A delightful story of intrigue and manipulation that shows how Henry really couldn’t control his kingdom.
Lipscomb (A Journey Through Tudor England: Hampton Court Palace and the Tower of London to Stratford-upon-Avon and Thornbury Castle, 2015, etc.) shows Henry VIII’s attempt to continue control over both church and state.
His last will, signed a month before his death, set forth the steps of succession beginning with his son, Edward. After arranging for possible children of his current and any future wives, he pronounced first Mary, then Elizabeth to be the next successors. In naming his son, he also stipulated that Edward’s heirs, or named successors, were primary. In another scenario, instead of naming the heirs of his sister, Margaret, he skipped to the heirs of the daughter of his sister, Mary: Frances Grey—i.e. Lady Jane Grey. In the 1540s, after war with the Scots, Henry arranged with Marie de Guise, James V’s widow, to wed her infant daughter Mary to his son Edward. However, de Guise had bigger plans for her daughter in France and renounced the match. Henry never forgave a slight, so Mary Queen of Scots was left out of the succession plans. Another of Henry’s stipulations was that Masses should be said for his soul. This was particularly artful, as he had dissolved monasteries whose members prayed for souls. Hedging his bets, Henry still left land and revenues for Masses and prayers to ensure his place in heaven. He designated more than a dozen executors and regents in hopes the transfer of power would be smooth. The author, who shows her deep knowledge of the Tudor period throughout the book, rejects the many charges that Henry’s will might have been changed or altered or that undue influence was used. It was treason to even suggest that the king might die. Afterward, the story was completely different, with Edward Seymour and Chief Secretary William Paget seizing control of the Regency and the kingdom.
A delightful story of intrigue and manipulation that shows how Henry really couldn’t control his kingdom.Pub Date: Dec. 20, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-68-177254-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Pegasus
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
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
An engrossing, intense, and highly descriptive narrative chronicling the ghastly conditions three pregnant women suffered...
The incredible true story of three Jewish women who survived the Holocaust.
Priska, Rachel, and Anka were married Jewish women in their early 20s when the Nazis took control of Europe. Like millions of other Jews, they were forced to give up their normal lives, all of their belongings, and their homes. Shuttled into ghettos and then off to one of the most notorious camps, Auschwitz II-Birkenau, they suffered through the Nazis’ increasing atrocities. But these three women all held a secret: they were pregnant. They were moved from Auschwitz and ended up in Mauthausen, another notorious death camp. With facing the most horrible conditions imaginable, all three gave birth right before the Allies accepted Germany’s surrender. In this meticulously detailed account, Holden (Haatchi & Little B: The Inspiring True Story of One Boy and His Dog, 2014, etc.) compiles an enormous amount of information from interviews, letters, historical records, and personal visits to the sites where this story unfolded. The graphic history places readers in the moment and provides a sense of the enduring power of love that Priska, Rachel, and Anka had for their unborn children and for the husbands they so desperately hoped to see after the war. Even though it occurred more than 70 years ago, the story’s truth is so chillingly portrayed that it seems as if it could have happened recently. These three women and their infants survived in the face of death, and, Holden writes, “their babies went on to have babies of their own and create a second and then a third generation, all of whom continue to live their lives in defiance of Hitler’s plan to erase them from history and from memory.”
An engrossing, intense, and highly descriptive narrative chronicling the ghastly conditions three pregnant women suffered through at the hands of the Nazis.Pub Date: May 5, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-237025-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2015
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