Lady Jane Grey Reference Guide

UK Reviews for ‘Our Man in Rome: Henry VIII and his Italian Ambassador by Catherine Fletcher have started appearing.

A diplomatic servant

‘Flethcher’s book is at its best in her account of precisely what it meant to be an ambassador in those treacherous times…

…More intriguing still are Fletcher’s accounts of the crude way that information was transmitted.An urgent dispatch could take two weeks to reach London from Rome; once there, nocturnal curfews could – and sometimes did – result in the dipolmatic bag simply being chucked over a wall, to be left wherever it fell.

…It’s splendid that Flietcher’s curiosity has led her to undertake such a magnificent task of detective work – and to use Casali to illuminate such (literally) intriguing times.’

The Culture (Sunday Times), 26 February 2012, p 44

Untying a Tudor Knot

‘It is precisely because of all his woes that Catherine Fletcher’s choice of hero, if you can call him that, is so compelling. His failure is, in many ways, the story of his time…

…Fletcher manages to convey in her straightforward, fact-dense style and with only the occasional flight of fantasy. She is not afraid to dazzle the reader with her scholarly prowess and detail, with the result that she has managed here to reclaim a period of history all too often simplified to the point of inanity.

…Fletcher does her subject great credit. She makes no attempt to either embellish or siplify. She simply tells a cracking story well, in plenty of detail with clarity and insight. Above all she resists the temptation to overlay past events with modern cultural and emotional responses. Her protagonists are never anything but true to their selves and Fletcher richly deserves the title of historian.’

Saturday Review, Daily Telegraph, 4 February 2012, p 16