Down in the Framing Studio, the team is reframing a portrait of Lady Jane Grey #secretsMW #MuseumWeek pic.twitter.com/7ew9VjLesQ
— Portrait Gallery (@NPGLondon) March 23, 2015
(c) NPG
The portrait will be on display at Montacute House in Somerset from late spring.
March – Elizabeth I and Her Circle by Susan Doran
‘This is the inside story of Elizabeth I’s inner circle and the crucial human relationships which lay at the heart of her personal and political life. Using a wide range of original sources – including private letters, portraits, verse, drama, and state papers – Susan Doran provides a vivid and often dramatic account of political life in Elizabethan England and the queen at its centre, offering a deeper insight into Elizabeth’s emotional and political conduct – and challenging many of the popular myths that have grown up around her.
It is a story replete with fascinating questions. What was the true nature of Elizabeth’s relationship with her father, Henry VIII, especially after his execution of her mother? What was the influence of her step-mothers on Elizabeth’s education and religious beliefs? How close was she really to her half-brother Edward VI – and were relations with her half-sister Mary really as poisonous as is popularly assumed? And what of her relationship with her Stewart cousins, most famously with Mary Queen of Scots, executed on Elizabeth’s orders in 1587, but also with Mary’s son James VI of Scotland, later to succeed Elizabeth as her chosen successor?
Elizabeth’s relations with her family were crucial, but almost as crucial were her relations with her courtiers and her councillors (her ‘men of business’). Here again, the story unravels a host of fascinating questions. Was the queen really sexually jealous of her maids of honour? What does her long and intimate relationship with the Earl of Leicester reveal about her character, personality, and attitude to marriage? What can the fall of Essex tell us about Elizabeth’s political management in the final years of her reign? And what was the true nature of her personal and political relationship with influential and long-serving councillors such as the Cecils and Sir Francis Walsingham?
Further details – Amazon.co.uk
15 August 2015 – Margaret Pole: The Countess in the Tower by Susan Higginbotham
‘Of the many executions ordered by Henry VIII, surely the most horrifying was that of sixty-seven-year-old Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury, hacked to pieces on the scaffold by a blundering headsman. From the start, Margaret’s life had been marred by tragedy and violence: her father, George, Duke of Clarence, had been executed at the order of his own brother, Edward IV, and her naive young brother, Edward, Earl of Warwick, had spent most of his life in the Tower before being executed on the orders of Henry VII. Yet Margaret, friend to Catherine of Aragon and the beloved governess of her daughter Mary, had seemed destined for a happier fate, until religious upheaval and rebellion caused Margaret and her family to fall from grace. From Margaret’s birth as the daughter of a royal duke to her beatification centuries after her death, Margaret Pole: The Countess in the Tower tells the story of one of the fortress’s most unlikely prisoners.’
Further details – Amazon.co.uk
11 February 2016 – Richard III: Brother, Protector, King by Chris Skidmore
‘The last Plantagenet king remains one of England’s most famous and controversial monarchs. There are few parallels in English history that can match the drama of Richard III’s reign, witnessed in its full bloody intensity.
A dedicated brother and loyal stalwart to the Yorkist dynasty for most of his early life, Richard’s personality was forged in the tribulation of exile and the brutality of combat. An ambitious nobleman and successful general with a loyal following, Richard was a man who could claim to have achieved every ambition in life, except one.
Within months of his brother Edward IV’s early death, Richard stunned the nation when he seized the throne for himself and disinherited his nephews. Having put to death his rivals, Richard’s two-year reign would become one of the most tumultuous in English history, ending in treachery and with his death on the battlefield at Bosworth.
Chris Skidmore’s biography strips back the legends that surround Richard’s life and reign, and by returning to original manuscript evidence, he rediscovers the man as contemporaries saw him. Rather than vindicate or condemn, Skidmore’s compelling study presents every facet of Richard’s personality as it deserves to be seen: as one of the most important figures in medieval history, whose actions and behaviour underline the true nature of power in an age of great drama, upheaval and instability.’
Further details – Amazon.co.uk
15 March – The Family of Richard III by Michael Hicks
‘The Wars of the Roses were quarrels within the Plantagenet family, of which Richard’s dynasty, the house of York was one branch. The house of York won the first war, with Richard’s elder brother becoming king as Edward IV. In 1483, after decades of family infighting, there was a sudden violent resolution following Edward IV’s death. Richard III claimed to be his brother’s heir, the Yorkist establishment refused and shared in Richard’s destruction. With the recent discovery of Richard III’s skeleton and his reburial in Leicester Cathedral, Professor Michael Hicks, described by BBC HISTORY MAGAZINE as ‘the greatest living expert on Richard III’ reassesses the family ties and entrails of his wayward and violent family. Many thousands of descendants of Richard survive, some more interested in their linage than others, and the book will conclude with an analysis of Richard’s DNA and his ‘family’ as it exists today.’
Further details – Amazon.co.uk
15 March – Inside the Tudor Court: Henry VIII and his Six Wives through the eyes of the Spanish Ambassador (Paperback) by Lauren Mackay
‘The reports and despatches of Eustace Chapuys, Spanish Ambassador to Henry VIII’s court from 1529 to 1545, have been instrumental in shaping our modern interpretations of Henry VIII and his wives. As a result of his personal relationships with several of Henry’s queens, and Henry himself, his writings were filled with colourful anecdotes, salacious gossip, and personal and insightful observations of the key players at court, thus offering the single most continuous portrait of the central decades of Henry’s reign. Beginning with Chapuys’ arrival in England, in the middle of Henry VIII’s divorce from Katherine of Aragon, this book progresses through the episodic reigns of each of Henry’s queens. Chapuys tirelessly defended Katherine and later her daughter, Mary Tudor, the future Mary I. He remained as ambassador through the rise and fall of Anne Boleyn, and reported on each and every one of Henry’s subsequent wives – Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves, Catherine Howard, and Katharine Parr – as well as that most notorious of ministers Thomas Cromwell. He retired in 1545, close to the end of Henry VIII’s reign. In approaching the period through Chapuys’ letters, Lauren Mackay provides a fresh perspective on Henry, his court and the Tudor period in general.’
Further details – Lauren Mackay
Further details – Amazon.co.uk
