John Alexander Guy

A new historian of Mary Queen of Scots draws on new sources to shatter various myths surrounding this odd monarch and uncover some of the scandals and political machinations underpinning, and undermining, her throne.

The True Life of Mary Stuart

Queen of Scots

COSTA AWARD FINALIST ECONOMIST BOOK OF THE YEAR FINANCIAL TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR Film rights acquired by Gold Circle Films, the team behind My Big Fat Greek Wedding "A fresh, thrilling portrait... Guy's Elizabeth is deliciously human." -Stacy Schiff, The New York Times Book Review A groundbreaking reconsideration of our favorite Tudor queen, Elizabeth is an intimate and surprising biography that shows her at the height of her power. Elizabeth was crowned queen at twenty-five, but it was only when she reached fifty and all hopes of a royal marriage were behind her that she began to wield power in her own right. For twenty-five years she had struggled to assert her authority over advisers, who pressed her to marry and settle the succession; now, she was determined not only to reign but to rule. In this magisterial biography, John Guy introduces us to a woman who is refreshingly unfamiliar: at once powerful and vulnerable, willful and afraid. We see her confronting challenges at home and abroad: war against France and Spain, revolt in Ireland, an economic crisis that triggers riots in the streets of London, and a conspiracy to place her cousin Mary Queen of Scots on her throne. For a while she is smitten by a much younger man, but can she allow herself to act on that passion and still keep her throne? For the better part of a decade John Guy mined long-overlooked archives, scouring handwritten letters and court documents to sweep away myths and rumors. This prodigious historical detective work has enabled him to reveal, for the first time, the woman behind the polished veneer: determined, prone to fits of jealous rage, wracked by insecurity, often too anxious to sleep alone. At last we hear her in her own voice expressing her own distinctive and surprisingly resonant concerns. Guy writes like a dream, and this combination of groundbreaking research and propulsive narrative puts him in a class of his own. "Significant, forensic and myth-busting, John Guy inspires total confidence in a narrative which is at once pacey and rich in detail." -- Anna Whitelock, TLS "Most historians focus on the early decades, with Elizabeth's last years acting as a postscript to the beheading of Mary Queen of Scots and the defeat of the Spanish Armada. Guy argues that this period is crucial to understanding a more human side of the smart redhead." - The Economist, Book of the Year

The Forgotten Years

Elizabeth

Presents a new portrait of Margaret Roper, the daughter of Sir Thomas More, examining her work as an accomplished scholar in her own right and relying on original sources that have been overlooked by generations of historians.

Thomas More and His Dearest Meg

A Daughter's Love

This book is a reinterpretation of the life of Mary, Queen of Scots. John Guy returns to the archives to explode the myths and correct the inaccuracies that surround this most fascinating monarch. He also explains a central mystery: why Mary would have consented to marry - only three months after the death of her second husband, Lord Darnley - the man who was said to be his killer, the Earl of Bothwell. He also solves, through careful re-examination of the Casket Letters, the secret behind Darnley's spectacular assassination at Kirk o'Field.

The Life of Mary Queen of Scots

My Heart is My Own

This book is a dramatic reinterpretation of the life of Mary, Queen of Scots. Crowned Queen of Scotland at nine months of age, and Queen of France at 16, at 18 Mary ascended the throne that was her birthright and began ruling one of the most fractious courts in Europe, riven by religious conflict and personal lust for power. She rode out at the head of an army in both victory and defeat; saw her second husband assassinated, and married his murderer. She was a woman so magnetic, so brilliant in conversation that her cousin, Elizabeth I, refused to meet her in the course of their lifetimes for fear of being overshadowed or outwitted. At 25 she entered captivity at the hands of her rival queen, from which only death would release her. The life of Mary Stuart is one of unparalleled drama and conflict. From the labyrinthine plots laid by the Scottish lords to wrest power for themselves, to the efforts made by Elizabeth's ministers to invalidate Mary's legitimate claim to the English throne, John Guy returns to the archives to explode the myths and correct the inaccuracies that surround this most fascinating monarch. He also explains a central mystery: why Mary would have consented to marry - only three months after the death of her second husband, Lord Darnley - the man who was said to be his killer, the Earl of Bothwell. He also solves, through careful re-examination of the Casket Letters, the secret behind Darnley's spectacular assassination at Kirk o'Field. With great pathos, Guy illuminates how the imprisoned Mary's despair led to a reckless plot against Elizabeth - and thus to her own execution. The portrait that emerges is not of a political pawn or a manipulative siren, but of a shrewd and charismatic young ruler who relished power and, for a time, managed to hold together a fatally unstable country. The book is a work of historical scholarship that offers radical new interpretations of an ancient story. - Publisher.

Две королевы

Making available a selection of some of the most significant recent work on the Tudor Monarchy, this Reader gives a good sense of the issues that have preoccupied historians and of the ways in which the traditional concerns of power and politics have been enlarged by growing attention to less conventional facets of the subject, including the wider agenda of Renaissance statecraft, the phenomenon of female rule, the interdependence of Court and localities, and the significance of frontiersand borderlands in the shaping of Tudor political culture.

The Tudor Monarchy

This book investigates the norms and values of Tudor and early-Stuart politics, which are considered in the contexts of law and the Reformation, legal and administrative institutions, and classical and legal humanism. Main themes include 'imperial' monarchy and the theory of 'counsel', Parliament and the royal supremacy, conciliar politics and organization, the relationship of law and equity, and the jurisdictional rivalry between the courts of common law and canon law. The author argues that norms of Tudor England were sufficiently pluralist to satisfy both 'absolutist' and 'constitutionalist' aspirations, whereas by 1628 they proved no longer effective as a mechanism for the orderly conduct of politics. The clash between two conflicting sets of values was translated into a clash of ideologies.

Politics, Law and Counsel in Tudor and Early Stuart England

Making available a selection of some of the most significant recent work on the Tudor Monarchy, this Reader gives a good sense of the issues that have preoccupied historians and of the ways in which the traditional concerns of power and politics have been enlarged by growing attention to lessconventional facets of the subject: to the wider agenda of Renaissance statecraft and the phenomenon of female rule, for instance, or to the interdependence of Court and localities and the significance of frontiers and borderlands in the shaping of Tudor political culture. Particular attention isgiven to recent seminal contributions that have shifted the traditional focus, but the debates in the field that continue to fascinate historians and students are well represented. With full introductory sections by John Guy, the volume looks in turn at the broad themes of "Renaissance Monarchy";personality and politics; and polity and government.

A study of politics and political culture of the 'last decade' of the reign of Elizabeth I, in effect the years 1585 to 1603.

Court and Culture in the Last Decade

The Reign of Elizabeth I

Om den engelske kardinal og politiker Thomas Wolsey (ca. 1473-1530) under Henry VIII der spillede en væsentlig rolle i Court of Star Champer

John Alexander Guy

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