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.