I was really looking forwards to this book, I am an avid reader of anything to do with Tudor history and the wars of the roses and as there is relatively little written on the early years of Henry VIII I was keen to discover more about his personality, his friendships, his marriage, his life and what made him into the tyrant most people recognise him as. Starkey's introduction was promising, I was...
Elizabeth I survived to become queen by being very careful. The fact that she avoided being used or implicated by the various plots against her radically Protestant brother Henry VIII, and fanatically Catholic sister Mary I, was a triumph in itself, and she never forgot the lesson that survival needed to be her first goal. What many of her contemporaries took for irritating womanly indecision was...
This is an excellent book! I've read it dozens of times and it maintains its fascination. Weir's writing style is so fluid and easy to read that I've since bought many other titles written by her.
I have been looking for a truly historical analysis that neither confinces this complex character to one chapter in a book on the reign of Henry VIII, portrays her as a saucy temptress nor eulogises her in sickeningly romantic tones in the manner of the unprofessional outpourings of Joanna Denney, who should be ashamed to call herself a historian with a one-sided diatribe such as England's Tragic Queen.
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This is a book I keep going back to, both for information and for pleasure. It is very readable, whether starting at the beginning or just dipping into.
I especially like the timelines which put the monarchs into social and political context, and also the way their character and personality is brought out.
The Virgin Queen, Gloriana, Good Queen Bess; Elizabeth I holds a unique place in the English imagination as one of the nation's most powerful, charismatic and successful monarchs. Elizabeth is usually imagined as the icy, untouchable figure memorably recreated on screen by Bette Davis and Judi Dench, but that vision of Elizabeth ignores the turbulent years of her early life, from her birth as the daughter...
This book glossed over Zara's eventing career, preferring to focus on her relationships with the rest of the royal family and how this has shaped her life.
To be honest there is probably less than a chapter's worth about her riding and fantastic partnership with Toytown which is a real shame.
A good read if you want to know the in's & out's of a royal childhood but disappointing if you...
I got this book with the inscription: "It is all true, Darling" as an expression of big irony. Kitty Kelly might be a great US author but she does not understand a thing about European Royalty. The book is utter trash, with no inside and everybody who reads tabloids could have written this. Not worth a read.
Nice anthology of curiosities and anecdotes about the Queen and her family, very readable and funny. You'll learn about the beloved corgies, food and drink, cars and driving habits, horses and the Windsors' Christmas.
There are also some hilarious drawings at the beginning of each chapter. I loved the ones showing the Queen with her corgies, so funny!
The other is: Sarah Bradford's biography of Diana. (I also liked Ken Wharfe's memoir very much.)
Ms. Bedell-Smith digs deep and sometimes unsympathetically into the life of Diana, Princess of Wales. However, I think for the most part she is objective about Diana, not objectionable -- in other words, she tells Diana's story as it was, not as we might WISH it was. Diana had her bad...
