Elizabethan English

At her execution Mary, Queen of Scots wore red. Widely known as the colour of strength and passion, it was in fact worn by Mary as the Catholic symbol of martyrdom. In 16th-century Europe, women's voices were suppressed and silenced. Even for a queen like Mary, her prime duty was to bear sons. In an age when textiles expressed power, Mary exploited them to emphasise her female agency.

Just seventeen years old, Henry IX, known as William, is a king bound by the restraints of the regency yet anxious to prove himself. With the French threatening battle and the Catholics sowing the seeds of rebellion at home, William trusts only three people: his older sister Elizabeth; his best friend and loyal counselor, Dominic; and Minuette, a young orphan raised as a royal ward by William’s mother, Anne Boleyn.

Illegitimate children, adulterous queens, impotent kings, and a whole dynasty resting on their shoulders. Sex and childbirth were quite literally a matter of life or death for the Tudors.

Best-selling author Alison Weir turns her masterly storytelling skills to the early life of young Elizabeth Tudor, who would grow up to become England's most intriguing and powerful queen. Sweeping in scope, The Lady Elizabeth is a fascinating portrayal of a woman far ahead of her time - whose dangerous and dramatic path to the throne shapes her future greatness.

In 1987, when Hilary Mantel was first published in the London Review of Books, she wrote to the editor, Karl Miller, ‘I have no critical training whatsoever, so I am forced to be more brisk and breezy than scholarly.’ This collection of 20 reviews, essays and pieces of memoir from the next three decades tells the story of what happened next.

Jasper Tudor, son of Queen Catherine and her second husband, Owen Tudor, has grown up far from the intrigue of the royal court. But after he and his brother Edmund are summoned to London, their half brother, King Henry VI, takes a keen interest in their future. Bestowing earldoms on them both, Henry also gives them the wardship of the young heiress Margaret Beaufort. Although she is still a child, Jasper becomes devoted to her and is devastated when Henry arranges her betrothal to Edmund.

In this remarkable biography, Carolly Erickson brings Elizabeth I to life and allows us to see her as a living, breathing, elegant, flirtatious, diplomatic, violent, arrogant, and outrageous woman who commands our attention, fascination, and awe. With the special skill for which she is acclaimed, Carolly Erickson electrifies the senses as she evokes with total fidelity the brilliant colors of Elizabethan clothing and jewelry, the texture of tapestries, and even the close, perfumed air of castle rooms. Erickson demonstrates her extraordinary ability to discern and bring to life psychological and physical reality.

Elizabeth was not just Queen, she was ruler. In an age of male supremacy she, by sheer force of character, became not only the unchallenged leader of the English but also the first leader of an empire upon which the sun never set. Erickson’s biography tells the truth about this extraordinary woman and profiles some amazing people - their personalities and culture.

Mark Noble joined the West Ham Youth Academy in 2000 and immediately made an impression. Tenacious, aggressive, brave and full of character, he was the perfect embodiment of West Ham’s values and was seen as having a bright future in the Hammers first team. But nobody could have dreamt of Mark’s career at the club: the most appearances in the Premier League for West Ham United and, by the time of his retirement in 2022, the longest-serving one-club player in Europe – his achievements cemented him as one of the club’s modern legends and earned him the nickname ‘Mr West Ham’.

Dorset, 1682. Catherine Carey was once a vivacious beauty with the world at her feet. One tragic accident was all it took to shatter her dreams, her spirit, her everything. Now, she only wants to hide her scarred face from the world. But if she thinks she’s safe at home, she is wrong. Her scheming brother wants to marry her off to a fortune-hunter, and he won’t take no for an answer. Out on a lonely walk, Catherine is attacked and left for dead. Could this be her brother’s doing?

Here is the tragic, stormy life of Mary Tudor, daughter of Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon. Her story is a chronicle of courage and faith, betrayal and treachery - set amidst the splendor, pageantry, squalor, and intrigue of 16th-century Europe. The history of Mary Tudor is an improbable blend of triumph, humiliation, heartbreak, and devotion - and Ms. Erickson recounts it all against the turbulent background of European politics, war, and religious strife of the mid-1500s.

William Shakespeare found dozens of different ways to kill off his characters, and audiences today still enjoy the same reactions - shock, sadness, fear - that they did more than 400 years ago when these plays were first performed. But how realistic are these deaths, and did Shakespeare have the knowledge to back them up? Kathryn Harkup turns her discerning scientific eye to the Bard and the varied and creative ways his characters die.

Hans Holbein the Younger is chiefly celebrated for his beautiful and precisely realized portraiture, which includes representations of Henry VIII, his advisors Thomas More and Thomas Cromwell, his wives Jane Seymour and Anne of Cleves, and an array of the Tudor lords and ladies encountered during the course of two sojourns in England. But beyond these familiar images, which have come to define our perception of the age, Holbein was a multifaceted genius: a humanist, satirist, and political propagandist, and a deft man whose work was rich in layers of symbolism and allusion.

Grace O'Malley, daughter of a clan chief in the far west of Ireland, went from marriage at fifteen to piracy on the high seas. She soon had a fleet of galleys under her commander, but her three decades of plundering, kidnapping, murder and mayhem came to a close in 1586, when she was captured and sentenced to hang. Saved from the scaffold by none other than Queen Elizabeth herself—another powerful woman in a man's world—Grace's life took another extraordinary turn, when it was rumored she had become intelligencer for the queen's spymaster, Sir Francis Walsingham.

In this novel of alternative history from best-selling author Harry Turtledove, the Spanish Armada has conquered England, King Phillip holds the English throne, and Elizabeth I languishes as a prisoner in the Tower of London. Meanwhile, in London, a mysterious stranger approaches young playwright William Shakespeare with an offer that could change the course of history.

The Tudors are England's most notorious royal family. But, as Leanda de Lisle's gripping new history reveals, they are a family still more extraordinary than the one we thought we knew. The Tudor canon typically starts with the Battle of Bosworth in 1485 before speeding on to Henry VIII and the Reformation. But this leaves out the family's obscure Welsh origins and the ordinary man known as Owen Tudor who would fall (literally) into a queen's lap - and later her bed.

Alexander “Sander” Cooke is the most celebrated “boy player” in the Chamberlain’s Men, William Shakespeare’s theatre company. Indeed, Sander’s androgynous beauty and deft portrayal of female roles have made him the toast of London, and his companionship is sought by noblewomen and -men alike. And yet, now at the height of his fame, he teeters on the cusp of adulthood, his future uncertain. Often, he wishes he could stop time and remain a boy forever.

The year is 1587. One of Queen Elizabeth's cousins is found murdered, her flesh marked with profane symbols. A plot to assassinate Sir Francis Drake, England's most famous sea warrior, is discovered. One man is charged with the desperate task of solving both cases: John Shakespeare.

Sixteenth-century Europe was a time of destabilization of age-old norms and the waging of religious wars - yet it also witnessed the remarkable flowering of a pacific culture cultivated by a cohort of extraordinary women rulers who sat on Europe's thrones, most notably Mary Tudor; Elizabeth I; Mary, Queen of Scots; and Catherine de' Medici.

A groundbreaking and insightful exploration of King James I, enigmatic successor to Queen Elizabeth I, from the “meticulous researcher” (The Wall Street Journal) and author of the “enjoyable and readable” (Philippa Gregory, #1 New York Times bestselling author) The Palace. From the...