I thought I had posted about this when the UK version came out, but I couldn’t find it in the archives, so I guess I didn’t!
Here are Amazon links (it comes out on July 8 in the US and has been out for a while in the UK):
And here is a neat list that I received from the author,
Linda Porter:
TEN THINGS YOU DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT “BLOODY MARY” (MARY TUDOR, England’s first queen regnant) by Linda Porter, author of The First Queen of England: the myth of “Bloody Mary” (published by St Martin’s press, July 2008)
1. She was raised as the “heir of England” ( her father, Henry VIII’s own words) and received a ground-breaking education and training for the role, until Henry declared her illegitimate in 1533, following his divorce from her mother, Queen Katherine of Aragon.
2. As a young woman, she was described as one of the most attractive and accomplished princesses in Europe. The poet John Heywood wrote: “her beauty twinkleth like a star within the frosty night.” Her fine complexion and red-gold hair were particularly admired.
3. She was a superb musician, with a precocious talent noted when she was only two years old. She played the virginals, the lute and the spinet. Both the Imperial and the French ambassadors commented on her virtuosity. As queen she encouraged musicians and there was a general blossoming of the arts. Thomas Tallis was supported by Mary and he composed one of his greatest pieces, Puer natus est nobis, during her reign. Her linguistic ability was also outstanding. She spoke fluent French and Latin and had a good command of Italian and Spanish.
4. She adored clothes and jewels and became a fashion trendsetter. Her wardrobe accounts reveal a woman who spent heavily on expensive materials (silks, velvets, taffeta, satins, damask, cloth of gold and cloth of silver), all sumptuously embroidered, and cut in the very latest French and Venetian styles. Her jewellery collection, of which she was very proud, was given to her sister Elizabeth shortly before Mary’s death. A superb replica has been made of her wedding dress of purple satin and cloth of silver, decorated with pearls. It cost £3000 to make and was commissioned by Winchester Cathedral for its commemoration of the 450th anniversary of Mary’s marriage there to Philip of Spain in the rainy July of 1554.
5. She had a passion for gambling at cards and ran up considerable debts. After the fall of Anne Boleyn, when Mary was partially returned to royal favour, she spent nearly one-third of her monthly income on gambling.
6. She was an affectionate sister to Elizabeth and Edward (the son of Jane Seymour), taking an interest in their education and frequently buying clothes and toys for Elizabeth. Both the younger children spent a large part of their early childhoods in her company, as they shared the same households. The ill-feeling that developed between Mary and Elizabeth did not start until well after the death of their father, as Elizabeth approached adulthood.
7. She had a string of suitors – many more than Elizabeth – and fell deeply in love with the one she did eventually marry, Philip of Spain. But he could not reciprocate her feelings. She was eleven years his senior and, by her late thirties, aged by ill-health and the relentless pressure of the unstable times in which she had lived.
8. She was brave, hard-working and had a better grasp of the intricacies of government than her father. Her courageous fight for her throne in 1553, when Edward VI disinherited both Mary and Elizabeth on his deathbed, is one of the few successful revolts of the provinces against London in English history.
9. She was a caring and much-loved employer to her household staff and ladies in waiting, and merciful to her political enemies. She only agreed with great reluctance to the execution of her cousin, Lady Jane Grey. And although she could not condone heresy (hence the ill-advised burnings of Protestant opponents) she did not actually introduce the Inquisition into England. Her aim was to develop a revived and renewed Catholicism, not to turn back the clock. In reality, the silent majority of her subjects did not oppose the re-introduction of Catholic practices and seem to have enjoyed the ceremonial aspects that went with them.
10. She was not subservient to her husband, Philip, who, in practice, never had a role other than that of king consort. And she did not say:” When I am dead and opened, you will find Calais lying in my heart.” The loss of Calais, England’s last foothold in France, in 1558, was distressing for English pride, but also solved the problem of what to do with an expensive, ill-fortified relic harbouring many troublemakers.
