New Tudor Books!

It looks like this is going to be a very busy year with so many interesting Tudor books due to be published. Here is a little taste of what’s to come:

Anne Boleyn: In Her Own Words & the Words of Those Who Knew Her by Elizabeth Norton (Available April 1 2011)

Amazon Product Description:

The complete letters, dispatches and chronicles that tell the real story of Anne Boleyn. Anne Boleyn, the second wife of Henry VIII, caused comment wherever she went. Through the chronicles, letters and dispatches written by both Anne and her contemporaries, it is possible to see her life and thoughts as she struggled to become queen of England, ultimately ending her life on the scaffold. Only through the original sources is it truly possible to evaluate the real Anne. George Wyatt’s Life of Queen Anne provided the first detailed account of the queen, based on the testimony of those that knew her. The poems of Anne’s supposed lover, Thomas Wyatt, as well as accounts such as Cavendish’s Life of Wolsey also give details of her life, as do the hostile dispatches of the Imperial Ambassador, Eustace Chapuys and the later works of the slanderous Nicholas Slander and Nicholas Harpsfield. Henry VIII’s love letters and many of Anne’s own letters survive, providing an insight into the love affair that changed England forever. The reports on Anne’s conduct in the Tower of London show the queen’s shock and despair when she realised that she was to die. Collected together for the first time, these and other sources make it possible to view the real Anne Boleyn through her own words and those of her contemporaries.

Agnes Strickland's Lives of the Queens of England edited by Antonia Fraser

Agnes Strickland’s Lives of the Queens of England edited by Antonia Fraser

(1 Feb 2011)

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Strickland was possibly the most celebrated English female historical biographer of the 19th Century. Antonia Fraser selects her best writing and explains its importance. “The Lives of the Queens of England” were among the most popular of all Victorian historical publications. They remain an important pioneering achievement in the writing of historical biography. Agnes Strickland worked in manuscript collections and managed to obtain access to the state paper office. ‘Facts not opinions’ was her credo and the “Lives” were an important resource for later scholars, decades after their original publication. Antonia Fraser, the doyenne of modern historical biographers, makes a selection of her favourite passages from Strickland’s work and writes an extensive introduction in which she states that the Lives ‘remain in many ways as fresh and as entertaining as their first delighted readers must have found them’. Her selection concerns Anne Boleyn and her daughter Elizabeth I. “Continuum Histories” will attract a new generation of readers to some of the greatest narrative history ever written. Each volume includes a dramatic episode from a major work of history, prefaced with an introduction by a leading modern authority.

Henry VIII: A Life by David Loades

(1 Mar 2011)

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A major new biography of the most infamous king of England. ‘Means to be God, and do as pleases himself’ Martin Luther observed. It was a shrewd comment, not merely on the divorce in which the King was then embroiled, but upon his whole career. Henry VIII was self righteous, and convinced that he enjoyed a special relationship with the Almighty, which gave him a unique claim upon the obedience of his subjects. He subdued the church, sidelined the old nobility, and reorganised the government of his realm, all in the name of that Good Lordship which was his God-given responsibility. As a youth, he was a magnificent specimen of manhood, and in age a gargantuan wreck, but even in his prime he was never the ‘ladies man’ which legend, and his own imagination, created. Sexual insecurity undermined him, and gave his will that irascible edge which proved fatal to Anne Boleyn and Thomas Cromwell alike. Several times during his reign he took out his frustrations in warfare, but succeeded only in spending vast sums of money. Henry VIII dominated England during his lifetime and for many years thereafter, as a warrior, as a renaissance Prince, and as Supreme Head of the Church, but his personality is as controversial today as it was in his own lifetime. He is a figure impossible to ignore. Professor David Loades has spent most of his life investigating the remains, literary, archival and archaeological, of Henry VIII, and this monumental new biography book is the result. His portrait of Henry is distinctive, he was neither a genius nor a tyrant, but a man’ like any other’, except for the extraordinary circumstances in which he found himself.

Young Henry: The Rise of Henry VIII by Robert Hutchinson

Young Henry: The Rise of Henry VIII by Robert Hutchinson

(7 April 2011)

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Henry VIII always had problems with women. Born on 28 June 1491, he lived in the shadow of his elder brother Arthur and his dour and autocratic father, Henry VII. Elizabeth of York, Henry’s mother, died when he was twelve and thereafter he lived under the thumb of his formidable grandmother, Lady Margaret Beaufort, who beneath a pious exterior was the arch-conspirator of the last days of the Wars of the Roses. Everything changed when Arthur died of tuberculosis at Ludlow Castle in 1502, less than six months after his marriage to the Spanish princess, Catherine of Aragon. Henry VII died in April 1509 when his sole heir was nine weeks away from his eighteenth birthday. His grandmother acted as regent until his birthday and he married his brother’s widow, Catherine on 11 June, two weeks before their joint coronation. Henry quickly swept away the musty cobwebs of his father’s court. He loved magnificence, merriment and the hunting field, and could fire an arrow further than most of his professional archers. Henry could dance everyone off their feet and could drink most men under the table. But Henry became frustrated and angry at his lack of sons by Catherine and his attention began to wander. Some time in 1526 he fell passionately in love with Anne Boleyn. At the age of 35, the time for youthful frolic had ended. To achieve his heart’s overpowering desire, the executions had now to begin. Young Henry provides readers with an unique and compelling vision of the splendours and tragedies of the royal court, presided over by a magnificent and ruthless monarch.

England’s Queens: The Biography by Elizabeth Norton

(1 May 2011)

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Her story not his, the English monarchy through the private and public lives of the queens of England. Nearly eighty women have sat on the throne of England, either as queen regnant or queen consort and the voices of all of them survive through their own writings and those of their contemporaries. The primary role of the queen over the ages was to provide an heir. Catherine of Aragon found this to her cost, divorced by Henry VIII for failing to produce a healthy son. Anne Boleyn was executed shortly afterwards for the same reason. The birth of an heir was also a route to power for a queen and Eleanor of Aquitaine became the most powerful woman in Europe during the reigns of her sons. Emma of Normandy was so desperate to be queen mother that she manipulated her three sons in an attempt to ensure that one would be king. One was murdered when he attempted to reach his mother but her remaining two sons became kings in turn with their mother as a leading advisor. Strong relationships could also develop between the queens and their husbands. Richard II and Anne of Bohemia made an arranged marriage but quickly fell deeply in love and, on Anne’s death at Sheen Palace, Richard’s grief was so intense that he ordered the palace to be destroyed. Edward VIII even abandoned his throne when forced to choose between the crown and his lover, Wallis Simpson. Not all marriages were happy and queens such as Isabella of France and Catherine Howard took lovers to escape their marriages. The unhappy Sophia Dorothea of Celle was imprisoned for over thirty years by her husband George I when her affair was discovered. Her lover, Count von Konigsmarck was murdered. Most queens made arranged marriages and were used by their families to build alliances. Some queens were able to break away from this control. Queen Victoria spent her childhood secluded with her overprotective mother, even sharing the same bedroom until the day when she was proclaimed queen and finally freed herself from her mother’s control. For the first time, the voice of each individual queen can be heard together, charting the course of English queenship through nearly two thousand years of history. Each queen played her own part in shaping what the role of queen would become and it developed through the lives and actions of each of the women in turn.

Sister Queens: Katherine of Aragon and Juana Queen of Castile: Katherine of Aragon and Juana Archduchess of Burgundy by Julia Fox

Sister Queens: Katherine of Aragon and Juana Queen of Castile: Katherine of Aragon and Juana Archduchess of Burgundy by Julia Fox

(12 May 2011)

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Daughters of the formidable Isabella and Ferdinand of Spain, Katherine and Juana were born in to a world of privilege and luxury that came at a devastating personal price. They were trained from an early age to understand European diplomacy and to revere their position as defenders of Catholicism against any threat to their religion. In an age of familiy politics, the sisters were useful only as a way to secure new alliances through marriage; both at the mercy of the men they were to marry. Katherine’s marriage to Prnice Arthur apeared to go well until he died suddenly after ten months. Marriage to King Henry VIII did not result in the vital heir, and soon Henry was displaying his despotic nature, with the execution of ‘traitors’ and high-handed affairs. Juana fared no better with Philip of Burgundy, whose naked amibition and cruelty made her life equally difficult. Julia Fox’s new biography vividly portrays the harsh realities of being a queen within a world dominated and run by men. She provides a fresh take on the sisters’ characters and interior worlds by setting them within their family and Spanish contexts. In the case of both women, this vibrant biography graphically illustrates the dangers of being a royal commodity at such a perilous time, and gives a highly revealing portrait of two forceful female personaliites thrwarted by the men around them – including the men closest to them who sould have cared for them the most.

The French Queen's Letters: Mary Tudor Brandon and the Politics of Marriage in Sixteenth-Century Europe by Erin A. Sadlack

The French Queen’s Letters: Mary Tudor Brandon and the Politics of Marriage in Sixteenth-Century Europe by Erin A. Sadlack

(13 May 2011)

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In this biography, Erin Sadlack contends that Mary was neither a weeping hysteric nor a love-struck romantic, but a queen who drew on two sources of authority to increase the power of her position: epistolary conventions and the rhetoric of chivalry that imbued the French and English courts.

Henry: Model of a Tyrant by David Starkey

(29 Sep 2011)

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How and why did Henry VIII turn from a glamorous Renaissance prince into this country’s greatest tyrant? David Starkey’s magesterial concluding biography, published to coincide with the 500th anniversary of Henry’s accession to the throne, tells this remarkable, bloodthirsty story. When Henry VIII came to throne in 1509, he had already distinguished himself as a scholar, musician and athlete. So how did this glamorous young Renaissance prince become this country’s greatest tyrant? Desperate to cement his claim to the throne, Henry quickly became frustrated by the lack of a male heir from his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. His impatience increased after he became infatuated with the beautiful Anne Boleyn. When Anne refused to become his mistress, a desperate Henry was forced to take action that would set the course of British history for the next 500 years. In a move that would have fateful consequences for all involved, Henry ordered his lifelong friend Thomas More to implement religious changes that would allow him to remarry. The resulting establishment of the Church of England catapulted Henry to the height of his personal power and led to More’s death. Catherine was dismissed, Anne was ushered in, and so began the bloody cycle of marriage, divorce and execution Henry is still remembered for today. And yet behind this brutal history was a man traumatised by bitter divorce. David Starkey’s magisterial concluding biography of this most complex of British kings, published to coincide with the 500th anniversary of Henry’s accession to the throne, tells the bloodstained story of his remarkable shift from humanist prince to all-powerful despot during one of the most vivid and significant periods of British history.

Mary Boleyn: The Great and Infamous Whore by Alison Weir

Mary Boleyn: The Great and Infamous Whore by Alison Weir

(6 Oct 2011)

From Alison Weir News:

In this book, the first full-scale, in-depth biography of Henry VIII’s famous mistress, Mary Boleyn, the sister of Anne, his second queen, Alison Weir explodes much of the mythology that surrounds Mary Boleyn and uncovers the truth about one of the most misunderstood figures of the Tudor age.

Full details available on Alison’s website here.