An introduction to one of the Tudor family’s least-known women.
Margaret Tudor, daughter of Henry VII, was married to James IV of Scotland and bore his son, James V. Her second husband, Archibald Douglas, fathered her daughter, also named Margaret. She is the subject of Ring’s dramatic history of 16th-century England, a tempestuous period that has been the subject of many books—for good reason. Henry VII’s claims to the throne were based on distant family connections, and they fought back many usurpers. That fragile hold on the throne would continue throughout the family’s history; save the short reign of Edward VI. For decades, the Tudors fought to control the country’s religion, alternating from Catholic to Protestant to Elizabeth’s acceptance of the “private devotions” of Catholics. Even Elizabeth changed after the Catholic “Northern Rebellion” and the pope’s bull excommunicating her. As the Tudors worried about succession, young Margaret Douglas should always have been a factor—and she was, until a fight with her uncle, King Henry VIII, at the end of his life saw her removed from the succession. Margaret was also the half sister of the Scottish king, James V, and married to Matthew Stewart, the Scottish Earl of Lennox. Margaret was born into this political intrigue, and her life is a perfect example of Tudor machinations. Though she bore eight children in one of the happiest marriages in the Tudor dynasty, only two sons survived. One of them, Henry Darnley, was the object of their ambition, and his son would one day become James VI. Ring ably shows Margaret’s adaptation to religious mores and to the caprices of kings and queens, though she is less successful in that perpetual stumbling block of books about English history: connecting names, titles, and relationships.
A wealth of correspondence and a strong knowledge of the period combine in a capable book showing life at these strange medieval courts.Pub Date: April 25, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-63286-605-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
Categories: BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | HISTORY | HISTORICAL & MILITARY | WORLD | GENERAL HISTORY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR
Did you like this book?
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
Categories: GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | PHILOSOPHY & RELIGION | PSYCHOLOGY | HISTORICAL & MILITARY
Did you like this book?
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Categories: BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | HOLOCAUST | HISTORY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL HISTORY
Did you like this book?
© Copyright 2023 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
