‘Defender of the Faith’ was more than just a motto given by the Pope. You also had to have faith in your successor’s ability (or willingness) to have children.

Publisher: Amberley Publishing
Pages: 203
Type: Non-Fiction
Age: Adult
ISBN: 978-1-4456-0280-6
First Published: 2002
Date Reviewed: 26th September 2011
Rating: 4/5

The Tudors were an intriguing bunch of people. Strong-minded and self-righteous often, they caused much joy and much sorrow. Obstinate when it came to the succession, they tended to leave their counsel with plenty of work to do in wondering who should be next up for the crown and whether or not so-and-so was a good choice. Yet there is little doubt that what they did is still worthy of being so famous, or rather infamous, today. Rex gives a quite broad and detailed account of those five people, from the man who wasn’t really in a position to be king, to the woman who refused to provide for the future of the dynasty.

Rex sets out with a couple of goals. He says his mission is to write from the royal perspective, and that his book is for readers rather than academics. The first he succeeds in doing completely – what social information there is in the book is there because it needs to be there to set the rest in context, and it truly is a book about the dynasty rather than anything else. The second is more difficult to rate. The book is humorous – Rex presents the facts while allowing himself and his readers to have a good laugh in places where people were a bit silly. But this humour is quite okay considering that Rex is clearly passionate about his subject; knowing all that he does it’s fine to have a laugh now and again. The humour is what makes it a book for readers, along with the obvious influence of David Starkey, who is a historian Rex admires. However there are a lot of extra details on aspects such as taxation, war, and money in general, and while this is interesting it does move the book more into the realm of academia. There are times when the book is like those you read for study purposes, and indeed the information included is written in a way that makes it perfect for university essays.

Henry Parker… an old-fashioned aristocrat who often bestowed upon his sovereign the fruits of his limited literacy skills…

Like all historians, Rex has his opinions, but he is very good at presenting several arguments and telling you why they could be possible and why not. Obviously he tends to lean towards his own thoughts, so for example after he has covered the possibility of Elizabeth’s having a sexual affair with Robert Dudley, it is mentioned no further. Something that is also intriguing is that he tells you where different theories have stemmed from, and why they have been discounted in modern times, or why they are continually believed. He refers to a range of different types of primary sources and the book itself, at least this edition, is full of pictures of these written and artistic sources. This visualisation of the sources, however, could have been better handled by whoever decided where they should be placed. There are a lot of them in the chapter on Elizabeth and although it makes you feel like you’re reading very fast (because the sources often take up most of the page) it breaks up the text in a way that disrupts the reading experience. This reviewer must also mention the pages of colour images in the book as she found them rather strange – they are copies of originals, however whether they are the originals or not she cannot say as in many places the colours of people’s eyes have been changed.

In the preface Rex says that he hasn’t worried too much about references, and he hasn’t, preferring to simply leave the vast majority to the further reading section. While this does help the flow of the book, it means that if you want to find out exactly whom he has referenced you may need to do a bit of research. What this lack of references does mean, though, is that Rex escapes the trap that many others fall into of unintentionally (or intentionally, if we consider G W Bernard) moaning about his fellow historians. In fact Rex tends to lump groups of people together in a loose way rather than point anyone out, except of course people of the past, which is the starting point of his polite disinclination to favour opinions that do not match his own.

The act included a declaration that it was treason for a woman to marry the [aging] king if she had had premarital sex. As the Imperial ambassador caustically observed, this rather narrowed the field.

There is a chapter for each of the monarchs, though anyone seeking to learn about Henry VIII’s wives in detail, or the ‘reign’ of Lady Jane Grey should understandably not expect to gather much information from this book. Rex has defined his book as one of rulers, so there is little about, for example, Henry VIII’s brother Arthur.

On first glance, The Tudors appears to be a quick introduction into each of the monarchs between 1485 and 1603, but when you read it you discover that it is in fact rather in depth and a sometimes hefty read. True, as Rex says himself, most of the content is general Tudor knowledge, but it is the way that it is presented and the afore mentioned depth that make it worth a read no matter how much you already know.

It is definitely written by an academic, and it is definitely written by someone with a sense of humour. The Tudors is a very good starting or continuing place for anyone interested in the dynasty.

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The industrial revolution shook England up and changed everything, but where is the plot in Gaskell’s book?

Publisher: Vintage
Pages: 547
Type: Fiction
Age: Adult
ISBN: 978-0-099-51148-9
First Published: 1855
Date Reviewed: 12th September 2011
Rating: 2.5/5

After Mr Hale decides that he can no longer be a vicar of the Church of England, he takes his family from their home in the New Forest, to Milton in the north. Whereas the New Forest is pretty and problems are hidden, Milton is smoky and full of issues. Margaret, the daughter and the heroine of the novel, learns to live in Milton.

Aside from the uprooting of a family, I could find no real plot to this novel. Discussions on life, yes, but a firm here to there in any theme, no. Gaskell is both humorous and knowledgeable about the subject on which she writes, but in detailing the industrial revolution as she did it she forgot to tell a story. And whilst her characters are okay, they are not interesting enough by themselves to make the plot irrelevant.

Margaret isn’t a heroine to enjoy reading about. She receives proposals of marriage and gets angry about it and her speeches single her out as a self-righteous woman who, while not wanting to demean herself and act like a woman was supposed to, does often cause one to want her to be quiet. When a friend dies she refuses to see the body, and at one time she calls herself a genius – for doing something that the reader will identity as common sense. It’s not said in a humorous manner and is thus difficult to read.

Neither are the other characters particularly readable. Mr Hale comes across as selfish in his desire to leave the church, and the younger men have nothing special to recommend them. A lot of characters are there just because. The class issues are not looked into very well and hardly scratch the surface. Yes, Gaskell tells you what happened, but her whys aren’t particularly compelling.

While it may be the melodramatic nature of Victorian literature, that so many people start dropping like flies doesn’t suit Gaskell’s writing at all. It comes across as fake and convenient. The ending is rather sudden and unbelievable and the conversations go on and on without making any real progress. You get excited about all the possibilities with a character or a relationship and then Gaskell kills them off or makes Margaret stop seeing them.

To be sure the information presented is interesting, if you are in to economics and trade, and the later development of an understanding between those with power and those with none is good to read about, but by and large this reviewer cannot see why North And South proclaimed a classic.

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The phrase ‘let them eat cake’ has created a false impression.

Publisher: Phoenix (Orion Books)
Pages: 546
Type: Non-Fiction
Age: Adult
ISBN: 978-0-7538-1305-8
First Published: 2001
Date Reviewed: 18th August 2011
Rating: 4/5

Marie Antoinette was the ill-fated Austrian bride of her cousin, Louis XVI of France. Fraser documents her life from the cradle to the grave and the legacy she left.

The book is very well written and the narrative runs quicker than many fiction releases. If this were fiction it would be magnificent. Fraser describes events with good detail, uses plenty of primary sources for quotations, and when she comes to the executions of the family she succeeds in showing how horrific and unjust the situation was.

Fraser presents Marie Antoinette as the unlucky victim of political manoeuvrings by Europe’s dynasties and a scapegoat of the French Revolution. But she does it whilst remaining objective, no matter the fact that her writing positively impresses upon the reader her overall opinion of the Queen as a good woman. She never speaks negatively of Marie Antoinette, but she does allow for those stereotypes that are grounded in truth to stay; for example the idea that Marie Antoinette was uneducated – Fraser presents not a woman unwilling, rather a woman disadvantaged by a male-orientated society. So you have a queen who had wit and was a great entertainer, but was uneducated and an obvious mismatch for her academic husband. Yet she was a lady of common sense who was strong in her own right.

That Marie Antoinette struggled to balance her responsibilities is examined on various occasions. Being told that she was an ambassador for Austria by her mother, she had to also remember that she ought to allow French society to change her. Such instruction would be difficult for anyone, and certainly in our present day much smaller things are hard enough, but as Fraser illustrates it would have been all the more so for Antoinette given her lack of education and her love of her family.

Fraser provides the evidence that was given at Antoinette’s trial, having already examined each piece to destroy any idea of its being true. She does this well, leaving no reason why the reader should think otherwise. The reason why it’s believable is that the author has already described Antoinette’s personality and life, and indeed the book ends with a look back at what was said before. Fraser doesn’t deny that Marie Antoinette didn’t help herself by spending lots of money on friends and on entertainment, but she also reminds you that money was also spent on trying to live more frugally, or at least as frugally as the Queen of France could.

And it is this desire to live more like the common person that gets lost under the burdens of the revolution and thus needs to be remembered. Fraser recounts many occasions where not only did Marie Antoinette wish to dress simply or act the role of a common servant in theatre, but she was truly concerned for the everyday man, especially when it came to children. What she lacked in education and political opinion, she made up for in domesticity, wanting nothing more than to look after her children herself and caring when the offspring of peasants were in a bad situation.

This adds up, successfully for Fraser, to a woman who made the best of what she could with the disadvantages afforded to her. A person lacking in a mother’s love but not lacking in a mother’s criticism, feeling guilt at not being pregnant when it was not her fault, and used to the company of her siblings and an aristocratic way of life was never going to be perfect Queen material.

The big downfall of the book is Fraser’s fixation on her idea that the Swiss Count Fersen and Marie Antoinette must have had a sexual relationship. So relentlessly pursued is this idea that one could say that the most pressing reason Fraser had for her book was to write a story of some-what forbidden love. What makes Fraser’s determination so peculiar is that for the first third or so of the book she continually expresses how content Marie Antoinette and Louis were, that even if they weren’t in love, there was a strong devotion there. The transition between her saying this and speaking of affairs is sudden. From the sources Fraser has provided there is simply not enough evidence to say for certain that this affair happened and that Fersen’s admiration for Marie Antoinette and vice versa ever transformed into fornication. It is possible, yes, but as it is not definite, and as it is quite obvious Fraser is having dreamy thoughts that she should have used in a piece of fiction rather than historical biography, her constant claims are, as Henry VIII would say of his marriages, null and void.

Fraser is well read, that is obvious, and in the main her words are easily acceptable. For the most part she is objective, and where she is not she is at least transparent. Marie Antoinette is a compelling book that deserves a read by anyone interested in the period or the queen herself, just be aware that it was written by a romanticist.

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