1st February – Agnes Strickland’s Lives of the Queens of England edited by Antonia Fraser
‘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.
From Amazon.co.uk
Further details – Amazon.co.uk
11th March – Henry VIII: A Life by David Loades
‘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.’
From Amazon.co.uk
Further details – Amazon.co.uk
18th March – Katherine the Queen: The Remarkable Life of Katherine Parr by Linda Porter (Paperback)
‘Set amidst the lusts, intrigue and violence of a turbulent age, Katherine the Queen paints a memorable portrait of a dramatic life.’
From Linda Porter
Reviews for the hardback version
Further details – Panmacmillan
Further details – Amazon.co.uk
1st April – Catherine of Aragon: Henry’s Spanish Queen by Giles Tremlett (Paperback)
‘Reformation, revolution and Tudor history would all have been vastly different without Catherine of Aragon.
Giles Tremlett’s new biography is the first in more than four decades to be dedicated entirely and uniquely to the tenacious woman whose marriage lasted twice as long as those of Henry’s five other wives put together. It draws on fresh material from Spain to trace the dramatic events of her life through Catherine of Aragon’s own eyes.’
From Faber & Faber
Reviews for the hardback version
Further details – Faber & Faber
Further details – Amazon.co.uk
1st April – Anne Boleyn: In Her Own Words & the Words of Those Who Knew Her by Elizabeth Norton
‘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.’
From Amazon.co.uk
Further information – Amazon.co.uk
April – The French Queen’s Letters: Mary Tudor Brandon and the Politics of Marriage in Sixteenth-Century Europe by Erin A Sadlack – New publication date
’A fresh biography of Mary Tudor which challenges conventional views of her as a weeping hysteric and love-struck romantic, providing instead the portrait of 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.’
Further details – Palgrave Macmillan.com
Further details – Amazon.co.uk
7th April – Young Henry: The Rise of Henry VIII by Robert Hutchinson
‘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.’
Further details – Orion Publishing Group
Further details – Amazon.co.uk
12th May – Sister Queens: Katherine of Aragon and Juana Queen of Castile: Katherine of Aragon and Juana Archduchess of Burgundy by Julia Fox
‘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 personalities thwarted by the men around them – including the men closest to them who should have cared for them the most.’
From Amazon.co.uk
Further details – Orion Publishing Group
Further details – Amazon.co.uk
1st June – England’s Queens: The Biography by Elizabeth Norton – New Publication date
’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.’
From Amazon.co.uk
Further details – Amazon.co.uk
15th June – Anne Boleyn: The Young Queen to Be by Josephine Wilkinson
‘The story of Anne Boleyn’s early life, told in detail for the first time. Anne Boleyn is perhaps the most engaging of Henry VIII’s Queens. For her he would divorce his wife of some twenty years standing, he would take on the might of the Roman Church and the Holy Roman Empire; he would even alienate his own people in order to win her favour and, eventually, her hand. But before Henry came into her life Anne Boleyn had already wandered down love’s winding path. She had learned its twists and turns during her youth spent at the courts of the Low Countries and France, where she had been sent as a result of her scandalous behaviour with her father’s butler and chaplain. Here her education had been directed by two of the strongest women of the age – and one of the weakest.’
From Amazon.co.uk
Further details – Amazon.co.uk
New publication date – 22nd July – Katherine Parr: Complete Works and Correspondence edited by Janel Mueller
‘Janel Mueller has assembled the four publications attributed to Parr—Psalms or Prayers, Prayers or Meditations, The Lamentation of a Sinner, and a compilation of prayers and Biblical excerpts written in her hand—as well as her extensive correspondence, which is collected here for the first time. Mueller brings to this volume a wealth of knowledge of sixteenth-century English culture. She marshals the impeccable skills of a textual scholar in rendering Parr’s sixteenth-century English for modern readers and provides useful background on the circumstances of and references in Parr’s letters and compositions. ‘
From University of Chicago Press Books
Further details – University of Chicago Press Books
Further details – Amazon.co.uk
7th July – She Wolves: The Women Who Ruled England Before Elizabeth’ by Helen Castor (Paperback)
‘The stories of these women, told here in all their vivid humanity, expose the paradox which the female heirs to the Tudor throne had no choice but to negotiate. Man was the head of woman, and the king was the head of all. How, then, could royal power lie in female hands?’
From Helen Castor.com
Reviews for the hardback & paperback versions
Further details – Faber & Faber
Further details – Amazon.co.uk
21st July – The Last White Rose: Dynasty, Rebellion and Treason – The Secret Wars Against the Tudors by Desmond Seward (Paperback)
‘The War of the Rose didn’t end at the Battle of Bosworth field in 1485. In “Last White Rose” Desmond Seward overturns the traditional story of the rise of the Tudor dynasty.’
From Amazon.co.uk
Further details – Constable & Robsinson
Further details – Amazon.co.uk
2nd August – Three Maids for a Crown: A Novel of the Grey Sisters by Ella March Chase
‘In the second novel from Ella March Chase, we meet sixteen-year-old Jane Grey, a quiet and obedient young lady destined to become the shortest reigning English monarch. Her beautiful middle sister Katherine Grey charms all the right people–until loyalties shift. And finally Lady Mary Grey, a dwarf with a twisted spine whose goal is simply to protect people she loves–but at a terrible cost.
In an age in which begetting sons was all that mattered and queens rose and fell on the sex of their child, these three girls with royal Tudor blood lived under the dangerous whims of parents with a passion for gambling. The stakes they would wager: their daughters’ lives against rampant ambition.’
From Amazon.co.uk
Further details – Amazon.co.uk
Further details – Ella March Chase
30th August – Mary I: England’s Catholic Queen by John Edwards – New
‘The lifestory of Mary I – daughter of Henry VIII and his Spanish wife, Catherine of Aragon – is often distilled to a few dramatic episodes: her victory over the attempted coup by Lady Jane Grey, the imprisonment of her half-sister Elizabeth, the burning of Protestants, her short marriage to Philip of Spain. This original and deeply researched biography paints a far more detailed portrait of Mary and offers a fresh understanding of her religious faith and policies as well as her historical significance in England and beyond. John Edwards, a leading scholar of English and Spanish history, is the first to make full use of Continental archives in this context, especially Spanish ones, to demonstrate how Mary’s culture, Catholic faith, and politics were thoroughly Spanish. Edwards begins with Mary’s origins, follows her as she battles her increasingly erratic father, and focuses particular attention on her notorious religious policies, some of which went horribly wrong from her point of view. The book concludes with a consideration of Mary’s five-year reign and the frustrations that plagued her final years. Childless, ill, deserted by her husband, Mary died in the full knowledge that her Protestant half-sister Elizabeth would undo her religious work and, without acknowledging her sister, would reap the benefits of Mary’s achievements in government.’
Further details – Yale University Press
Further details – Amazon.co.uk
1st September – Matilda: Wife of the Conqueror by Tracy Borman
Further details – Amazon.co.uk
28th September – The Boleyns: The Rise and Fall of a Tudor Family by David Loades
‘A magnificent tale of family rivalry and intrigue set against Henry VIII’s court. The fall of Anne Boleyn and her brother George is the classic drama of the Tudor era. The Boleyns had long been an influential English family. Sir Edward Boleyn had been Lord Mayor of London. His grandson, Sir Thomas had inherited wealth and position, and through the sexual adventures of his daughters, Mary and Anne, ascended to the peak of influence at court. The three Boleyn children formed a faction of their own, making many enemies: and when those enemies secured Henry VIII’s ear, they brought down the entire family in blood and disgrace. George, Lord Rochfort, left no children. Mary left a son by her husband, William Carey – Henry Carey, Lord Hunsdon. Anne left a daughter, Elizabeth I – so like her in many ways and a sexual politician without rival.’
From Amazon.co.uk
Further details:
Further details – David Loades
29th September – Winter King: The Dawn of Tudor England by Thomas Penn
‘He were a dark prince, and infinitely suspicious, and his times full of secret conspiracies and troubles’, Sir Francis Bacon
It was 1501. England had been ravaged for decades by conspiracy, violence, murders, coups and counter-coups. Henry VII had clambered to the top of the heap – a fugitive with a flimsy claim to England’s crown who through luck, guile and ruthlessness had managed to win the throne and stay on it for sixteen years. Although he built palaces, hosted jousts, gave out lavish presents and sent ambassadors across Europe, for many he remained a usurper, a false king.
But Henry had a crucial asset: his queen and their children, the living embodiment of his hoped-for dynasty. Now, in what would be the crowning glory of his reign, his elder son would marry a great Spanish princess. On a cold November day this girl, the sixteen-year-old Catherine of Aragon, arrived in London for a wedding upon which the fate of England would hinge…
In his remarkable debut, Thomas Penn recreates an England which is both familiar and very strange – a country that seems medieval yet modern, in which honour and chivalry mingle with espionage, realpolitik, high finance and corruption. It is the story of the transformation of a young, vulnerable boy, Prince Henry, into the aggressive teenager who would become Henry VIII, and of Catherine of Aragon, his future queen. And at its heart is the tragic, magnetic figure of Henry VII – controlling, paranoid, avaricious, with a Machiavellian charm and will to power.
Rich with incident and drama, filled with wonderfully drawn characters, Winter King is an unforgettable story of pageantry, surveillance, the thirst for glory – and the fraught, unstable birth of Tudor England.
From Amazon.co.uk
Further details – Amazon.co.uk
6th October – Mary Boleyn: The Great and Infamous Whore by Alison Weir
‘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.’
From Alison Weir
Further details – Alison Weir – News
Further details – Amazon.co.uk
October – Henry VIII by Eric Ives
Further details – Amazon.co.uk
14th October – Lady Jane Grey: A Tudor Mystery (Paperback)
“A highly ingenious solution to the mystery of Jane Grey′s thirteen–day usurpation of the throne. Ives′s research skills are formidable and will make this book essential, if provocative reading.” — John Guy
From Amazon.co.uk
Reviews for the hardback version
Further details – Amazon.co.uk
28th October – Bessie Blount: The Story of Henry VIII’s Longtime Mistress by Elizabeth Norton
Further details – Amazon.co.uk
11 November -Elizabeth of York (Queenship and Power) by Arlene Naylor Okerlund (Paperback)
‘This book tells the story of the queen whose marriage to King Henry VII ended England’s Wars of the Roses and inaugurated the 118-year Tudor dynasty. Best known as the mother of Henry VIII and grandmother of Elizabeth I, this Queen Elizabeth contributed far beyond the act of giving birth to future monarchs. Her marriage to Henry VII unified the feuding houses of Lancaster and York, and her popularity with the people helped her husband survive rebellions that plagued his first decade of rule. Queen Elizabeth’s gracious manners and large family created a warm, convivial Court marked by a rather exceptional fondness between the royal couple. Her love for music, literature, and architecture also helped inspire England’s Renaissance.’
From Amazon.co.uk
Further information – Amazon.co.uk
30th November – Philip of Spain, King of England: The Forgotten Sovereign by Harry Kelsey
‘The Spanish Armada conjures up images of age-old rivalries, bravery and treachery. However the same Spanish monarch who sent the Armada to invade England in 1588 was, just a few years previously, the King of England and husband of Mary Tudor. This important new book sheds new light on Philip II of Spain, England’s forgotten sovereign. Previous accounts of Mary’s brief reign have focused on the martyrdom of Protestant dissenters, the loss of English territory, as well as Mary’s infamous personality, meaning that her husband Philip has remained in the shadows. In this book, Harry Kelsey uncovers Philip’s life – from his childhood and education in Spain, to his marriage to Mary and the political manoeuvrings involved in the marriage contract, to the tumultuous aftermath of Mary’s death which ultimately led to hostile relations between Queen Elizabeth and Philip, culminating in the Armada. Focusing especially on the period of Philip’s marriage to Mary, Kelsey shows that Philip was, in fact, an active King of England and took a keen interest in the rule of his wife’s kingdom. Casting fresh light on both Mary and Philip, as well as European history more generally, this book will be essential reading for anyone interested in the Tudor era.’
From Amazon.co.uk
Further information – Amazon.co.uk
1st December – Elizabeth I by Judith Richards
