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.
Commissioning John Edwards as the biographer of Mary I was an imaginative choice for Yale’s ‘monarchy’ series. He is an expert on the Spanish Inquisition, and has written a study of Mary’s maternal grandparents Ferdinand and Isabella. Edwards has set Mary’s life within its European context better than
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
'Rivalries are intense and dangerous, and someone has to die.'
@NJCooper_crime on new thrillers by @HenryCPorter, @k_faulkner, @annafbailey, @mserinkelly, @JoelDicker, @AlanJParks, @whartonswords and more.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/april-2021-crime-round-up
This spring, give the gift of reading.
Give a friend a gift subscription to Literary Review for only £33.50.
https://www.mymagazinesub.co.uk/literary-review/promo/spring21/
'It’s long been known that there is an optimum reproductive window and that women enjoy a considerably shorter one than men. For both sexes this window is opening and closing earlier than it used to.' (£)
https://literaryreview.co.uk/the-end-of-babies