publishing, Melbourne - Launched

Showcase: Spark

Includes my latest work:

Little Spark of Oz/Prelude to a Voyage

Delighted to be part of this exciting new collection, Showcase: Spark, from Tale Publishing, Melbourne. 

An anthology of Australian writers with a difference - each writer is given ten thousand words to showcase their talent and may do so in one, two or three pieces of writing.

Eight authors show their talent, and imaginative interpretation of the theme: Spark.

With stories ranging from reflective to action packed, and from adventure to speculative this anthology has something for everyone and may just introduce you to your new favourite author.

Click and buy eBook or paperback at select platforms globally, e.g.

https://www.amazon.com.au/Showcase-Spark-C.../dp/0648038610

My review of My Hard Heart: Selected Fiction, by Helen Garner

My Hard Heart: Selected Fiction

by Helen Garner

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

I loved Helen Garner's style from the time I read with awe her Monkey Grip (1977) and, until now, never got around to exploring much else of hers - that's no excuse, of course, but life and other reading just gets in the way sometimes. But I vividly remember wishing I could do what she did at that time. Such a bar raiser and role model this talented soul must have been for so many emerging wordsmith hopefuls over the decades.

Anthologies are popular reintroductions to writers, and follow-ups, after reading their novels. In the latter category, I read with intrigue in my ongoing quest to seek out seasoned Aussie writers who grab me. I enjoyed Garner's acute observations of human nature. I relished her evocative backgrounding. Her voice is richly authentic. Her fragmented sense of form I found bravely effective. Her suburban characters endeared and revolted me as much as they seemingly do their author, amounting to fine depictions. 

Although hard going in parts, the anthology's looming sense of inertia typifies a suburban Australian mindset of not long ago or even today, where intellect feels futile and family or mateship comes first. The combined greasy despondency and simmering tetchiness across the stories captures something as fundamentally Australian as its weather, if you can muster the grit to sit through it. This seems to be Garner's intended effect and, as always with this author, she nails it magnificently.

So, in some ways these pieces struck me as cathartic exercises, a soul-baring foundation of much great modern literature.

I was compelled to keep reading, with the timelessness of her human dilemmas loud and clear throughout. 

Helen Garner hardly needs my validation after her achievements. A notable Australian literary behemoth, one must admire her work's longevity in such a fast-changing scene. Whilst she has been criticised by some for merely 'transcribing her diary material into fictional form', in her defence it needs reiterating that autobiographical fiction is the chosen genre of some of the greatest writers of all time. Raw truth punches harder, for many including this reader, than even the most elaborately contrived story plotting, character arcs and formulism of much popular fiction.

My quest for home grown Aussie writers to embrace continues. Thank you, Helen Garner, for earning your place near the top of my list.

You are among our very best, always.