A DANGEROUS INHERITANCE BY ALISON WEIR - BOOK REVIEW

"I can never forget the day they brought me the news that my sister's head had been cut off. I was not yet thirteen, too young fully to understand why she had to die, but old enough to imagine the horrific scene at the end. They said she had committed treason, the foulest of all crimes, but it didn't make any sense to me for Jane had only done what she was forced to do. and by that reasoning, I too had been an innocent traitor, just as she was."

This is the opening of this incredible novel I've just finished reading. The young girl in distress for her sister's horrible, unfair death is Katherine Grey, only 13 at the time her sibling was crowned Queen of England for nine days only to be  sentenced to death as a traitor soon after by Queen Mary Tudor  (1554). After Jane’s death,  also the life of Katherine Grey will be full of sorrows and pains in her constant attempt to pursue  true love as well as  the recognition of her status as heiress to the throne of England. She will have to fight against a fierce and very powerful rival, Queen Elizabeth I,   who saw her as a danger to her rule.

Lady Katherine Grey’s fate is intertwined with the story of another unlucky young royal child, Kate Plantagenet, Richard III’s  illegitimate daughter.  Katherine Grey finds her miniature portrait and a diary, and starts feeling sympathy for whom she imagined to be,  like her,  an unhappy victim of a dangerous inheritance: they both have their destinies signed by their having royal blood running through their veins.

The two stories develop onto parallel levels, distant in time, but so close in human suffering. Both girls will have to fight in the pursuit of true love: being of royal blood, a marriage for love is highly improbable for them. They have to marry for state reasons, they have to accept what parents and monarchs choose for them. The two  different levels of the narration offer a privileged perspective on historical figures and facts: Kate Plantagenet lived at Richard III’s court after his marriage to Anne Neville, while Katherine Grey is part of the Tudor family, cousin to Edward VI, Mary and Elizabeth and always kept close to the court by all of them in order to check her movements as a possible contender.

The two stories merge into a quest for the truth about the tragic fate of the Princes in the Tower, after Richard III’s coronation as king of England. Kate wants to purge her father tainted fame after his death at Bosworth, even risking her own life,  and Katherine Grey, imprisoned like the young Princes in the Bell Tower  by Elizabeth I,   will try to get to the truth thanks to Kate’s diary.

Is the mystery solved in the end? You’ll have to check that out yourself reading the book. I’m not revealing any further detail.

AUTHOR INTERVIEW WITH JENNY BARDEN & GIVEAWAY OF MISTRESS OF THE SEA

I'm extremely  glad to welcome best selling author Jenny Barden at FLY HIGH to discuss her latest release, Mistress of the Sea. Read the interview, leave your comment + e-mail address to enter the giveaway contest for a signed first edition copy of her book. The giveaway is open internationally and ends on November 2nd.

Jenny Barden has had a love of history and adventure ever since an encounter in infancy with a suit of armour at Tamworth Castle. Training as an artist, followed by a career as a city solicitor, did little to help displace her early dream of becoming a knight. A fascination with the Age of Discovery led to travels in South and Central America, and much of the inspiration for Mistress of the Sea came from retracing the footsteps of Francis Drake in Panama. She is currently working on a sequel centred on the first Elizabethan 'lost colony' of early Virginia. Jenny has four children and lives in Hertfordshire with her long suffering husband, a loving Labrador and a deadly Bengal cat.

Welcome to FLY HIGH, Jenny, and many thanks for accepting my invitation. Now, my first question for you is: Mistress of the Sea is set in the Elizabethan Age, the first part of Queen Elizabeth I’s reign. What is it that you find most fascinating in those years?

Mistress of the Sea covers the years 1570-3; it begins twelve years into Elizabeth I's long 44 year reign. At that time England was on the point of emerging as a power to be reckoned with on the world stage, free from the Church of Rome and domination by any other state. Her seafarers, Francis Drake among them, were voyaging far and opening up new opportunities for trade, colonisation and piracy. They were developing the skills in navigation, sailing and ship-design that would lay the foundations from which the British Navy and the British Empire would later emerge. In 1570 England was about to enter her Golden Age, Shakespeare and Marlowe were only boys but they would epitomise the flowering of the English Renaissance; Edward de Vere was already writing beautiful poetry and Nicholas Hilliard was starting to produce the exquisite paintings that would help create the iconography supporting the image of Elizabeth as 'Gloriana'; the sublime music of Thomas Tallis graced the chapels of the royal household and nobility. There was a new confidence and optimism. The country was free, relatively liberal and growing economically. England was looking outward and toward a 'brave new world'. What I particularly like about the true adventure which forms the backdrop toMistress of the Sea is that it encompasses so much of what was pivotal in England's development at this exciting time.

NICHOLAS COOKE: ACTOR, SOLDIER, PHYSICIAN, PRIEST BY STEPHANIE COWELL - GIVEAWAY WINNER

First of all let me thank Stephanie Cowell for being again my guest at FLY HIGH with a great post dedicated to Elizabethan England. Her first time here was in January 2011 to present her CLAUDE AND CAMILLE, A NOVEL OF MONET. 

NICHOLAS COOKE: ACTOR, SOLDIER, PHYSICIAN, PRIEST, the story of a brilliant but hot-tempered boy who grows up as an apprentice in Shakespeare’s theater troupe 1593 and to whom Shakespeare is a life-long mentor, has been published in the kindle version. To celebrate the event Stephanie granted one kindle copy to the readers of this blog who left their comments. 

The lucky winner is Amanda. 

Congratulations!!!

AUTHOR GUEST POST : STEPHANIE COWELL, WHY I ALWAYS LOVED ELIZABETHAN ENGLAND + GIVEAWAY OF NICHOLAS COOKE (KINDLE EDITION)

Nicholas Cooke: Actor, Soldier, Physician, Priest is a book Stephanie Cowell published in 1993 to great reviews. It is now available in the Kindle version, and Stephanie kindly accepted to talk about it here at  FLY HIGH! If you love historical fiction set in Elizabethan England, you'll be definitely interested in this book. What about getting a chance to win a free kindle copy? Leave your comment or a question for Stephanie Cowell, add your e-mail address and good luck! It's as simple as that. This giveaway is open internationally and ends on October 18th.

I first fell in love with 16^th century England when I was very young and read everything I could about it.  I especially fell in love with Shakespeare and the theater of his day.  So it was likely that the first novel I ever published was about a brilliant boy who grows up as an actor in Shakespeare’s theater group and follows his extraordinary adventures from one difficulty to another, from one love to another, until he eventually becomes a physician and Anglican priest. The novel is Nicholas Cooke: actor, soldier, physician, priest. It was first published to wonderful reviews in 1993 and has just been re-published as a Kindle e-book.

I first traveled to England at the age of 23 quite alone with almost no money, stayed in student lodgings and cheap hotels and ate a lot of greasy sausage rolls with tea. I visited Westminster Abbey and stood before Queen Elizabeth’s tomb. At the Tower of London, the guide pointed out the spot where Anne Boleyn was beheaded. In Canterbury I had an unbelievable adventure with another girl on the

ELIZABETH I (2005) - DVD REVIEW

This miniseries is awesome. Helen Mirren’s performance is powerful, stunning, compelling. Supported by a stellar cast including Jeremy Irons (Earl of Leicester) , Hugh Dancy (Earl of Essex), Toby Jones (Robert Cecil) , Patrick Malahide (Sir Francis Walsingham) Simon Woods (Gilbert Gifford) , she is Elizabeth I.

The two episodes focus on one motif: “the hardest thing to govern is the heart”. So we see Queen Elizabeth Tudor in her most human feeble aspect: the search for true love, loyal relationships, friendship and tenderness. As proud as she was of her independence – she never married – and her power , she suffered for her being doomed to solitude. She was capable of sublime tenderness as well as defying acts, of falling deeply in love as well as of stately insults. Her sharp intelligence and sense of humor, her stubborness and refined education, her strength and her humanity made of her the Queen with the heart and the stomach of a king and one the most beloved sovereigns in history.

Part I deals with her troubled but close relationship with her old friend and loyal advisor, the Earl of Leicester . Their love/friendship survives her contemplating marriage with the relatively young and handsome Duke of Anjou,  a war with Spain, his secret (to the Queen) marriage to Lady Essex, his exile from court after her rage, her troubled "decision" to execute Mary Stuart. Jeremy Irons is incredibly good as Robin of Leicester.

My favourite scenes in Part I are

1. the moving farewell between the Queen and the Duke of Anjou. Mirren pronounces Elizabeth's lines from On Monsieur's Departure ( did you know the queen also wrote poetry?):

I grieve and dare not show my discontent,

I love and yet am forced to seem to hate,
I do, yet dare not say I ever meant,
I seem stark mute but inwardly do prate.
I am and not, I freeze and yet am burned,
Since from myself another self I turned.
My care is like my shadow in the sun,
Follows me flying, flies when I pursue it,
Stands and lies by me, doth what I have done.
His too familiar care doth make me rue it.
No means I find to rid him from my breast,
Till by the end of things it be supprest.
Some gentler passion slide into my mind,


For I am soft and made of melting snow;
Or be more cruel, love, and so be kind.
Let me or float or sink, be high or low.
Or let me live with some more sweet content,
Or die and so forget what love ere meant.

2. the meeting between Elizabeth and her prisoner and cousin, Mary Stuart Queen of Scotland  in which Mirren pronounces a truthful line: "We are both prisoners of our time". Though this meeting has inspired fictional works, it never took place in real life. Friederich Schiller, for instance, imagined it in his tragedy Mary Stuart (1800).

Part Two follows Elizabeth through her later years, during which she has a passionate affair with the stepson of the Earl of Leicester, the much younger Earl of Essex, whose political ambitions frequently clash with his devotion and loyalty to the monarch. Elizabeth will suffer greatly for her weaknesses to the handsome fascinating Robin of Essex.

 

This series won Emmy, Peabody and Golden Globe Awards in 2006. In the same year Helen Mirren was also THE QUEEN , Elizabeth II , and dominated the Awards scene.

 

Among the historical inaccuracies, the screenplay explicitly mentions that Gilbert Gifford (Simon Woods) attempted to murder Elizabeth I by stabbing (in the first part of Episode One Leicester saves her life on this occasion). He is then seen being tortured and interrogated, but reappears in the second part of the episode to play his real historical part in the Babington Plot. This part of the episode even includes a scene where Gifford meets the Queen and she acknowledges him as the perpretator of the failed murder seven years before. The murder attempt never happened and, if it had, would inevitably have resulted in the perpetrator's execution.

 

I watched this two-part miniseries just yesterday and I'm so glad I did it. I was completely absorbed while watching it and ... it was rather dangerous ... Can anybody guess why?

I had seen and loved the two movies starring Cate Blanchett. She was brilliant. But Helen Mirren and the entire cast of this 2005 TV production surpassed my expectations.

Have you seen ELIZABETH I? Did you like it? If you haven't and love this historical figure as much as I do, you must get this DVD and watch it. 

ELIZABETH I (2005) at imdb