Reviews of ‘Crown of Thistles: The Fatal Inheritance of Mary Queen of Scots’ by Linda Porter have started appearing.
(c) Andrew Lownie Literary Agency
‘In focusing on the family rivalries that led to Mary’s reign and fall, Porter has found a fresh approach to a familiar subject.’
Event – The Mail on Sunday 18/8/2013, p.37
You can read the whole of Leanda de Lisle’s review at her website:
Leanda de Lisle – My Review of ‘Crown of Thistles: The Fatal Inheritance of Mary Queen of Scots’]
The book is elegantly written, decently researched and, crucially, it will alert a new readership to a neglected subject.‘
Read the whole review:
Linda Porter: Crown Of Thistles – The Fatal Inheritance Of Mary Queen Of Scots – Review by Jonathan Wright – The Herald – 10 August 2013
‘A racy tale of Mary. Elizabeth and the dawn of a dynasty grips Melanie Reid’
… ‘Into all this phwoar and war steps the historian Linda Porter, cooly crafting the authentic story of how Mary, Queen of Scots and Elizabeth I came to be, rather than simply who they were. This is Porter’s unique selling point in a crowded field. She looks at the Tudors and Stewarts from the period of the queens’ great-grandfathers: two dynasties, English and Scottish, fighting like vicious neighbours over a Leylandii hedge, yet ultimately converging within the Union of the Crowns under James I & VI in 1603.
…Porter’s forte, though, lies in reappraising figures who have been neglected, as her biographies of Mary Tudor and Katherine Parr demonstrated.
This book is at its best when she alights on largely forgotten characters, in particularly Henry VII and James IV, the grandfathers of the famous queens.
…Her writing is bold, insightful and vivid…’
Saturday Review (The Times), 10 August 2013, p 12
