Leanda de Lisle
In My Ladies’ Chambers
Elizabeth’s Women: The Hidden Story of the Virgin Queen
By Tracy Borman
Jonathan Cape 404pp £20 order from our bookshop
Elizabeth I valued female company. She loved childhood servants such as Kat Ashley, and as Queen surrounded herself with indulged, non-royal Boleyn cousins. They might have offered an alternative narrative to that of the disgraced dead mother and the extended sisterhood of royal relatives plotting against each other. But there was no escape for Elizabeth from the central issue of the Tudor succession into which she was born.
It was not just Elizabeth’s father, Henry VIII, who wanted a male heir for the English throne. As Borman helps remind us, it was successive generations of the political elite. Until Lady Jane Grey (later Dudley) became queen in July 1553, England had never had a queen who
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
George Mackay Brown's work 'not only captures the totality of Orcadian life but also draws from that life a humane vision of creaturely dwelling, of man’s symbiotic relationship with the land and its history'.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/et-in-orcadia-ego
'Rather than concerning themselves with the machinations of great men', antiquaries 'sought to establish how people had lived, what they had worn, what stories they’d told and what games they’d played'.
http://ow.ly/abL350FcfW9
Stuck for a Father's Day gift?
We'll send you a free hardback copy of @BurlM11's 'Day of the Assassins when you subscribe OR give a gift subscription to Literary Review.
Enter the code FATHER21 at checkout.
https://www.mymagazinesub.co.uk/literary-review/promo/father21/