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This book will break open a secret. It is a gripping tale of love, loyalty and domestic happiness that came to be overwhelmed by the forces of ambition, deceit and treachery, from the award-winning author of 'My Heart is My Own: The Life of Mary, Queen of Scots'.
Now a major film, this is a dramatic reinterpretation of the life of Mary Queen of Scots by one of the leading historians of this period. For centuries, Mary, Queen of Scots has been a figure of scholarly debate. Where many have portrayed her as the weak woman to Elizabeth's rational leader, John Guy reassesses the young queen, finding her far more politically shrewd than previously believed. Crowned Queen of Scotland at nine months old, Queen of France by age sixteen and widowed the following year, Guy paints Mary as a commanding and savvy queen who navigated the European power struggles of the time to her advantage. Her life was one of drama and conflict - Scottish lords constructed labyri...
COSTA AWARD FINALIST ECONOMIST BOOK OF THE YEAR FINANCIAL TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR Film rights acquired by Gold Circle Films, the team behind My Big Fat Greek Wedding “A fresh, thrilling portrait… Guy’s Elizabeth is deliciously human.” –Stacy Schiff, The New York Times Book Review A groundbreaking reconsideration of our favorite Tudor queen, Elizabeth is an intimate and surprising biography that shows her at the height of her power. Elizabeth was crowned queen at twenty-five, but it was only when she reached fifty and all hopes of a royal marriage were behind her that she began to wield power in her own right. For twenty-five years she had struggled to assert her authority over advis...
"But who was the historical More? Which of the many characterisations that have attached to his name, some plainly incompatible, are upheld by the sources? In this new study we are, taken behind the facade, to understand better the substructure of evidence on which biographers must construct their works. We see not only the different portrayals that have arisen to explain or condemn or exculpate, but are also given a sense of what we can and cannot know about Thomas More, laying bare those points of transition between the sustainable and the conjectural."--BOOK JACKET.
Charismatic, insatiable and cruel, Henry VIII was, as John Guy shows, a king who became mesmerized by his own legend - and in the process destroyed and remade England. Said to be a 'pillager of the commonwealth', this most instantly recognizable of kings remains a figure of extreme contradictions: magnificent and vengeful; a devout traditionalist who oversaw a cataclysmic rupture with the church in Rome; a talented, towering figure who nevertheless could not bear to meet people's eyes when he talked to them. In this revealing new account, John Guy looks behind the mask into Henry's mind to explore how he understood the world and his place in it - from his isolated upbringing and the blazing glory of his accession, to his desperate quest for fame and an heir and the terrifying paranoia of his last, agonising, 54-inch-waisted years.
'A masterful biography' Amanda Foreman 'A gripping story of Queen Elizabeth's last years, authoritatively researched and engagingly recounted by the leading Tudor historian of our age' James Shapiro, author of 1599 and 1606 ____________________ An ageing queen, an heirless state, conspiracy all round: here is the court of Elizabeth I as never known before History has pictured Elizabeth I as Gloriana, an icon of strength and power. But the reality, especially during her later years, was not so simple. In 1583 Elizabeth is fifty years old, but her greatest challenges are still to come: the Spanish Armada; the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots; relentless plotting among her courtiers. This grip...
This Whitbread Award–winning biography and basis for the film Mary Queen of Scots starring Saoirse Ronan and Margot Robbie “reads like Shakespearean drama” (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution). “A triumph . . . A masterpiece full of fire and tragedy.” —Amanda Foreman, author of Georgiana In the first full-scale biography of Mary Stuart in more than thirty years, John Guy creates an intimate and absorbing portrait of one of history’s greatest women, depicting her world and her place in the sweep of history with stunning immediacy. Bringing together all surviving documents and uncovering a trove of new sources for the first time, Guy dispels the popular image of Mary Queen of Scots...
This book investigates the norms and values of Tudor and early-Stuart politics, which are considered in the contexts of law and the Reformation, legal and administrative institutions, and classical and legal humanism. Main themes include 'imperial' monarchy and the theory of 'counsel', Parliament and the royal supremacy, conciliar politics and organization, the relationship of law and equity, and the jurisdictional rivalry between the courts of common law and canon law. The author argues that norms of Tudor England were sufficiently pluralist to satisfy both 'absolutist' and 'constitutionalist' aspirations, whereas by 1628 they proved no longer effective as a mechanism for the orderly conduct of politics. The clash between two conflicting sets of values was translated into a clash of ideologies.
This book is about the politics and political culture of the 'last decade' of the reign of Elizabeth I, in effect the years 1585 to 1603. It argues that this period was so distinctive that it amounted to the second of two 'reigns'. It also invites readers, at times provocatively, to take a critical look at the declining Virgin Queen. Many teachers and their students have failed to consider the 'last decade' in its own right, or have ignored it, having begun their accounts in 1558 and struggled on to the defeat of the Armada in 1588. Only two major political surveys have been attempted since 1926. Both consider mainly the war with Spain and the politics of war, and each allots inadequate space to Crown patronage, puritanism and religion, society and the economy, political thought, and literature and drama. This book, written by some of the leading scholars of their generation, will be indispensable to a fuller understanding of the age.
WINNER OF THE WHITBREAD BIOGRAPHY AWARD Now a major film, this is a dramatic reinterpretation of the life of Mary Queen of Scots by one of the leading historians of this period. For centuries, Mary, Queen of Scots has been a figure of scholarly debate. Where many have portrayed her as the weak woman to Elizabeth's rational leader, John Guy reassesses the young queen, finding her far more politically shrewd than previously believed. Crowned Queen of Scotland at nine months old, Queen of France by age sixteen and widowed the following year, Guy paints Mary as a commanding and savvy queen who navigated the European power struggles of the time to her advantage in a life of drama and conflict. Re-examining the original sources, resulting in a riveting new argument surrounding Mary's involvement in her husband murder, Guy's deft storytelling and insightful new arguments provide compelling and dramatic reading. 'An absorbing biography . . . meticulously researched . . . scholarly and intriguing' Peter Ackroyd, The Times 'Rarely have first-class scholarship and first-class storytelling been so effectively combined' John Adamson, Daily Telegraph