My review of Kids, Wait Till You Hear This, by Liza Minnelli

Kids, Wait Till You Hear This!

by Liza Minnelli

My rating 5 out of 5 stars

Liza Minnelli is a name synonymous with such a range of topics:

From the old Hollywood she was born into as the sole child of director Vincent Minnelli and silver screen star Judy Garland. To being among the entertainment industry's rare EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony) winners.

Her outstanding showmanship that stood tall alongside rat pack giants like Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jnr, Chita Rivera and Charles Aznavour.

Her globally acclaimed performances from Carnegie Hall, Las Vegas and Broadway. Her fiercely loyal LGBTQI+ following, once fondly nicknamed 'friends of Dorothy', who know her as the 'daughter of Dorothy'.

Her string of celebrity marriages.

And, of course, her very public struggles with substance use disorder (SUD).

Long ago, she strove to step out from the shadow of her legendary mother, Judy Garland. But those days are far behind her as she reaches her eighth decade of life – double what Judy survived before her accidental overdose death in her forties, which is widely believed to have been the final trigger of the 1969 Stonewall riots that gave birth to modern gay rights movement.

Thick skinned yet sensitive Minnelli has stared down ridicule and contempt for most of her working life, including a string of unkind impersonators, while soaking up adoration as a role model for more positive drag queens.

Her closest friends and mentors include lionised musical duo Kander and Ebb, fashion designer Halston and Cabaret movie co-stars Joel Gray and Marisa Berenson.

It seems almost inevitable that some will forever knock her down (as is the way of tall poppy syndrome) while she stands right up and dusts herself down each time. Humiliation is part of her persona. And while most of the media legacy's reviews of this long-awaited memoir are largely kind, there are those few who cannot help themselves from having a stab.

Yes, this book is a collaboration between an entourage including her lifelong best friend Michael Feintstein (musical archivist and interpreter of the Great American Songbook) in conversation with whom she spent twelve years recording this memoir via taped conversations.

Assisting is bestselling author Josh Getlin and Pulitzer Prize winner Heid Evans. Minnelli's end acknowledgements cover five printed pages, stipulating in no uncertain terms that this book could never have happened without all these people.

So why, oh why, must her diehard critics harp on about every little thing they can drum up, from everyday Amazon reader stabs like 'what a downer' to The New York Times critic Alexandra Jacobs calling it, to paraphrase:

'… more compact and circumspect than Barbra Streisand's My Name Is Barbra and Cher's Cher: The Memoir having been plucked, buffed and powder-puffed within an inch of its long life by Feinstein during the 12-year writing process …' 

???

(NB This reviewer had read both of the above memoirs and been too underwhelmed to review either.)

Where is the root of this vigilant hatred, we must ask, on reading Liza's book for ourselves? The only possible answers I could think up were: 'its personal', 'it's fashionable' or ''haters gotta hate'. Like, where do these naysayers get their kicks?

My own reading of it was done in just over a week of very late nights. Admittedly, I'm a lifelong admirer of her talent and personal resilience.

I found parallels between this and Lillian Roth's devastating 1954 autobiography I'll Cry Tomorrow which was at the time described as a 'brutally frank' depiction of Roth's alcoholism and which, having broken barriers about celebrity addiction, sold over 7 million copies in 20 languages before being adapted into a film starring Susan Hayward.

Roth was, at the time, condemned by the newly formed 12-step recovery system for 'breaking her anonymity', i.e. attracting attention to a name who may well 'bust' and so draw disrepute to the 'program'. She did! And so lived to regret it.

Liza's frankness about her recovery journey is clearly aimed at those still suffering from substance abuse disorder (SUD) in the vein of 12-step programers' well known 'love of one alcoholic for another'. In other words, she aims to use her suffering to help others rise above theirs. What could be kinder, humbler or more well-meant?

She crosses privacy boundaries she had never before crossed, while retaining an admirable level of dignity – there are lines she will not cross when it comes to the privacy of others. 

For this she has been criticised by words like 'circumspect' again by bitchy upstart Alexandra Jacobs of The New York Times, who sarcastically calls Liza 'America’s sequined sweetheart' – I mean, does this greenhorn 'critic' know very much at all about her subject, whose success was established decades before this shallow commentary? I very much doubt it. Or was the pay that great? Probably, IMHO.

Liza Minnelli's brick-thick tome is a compelling, revealing, brutally honest self-study. No rational reader could possibly pass this off as some vanity project.

This is the intentional legacy of a great, great star, herself the end line of great, great stars. If only there were more Liza Minnellis, the world would be a happier place (I'd like to add God love her, but that would be just plain patronising, she doesn’t need this)

I loved it more than I have many others in its genre in recent years.

Her descriptions of a life we can only guess at are one-on-one vivid. Her honesty is that of one who may not live much longer. Her integrity is 100% aglow - there is no BS here.

This was never intended to be some literary achievement, and accordingly it is not. This is the intimate telling of a life the world has wondered about for more than a half-century.

Just enjoy and appreciate it. I did! We love you, Liza!!!

My review of Wide Sargasso Sea, by Jean Rhys

Wide Sargasso Sea

by Jean Rhys

My rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Let me first say that this literary masterpiece deserved every last ounce of global acclaim that it won - so special that no film adaptation has come anywhere near to the book. This is the perfect novel, in form, in cadence, in concept. Pure magic.

That said, this glittering tome is my least favourite, plot-wise, of Jean's novels. Maybe because it is a standalone, with little in common with any of her other, less appraised works.

She herself saw the irony that this atypical epic, published in her dotage, from handwritten scrawl, was what it took to deem her a literary luminary. Of all the plaudits and her prestigious literary award, she said only, in pure Jean Rhys form: 'It came too late.' Only her old cult following could appreciate this understatement. For too many long decades she had been unfairly underestimated and shunned by highbrow critics and readership masses alike.

Rhys had lived in obscurity for decades after her previous work, Good Morning, Midnight, was published in 1939, with publishers presuming her dead. Wide Sargasso Sea, her astonishing and unanticipated comeback, became her most successful novel, winning her the 1967 WH Smith Literary Award, and seeing her later appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE). 

A prequel to Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, this is the backstory of Antoinette Cosway, a white Creole heiress, from the time of her Caribbean youth to her unhappy marriage to an unnamed English gentleman (implied as Jane Eyre's 'Mr. Rochester'). The story elaborates on how her captor-husband came to move Antoinette to England, rename her Bertha, falsely declare her insane and lock her away in his attic, where she then actually descends into madness.

Rhys uses multiple narrative voices (Antoinette's, Rochester's, and Grace Poole's), masterfully merging this plot with that of Jane Eyre. For the most part, however, protagonist Antoinette relates her life story from colonial childhood, to arranged marriage, to her attic room confines under servant Grace Poole's watch in [Rochester mansion] Thornfield Hall.

The novel begins circa 1834 after the Abolition Act ended slavery in the British Empire. Part One, set in Jamaica's Coulibri, is narrated by Antoinette who reflects, fragmentally, on her childhood, her mother's mental instability and her mentally impaired brother's tragic death.

Part Two alternates between perspectives of Antoinette and her unnamed English husband during their honeymoon in Dominica's Granbois. Antoinette's childhood nurse, Christophine, travels with the newlyweds as servant. We witness the advent of Antoinette's mental downfall after her husband receives a malicious blackmailing letter from one Daniel, an acquisitive native, demanding hush money and claiming to be Antoinette's distant illegitimate brother. For good measure, Daniel also alleges Antoinette carries a hereditary half-madness.

Loyal Christophine, resenting the groom's semi-belief in Daniel's crazed claims, aggravates matters with her open hostility. Perplexed and frustrated, Antoinette's new husband, feeling alienated in this foreign land, eventually lashes out, becoming openly unfaithful to his bride. Our heroine's swelling paranoia and despair at her failing marriage unbalance her already frail emotional state.

Part Three, the novel's shortest section, is from the perspective of Antoinette, now renamed Bertha. She is confined in the attic of Thornfield Hall which she calls the 'Great House'. We follow her relationship with servant-guard Grace Poole, as Antoinette's captor-husband hides her from the world. Promising to see her more, he pursues relationships with other women (eventually with his new young governess, Jane Eyre). In a final act of despair, Antoinette/Bertha decides to take her own life.

Her magnum opus, this is not your typical Jean Rhys, not that younger, wilder Jean her select following knew and loved, but it has nevertheless been justifiably hailed as one of the most important works of English literature ever penned.

Anyone who reads would be a fool to pass on this one.

My review of Letters 1931-1966, by Jean Rhys, Francis Wyndham (Editor), Diana Melly (Editor)

Letters 1931-1966

by Jean Rhys, Francis Wyndham (Editor), Diana Melly (Editor) 

My rating: 5 out of 5 stars

I was bought this as a birthday gift by someone who knew my fanaticism for Jean Rhys. This intimate glimpse into the personal comments of my all-time favourite writer had me mesmerised from start to finish.

The letters include those from 1931, when she was recently estranged from her first husband French-Dutch journalist-songwriter (and spy) Jean Lenglet. Jean was still enjoying the acclaim of her first three books, The Left Bank and Other Stories (1927) Postures/Quartet (1929) and After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie (1931).

Like a fly on Jean's various walls, we watch her bumpy life unravel until the 1966 death of her of her third and final husband, solicitor Max Hamer, who had spent much of their marriage jailed for fraud. Jean was now a frail old woman reduced to a life of obscurity, alone in her ramshackle West Country home. Publicly long forgotten and presumed dead, her books were mostly out of print. 

She was, however, on the brink of major rediscovery with the publication of Wide Sargasso Sea, which she had spent years drafting and perfecting. Unlike any of her earlier works, this final tome was a fictional perspective of the 'madwoman in the attic' from Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. It would win Jean the prestigious 1967 WH Smith Literary Award, of which she famously said: 'It has come too late'.

Like all Jean's penned words published or not, this is like sitting all alone with her, listening to a voice that speaks only the pure, haunting truth.

A remarkable, intimate journey through her life that validates and authenticates the integrity of everything she had published and explains so much more about her than we, as diehard fans, could have known.

The most beautiful birthday gift I was ever given. Truly. It will never be allowed out of my house.

As an afterthought, it's interesting that those reviewers who don't "get" the Jean Rhys letters tend to be American, whereas those who do appear to be British.

My review of Ungrateful Daughters: The Stuart Princesses Who Stole Their Father's Crown, by Maureen Waller

Ungrateful Daughters: The Stuart Princesses Who Stole Their Father's Crown

by Maureen Waller 

My rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Interesting account of the end of the Stuarts in England. Until the last century there remained vehement opponents of the switch to Hanoverian rule.

James II's daughters, Mary and Anne, were Anne Hyde's daughters. They resented their stepmother, Mary of Modena, and were so bitter at her baby son's arrival (cue pushing towards their throne) that a family row ensued, escalating into a coup against their father aided by public fears and anti-Catholic prejudices.

James II, as Charles II's younger brother, had not always been expected to rule. The latter, however, left no legitimate heirs. Only when James came under greater scrutiny as king did his Catholicism come into much question publicly, the matter having been kept discrete like many sensitive royal details.

Malicious rumours erupted concerning the baby prince's legitimacy, the harshest being that he was an imposter smuggled into the palace in a bed-warming pan after Mary's real baby died. The likelihood, or not, of this is examined, as is the issue of post-reformation England's then governmental power mongers (and proletariat) dreading any return to a Catholic monarchy. The last had been Bloody Mary Tudor, under whose watch 283 Protestants had been executed for heresy, most by burning.

James II's baby heir, James Francis Edward Stuart, later to become nicknamed the Old Pretender, was taken to France by his mother who feared for his life, and kept by his cousin Louis XIV of France.

James II then fled England for his safety when it became apparent that his Protestant son-in-law, William of Orange would invade at the request of James' detractors. James' baby son was railroaded from the succession by Mary and William. That couple ruled jointly until William died, leaving just Queen Mary II. With no offspring, Mary's demise left Queen Anne to wind up the Stuart rule. Her disastrous run of 17 pregnancies left no living offspring either. So came their Hanoverian cousins, descended from the same Stuart grandparents via the maternal line.

These two 'Ungrateful Daughters' of James II, as the title suggests, are not portrayed sympathetically. This may not be author bias, but more likely the way many have remembered them. Neither went down in history as hugely popular monarchs, although Anne's reign saw nationalistic development, notably the 1707 Acts of Union whereby her realms of England and Scotland became united as Great Britain, creating Europe's largest free trade area.

Ungrateful Daughters is an insightful account of the 1688 Glorious Revolution and two rather troubled and troublesome sisters, neither of which became greatly revered. Anne became more iconic than Mary but without attaining much personal popularity with all those around her. Political and diplomatic achievements of Anne's governments, and the absence of constitutional conflict between herself and parliament, indicate that she chose ministers and exercised her prerogatives wisely. Her reign marked an increase in the influence of ministers and a decrease in the influence of the Crown

The Stuarts have been tagged a jinxed dynasty, with Mary of Scots and her grandson Charles I's executions, the latter's triggering England's republic. Then, after the long awaited and greatly hailed Restoration, Charles II's morally lax court attracted fresh disrepute; his many controversial bastards but no legitimate heirs signalled the beginning of the end for these Stuarts. Two unsuccessful invasions and coups by leftover Stuarts were plotted after the Hanoverian branch was called in: the 1708 Jacobite Rising, led by the Old Pretender, and the 1745 Jacobite Uprising led by his son, the Young Pretender (Bonnie Prince Charlie).

An important era to study in piecing together how the UK got today's royals, whose convoluted lineage runs from William the Conqueror ... via the tragic forbear of these very Stuarts: Mary Queen of Scots (and her Hanoverian descendants). Maureen Waller makes the characters and their motives accessible, coherent and dramatic without switching from meticulous documentation to melodrama.

Well-crafted high calibre biography.

My review of Queen Anne: The Politics of Passion by Anne Somerset

Queen Anne: The Politics of Passion 

by Anne Somerset

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

An excellent biography of a monarch often written off as 'too dull' by fans of the more popular icons, such as Tudors, etc.

In fact, as we see in this well documented account, Queen Anne had her idiosyncrasies, increasingly apparent throughout her life. Anne Somerset painstakingly draws out for us a studied portrait of a woman of distinct character.

Stolid, at times timid and withdrawn, at others formidably strident, Anne had a good heart and a wise head on her shoulders. Usually kept well cordoned off from her succinct 'constitutional' instinct, she had a closely guarded impetuosity, particularly around close relationships with female favourites. (Crass sensationalism has even seen her tagged a closet case. Whether or not she was, this biography transcends such silliness.)

Important diplomatic and nationalistic milestones were laid under Anne's watch. She left more than her predecessors to her government, adopting the tendency to 'sign off' more than dictate. This was the hallmark of constitutional monarchy, notably reviewed under Anne's Restoration uncle Charles II's succession, after the decade long Interregnum that followed Charles I's execution for being too high and mighty.

Anne's gender eased along this sensitive process, the woman often leaving big business to the men who did her bidding. Even so, she had her limits, would not always be pushed around and inconsistently put her foot down when her convictions demanded.

Her personal spending choices on select favourites drew harsh criticism from jealous insiders and other agenda driven detractors. She nevertheless usually stuck to her guns, displaying a strong personal loyalty which some dismissed as a weakness. This view of her as weak was compounded by her ever-ailing health.

Her less dictatorial, more constitutional ruling style, merged with these other features, sometimes left her seeming indecisive. This was a falsehood: had she been of intrinsically indecisive character she would never have so virulently fuelled the flames of the Glorious Revolution that saw her father removed from the throne.

Rather than being weak and indecisive, Anne was shrewd, wise and cautious, having seen what could happen to high-handed monarchs whose undoing was their rash and outlandish mistakes. In this feature, along with her stubborn side, she perhaps resembled Elizabeth I, but Anne had no such heart of fire, retreating into the shadows of her solitude more than the great Gloriana ever would have. Anne was immeasurably more contained, more modest, as dictated by these times where royalty itself walked a tightrope and republicanism still loomed large.

Stone statues and such iconography of her adorn great British heritage sites, confirming her importance in the long royal line linking today's royals to William the Conqueror. Though not every monarch has enjoyed Anne's acclamation, many were more greatly revered.

Anne Somerset breaths air into this frail and obese woman's lungs, bringing to us live and in person this great-great-granddaughter of romantic tragedienne Mary, Queen of Scots.

Enjoyed this biography very much, about the last ruler of what was not my favourite dynasty to read on.

My review of Mary Queen of Scots and the Murder of Lord Darnley, by Alison Weir

Mary Queen of Scots and the Murder of Lord Darnley

by Alison Weir

My rating: 5out of 5 stars

Alison Weir surpassed herself penning this tome, the first in my opinion to rival Antonia Fraser's 1969 Mary Queen of Scots. Via Mary Stuart runs the continuous line of succession, from Plantagenets & Tudors, down to England's current royals.

Mary has always polarised debate, first when alive and then, through the centuries, from the grave. Regardless which account we accept, she cannot be seen as entirely blameless for her unfortunate life. It's also beyond question that too much blinkered blame has gone her way, backwards in time.

Her murdered second husband Henry, Lord Darnley, was a hideous character who arguably deserved his comeuppance. If Mary was privy to his murder plot, we can hardly blame her. It's an equally short-sighted assumption that anyone put in Mary's position would not have conspired towards her liberty when so unjustly imprisoned for so long by Queen Elizabeth I. She was viciously provoked, set up and entrapped into her 'treason' against Elizabeth.

Mary Stuart, great-niece of England's King Henry VIII, was 6 days old when her father, King James V of Scotland, died and she acceded to his throne. Uniting France and Scotland against conflict with Henry VIII's England, France's King Henry II negotiated little Mary's marriage to his three-year-old son, the Dauphin Francis. Five-year-old Mary was shipped to France and spent thirteen years at the French royal court.

Despite that regal upbringing largely moulding her character, Mary's detractors criticise her limited grasp of her native Scottish subjects who were then, largely, backwater bog and highland dwellers. Yet this eventually anointed queen of France had not seen Scotland since being spirited away as an infant.

Widowed at eighteen, Mary was no longer wanted in the French court by her mother-in-law, France's new regent, Catherine de Medici. Though she could have retired there in splendour, remarrying any prince in Christendom, Mary instead returned to her homeland to start anew.

In vain she reached out to her surly Scottish subjects who, after ceremonial formalities, snubbed her as a high-flying foreigner. They eyed her with suspicion from the minute she disembarked in her mourning garb, a grown woman and stranger. They considered this newly arrived Catholic head of state, in their Protestant land, anomalous. This sentiment was fuelled by Protestant reformist preacher John Knox, who vehemently campaigned against Mary.

Worse still, she was female.

Across the border, her less beautiful but wilier cousin, Elizabeth, remained contentiously unwed. Resentful of Mary's youth and fecundity, the childless Elizabeth also felt threatened by Mary's strong claim to England's shaky throne.

After two more short and unpopular marriages, Mary was overthrown and imprisoned in Scotland. Eventually escaping, she shaved her head for disguise, donned peasant's clothing and fled, by fishing boat, to England. Hoping for Elizabeth's support, Mary was instead imprisoned and held captive for eighteen-and-a-half years.

After despairingly plotting towards her liberty (making herself complicit in linked plots for Elizabeth's assassination), Mary was entrapped and executed. This unprecedented regicide officially triggered the Spanish Armada. Catholic Philip of Spain had been waiting for an excuse to take England and curb the spread of Protestantism in Europe. As was her final wish, Mary became a Catholic martyr.

Mary's apologists argue she was a kind, intelligent woman, a romantic icon of her day. She was indeed the subject of sonnet and pros, by Ronsard no less. Her beauty and personal charm are legendary.

Neither her cruellest detractors nor most ardent apologists are fully right or wrong. The truth, as always, lies somewhere in the middle. This is where Alison Weir's insightful, brilliantly researched and presented account places it.

The reader is left with a balanced understanding of events while empathising with, and recognising the obvious mistakes of, a desperate woman. I loved this book and reread it to reabsorb the literary quality and exquisite detail.

My review of Nicholas and Alexandra: The Classic Account of the Fall of the Romanov Dynasty, by Robert K. Massie

Nicholas and Alexandra: The Classic Account of the Fall of the Romanov Dynasty

by Robert K. Massie

My rating: 5 out of 5 stars

More than five decades after its publication, this book still glows of those hallmarks that would later earn American author and historian Robert K. Massie a Pulitzer Prize. His interest in this last handful of ruling Romanovs was triggered by his son having haemophilia, as had Tsar Nicholas II's son, Tsarevich Alexei. The author's love of his subject sparkles from start to finish.

Massie's immaculate detail and empathic biographical style is on a par with that of the great Lady Antonia Fraser, who not until two years later penned her definitive Mary, Queen of Scots (1969). This extraordinary craftsmanship alone is worth the five stars I rated it with.  

With access now to material still classified in 1967, today's reader might be forgiven for dismissing parts of this work as outdated and incomplete propaganda, notably penned by an American during his country's Cold War with Russia. And yet, penned by a man who would devote most of his life to studying Russia's Imperial family, we sense this book's accuracy and personal impartiality. The nowadays obvious information gaps made no difference to me, as a novice reader of this time and place. I learnt from what was there, remaining captivated and enthralled throughout.

Its lack of political bias is admirable. Sure, Massie paints vividly the ugliness of rabid Bolshevist extremism over the towering bloodline autocracy it usurped, but his compassionate treatment of that toppled autocracy is generous for a writer from the democratic thinking U S of A.

The international lead up to World War I is insightful and informative. There would surely be no neutral way of depicting Germany's almost deranged Kaiser Wilhelm II in the context of this history, but thankfully he is no central player in this biography. 

I came to like and understand the human side of these misunderstood historical figures, the Romanovs, otherwise passed down to us under bitter revolutionary prejudice as personifications of an icily detached, staunchly autocratic elite. Their abominable treatment at the hands of Russia's revolutionaries is truly heart wrenching.

Tsar Nicholas we see as a mild-mannered man, perhaps weak in certain areas of rulership, but a good, kind, decent husband, father and son. It has been all too easy for anti-imperialism to downplay the sheer enormity of his empire and the lifelong commitment he inherited then handed over when facing defeat. He believed he was doing what was right for Russia. For all his Imperial droopiness, sincerity, integrity and likeability are his redeeming qualities. This cousin of King George V of the United Kingdom, to whom he bore such a striking physical resemblance, was a gentle, pious man who lived for his family and country.

I felt deeply for Nicholas's wife, the unpopular and ostracised (German born) Alexandra Feodorovna (Alix of Hesse), another cousin of King George V of the United Kingdom and granddaughter of Queen Victoria. Their children are beautifully, poignantly drawn, especially their only son, Alexei, without whose tragic hereditary illness (probably passed down from Queen Victoria) there would have been no Rasputin in this picture and perhaps therefore no violent rulership overthrow, so possibly no Bolshevist state.

The 'holy' yet sinister Rasputin is an enigmatic character shrouded in mystique and debauchery, but not without usefulness or heart. He will always intrigue readers, as will poor Alexandra's desperate support for him, the only person seemingly able to keep her tiny boy from death by bleeding. That contentious relationship between the Tsarina and the hard living peasant priest was callously used an excuse to trigger the almost inevitable revolution.

This book was the basis of a 1971 Academy Award-winning film of the same title, starring Michael Jayston and Janet Suzman in the title roles, with greats like Michael Redgrave, Laurence Olivier, Timothy West and Roy Dotrice, featuring the wondrous Irene Worth as the Dowager Empress Maria and Fiona Fullerton as Anastasia. Whilst the film has become stylistically dated, Massie's book remains untainted by the passage of over half a century.

I intend to read it again someday, which is the highest compliment I can give any book. Before I do that, I feel compelled to read Massie's 1995 update and elaboration of this work, The Romanovs: The Final Chapter, written when the Soviet Union fell, and records of the Romanovs were released. I somehow doubt, however, that for all its newer material, that follow up work could have come even close to his original, in sheer quality and readability.

As an ardent devotee of the historical biography genre, I cannot recommend this special treat highly enough to my reading peers.

My review of The Left Bank, and Other Stories by Jean Rhys

The Left Bank, and Other Stories

by Jean Rhys

My rating: 5 out of 5 stars

A must for all Jean Rhys aficionados. This was her first ever published writing, which came about by chance and desperation. Those who read her posthumously published unfinished autobiography Smile Please will know that the story behind these Left Bank stories is a great one:

In 1924 Ella Lenglet nee Williams (later Jean Rhys) was alone, destitute and starving in a rundown Paris hotel room. Her husband of five years, French-Dutch journalist and songwriter (and spy) Jean Lenglet, was in a French jail for what she described as 'currency irregularities'.

After visiting him one day, she took articles he had written to a newspaper contact to try and sell, so she could eat. The newspaper contact sent her on to someone else who asked her to go away and translate them, which, being multilingual, she successfully did. That contact finally declined her husband's translated articles but liked her translation style and so, as a final thought, asked her whether she, Ella, had ever penned anything herself.

Perplexed but desperate, she showed the person some samples of her diary, which included a few rough sketches of life in the Paris she inhabited.

So impressive were these that the rapidly thinning Ella was sent on to another contact, eventually coming face to face with English writer and publisher Ford Maddox Ford.

He was instantly impressed and took her under his wing, mentoring her and inviting her to move in with him and his common-law wife, Australian artist Stella Bowen. Under Ford's tutelage her stories were developed into The Left Bank, and Other Stories and published in his Transatlantic Review.

It was with this release of her first published fiction that Ford persuaded her to use nom de plume Jean Rhys.

Ford published a generous introductory foreword, praising her 'singular instinct for form', for which she became so loved by her readers many decades on. 'Coming from the West Indies,' Ford explained here, 'with a terrifying insight and ... passion for stating the case of the underdog, she has let her pen loose on the Left Banks of the Old World.'

Such was the advent of Jean Rhys' unlikely writing career.

It was also during this period, while living with Ford & Stella, that Jean's turbulent affair with Ford took place under Stella's nose, resulting in the breakup of Jean's marriage to her jailed husband - all to be later fictionalised into what would become the first Jean Rhys novel, Quartet (1928). But that cathartic act of vengeance is another story.

So, these Left Bank and Other Stories have quite a tale of their own.

These preliminary short stories that made young Ella Williams history and launched newly invented Jean Rhys are filled with her personal hallmarks: her vivid characterisations, her evocative, filmic scenes, her succinct, incisive take on life through the eyes of the downtrodden, of the outsider looking in.

Breathtaking. Not to be passed over by any of her readers.

(NB A selection of these are also included in Jean's Tigers Are Better Looking anthology).

My review of Arbella, England's Lost Queen, by Sarah Gristwood

Arbella, England's Lost Queen

by Sarah Gristwood 

My rating: 4 out of 5 star

Arbella is an excellent reading adjunct to mainstream Tudor-Stuart characters, especially after exhausting other material and craving more of the genre.

For anyone fascinated by such royal genealogies, Arbella's lineage is a feast to behold: great-great granddaughter of Henry VII and first cousin of James VI & I, she was descended from both of Henry VIII's sisters, Margaret and Mary. Her claim to the throne was therefore doubly, triply threatening to the Virgin Queen, Elizabeth I, her first cousin twice removed.

Her formidable maternal grandmother, Bess of Hardwick, another of my favourites, became Arbella's ward when she was orphaned at 7. Arbella spent her childhood cloistered away in Bess's various gilded cages, receiving private tuition considered fit for her rank (archived dispatch documents have triggered speculation that poet Christopher Marlowe was one tutor).

Bess, a well practised keeper for years entrusted with jailing Mary of Scots, now had Arbella's safeguard in mind. Tight house security to prevent kidnappings, agenda-driven friendships and romances left the girl isolated, lonesome but deeply conscious of her royal lineage. Periodically invited to Elizabeth's court for royal scrutiny, she proved not so socially adept, a tad precious and disinclined to kowtow, so was not embraced by the vain queen.

Repeatedly sent away again, she always resumed her stately seclusion, the powers that be wanting her watched in this age of plots to dethrone and assassinate Elizabeth. Continuing home education into her twenties, Arbella acquired several languages and mastered the lute, viol and virginals. She was a restless soul, suspected by some of carrying her great grandmother Margaret Tudor's porphyria, famously passed down to cause the madness of King George III.

Her ambitious marriage suitors included the Pope's brother, the Duke of Parma's son and ... William Seymour Lord Beauchamp and later 2nd Duke of Somerset (whose grandfather Edward 1st Earl of Hertford had incurred Elizabeth's wrath for secretly marrying Lady Catherine Grey, sister of 'nine days queen' Jane, without royal permission). Later ones included Ludovic Stuart, 2nd Duke of Lennox, then even the King of Poland! With Arbella's marriage requiring royal approval, none of these suspicious sounding matches materialised - such men were believed acquisitive of her claim to the throne.

Weary and frustrated, Arbella eventually settled on William Seymour who, as grandson of Lady Catherine Grey, was sixth-in-line to the throne himself, intensifying Arabella's threat to the crown. With history appearing to repeat itself and royal permission denied they married secretly in 1610. The result was their separate house arrests under King James, in various stately homes.

After feigned illness and transfers, Arbella escaped dressed as a man (Shakespeare's cross-dressed heroine of Cymbeline has been read as a reference to Arbella) to meet her husband and flee to France. With her husband not making it to port on time she sailed alone, only to be captured at sea by King James' men, and henceforth imprisoned in the Tower of London. She never again saw her husband who, after arriving at port late and missing her, reached safety abroad at Ostend.

Arbella was made the focus of the 1603 Spanish Government funded 'Main Plot', involving Sir Walter Raleigh, to oust King James, replacing him with Arbella. However, seeing parallels between this and the Lady Jane Grey plot that saw her ancestor beheaded, cautious Arbella, already up to her neck in strife, immediately reported the plot when asked to agree in writing to Philip of Spain. This, however, only saved her neck from the block.

Arbella remained in the Tower until her death in 1615, which she helped along by starving herself.

Another tragic Tudor-Stuart descendent well worth the drama. Sarah Gristwood's fine craftsmanship equals that of her contemporaries.

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 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 any 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 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 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 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 18 Months of One Night Stands, by Dolores Dunbar

18 Months of One Night Stands

by Dorlores Dunbar

My rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Long ago in Far North Queensland, a tiny exotic girl named Dolores twirled between tamarind trees and on tabletops. She sang as she skipped and whirled in the tropical sunshine, a vocal gift inherited from her opera mother Kay Zammit, a celebrated radio and Tivoli Circuit soprano.

Kay was the eldest of ten offspring of Maltese 'Sugar King' Paul Zammit and his wife Pauline, who had landed on these sunburnt shores with zilch and pioneered a cane sugar industry.

Their family had grown such that, for some of their scions' households, cash got tight. But they scraped by without much need of pounds, shillings and pence in this mid-century lucky country.

They were tough but rosy times. Cairns, now a major travel destination, was a sleepy hollow without so much as a tourist bureau.

Mum Kay had married war veteran Bill Ernst, father of the author Dolores Ernst, eldest of five, who grew up seeking not fame nor fortune and without delusion of grandeur. Just that yearning to stand on a stage and feel the joy of applause.

She loved climbing trees, picking avocados, romping in sand with cousins, searching for pearl shells, fishing, catching mud crabs in mangroves and listening to the Bakelite radio. But her passion from the get-go was ballet, from age four.

Any Australian showbusiness insider worth their salt knows of this stalwart. Her motto 'happy to be here, easy to work with' has ushered in countless foot lit journeys.

At an astonishing 'eighty years young', Dolores Dunbar invokes the might to proffer this charming tome. Penned without literary trickery, her candour and humility strike at the heart.

Her anecdotal tenderness cloaks a theatrical behemoth. We embrace her trusty voice with its sprinkle of wry musings.

Dolores. Here is her tale:

After a strict yet blissful Catholic girlhood, her grownup action kicks off at the dawn of the '60s. Word is out that country music legend Slim Dusty needs a girl to sing and dance in his roadshow, doubling as a magician's 'boom ching girl' alongside a rope-spinning cowgirl and bikini-clad juggler.

Teenage Dolores is up for this, anything for a foot in the door to her dream. And bravo, she gets the gig. Hence the title '18 Months of One Night Stands'.

So ensues a muddy 18-month convoy. Through outback bush tracks, backwoods and boondocks beyond the proverbial black stump. Townships with no building in sight.

Their loyal audiences comprise cattlemen, miners, barefoot desert folk squatting on floors with suckling babies and nary a word of English. Parched of entertainment in dusty one-horse-towns without so much as a communal TV, mobs hear via bush telegraph and show up in droves, waving 20-pound notes at the window when booked out. Some even muck in.

Galvanised iron venues with bare earth floors. Stages strung from painter's planks across 44-gallon drums. 100-watt bulbs as overheads. Old halls. Amp leads crossing streets from ramshackle pubs. Torch-shining crowds. Spot the loo if you can.

Showbiz apprenticeship in all its stark glory.

We feel their enterprise, sweat and camaraderie. The remoteness of a wide brown land at the end of the earth, before mass global travel or imponderables like internet or smartphones.

This isolation simmers in Dunbar's subtext, aglow with nostalgia and no hint of grievance.

Post-tour and braving the city smoke, she does 'those' humdrum jobs in this quest for the footlights. 'Paying one's dues', biding her time, eyeing what chances arise.

In a doctor's office. The handkerchief section at McWhirters store in Brisbane. Sportswear at Bolands in Cairns. Does shows with Cairns Choral Society.

Tries varying posts, feeling misplaced here and there. But tenacity is paramount. It's the end goal that counts.

Ambitious if homesick, she settles on a commission desk placement in the hairdressing salon of Sydney's Farmers department store.

A kindly supervisor's social connections lead to formal singing lessons from famed contralto Evelyn Hall de Izal, which in turn lands an audition for fabled producers J.C. Williamson's, known as The Firm or J.C.W.

Her first musical is in the ensemble of Funny Girl at Sydney's ornate old Theatre Royal. She discovers the not so ornate cold, grubby dressing rooms and bathrooms of the era.

Dolores cuts her teeth and earns her stripes the way it was done then. Show boys drill her on greasepaint, eyelash glue and where to pin hairpieces. The hoofer sisterhood helps too.

Funny Girl runs forever, moving to Melbourne, Adelaide, Brisbane and Perth.

At Her Majesty's Melbourne, as their companies co-dine between shows, she meets fellow Queenslander Rod Dunbar from Oliver! across the road at the Comedy Theatre. All of pop and TV know this handsome ex rock singer, a onetime regular on Channel Seven’s Sing Sing Sing. Expanding into musical theatre, Rod is already in principal roles.

They marry and stay together for life, until Rod dies aged 77, meanwhile welcoming a beautiful son into the world.

Both manage solo careers some of the time.

Dolores appears sans hubby in My Fair Lady, Applause, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas and Les Miserables. In her widowed 70s she joins a luminary line-up in musical comedy Half Time at Sydney's Hayes Theatre alongside the venue's eponymous star Nancye Hayes herself.

She portrays everything from a Ziegfield Bride to a mouse. Crones, whores, Disney creatures, Litle Miss Sunshine, Wonder Woman, a Fairy Godmother. She choreographs shows and events, takes on Company Management posts, the lot.

But the duo also becomes known as a team early on, appearing in shows together. Even before marrying, they are in Fiddler on the Roof, Dolores as daughter Tzeitel and Rod as The Fiddler. 

They reunite in Godspell, with Rod as Jesus. In Chicago Rod is MC, Dolores merry murderess Mona (Lipshitz). They become Johnny O'Keefe's parents in a tour of Shout. In Bye Bye Birdie they team up as Mayor and Mayor's Wife.

This tradition helps them through a life few theatrical marriages survive. But true love is their bond. 

And just when you think this old hand may retire, she embarks on a quarter-century encore career teaching Dance and Musical Theatre at the McDonald College of Performing Arts, directing extravaganzas like Copacabana, Grease and Fame.

In this 'giving back' incarnation, her passion and energy drive future talents. She takes student groups to the USA to perform, join classes and see hit shows of Broadway, LA and Vegas – even to China! And not just once or twice. She pioneers this McDonald custom that lives on in her wake.

Then she gets to work on this book.

She outlines highpoints, hallowed theatres and sellouts. Marvels at the stars, directors, designers and choreographers she's known. And drolly dismisses the less-than-kind ones.

The torrent of names along this Australian journey is eye-popping. Greats like Jill Perryman, Gloria Dawn, Bobby Limb and Dawn Lake, Betty Pounder, Toni Lamond, Bruce Barry, June Bronhill, Hayes Gordon, even Hollywood favourite Eve Arden.

Others are Lorraine Bayly, Normie Rowe, Jeanne Little, Richard Wherrett, Judi Connelli, Roger Kirk, Colette Mann, John Waters, Donna Lee, Ross Coleman . . .

Well sure, headliners may put bums on seats, but there would be no show without the all-dependable, ever-reliable trouper.

Keeping things real, the author peeps into those lesser ventures vital to most thespians: cruise ships, cabaret hecklers, bawdy theatre restaurants. Wherever there's a buck to keep the wolves from the door. Graft that the theatregoing hoi polloi seldom hear of, and the soulless sniff at from their 9-5 abyss.

The madness, slog, frantic tours, fluffed lines, dodgy scenery, missed cues, last minute stand-ins, stages the size of stamps. Theatre digs, from the dubious to the idyllic.

Career hiccups, injuries, bomb scares, fires and flops. Some catastrophic, others plain farcical. All part of the merry-go-round. Guessing what zenith waits round the next corner.

History is marked by where she performs on events like the John F. Kennedy assassination, the Six-Day-War and Australia's Whitlam Dismissal.

This astonishing soul then shares secrets and tips to aspirants and aficionados, those who crave the Razzle Dazzle, those seeking inspiration whatever their dream, and we who just love an enchanting memoir.

Here's the crucial yarn of one who never sought acclaim but was just there. A formidable legacy. Look at that cover, check the blazing smile. Showbiz personified.

A raconteuse extraordinaire. If only there were more Dolores Dunbars.

100% must read for all humans.