Leanda de Lisle
Heresy & Hearsay
Mary I: England’s Catholic Queen
By John Edwards
Yale University Press 336pp £25 order from our bookshop
Mary I is rarely allowed her proper title. She is either Mary Tudor, as if we cannot admit we ever had a Catholic queen, or the ‘Bloody Mary’ of Whig history. Here she is, at last, as Mary I, but in a biography that calls to mind the girl with a curl in the middle of her forehead: where it is good it is very, very good, and where it is bad it is … just that.
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
My review of @herdyshepherd1's wonderful English Pastoral in the October issue of the Literary Review, with nods in the direction of @JLewisStempel, Patrick Laurie and @Dieter_Helm. @Lit_Review https://literaryreview.co.uk/peak-soil
My review of Edmund Fawcett's Conservatism: The Fight for a Tradition in the October 2020 issue of Literary Review (@Lit_Review). https://literaryreview.co.uk/all-burkes-children
'It would be hard, after all, to name a better living parodist and pasticheur.'
Our October issue is out now, featuring Jeremy Treglown on the life and work of Tom Stoppard.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/the-long-road-to-leopoldstadt