Alison Weir

The tempestuous, bloody, and splendid reign of Henry VIII of England (1509-1547) is one of the most fascinating in all history, not least for his marriage to six extraordinary women. In this work of scholarship, Alison Weir draws on early biographies, letters, memoirs, account books, and diplomatic reports to bring these women to life. Catherine of Aragon emerges as a staunch though misguided woman of principle; Anne Boleyn, an ambitious adventuress with a penchant for vengeance; Jane Seymour, a strong-minded matriarch in the making; Anne of Cleves, a good-natured and innocent woman naively unaware of the court intrigues that determined her fate; Catherine Howard, an empty-headed wanton; and Catherine Parr, a warm-blooded bluestocking who survived King Henry to marry a fourth time.

From the rhyme sung by our children to the bloodline of English royalty, no one can deny Mary, Queen of Scots has unbeknown to us permanently taken root in the English people. Born in the aftermath of Henry VIII's "Great Matter" to a king who would have preferred a son, never knowing his daughter would be the matriarch of a powerful dynasty. In 14 December 1542 with only 6 days of age she was the anointed queen of Scotland, for a year the 17 year old was also the queen of France. She lived with regal dignity, chivalry and pride. However, she was unable to prevent her downfall due to the fact that she upheld medieval values in an increasingly Machiavellian world, but above all, that unlike Elizabeth I who was first a monarch, Mary Stuart nee Bruce was first a woman

This new edition of Lucy Wooding's Henry VIII is fully revised and updated to provide an insightful and original portrait of one of England's most unforgettable monarchs and the many paradoxes of his character and reign. Henry was a Renaissance prince whose Court dazzled with artistic display, yet he was also a savage adversary, who ruthlessly crushed all those who opposed him. Five centuries after his reign, he continues to fascinate, always evading easy characterization. Wooding locates Henry VIII firmly in the context of the English Renaissance and the fierce currents of religious change that characterized the early Reformation, as well as exploring the historiographical debates that have surrounded him and his reign. This new edition takes into account significant advances in recent research, particularly following the five hundredth anniversary of his accession in 2009, to put forward a distinctive interpretation of Henry's personality and remarkable style of kingship. It gives a fresh portrayal of Henry VIII, cutting away the misleading mythology that surrounds him in order to provide a vivid account of this passionate, wilful, intelligent and destructive king.

WONDERFUL, WEALTHY ISABELLA At twenty-six, wealthy and sensible Isabella Latham had abandoned all thoughts of marriage. Yet when she arrived in London to oversee the debut of two younger cousins, it was Isabella who was besieged by legions of suitors... all of whom had an excess of creditors. There was the wickedly attractive Basil Trevelyan, a rake whose charm Isabella could not resist. And there was his utterly handsome cousin, the Earl of Hartleigh, who made her heart flutter in spite of herself. Pity Isabella. Little did she dream that her delicate dilemma would bubble into a scandal that would rattle family skeletons, give gossip-mongers their due... and land her an ideal husband!

I am now a condemned traitor . . . I am to die when I have hardly begun to live.Historical expertise marries page-turning fiction in Alison Weir's enthralling debut novel, breathing new life into one of the most significant and tumultuous periods of the English monarchy. It is the story of Lady Jane Grey--"the Nine Days' Queen"--a fifteen-year-old girl who unwittingly finds herself at the center of the religious and civil unrest that nearly toppled the fabled House of Tudor during the sixteenth century. The child of a scheming father and a ruthless mother, for whom she is merely a pawn in a dynastic game with the highest stakes, Jane Grey was born during the harrowingly turbulent period between Anne Boleyn's beheading and the demise of Jane's infamous great-uncle, King Henry VIII. With the premature passing of Jane's adolescent cousin, and Henry's successor, King Edward VI, comes a struggle for supremacy fueled by political machinations and lethal religious fervor. Unabashedly honest and exceptionally intelligent, Jane possesses a sound strength of character beyond her years that equips her to weather the vicious storm. And though she has no ambitions to rule, preferring to immerse herself in books and religious studies, she is forced to accept the crown, and by so doing sets off a firestorm of intrigue, betrayal, and tragedy. Alison Weir uses her unmatched skills as a historian to enliven the many dynamic characters of this majestic drama. Along with Lady Jane Grey, Weir vividly renders her devious parents; her much-loved nanny; the benevolent Queen Katherine Parr; Jane's ambitious cousins; the Catholic "Bloody" Mary, who will stop at nothing to seize the throne; and the protestant and future queen Elizabeth. Readers venture inside royal drawing rooms and bedchambers to witness the power-grabbing that swirls around Lady Jane Grey from the day of her birth to her unbearably poignant death. Innocent Traitor paints a complete and compelling portrait of this captivating young woman, a faithful servant of God whose short reign and brief life would make her a legend.

A powerful storm delivered heiress Stacy Ashford into the iron-hard embrace of a shadowy stranger, a man as rough-hewn as the craggy Colorado mountains. But their meeting seemed more fate than chance. Gaining her inheritance depended on Stacy's rebuilding the eerie hotel where Josh Spencer's sister had died. And though she shouldn't trust Josh's motives for helping her, his commanding presence kept her strong when someone - or something - tried to scare her off. Then the incidents turned deadly... She was Josh's means to end the search for his sister's killer, and a threat to the posted Not Trespassing sign on his heart. But Stacy's inheritance bound them in an ever-tightening coil of danger - and what destiny joins, let no man, ghost or killer put asunder...

National Theatre, The American National Theatre and Academy presents Eva Le Gallienne, Faye Emerson and The National Repertory Theatre, Michael Dewell and Frances Ann Hersey, producers in Maxwell Anderson's "Elizabeth the Queen," and Friedrich Schiller's "Mary Stuart," adaptation by Jean Stock Goldstone and John Reich also starring Scott Forbes with Paul Ballantyne, Dalton Dearborn, Claude Horton, Pirie Macdonald, Geddeth Smith, Dee Victor, Sydney Walker, Jonathan Farwell, Terence Scannell, Frederick Worlock, directed by Jack Sydow, settings by Jac Venza, lighting by Tharon Musser, costumes by Alvin Colt.

In her second novel, Alison Weir goes to the heart of Tudor England at its most dangerous and faction-riven in telling the story of Elizabeth I before she became queen. The towering capricious figure of Henry VIII dominates her childhood, but others play powerful roles: Mary, first a loving sister, then as queen a lethal threat; Edward, the rigid and sad little King; Thomas Seymour, the Lord High Admiral, whose ambitions, both political and sexual, are unbridled. And, an ever-present ghost, the enigmatic, seductive figure of her mother Anne Boleyn, executed by Henry, whose story Elizabeth must unravel. Elizabeth learns early that the adult world contains many threats that have to be negotiated if she is to keep her heart and her head.

At his death in 1547, King Henry VIII left four heirs to the English throne: his only son, the nine-year-old Prince Edward; the Lady Mary, the adult daughter of his first wife Katherine of Aragon; the Lady Elizabeth, the teenage daughter of his second wife Anne Boleyn; and his young great-niece, the Lady Jane Grey. In her new book, Alison Weir paints a unique portrait of these four extraordinary rulers, examining their intricate relationships to each other and to history.

Lancaster and York. For much of the fifteenth century, these two families were locked in battle for control of the British monarchy. Kings were murdered and deposed. Armies marched on London. Old noble names were ruined while rising dynasties seized power and lands. The war between the royal House of Lancaster and York, the longest and most complex in British history, profoundly altered the course of the monarchy. In The Wars of the Roses, Alison Weir reconstructs this conflict with the same dramatic flair and impeccable research that she brought to her highly praised The Princes in the Tower. The first battle erupted in 1455, but the roots of the conflict reached back to the dawn of the fifteenth century, when the corrupt, hedonistic Richard II was sadistically murdered, and Henry IV, the first Lancastrian king, seized England's throne. Both Henry IV and his son, the cold warrior Henry V, ruled England ably, if not always wisely--but Henry VI proved a disaster, both for his dynasty and his kingdom. Only nine months old when his father's sudden death made him king, Henry VI became a tormented and pathetic figure, weak, sexually inept, and prey to fits of insanity. The factional fighting that plagued his reign escalated into bloody war when Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York, laid claim to the throne that was rightfully his--and backed up his claim with armed might. Alison Weir brings brilliantly to life both the war itself and the historic figures who fought it on the great stage of England. Here are the queens who changed history through their actions--the chic, unconventional Katherine of Valois, Henry V's queen; the ruthless, social-climbing Elizabeth Wydville; and, most crucially, Margaret of Anjou, a far tougher and more powerful character than her husband,, Henry VI, and a central figure in the Wars of the Roses. Here, too, are the nobles who carried the conflict down through the generations--the Beauforts, the bastard descendants of John of Gaunt, Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, known to his contemporaries as "the Kingmaker"; and the Yorkist King, Edward IV, a ruthless charmer who pledged his life to cause the downfall of the House of Lancaster. The Wars of the Roses is history at its very best--swift and compelling, rich in character, pageantry, and drama, and vivid in its re-creation of an astonishing, dangerous, and often grim period of history. Alison Weir, one of the foremost authorities on the British royal family, demonstrates here that she is also one of the most dazzling stylists writing history today.

A compassionate and comprehensive account of the life of Eleanor of Aquitaine, a woman of enormous intelligence and titanic energy. The wife of King Louis VII of France and then of King Henry II of England and mother to Richard Coeur de Lion and King John, she became the key political figure of the 12th century. A stunning biography of one of the most exciting and powerful personalities of all time.

Acclaimed author Alison Weir has been prolific with her books on English royalty covering everything from the Houses of York and Lancaster to the reigns of the Tudors and beyond. Now this remarkable historian brings to life the extraordinary tale of the woman who was ancestor to them all: Katherine Swynford, a royal mistress who was to become one of the most crucial figures in the history of the British royal dynasties.Born in the mid-fourteenth century, Katherine de Roet was only twelve when she married Hugh Swynford, an impoverished knight. But her story had already begun when, at just ten years old, she was appointed to the household of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster and fourth son of King Edward III, to help look after the Duke's children. Widowed at twenty-one, Katherine, gifted with beauty and undeniable charms, was to become John of Gaunt's mistress.Their years together played out against a backdrop of court life at the height of the Age of Chivalry. Katherine experienced the Hundred Years' War, the Black Death, and the Peasants' Revolt. She survived heartbreak and adversity, and crossed paths with many eminent figures of the day, among them her brother-in-law, the poet Geoffrey Chaucer. Yet as intriguing as she was to many of her contemporaries, there were those who regarded her as scandalous and dangerous. Throughout the years of their illicit union, John and Katherine were clearly devoted to each other, and in middle age, after many twists of fortune, they wed. The marriage caused far more scandal than the affair had, for it was unheard of for a royal prince to wed his mistress. Yet Katherine triumphed, and her children by John, the Beauforts, would become the direct forebears of the Royal Houses of York, Tudor, and Stuart, and of every British sovereign since 1461 (as well as four U.S. presidents).Drawing on rare documentation, Alison Weir paints a vivid portrait of a passionate spirit who lived one of medieval England's greatest love stories. Mistress of the Monarchy reveals a woman ahead of her time--making her own choices, flouting convention, and taking control of her destiny. Indeed, without Katherine Swynford the course of English history, perhaps even the world, would have been very different.From the Hardcover edition.

"The imprisonment and execution of Queen Anne Boleyn, Henry VIIIs second wife, in May 1536 was unprecedented in English history ... Anne was imprisoned in the Tower of London on 2 May 1536, and tried and found guilty of high treason on 15 May. Her supposed crimes included adultery with five men, one her own brother, and plotting the Kings death. Mystery surrounds the circumstances leading up to her arrest. Was it Henry VIII who, estranged from Anne, instructed Master Secretary Thomas Cromwell to fabricate evidence to get rid of her so that he could marry Jane Seymour? Or did Cromwell, for reasons of his own, construct a case against Anne and her faction, and then present compelling evidence before the King? Or was Anne, in fact, guilty as charged?"--Publisher's description.