My review of Queen of Scots: The True Life of Mary Stuart by John Guy

Queen of Scots: The True Life of Mary Stuart 

by John Guy

My rating: 5 out of 5 stars

An essential element of any historical biographer's task is to put colour into the cheeks of their subject, which Professor Guy effects with aplomb in this meticulously penned tome. This queen, who has for centuries polarised commentariats, is a personal favourite, this being the twenty-something book of her I've relished. Each biographer depicts her as predominantly innocent or guilty. This one is firmly on Mary's side and puts his case supremely.

The details that divide on the Queen of Scots are those absent from posterity, those which perhaps Mary's royal son James I & VI helped erase from record, or which Mary's accusers collectively disposed of to save their own reputations with the passage of time. Much has been powerfully theorised on the potential forgery of her incriminating 'casket letters' with as much effectively arguing their authenticity.

We'll never know for sure, without some revelation becoming unearthed. Such are the tantalising dynamics of the relationship between this and her cousin queen and executioner Elizabeth I, of whom similarly divided thought tribes have evolved for similar reasons. Both queens have benefited and suffered from each other's propagandists.

In the face of excellent wider reception, this author has by some been unfairly accused of being as enamoured with Mary Stuart as her contemporary devotees were, his detractors complaining of his bias in her favour. Yet septuagenarian Professor Guy, who read history at Cambridge before teaching there, is a veteran historian of the highest order. He is as entitled, perhaps more so than his armchair critics, to an informed opinion.

It never fails to baffle me, reading critiques from those a half or quarter Guy's age, qualifying their pickiness citing not a single academic endowment of their own — I'm not talking critiques of his style but of his capacity to know his material — just how ferociously opinionated today's readers still find themselves on this dividing monarch. The bare facts still trigger kneejerk moral reactions to her legendary deeds.

I agree with John Guy on the reality of Mary of Scots' personally redeeming qualities. Without a religious agenda to my name and having equal fondness for her archrival, Elizabeth, I too have always kept an open mind on Mary's broader innocence and have consistently concluded that, like so many martyrs of her age put to death for treason, she cannot have been entirely guilty of everything charged against her. Such was the politico-judicial machine's modus operandi and still is. Evidence is, and always was to some degree, controlled, manipulated and confected by those in power over any such accused.

Nor can any rational apologist concede Mary's total innocence (anyone so unjustly imprisoned for so long would have plotted towards their liberty on whatever ethical ground presented itself). The truth, as always, must lie somewhere in the centre. I once more concluded, nevertheless, that here was an extremely likeable woman. One I still find intriguing enough to keep reading on as more gets written with the sophistry of modern research. One I remain unable to side either with or against. It's a stimulating position.

Highly recommend this book, especially to the unbigoted.

My review of Mary Queen of Scots, by Antonia Fraser

Mary Queen of Scots

by Antonia Fraser

My rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Nobel Laureate Lady Antonia Fraser's rare combination of formidable historical knowledge and exquisite penmanship makes this book a supreme standalone piece.

For this, her first major publication, she was awarded the 1969 James Tait Black Memorial Prize. The 40th anniversary edition was published in 2009, two years before she was elevated to Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the 2011 New Year Honours for services to literature.

Few of Lady Fraser's other historical biographies have come close, in my opinion, to this now definitive work on one of history's most unique and fascinating queens. The religiously martyred Mary, Queen of Scots, has for centuries also been politically demonised. Accordingly, Fraser enumerates in her 'Author's Note' that this book aims:

(1) To test the truth or falsehood of the many legends surrounding the subject; and 

(2) To set Queen Mary in the context of the age in which she lived.

Fraser has endured considerable criticism from more recent biographers of Mary Stuart, her own portrait being largely sympathetic in stressing Mary's key virtues. Yet this grandmother of eighteen, widow of Harold Pinter and daughter of the 7th Earl and Countess of Longford, is no doubt above such flippant critique from what must seem to her like amateur upstarts.

Anyone interested in history and monarchy will adore this. I drooled like the cat that's got the cream, stretching it out into slow, bite sized sittings. It was too superb to devour hurriedly.

Astonishingly high-quality reading which educates and entertains, leaving the reader begging for more. Can't be topped by anything in its class.

My review of Mae West: It Ain't No Sin, by Simon Louvish

Mae West: It Ain't No Sin

by Simon Louvish

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

I loved reading about this skilful, acutely intelligent performer who haunts my foggy formative years' recall. I still visualise her swagger, hear her distinct drawl in scratchy, early '30s movies that TV showed late at night, like 'She Done Him Wrong,' 'I'm No Angel' 'Bell of the Nineties' and 'Klondike Annie'.

What we learn from this book is that Mary Jane 'Mae' West, born 1893, turned her hand to many things including scriptwriting and jazz singing. She did some astonishingly risqué work long before there were any movies, or talkies anyway. Learning her stagecraft treading the boards, she wrote prolifically, including some fiction and much that was banned.

She produced some extraordinarily daring comedic material, loaded with double entendres outrageous even by today's standards. This was long, long before the age of political correctness, way before anything like the Hayes Production Code was even thought of. She subsequently became a pioneer in fighting censorship.

Her celluloid glory days need no elaboration here.

By the '50s she was such a legend she was blithely turning down roles like Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard. By the early '70s she was appearing in gender-bending things like Gore Vidal's 'Myra Breckinridge' with Raquel Welch. How long can any mortal keep going so, really? But she kept at it.

By the late '70s, making 'Sextette', she needed her lines fed to her through a tiny speaker hidden inside her wigs. She reportedly seemed disoriented and forgetful, having difficulty following direction. Failing eyesight made navigating around the set difficult for her. The camera crew started shooting her from the waist up (one official account is that this was to hide an out-of-shot production assistant crawling on the floor, guiding her around the set, but another I've read is that she had sandbags strategically placed for her feet to feel and guide her as she shuffled her way about the set floor).

I didn't mind Simon Louvish's academic style of documentation here, which accorded fine balance between the unavoidably outlandish subject material and the sensibly erudite final draft.

Fascinating and well-crafted biography about a greatly underestimated gal, the remarkable woman behind the legend of Diamond Lil.

My review of Bess of Hardwick by Mary S. Lovell

Bess of Hardwick: First Lady of Chatsworth, 1527-1608

by Mary S. Lovell

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

I relished this important biography of a fascinating woman. Among other things, Bess was maternal grandmother to the girl considered possible successor to Elizabeth I, Lady Arbella Stuart. This in itself strengthened Bess's intricately woven ties to royalty.

She was also for a long time the main keeper and confidante of the captive Mary, Queen of Scots, hand-picked by Queen Elizabeth herself, so highly respected and trusted was Bess. For anyone fascinated by that legendary Scots martyr queen, as I have always been, this biography makes for essential reading. That said, Bess's story is a standalone by any measure.

Here was an extraordinary woman, especially for her time, but really against any historical backdrop. Transcending her somewhat humble beginnings, Bess married four times and rose to become an independent woman of means, materially on a par with Queen Elizabeth in wealth and power, an astonishing climb. This was the wealthiest non-royal lady in all England, keeper of rival monarchs, royal secrets and mistress of her own unique dynasty.

A formidable woman by all accounts, Bess created and left some of England's most splendiferous architecture including Chatsworth and Hardwick Hall ('... more glass than wall').

She earned respect for having retained her earthiness while becoming a breathtaking example of a new aristocracy, all the way demonstrating remarkable business acumen that many a man envied.

The story of this funny, po-faced termagant with her jewelled but work-worn finger ever on the ledger book, is an absolute must read, not to be excluded by any keen reader of Elizabethan history.

My review of Princesses: The Six Daughters of George III, by Flora Fraser

Princesses: The Six Daughters of George III

by Flora Fraser

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

I was intensely immersed in Flora Fraser's impressive, high calibre tome. Historical royal biography is an addictive genre that leaves its readers ever hungry for something to top their favourites. This is a difficult call on authors. There are only limited options without repeating what others before have done brilliantly.

This author's notary mother, Lady Antonia Fraser, is an impossible act to follow. Think of most talented daughters living in their famous mothers' shadows and this syndrome becomes clear.

Being any such diva's daughter may have that advantageous head start insofar as many already know who you are and will finance your enterprise if only from curiosity. But there are accompanying soaring expectations, ones few mortals could realistically live up to.

Any established readership like Lady Antonia's is so loyal it can be wincingly unforgiving in its natural comparisons. That brilliant mother has already covered the most popular subjects and periods, leaving only the duller choices for her daughter to embark upon.

Flora Fraser has proven herself a chip off the old block to this first-time reader. Her characterisations are sublime, her detail meticulous, her research suitably mindboggling - I'd have expected nothing less and would have been greatly disappointed with less.

While this is admittedly not the most interesting period to me, the book covers a fascinating royal court. The civility and humanness of Mad King George III's cultured female offspring is striking. We like these women. They are deserving of such coverage. I came away better informed, further educated and entertained, if little more enthralled by the Hanoverians generally.

Perhaps only Lady Fraser's daughter could have achieved what has been pulled off here. A fine piece of work on a challenging group of subjects to document interestingly. As with her mother, I will read more of her, regardless which subjects.

My review of I'll Cry Tomorrow by Lillian Roth, Gerold Frank, Mike Connolly

I'll Cry Tomorrow

by Lillian Roth, Gerold Frank, Mike Connolly

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Riveting 1954 memoir of 1920s & '30s star of stage, screen and radio, Lillian Roth.

Her horrific journey through alcoholism, making for confronting reading at times, was an unprecedented international sensation. Courageously penned, this became a global best seller of its era, in seven languages.

She was widely praised for passing on the message of recovery to millions in an era when alcoholism was seldom discussed in polite society. She was also harshly criticised by certain overly zealous self-appointed Twelve Step fellowship spokespeople wary of celebrities making themselves 'recovery' icons (some who disclosed their fellowship membership were accused of damaging 'the program's' reputation when they publicly relapsed).

Recovery controversies aside, this was, and remains, a brilliant standalone book, not at all the sort of tacky celeb tell-all that would evolve in subsequent years.

At six, as Educational Pictures' trademark, Lillian was painted as a living statue holding a lamp of knowledge, and her painter molested her, which she describes in chilling detail as the defining event that would forever haunt her.

Lillian's signature song was "When the Red, Red Robin (Comes Bob, Bob, Bobbin' Along)". That's about the best-known legacy many of today's generations may have of her. And this hair-raising book.

Actresses considered to play Lillian in the 1955 film adaptation included June Allyson, Grace Kelly, Janet Leigh, Jane Wyman, Jean Simmons, Jane Russell and Piper Laurie. It was Susan Hayward who won the role and was nominated for an Academy Award for her gritty portrayal. That movie became the fourth-highest money maker of 1956.

Still an awesome read more than 50 years after its publication, this candid memoir gave me cold shivers, goose pimples and left me wanting to read more and more when I'd finished the last page.

My review of Marilyn: The Last Take, by Peter Harry Brown

Marilyn: The Last Take

Peter Harry Brown

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Regardless of its seeming irrelevance in the fifty-year blizzard of Marilyn biographies, I was unable to put down this curled and yellowed artifice, lent to me by a diehard fan, complete with pressed and mummified cockroach legs. So many Marilyn pieces are unreadable pulp non-fiction. This one earned its place in that handful of standout efforts.

Easy flowing, unpretentious yet thoroughly slick, the quality of workmanship held me throughout. Whilst lacking the glitzy hallmarks of more iconic, full-life biographies, this steers clear of popular Monroe mythology, sticking solidly to documented facts concerning only that contentious period imminent to her death. 

So much was ado in 1962, as Marilyn, 20th Century Fox's most bankable star of the 1950s, commenced that studio's ill-fated Something's Got to Give, an updated remake of screwball comedy My Favorite Wife (1940). We read how, for months, she was insidiously undermined, goaded on-set, bullied by proxy, misrepresented by studio and media alike, defamed to the point of despair (and that was only her work life, without even starting on her personal life). 

This vicious campaign of intimidation was spearheaded by ageing, drug-addled, acid-tongued director George Cuckor, aided by his buddies higher up the studio ladder. What's more, the film's already insultingly flimsy budget was being further siphoned away to cover that farcically expensive Burton-Taylor debacle, Cleopatra, which the ailing studio hoped would save it.

The effects of Cuckor's malicious vendetta on this, Marilyn's final movie, were compounded by a throng of Hollywood gossip columnists led by notorious Hedda Hopper and her archrival Louella Parsons. Fox's publicists also played a perversely pivotal role in wrecking her morale, as did the White House fraternity and its undercover henchmen, shielding the cracking image of a president at a critical time in his leadership.

In production reports and press releases, Monroe's genuine health issues were passed off as the temperamental play-ups of an unreliable diva. An underlying will to be rid of her simmered from office to office, coast to coast, awaiting some opportune moment. This involved studio heads and backers on one side and more sinister, undercover forces on the other, moving to prevent her affairs with President John F Kennedy and his brother, Attorney General Bobby, becoming publicly confirmed (or, better still, to end them).

Before Something's Got to Give's shooting commenced, Monroe had notified producer Henry Weinstein that she had been asked by the White House to sing at President Kennedy's Madison Square Garden birthday honours on May 19, 1962. Weinstein had granted her permission, believing it would not hinder production. JFK had even personally assured her he would pull any necessary strings to prevent her Madison Square Garden appearance causing any contractual conflict with Fox.

Yet soon after the event her romantic and professional tide turned. Kennedy suddenly disowned her, and Marilyn was publicly fired, amidst widely publicized plans to replace her with Lee Remick who was fitted into Monroe's costumes and photographed with Cuckor. This was to backfire, with her fans up in arms and her select remaining handful of powerful industry allies resolute about saving her. 

Similarly, co-star Dean Martin, with final approval of his leading lady, loyally refused to continue without Monroe. After an extended stalemate and a personally engineered campaign aimed at her furious fans, Marilyn was reinstated under new terms and conditions with public popularity on her side. 

Her detractors became more peeved than ever. She had, infuriatingly, triumphed once more, in yet another battle of Hollywood egos. 

Awaiting resumption of the troublesome shoot, she had never been healthier or happier. 

In the damage control wake of her 'Happy birthday, Mr. President' appearance, amidst the prelude to an important by-election, Monroe was callously cut-off and ostracized by both Kennedy brothers and their phalange of bureaucrats and relatives. Politically vulnerable and under the supervision of political spin doctors and their ruthless father, each Kennedy brother changed his direct telephone number and refused to take her calls, offering Marilyn no explanation or farewell, resulting in the easily derailed star, with her lifelong abandonment issues, feeling used and discarded. 

Yet now, no longer a forgotten orphan, or an impoverished starlet, but a legend at the peak of her stardom, she had the guidance, support and encouragement of therapists, minions and mentors, along with her money and fame.

Heartbroken yet more determined than ever before to fight back at life and re-empower herself, she planned a press conference to end all press conferences - one that would have blown the lid off the Kennedy administration and embarrassed its tentacular web of connections which, unsurprisingly, extended to entertainment kingpins, studio heads and financiers.

Having correctly assumed her house was being bugged, many of her calls pertaining to this messy strategy were made from roadside pay phones. But written notes on her planned press conference were kept at hand, along with intimately detailed diaries pertaining to the Kennedy affairs.

The rest, as we know, is history. She was suddenly found dead, tagged with the 'accidental suicide' label in a bungled post-mortem case that never concluded but saw scandalous levels of sensitive information swept under carpets and left there for decades. Her house, the scene of unidentified comers-and-goers in the still of that fatal night, was cleared before investigation teams even arrived at her death scene, those highly sensitive press conference plans vanishing along with her revealing diaries. As if working in with all this, publicity machines covered up as much as they could by elaborating on her mental health problems and self-medication habits, emphasising the likelihood of suicide.

Monroe's autopsy, conducted August 5 by deputy coroner Dr. Thomas Noguchi, was pointedly clouded by the inexplicable disappearance of key liver and kidney tissue samples that would have proved she could never have self-administered the quantity of drugs that killed her.

For years, classified government files on her demise were kept tightly locked away, as were endless reels of Something's Got to Give footage showing she was never in better form, far from how the studio and its Washington connections would have had the world believe she had been in her final fourteen weeks on earth.

This book is no cheap conspiracy yarn, but a well-documented account of Marilyn Monroe's final months. A comprehensive lowdown on the contributing parties standing to benefit from the melee of cover-ups surrounding her premature and unresolved end.

Despite my sneezes with each crumbling page, it was well worth the tissues. An excellent read.

My review of Princess Margaret: A Biography by Theo Aronson

Princess Margaret: A Biography

by Theo Aronson

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Princess Margaret was, when I was growing up, the royal rebel people cheered on. As much a '60s icon as The Beatles or the miniskirt, she was always up to some exotic mischief, usually in some scorching Caribbean place and more often than not with the wrong man. My parents' generation (Margaret's slightly elder peers), and their own parents, had a soft spot for this princess whose personal dreams never came true. 'Poor Maggie,' was a common catch cry whenever she made tabloid headlines with yet another scandal.

Theo Aronson tells another side of the public's ideas on her — how she earned widespread disapproval and media condemnation, not to mention much high Establishment tut-tutting. This the author qualifies with anecdotes which are entertaining, if not as thoroughly sourced as this reader would have liked (a good proportion of these could have been plucked from the air just to amuse).

That much of the content is, conversely, very well documented, leaves the reader sceptical over quotes by so many unnamed people, e.g. 'family friend', 'guest at the event', 'high ranking official', etc. Of course, this also adds to the sense of intrigue we have come to expect from juicy royal biographies, yet this glaring feature places parts of the work more into the gutter press bundle than the authorised, legitimate one. Indeed, certain passages degenerate to gossip level, cheapening the overall effect.

That said, this is, for the most part, an entertaining and well written piece, even with workmanship notably weaker in some parts than others. Like his subject, Aronson is often a split case — sycophantic in many of his praises of Margaret, whilst vitriolic in some of his judgements and criticisms. This extremist swinging to and fro, between kindness and harshness, whilst matching perfectly the woman of whom he writes, lends the work a hyperbolic quality. The author seems in parts to defend his contentious subject to the hilt, whilst in others viciously slapping her beautiful face (curious, given that the princess was still alive at the time of this book's publication to read it). Even so, I was compelled to read on.

Here was arguably the last grand royal princess, cavorting around with the louche arts and pop communities, often a maverick at odds with her status, often hysterically funny and theatrical, yet equally often a diva of the most pompous, imperious kind imaginable. There was simply no predicting which of these polar-opposite split characters she would be. As if she had a deeply set identity crisis. Just as there is never any predicting which route this author will take when relaying some episode — will it be compassionate or condemnatory? This shifting objectivity and judgement I found disconcerting yet interesting.

Like Diana who followed, this princess gave the monarchy that much needed humane element by being an openly flawed and self-contradictory figure we all related to at some level. She was brave, tragic, spoilt, vulnerable, mercurial, dutiful, extravagant, haughty, cynical, catty ... yet when it boiled down to it bore the capacity to be infinitely kinder, more personally loyal and more down to earth than many royals we read of — it all depended on who you asked, and which occasion it related to.

I enjoyed this lightweight read. Though it could surely doubtful ever be considered the definitive work of its kind on this princess, I highly recommend it to the diehard royal biography buff.

My review of Good Morning, Midnight by Jean Rhys

Good Morning, Midnight

by 

Jean Rhys

My rating: 5 out of 5 stars 

Jean Rhys's 1939 Kafkaesque tragi-farce is an all-powerful and evocative trip into a Paris of times past and the existentialist internal world of a tortured woman heading for disaster.

Middle-aged English woman Sasha Jensen has returned to Paris after a long absence. Her trip down Memory Lane is enabled by money lent by a kind friend. Close to broke, Sasha is haunted by a past loveless marriage and her baby's death.

Adrift in the city she feels connected to despite its painful memories, she bases herself in a dingy hotel room, waking and emerging mostly after dark, hence the title Good Morning, Midnight - taken from a poem by Emily Dickinson.

Sasha wanders streets and bars reminiscing. She drinks, takes pills, obsesses over her hair, clothes and creeping age, all the time ruminating scornfully over society.

This is the maturing Jean Rhys at her cynical best. Published on the eve of WWII's outbreak, when readers craved more uplifting, optimistic fiction, this was her last before vanishing into literary obscurity for decades, with people assuming her dead.

In its time it was thought too dark, too depressing, too sordid. More than a few found its storyline repellent. She was, however, a writer aeons ahead of her time, with a supreme talent for resonating with our innermost primal emotions.

My first ever reading of this was my chance introduction to Rhys, who would become my all-time literary favourite. An eerie experience, it was like reading my own thoughts, penned decades before I was born ... just for me to read someday long after the author's death.

My affinity with Jean Rhys was instant and unshakeable. She was an underrated literary genius whose eventual great acclaim came far too late, when she was too old and frail to enjoy it. If only she could have been more prolific in her prime!

Good Morning, Midnight changed the way I read fiction forever and remains my favourite Jean Rhys novel. I still return regularly to it and quote liberally from its superlative narrative.

Prose at times like poetry, nihilistic yet astoundingly beautiful, everyone should read this timeless treasure.

My review of Vivien: The Life of Vivien Leigh by Alexander Walker

Vivien: The Life of Vivien Leigh

by Alexander Walker

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

It was on reflection of what would have been Vivien Leigh's hundred and tenth year, 2023, that I revisited Alexander Walker's biography, one I had previously relished, but which had triggered disappointment in some. I've said before: if it's a movieography you want, click on Wikipedia or the Internet Movie Database. There isn't much to see. Leigh didn't make a long list of films comparable to other legends of her standing. This serious actress was at heart a great theatre performer, like her husband Sir Laurence Olivier who, likewise, made some celluloid epics but less than you might think.

So obviously this is no beginners' handbook on Vivien Leigh's movies. It's hardly news that she won two Best Actress Academy Awards for her performances as 'Southern belles': Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind (1939) and Blanche DuBois in the screen adaptation of A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), a role she had played on stage in London's West End in 1949. Unsurprisingly, she also won a Tony Award for her work in the Broadway version of Tovarich (1963).

This biography is about the person more than her films. Like many extraordinary talents, Leigh lived with bipolar disorder, no easy thing for any sufferer to work with let alone a star of stage and screen with those impossibly demanding schedules. This affected her twenty-year marriage to Sir Laurence Olivier so much that it ended in heartbreak, Olivier taking up with the great Joan Plowright who became the next Lady Olivier.

This multi-award nominee and winner of Oscars, New York Film Critics, Golden Globes and Tonies struggled with major health issues beside her mental ones. Her life and career were marred by those episodes. Recurrent bouts of tuberculosis, first diagnosed in the mid-1940s, claimed her life at 53. Understandably, she had earned a reputation for being difficult to work with, her career suffering periods of inactivity.

She was born in India, daughter of an English army officer in the Indian Cavalry. The family returned to their native England, Vivien later attending London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. She cut short her studies to get engaged to a man who disapproved of theatre work. She had therefore already been married, had a daughter and separated before she resumed her career, doing numerous quality but low-profile acting jobs for several years as she honed her stagecraft.

Then along came Olivier, her great love, and in turn came her brilliant career. Olivier really was her life more than anything, hence this biography's pronounced emphasis on her private life. She was utterly devastated by her divorce and never recovered.

The reader wonders whether it might have been some small consolation to Vivien being posthumously ranked 16th greatest female movie star of all time, in 1999, by the American Film Institute.

A more tragic private figure than any she publicly portrayed, here was a soul we feel for yet celebrate as we work our way through her life, care of this ever-reliable biographer of screen goddesses. I could not help wondering, on my second reading, whether a hundred-and-one-year-old Ms. Leigh might have eventually driven out her demons and made peace with her life, time healing all things and wisdom a natural product of years passing. She would surely have become one mightily wise dame. But as with all the great tragediennes, her life was cut short in her prime, which was perhaps her ultimate preference. She was, after all, quoted by US journalist Radie Harris as confiding that she 'would rather have lived a short life with Larry [Olivier] than face a long one without him'. Once more, I finished this book hoping this great star and tortured soul is at peace, if not for having kept her great love in life, then in the compensatory assurance of how treasured she will always be by her fans.

My review of Elizabeth: The Struggle for the Throne by David Starkey

Elizabeth: The Struggle for the Throne

by 

David Starkey

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars 

There's something to be said of the feministic slant common among Elizabeth's female biographers which make this sometimes-princess, sometimes-not a sympathetic young character. Just being Anne Boleyn's daughter would have been problematic for any individual regardless of character and circumstances. We recognise that these female biographers have done their job when we're compelled to empathise with the young Elizabeth. Such personal connection allows us special access into her psyche.

I was unsurprised to find this often-unforgiving exploration less empathic than bluntly incisive. I was able to factor in that Starkey was famously tagged misogynistic by historian Lucy Worsley in a heated moment of sensitive scholarly debate. Even his famous sobriquet as the 'rudest man in Britain' I knew was partly just the result of an old television debate panel beat-up.

I took into account that reviews of Starkey's own more recent TV documentaries unfairly drew on this aspect of him, calling him 'pompous' and 'acerbic'. David Sarky was one nickname.

I could therefore put aside Starkey's overt dismissal of other historians' ideas here. His provocative, self-opinionated manner is partly a contrivance, I knew.

This is a great historian of our time, a master of his genre, no mere popular history writer. To enjoy his quality, we must compromise by accepting his style. The effort is worth it.

Elizabeth's early years are undoubtedly what forged much of her persona. These are finely scrutinised without sentiment or bias. Starkey's erudite points are masterfully fleshed out, eloquently phrased and expertly documented.

Elizabeth's formative years of being pampered royal heiress then shunned royal bastard are satisfyingly cited as one trigger of her later infamous episodic neurosis.

Her much-debated time spent in Queen Catherine Parr's house is examined at length. So is the overwhelming probability of her being systematically seduced by her stepfather, the scheming Thomas Seymour, Baron Sudeley, who lost his head for his treasonous shenanigans. This well covered ground, consistent with general consensus, shines the obligatory light into Elizabeth's later famous reluctance towards open romance.

Her confusing return to royal favour under half-brother Edward offers context as plots thicken around replacing her and half-sister Mary with cousin Lady Jane Grey, the nine days queen who then lost her head on the block under the more rightfully placed Queen Mary I.

Elizabeth's subsequent persecution as heir again, under childless Mary, is well explained, with the effect of Elizabeth growing shrewder, a defining feature she would put to great use once on her throne.

Her potential involvement in Protestant plots to dethrone Catholic Mary is perhaps contentiously asserted, with Starkey gratuitously cherry picking to back up his conjecture. We are left with little doubt that she was at least privy to more than she owned up to being involved in, all of which she naturally denied to save her own neck.

A superbly written study, by a talented academic, of perhaps England's most popular queen. Notwithstanding its conspicuous departure from kinder, more feministic angles, this important book deserves its place on our shelves.

My review of Elizabeth I by Alison Plowden

Elizabeth I

by 

Alison Plowden

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

I just re-read this, as background revision, while watching the 2022 drama series 'Becoming Elizabeth'.

Alison Plowden is a queen of this genre. Her writing is addictive. Her research is meticulous, her detail mindboggling, her immortalised subject re-humanised. Elizabeth's life was fascinating regardless whose account you read — and I've read dozens — but this is among the better ones.

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.

A 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.

The reader of Alison Plowden's Elizabeth I is left feeling entertained, informed and satisfied.

A great addition for the more widely read Elizabeth I buff, a sound starting point for novices of this the subject and genre. Can't imagine anyone being disappointed by this book about England's all-time favourite monarch.

My review of The Forsyte Saga, by John Galsworthy

The Forsyte Saga

by John Galsworthy

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

This is for me the definitive period saga, by Nobel Prize-winning John Galsworthy. The reader follows the intertwined characters' lives for many years and several generations, with the collection comprising three hefty novels breaking down into five volumes:

The Man of Property (1906)

Indian Summer of a Forsyte (1918)

In Chancery (1920)

Awakening (1920)

To Let (1921)

Almost everyone I've known had seen this before reading it, including my great-grandparents. Two silent film adaptations, 1921 and 1922, captivated some Galsworthy devotees but attracted erstwhile print-shy masses who became converts, running out in droves to buy the cumbersome books. 

Similarly, a high calibre 2002-3 miniseries starring Gina McKee and Damian Lewis, with an endearingly wrinkly Wendy Craig, proved a satisfying recreation for some author fans but a watchable inspiration for the new millennium's page-reluctant youth, hoards becoming seduced into reading it, fuelling a modern-day sales resurgence.

My own adolescent introduction to this extensive fictional family was via the classic 1967 TV adaptation with a cherubic young Michael York; the then stellar Nyree Dawn Porter; pretty ingénue Susan Hampshire; the all-accomplishing Margaret Tyzack; and featuring, as Smither, the wondrous late Maggie Jones who would later win British hearts as Coronation Street's acerbic-tongued, gallows-humoresque Blanche Hunt.

The saga concerns the trials and tribulations of a twin-pronged nouveau riche British family, whose not so distant forbears were farmers. The author's own 'new money' upper-class family was not unlike this fictional one he so meticulously chronicles. The materially acquisitive protagonist, solicitor Soames Forsyte, is incurably unfulfilled despite his ever-expanding assets and status, his heart remaining shattered over first wife Irene.

Soames' rival cousin, painter Young Jolyon, who is actually older than Soames, was originally the family's favourite until deserting his wife for their daughter's governess, forever since thumbing his nose at society. The latter, however, subsequently remarries Soames' ex-wife, Irene, concreting their cousinly enmity.

Themes threading these volumes together include those common to the historic family saga genre: blood feuding, changing generations, mortality, ambition and duty versus desire.

There was something about the older Forsytes I found more endearing, their often-comical arch snobbery, their handwringing at not having quite yet reached that 'old money' mark, their whacky foibles, quirky prejudices and neurotic manifestations of status anxiety. 

The younger generations, as the saga progresses, have less edge, having mostly seen the errors of their forebears' ways and adapted for the 'better' (making them blander all round). They also represent the later period, as we compare them to their elders and their new epoch to times past. This characteristic is necessitated by the very concept of family saga. It demonstrates the loosening of restraint; the attitudinal progress time brings.

That necessity of genre notwithstanding, it is the very eccentricities, queerness and glaring shortcomings of the older, earlier Forsytes that makes them such colourful reading subjects (as was the case with those earlier penned, unforgettable characters of Dickens and other great nineteenth century masters from which Galswworthy's style seemingly draws considerable inspiration). 

Unlike some great sagas, this one never departs from English society's upper strata to glimpse the characters' lower-class counterparts, reminding us, perhaps, of the author's somewhat stifled cloistered upbringing. As if offsetting that limitation, there is sufficient of the 'downstairs' (the timeless, classless, primal) in some of these multidimensional, magnificently drawn 'upstairs' characters, whose humaneness at times transcends the abstract of class.

Though they are all, superficially, defined by their staunch social status, we are frequently reminded of that humble, if ambitious, farmers' blood still coursing through their not yet fully gentrified veins. This paradoxical edge to the Forsytes is charming, sometimes laughable, sometimes sad but makes them always accessible to us, the reader.

It took me many months, with breaks between volumes but, having selected it as midwinter bedtime reading, I remained blissfully unhurried about the mammoth task. Was often unable to put it down and switch off the bedside lamp, getting in 'just another quick chapter before I nod off' then noticing the dawn glimmering in through the blinds. I was left feeling nauseatingly smug as I closed the final page of the final book.

By no means a quick, easy or lazy read, this detailed body of work demands intense focus or continuity evaporates. The mental investment, however, is worth the rewards, as we end up on intimate terms with a remarkable family. If you love historical sagas, The Forsyte Saga is considered by aficionados to be the original, the ultimate one of its kind. This is something you will have seriously missed out on if the effort is not made. A magnificent work from a master storyteller.

Showcase: Spark, from Tale Publishing, Melbourne - Launched

Showcase: Spark

Includes my latest work:

Little Spark of Oz/Prelude to a Voyage

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sydney Morning Herald review of my novel Or Forever Be Damned

Sydney Morning Herald concluded:

"... astute characterisation and detailed evocation of the theatre world ... an impressive debut novel, written with great energy, featuring a good family-saga plot."

Or Forever Be Damned by C.S. Burrough | Review | Historical Novels Review

So grateful for the prestigious Historical Novel Society's great review 

... of my novel Or Forever Be Damned:

"Once, not so long ago, a little island nation ruled over an empire on which the sun never set. This is a simple statement of fact, but a mighty one. The age of empire building is the backdrop to the beginning of Burrough’s generational saga, which follows the height of British power through its collapse. It is against this backdrop that Burrough frames his narrative and through which the enormity of change that occurred during the 20th century is illuminated.

 

The narrative is framed around the lives and the families of two very different women who both escape the slums of Salford, England. Salford, a city which tried to match the success of nearby Manchester and failed miserably, was at its lowest point in the 1930s, and both women are scarred by their years spent there. Mona is a factory worker who yearns for a life on stage and is frustrated by her younger, favored and more talented brother, Ambrose. Mona resolves to outshine him. She meets Kat, a veteran child actor, who yearns to escape the theatre life as much as Mona dreams of having one. The two seem destined to be at odds from the beginning.

 

Or Forever be Damned is more than a novel; it is also just as much an enlightening commentary on the vast change time brings to society and how attitudes, values, formalities, expectations and conventions break down, to the great joy of some and the great heartbreak of others. It is certainly painstakingly researched and meticulous in its detail, and the characters are so wonderfully and richly crafted that one wonders if they correspond to people who once lived extraordinary but unknown lives. A highly recommended example of historical fiction at its finest."

https://historicalnovelsociety.org/reviews/or-forever-be-damned/ 

Soul Vomit: Domestic Violence Aftermath (Volume 2)

I was honoured to be a Featured Contributor to the 2014 Soul Vomit anthology, released October 18, 2014, in paperback & Kindle eBook editions.

Soul Vomit is about awareness raising and helping end domestic violence and abuse. Stories, poetry, art, and essays are collected from all over the world to help victims and survivors be heard!

It aims to help society open its eyes to this painful epidemic hiding behind closed family doors all over the world.

Purchase links:

‪#‎CreateSpace‬ http://tinyurl.com/qf2j5ad
‪#‎AmazonKindle‬ http://tinyurl.com/pqyjz2v
‪#‎AmazonPaperback‬ http://tinyurl.com/pvd524a

C S Burrough interviewed by Fiona Mcvie

It was a privilege and an honour being interviewed by the prolific Fiona Mcvie -  posted at Here is my interview with C S Burrough

Fiona: Name

I write as C S Burrough and my name is Colin.

Fiona: Age

55

Fiona: Where are you from?

I began life in the UK then made Australia home 30+ years ago.

Fiona: A little about yourself i.e. your education, family life etc.  

I was an only child, studied Performing Arts fulltime until leaving school, then forged an entertainment industry career. I worked on many West End productions and toured shows internationally before seeking out other experiences about midway through my working life. I've never been a family person, value my independence and prefer cats to people – I just have the one silver tabby who is enormously special and presently demanding I stop typing this to pay attention to her. I ride a modest sports scooter and spend as much time as I can in Sydney's fabulous outdoors.

Fiona: Tell us your latest news?

It’s Spring here, I went to iconic Bondi Beach yesterday, my historical novel Or Forever Be Damned was released in Kindle edition recently and is next due for paperback release this month. It's available at amazon.com

USA http://tinyurl.com/ofgxhyh
UK http://tinyurl.com/lwdopgn
AUS http://tinyurl.com/naemqj8

Fiona: When and why did you begin writing?

In my teens and early twenties I travelled extensively with my theatre work, keeping road journals. These recorded initial impressions of places I'd later revisit and review my opinions of. My deeper thoughts and more abstract reflections were explored this way, as I matured. The page became an invaluable confidante and sounding board. I never set out to make writing an art form, it developed incidentally as a result of my written expression.

Fiona: When did you first consider yourself a writer?

When I got my first story published, at the age of 30.

Fiona: What inspired you to write your first book?

I wanted to depict interesting people and places, make telling observations that readers would connect with. It’s a way of relating, a form of remote intimacy.

Fiona: Do you have a specific writing style?

I'm often told it’s evocative. I aim to transport readers to other times and places, whilst inhabiting different characters' internal worlds, comparing their separate personal realities in any given circumstance common to them. I explore the differing viewpoints that form a relationship's dynamics.

Fiona: How did you come up with the title?

It sounded like the crux of a life defining ultimatum. Life presents you with a chance at something. Whether we use up certain of life's chances shapes and determines our future. It's the classic human dilemma (decision making, direction choosing, risk taking), the source of much inner conflict.

Fiona: Is there a message in your novel that you want readers to grasp?

That human conflict usually involves legitimate differing viewpoints, it’s seldom as cut and dried as one party being right and another wrong. Also that human nature has both a timeless primal side and an accompanying flipside, a more subjective side peculiar to times and places inhabited. Yesteryear's people placed in today's situations would make different choices and have different outcomes. Similarly, those stuck in one part of the world are limited to its available options. Unless they get out! Breaking free of one's roots is usually far easier in today's world than it was in times past.

Fiona: How much of the book is realistic?

It's very realistic according to the reader reviews. As historical fiction its very core is realism, authenticity, fact rather than fantasy.

Fiona: Are experiences based on someone you know, or events in your own life?

No, the characters are completely fictional with no real-life counterparts, the settings mostly times and places I never inhabited. I have, however, used my extensive knowledge of theatrical lore to form the backdrop.

Fiona: What books have most influenced your life most?

In fiction, the great nineteenth century classics, especially Arnold Bennett's The Old Wives' Tale, Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights, Charles Dickens' Great Expectations and Victor Hugo's Les Misérables. Also the later works of my favourite author, Jean Rhys. But I'm more a reader of historical non-fiction and biographies, from which I've benefited greatly.

Fiona: If you had to choose, which writer would you consider a mentor?

Jean Rhys. I think she was pure genius.

Fiona: What book are you reading now?

Nicholas and Alexandra by Robert K. Massie.

Fiona: Are there any new authors that have grasped your interest?

No. I'm an old-fashioned reader.

Fiona: What are your current projects?

I'm spreading awareness on animal equality issues whilst slowly contemplating a collection of short stories.

Fiona: Name one entity that you feel supported you outside of family members.

Fellow writers.

Fiona: Do you see writing as a career?

More a vocation. 'Career' implies financial dependence, which for me is antithetical to creative integrity. Industrializing any art form I see as necessarily compromising. Careers in more commercial writing than the literary genres are maybe different, but I'd never want to be placed having to churn out words just to keep food on the table. I imagine the strain soul destroying. There would be no joy in that. I take as much time as I need to make my writing special and meaningful, regardless how 'marketable' it's considered.

Fiona: If you had to do it all over again, would you change anything in your latest book?

No, it's exactly as it should be.

Fiona: Can you share a little of your current work with us?

Or Forever be Damned is an historical saga spanning eight decades. It follows the lives and families of two very different women who escape northern England's slums in the 1930s Slump. When Fate brings these dual protagonist/antagonists together, their instinctive, irrational loathing of each other is instant and remains lifelong. The reader is unpressured into siding with either woman, with each having sympathetic qualities and flaws blossoming as they mature.

Fiona: Is there anything you find particularly challenging in your writing?

Getting first drafts done. I go for long periods with no words coming, then words erupt from me faster than my fingers can type. If only creativity was a more rational beast.

Fiona: Who is your favorite author and what is it that really strikes you about their work?

The late Jean Rhys. Her unique style has never been replicated. Her combined rawness of expression and literary skill remains breathtaking. Her incisive take on humanity's warped ways is so bravely, bluntly expressed, yet so poetically formed on the page. She was baring her soul in all her work. It was also often what she didn’t write – the unstated parts, the inferred elements that she left to the reader's imagination, rather than spelling them out – that gave her prose such impact. No other writer has conveyed so specifically my own personal experience of life. It's as if she read my mind decades before I was born.

Fiona: Do you have to travel much concerning your book(s)?

No, for this one I needed to stay anchored in my regular focus zone. In the past, though, I've got a lot written whilst travelling, but not journeying anywhere specifically for any one project.

Fiona: Who designed the covers?

The paperback print cover was specially designed by acclaimed Sydney artist Shayne Chester, a brilliant painter and photographer. He spent weeks reading the entire book first, not just the synopsis, to get the feel. We also discussed it over several weeks whilst he came up with several options. I love his beautifully eerie, evocative end result, which perfectly expresses my vision of this saga. 

Fiona: What was the hardest part of writing your book?

My own insistence on historical accuracy and precision of detail. As it follows numerous characters through eight decades, I spent over two years painstakingly researching, situating each person geographically, professionally etc. and, of course, dressing them accordingly.

Fiona: Did you learn anything from writing your book and what was it?

Writing my most recent novel, I learned that hard plotting, working to self-imposed deadlines, in fact 'industrial strategy' must sometimes be avoided to produce the best possible results.

Fiona: Do you have any advice for other writers?

Try to avoid replicating mass produced material to jump onto the fast-selling gravy train – write what you know is your own special line. Integrity resonates and in the long run a dozen genuinely devoted fans are of truer value than any annual royalty income. 

Fiona: Do you have anything specific that you want to say to your readers?

Just thank you for 'getting' me (I write for you only).

 

Fiona: Do you remember the first book you read?

Mary Poppins by P.L. Travers.

Fiona: What makes you laugh/cry?

Nobody made me laugh more than Lucille Ball in her TV shows. Nothing makes me cry more than human cruelty to animals, particularly all factory farming, chemical product testing for 'beauty' and of course hunting.

Fiona: Is there one person past or present you would want to meet and why?

Queen Elizabeth I. She would have been such a fascinating person. Otherwise, her great adversary Mary Queen of Scots, equally fascinating.

 

Fiona: Other than writing do you have any hobbies?

I'm into genealogy and have my family tree back to 843 AD.

 

Fiona: What TV shows/films do you enjoy watching?

British TV drama 'Silk' / Big screen period dramas and films noir of the Joan Crawford / Bette Davis type.

Fiona: Favorite foods / Colors/ Music

Home cooked vegan dishes / Gold / 1960s sounds.

 

Fiona: If you were not a writer what else would you like to have done?

Work with animals.

 

Fiona: Do you have a blog/website? If so what is it?

Blog http://csburrough.blogspot.com.au/

Facebook fan page https://www.facebook.com/colin.burrough

Goodreads author page https://www.goodreads.com/csburrough