5 comments about Five Women of the English Reformation.

1. Dean Zahl is an intriguing and interesting preacher and author. I read the book as I am deeply interested in the Reformation - particularly in the United Kingdom. I was most impressed with his chapter on Lady Jane Grey who certainly should be the role model and main subject of the five. I believe he should have downplayed the role of Anne Boleyn because of the great sorrow her marriage to Henry VIII caused to his wife of 20+ years. I am of course referring to Katherine of Aragon. Henry and Cranmer's treatment of the Queen was cruel and should not be defended in any modern Protestant forum. Indeed in Britain in Peterborough Cathedral her grave (desecrated by Protestants) was restored and now befittingly says "Katherine The Queen". I otherwise enjoyed the book but wish he had not remained silent on this issue when proclaiming Anne's virtues. A modern parallel might be considered in the relationship of Edward VII and Alexandra - Alexandra a devout Protestant endured Edward's numerous affairs. Katherine endured the same with Anne. I have read all of his books and consider him a scholar on Anglicanism. A little more compassion for Katherine would have made me rate the book higher.



2. I don't have the book in front of me anymore, so I can't pull quotes from it, but I remember thinking as I read this book that the author didn't really understand what the Reformation was about. At one point, he says in effect "God's love responds to man's faith". The Reformers clearly taught that man's faith responds to God's love and His calling. I know that the book wasn't about in depth theology, but statments like the above made it hard to take the rest of the book seriously.



3. "There was a king of Yvetot, " wrote the French poet Pierre-Jean de
   Beranger, "little known to history." Pick any period of history of which
   you are especially fond, and you will feel strongly that some figure you
   deem important is too "little known."

   Consider the era of the English Reformation. It is a time of tumultous
   change. A king shifts his faith, leaders are burned at the stake, people
   flee the country, many monasteries are destroyed, and the king's successors

   shift back and forth in the middle of the sixteenth century with astonishing
   rapidity. Read any work on this time and the authors TEND to focus on the
   politics, the leaders, the church, the liturgy and the men. When a woman is
   mentioned at all, the one bright light that gets nearly all the attention is
   Elizabeth I (1533-1603).

   Nearly all the other women are less noticed, and when they are focused on
   little is said about the role THEOLOGY plays in their lives and ministries.
   In a highly provocative and little noticed book, "When Life and Beliefs
   Collide : How Knowing God Makes a Difference" (Zondervan, 2001), Carolyn
   James writes: "As I have met with hundreds of women, I have encountered a
   wide spectrum of negative attitudes towards theology, from casual
   indifference to open hostility, and all points in between. Here and there,
   a few women may find theology fascinating, may even devote a lot of time to
   study it, but they are exceptional and, in the opinion of some, a little
   peculiar. Beyond these rare exceptions, most women cannot be bothered."

   Well, in the period of the English Reformation women COULD be bothered,
   indeed fascinated, by theology, as Paul Zahl's "Five Women of the English
   Reformation" (Eerdmans, 2001) shows. Dr. Zahl picks Anne Boleyn
   (1507-1536), Anne Askew (1521-1546), Katherine Parr (1514-1548), Jane Grey
   (1537-1554), and Catherine Willoughby (1520-1580) for his examination. "All
   of these woman thought theologically," he writes. "They were lay
   theologians. They read theological books, most especially the Bible, and
   anything to which they could gain access from the continental Protestant
   Reformers. They talked theology. Their inner circles were
   twenty-four-hours-a-day Bible studies. They saw everything that happened
   through two lenses: the lens of the providence of God and the lens of the
   furtherance of the Reformed religion."

   For Dr. Zahl, the "Reformed religion" comes to England in three successive
   parts. "The first phase of Reformation theology was justification by grace
   through faith rediscovered. The second phase was the implications of
   justification by faith for the Mass, the Mass being the central action and
   transaction of medieval Catholicism. The third phase of the English
   Reformation was the focus on election and predestination."

   Phase one concerns Anne Boleyn, "who died meekly but gave away nothing." So
   completely was she erased from the official record "it became as if she had
   never lived." For Zahl, however, she left the indelible mark of her faith.
   "As queen, Anne understood her providential mission to be.to bring the
   Reformation to England and employ every single instance of patronage and
   influence to that end." What is the human predicament? "The human person is
   caught up in himself and herself until set free to love by a prior exterior
   love." That prior love is the love above all loves, and the heart of Anne's
   faith, "the forgiving love of Christ Jesus, without which all human
   endeavors of love are doomed to be scripted and need projected."

   The second phase of the Reformation involves another Anne. "Anne Askew's
   primary target was biblical teaching concerning the eucharist, and more
   precisely the idea of transubstantiation. Anne was burned for denying
   transubstantiation. Her denial of it was aggressive. In fact she mocked
   the concept!"

   Zahl believes Anne Askew rejected transubstantiation for two reasons.
   "First, it is irrational to say that God can be contained within any object
   of any kind..`God will not be eaten with teeth': This is the Enlightenment
   or critical, deconstructing side of Protestantism in early form." Anne's
   second reason Zahl calls an "evangelical" one, namely the notion that Christ
   's atoning death occurred once for all. "To conceive of the Eucharist as a
   sacrifice of repetition, by which the benefits of Christ's death are
   presented new and actual each time on the altar, was to denigrate the `one,
   full perfect sacrifice'" of which Cranmer wrote.

   The final phase of the Reformation concerns Catherine Willoughby, the
   duchess of Suffolk in 1533, who lived the longest of the five women treated
   by Dr. Zahl. She addresses primarily the subjects of divine will,
   providence, and election. When she loses her sons Charles and Henry to
   death, she seeks to understand it as a "mercy. She means that by taking
   away from her, her very most cherished prerogative-her children and her
   attachment to them-God has intentionally forced her to rely solely on Him."
   Zahl confesses this is "counterintuitive" yet sees it as the inevitable
   outflow of Luther's theology. "If grace alone saves, then God alone is the
   willing actor in all human events.Contemporary people make heavy weather of
   this. Our ancestors generally accepted it."

   So here is vintage Zahl: compact, pithy, and theologically oh so rich.
   Appropriately, there is a chapter of reflection by Mary Zahl which concludes
   with the best call of the book: "Study the Bible.be courageous.See God as.
   [your] only authority.Be grateful that .[we are] not being asked to die for"
   our faith.

   For all the talk about theology, however, this theologian was most struck by
   all the suffering these women went through, the physical agony, the
   emotional trauma of becoming convenient victims in other's schemes, and the
   lives cut so terribly short (Willoughby excepted). "What I think we can say
   regarding the steel of our heroes' convictions is that in each case their
   new convictions were made firmer by means of affliction, loss and
   harassment." Indeed. "Shall I fall in desperation?" Katherine Parr asks.
   "Nay, I will call upon Christ, the Light of the world. The Fountain of
   life, the relief of all careful consciences, the Peacemaker between God and
   man, and the only health and comfort of all repentant sinners."

   Oh how they suffered, but they suffered for and with Christ. May God grant
   us similar rich and deep devotion to him in our generation.

   --The Rev. Dr. Kendall S. Harmon (ksharmon@mindspring.com) serves as Theologian in Residence at St.
   Paul's Episcopal Church in Summerville, South Carolina




4. Biographical historians would do well to emulate this book. This is history enthusiastically--never dully--told. Paul Zahl spins his true tales with zest, wit and total commitment to the subject: five women who dared to think and tell what they knew to be the truth. It's a difficult book to put aside, simply because the author is obviously time-travelling: you feel he was actually there, witnessing the remarkable times in which his subjects lived. Zahl brings each woman to life and makes the reader wish for more. Mary Zahl adds an epilogue that injects just the right amount of support for Paul Zahl's courage to write about women who are bigger than life--from a male perspective. Well done!



5. Biographical historians would do well to emulate this book. This is history enthusiastically--never dully--told. Paul Zahl spins his true tales with zest, wit and total commitment to the subject: five women who dared to think and tell what they knew to be the truth. It's a difficult book to put aside, simply because the author is obviously time-travelling: you feel he was actually there, witnessing the remarkable times in which his subjects lived. Zahl brings each woman to life and makes the reader wish for more. Mary Zahl adds an epilogue that injects just the right amount of support for Paul Zahl's courage to write about women who are bigger than life--from a male perspective. Well done!

2 comments about The Cradle King: The Life of James VI and I, the First Monarch of a United Great Britain.

1. Often books about European royalty are so complex that the reader needs to have a finger forever on family trees as he/she wades though the chapters. This book about a critical leader in our Anglo-Saxon past is very easy to read and provides some important new information and highlights the critical bonds between England and Scotland at the end of the Tudor era. I highly recommend this very readable book



2. What machinations! The court of the Tudors and Stuarts in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century were not easy places to navigate. For a young boy left by his mother to the in-fighting of Lairds and nobles it was an even more difficult place. It would be considered tragic now, that a boy like James should be used as a pawn for others gains, but for his time it was simply a game, and a game with huge wins and losses.
   
   Alan Stewarts book is almost very very good but I felt it fell short on many points. It is a highly readable work, and it covers some excellent matieral I had never read about before - the plotting and constant scheming of the courts. It also, to my relief, treated the issues in context to the time. There was no moralising about what happened, but it was very much presentation of the facts and their consequences.
   
   James VI of Scotland had grown up literally an orphan with his mother imprisoned in England and then beheaded. While he managed to manipulate the Scottish court, the intricacies of the British Court escaped him and his ability to rule England was often compromised. Perhaps too, in comparison to Elizabeth I he paled in significance in all aspects.
   
   This is a pretty good presentation of the first of the Stuart Kings who lasted little more than a century - but in that time managed a huge amount of upheaval to the British landscape and temperament.

5 comments about Heart of Oak.

1. I bought this book many years ago. I greatly enjoyed it, as it had a veracity to its description of lower-deck life. I re-read it recently, and still enjoyed it.
   
   I suppose I should have realized that it was fiction, as I don't think there ever was an E-class destroyer "HMS Eclectic", and no destroyer of that name sailed with HMS Hood and Prince of Wales to intercept the Bismarck (HMS Electra was in that group and picked up the 3 survivors from HMS Hood), as Jones claims. Nor was there a destroyer of that name that sailed with HMS King George V from Scapa Flow, nor did one join the action later from convoys. Some of the details of the action are also inaccurate, but not badly so for a supposed personal narrative (e.g., 6" secondary armament on KGV, when they were 5.25")
   
   Similarly, while there were four O-class destroyers involved in the sinking of the Scharnhorst, there was no "HMS Obstinate" (Jones' ship), nor was one of that name ever commissioned.
   
   Anthony Dalton's biography of Jones seems to paint him as a very interesting, but less-than-pleasant person. It certainly seems to have nailed any notion of Jones' books being other than substantially fiction. The history of the author does seem to add an extra level of interest to the stories. But that said, the stories are good, the feel for characters is strong, and they are very readable.



2. I needed information re- life on board a British ship during WWII. I found many fascinating details and much accurate information in this book. I found that some of the humor was less funny that announced, but on the whole, I found this book
   very interesting. It was in great part a tale based on personal experience, and
   it held my interest throughout. I'm going to read more by this author...



3. It is a terrific book - and I have enjoyed it for many years. However I recently discovered it is - as Anthony Dalton's new biography of Jones shows - complete fiction - in the sense that Jones was never at any of the events he described. In fact he didn't join the Royal Navy till AFTER World War II.
   
   But that is not to diminish the writing of the tale - Jones imaginings make for a "real" perspective of life in the lower decks of the WWII Royal Navy - and I imagne that in his immediate post-was career in the navy he learned enough to set the scene accurately.
   
   But remember - it is a work of fiction - set on a real historical timeline - but still a good read.



4. Heart of Oak is one the finest war books and sea stories that I have read. I found it hard to put down. Although the intensity of the war and its effects on the men was depressing, I was compelled to keep reading.

   Jones' gives the reader a different and personal perspective--that of the lowly, poor, and teenage sailor; looked down upon by everyone else and facing death, boredom, and discomfort constantly.

   I agree with another reviewer that it is unlikely that Jones witnessed as much as he claimed, and I cannot attest to the accuracy of his descriptions of life aboard His Majesty's Navy, but there is a truthfullness and sincerity in Jones' narative that I find totally convincing.




5. A welshman's soulful and realistic retelling of a matelot's live in Her Majesty's Navy during the dark days of World War II. Tristan Jones recounts his experiences with all the colour and song of a poet; a sea poet - and that he is. The lives of these men carry with you long after reading this book. Put Tristan Jones near the top of my favorite author's list.

1 comments about Clementine Churchill: The Biography of a Marriage.

1. This biography gives great insight into the lives of the Churchills'.It was written by Mary Soames, the youngest child of Winston and Clementine Churchill. It was amazing to see the love and devotion Clementine and Winston had for each other. They were ever faithful letter companions from the start of their romantic and strong relationship. While reading the profound letters they wrote to each other you feel as if you were there with them, feeling every emotion they felt. This biography also includes great stories and antecdotes that will keep you laughing, crying, or shouting for joy for hours. The effects this biography has on you are numerous, but the strongest one would have to be one of awe. Their marriage is a marriage to look up to. They did have troubled times. Like, when Winston went to join in the action of World War I after his loss of the position of First Lord of the Admiralty. Or of the times before WWII when Winston was trying so hard to get people to listen to him about the danger and potency of Hitler and the Nazis. They stayed together in good times and in bad and in sickness and in health. They stayed together until the death of Winston. I highly recommend this book so that you can experience this wonderful and lasting marriage and all that comes along with it.

1 comments about Ada, the Enchantress of Numbers: A Selection from the Letters of Lord Byron's Daughter and Her Description of the First Computer (The Pickering Masters).

1. A very pleasant biography in an original format, allowing for a good understanding of the main character. Typical american biography, where few details are untold, and where the author remains "transparent". We have to assume that B.A.Toole likes Ada, since she wrote a book about her, but we can't figure out why: was it beause she was Byron's daughter, or because she was Babbage's assistant, or because she lived an interesting life, or because she worked on early computers, or for any other reason... It might be a quality of good biographers, but as a French guy, I like to feel a greater intimacy between the autobiographer and the central character. A small disappointment: the lack of details regarding Ada's program for computing Bernouilli's numbers. Having computed some of those by myself, I know what an advantage it is to have at one's disposal a good algorithm to shorten fastidious calculations. In Toole's book, those numbers are barely mentioned, and the chapter 12, even though revised by an US Army colonel,doesn't explain why the Dept of Defense has chosen the ADA language. This having ben said, I took a great pleasure in reading a book which taught me a lot, even if Toole is too discreet on "an affair" that young Ada had when she was 17 years old with one of her preceptors (the great Turner?). Again the French side in me would have liked more details on that topic... Iconography is nice and all graphics are useful. All in all, a very good book to be read by all those who feel interested by an extraordinary woman who remains too little known by the general public.

2 comments about Home Is Where the Wind Blows: Chapters from a Cosmologist's Life.

1. This is an often-fascinating glimpse into the life of the incomparable Sir Fred Hoyle, astronomer, cosmologist, panspermicist, sci-fi afficionado, stellar nucleosynthesist and generally mathematician/scientist extraordinaire. I knew of Hoyle's work in stellar nucleosynthesis and steady-state cosmology before, but I came to this book intentionally after reading and thoroughly enjoying his sci-fi novels (especially "The Black Cloud" and "A for Andromeda"). Here, we peer into Hoyle's life as a scientist, beginning with his stubborn truancy in grammar school and continuing with his adolescent chemistry experiments, his work for the British goverment in WWII, his involvement in astronomy and cosmology from the 1950's through the 1970's, and ending with his political duels with stodgy representatives of British institutional science and his critique of Big-Bang theory as sheer metaphysic, indicting all the while fundamentalists of all ilk, Big-bangers and Bible-thumpers alike. His stories are often very funny, and those about Paul Dirac and Wolfgang Pauli (with whom he worked at Cambridge) are truly priceless. However, I always find his prose a bit stilted, and slogging one's way through Hoylistc grammar and obscure British slang can make for some slow, hard reading. Worst of all, several aspects of Hoyle's most interesting and controversial scientific work is completely absent, for example, panspermia (nothing to speak of) and evolutionary genetics (1-2 paragraphs). And despite both the cover photograph and the fact that Hoyle wrote a well-received book on Stonehenge as an ancient observatory, there is not one word about Stonehenge here. What a pity. On the other hand, he does immerse us in his deep distrust of politics and politicians, and even give's us a taste of his surprisingly Vedanta-like spiritual attitude and a kind of Pythagorean wonder at the Universe. The quote in my title is from Hoyle's self-described scientific activity as crab-like, inching foward cautiously over a lifetime. All told, it is a fascinating life-story told by one of the 20th century's greatest scientific iconoclasts.



2. Of all the stories and anecdotes I use to tell to my friends, many, surprisingly many, were learnt from this charming and wise book. How to buy a car, when to do it, etc., according to the ethics of times harder. Of course Sir Fred is a great astronomer, learned quantum mechanics from Dirac and is as much famous as a science-fiction writer. So, he wrote one of the best books I read in recent years.

3 comments about Paul Dirac: The Man and his Work.

1. A man Stephen Hawking calls 'probably the greatest British theoretical physicist since Newton,' has got to be a pretty bright man. Paul Dirac wrote the definitive equasion that joined the Theory of Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. Like Einstein before him, his equasion is very simple to express, very complex in its overall impact. It explains things like how television sets or computers work.
   
   This book is not exactly a biography, but more a tribute to him. It is a series of four talks given about Dirac eleven years after his death, upon the dedication of a plack to him in Westminster Abby.
   
   Abraham Pais describes Dirac's character and his approach to his work.
   
   Maurice Jacob explains not only how and why Dirac was led to introduce the concept of antimatter, but also its central role in modern particle physics and cosmology.
   
   David Olive gives an account of Dirac's work on magnetic monopoles and shows how it has had a profound influence in the development of fundamental physics down to the present day.
   
   Sir Michael Atiyah explains the widespread significance of the Dirac equation in mathematics, its roots in algebra and its implications for geometry and topology.



2. We were ourselves participating in the inauguration of the Paul Dirac memorial in Westminster Abbey. Especially the speeches of Stephan Hawking and Abraham Pais were very touching as they did not only touch Dirac's work but also his personality and life. He was a very complex person and a great physicist. This book reflects that more than others about him.



3. After missing the first collection of essays on this brilliant recluse published soon after his death, I picked up the present version as soon as I was able. It did not disappoint.

   The book is a collection of four lectures given in the subject's honor in 1995 on the tenth anniversary of his death. The final lecture and the latter part of the third are highly mathematical and technical and clearly intended for a professional audience.

   But for me, the first lecture by Abraham Pais is worth the purchase price alone. Pais was not only a contemporary physicist, but also a close friend and as close to a confidant as was possible with such a reticent man.

   Through Pais' eyes, we see a mathematician turned physicist who was very different from the man to whom Dirac is most frequently compared, Albert Einstein. Einstein was a physicist first, mathematician second. Dirac was exactly the opposite. Einstein became a social and political critic, Dirac never strayed far from his study. The two were similar in that both viewed mathematical beauty as primary and both hated the modern remake of quantum mechanics (after the initial theory) for very similar reasons. This last point was interesting as Dirac was the first one to combine all his contemporaries' work on this improved quantum physics into a formal mathematical structure. His resulting equation, called naturally the Dirac equation, is classic Dirac, short and sweet. It combined Einsteinian relativity with the new quantum theory and Dirac considered the result to govern most of physics and all of chemistry. Stephen Hawking, the renowned theoretical physicist, says in his introductory memorial address to the book, "If Dirac had patented the equation ... he would have become one of the richest men in the world. Every television set or computer would have paid him royalties." For this work, Dirac shared the 1933 Nobel Prize with German physicist Erwin Schroedinger. One unexpected consequence of this work was a mathematical conclusion that defined a "negative energy" matter (aka antimatter) solution. Simply put, he had discovered a universe noone had imagined. To this day, we see the effects of this discovery from medical necessities (PET scan imaging-Positron Emission Tomography) to science fiction (Star Trek).

   The quotations and anecdotes Pais chooses are well placed and often very funny. They are also supported by the images of Dirac portrayed in the sketch on the cover and in the few photographs scattered through the first two lectures. They reveal his character well. He saw mathematical and physical realities so clearly that he simply could not understand why others did not see them as well. The photo of him "listening" to future Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman in Maurice Jacob's section is one of the most amusing of the collection.

   In the second lecture, Jacob shows the path of discovery and effect on latter day experimental physics of antimatter. He goes too long in spots but is generally fine.

3 comments about A Circle of Sisters: Alice Kipling, Georgiana Burne Jones, Agnes Poynter, and Louisa Baldwin.

1. I read Ms. Flanders' previous work, "Inside the Victorian Home",(loved it) and therefore I was familiar with Ms. Flanders' writing style. Knowing the author's style helped me to enjoy CIRCLE OF SISTERS much more than if I had not first read Ms. Flanders previous book.
   
   I guess what I'm eluding to is: Ms. Flander's "interesting" writing style. Her style is almost Edwardian,for lack of a better word. Her style can get rather dull in some parts of this book, but luckily, the various intertwining life-stories help the reader to pick up the pace.
   
   If you want to read an intersting book about what life must have been like during the Victorian Era, and especially for four rather "unusual" sisters (ie: unusual for their time), then a reader may find this book quite fascinating, as I did.
   
   The book starts off with a Geneology Tree showing where each sister, and how their respected mates and relatives, fit into the picture.
   
   Then the book takes you back to grandfather MacDonald's life and how he and his wife rose to the challenges they encountered (eg: loneliness of a minister's wife, low pay, many moves).
   
   Soon, the reader is taken to a description of each of the sisters. By the way, there were actually FIVE MacDonald sisters, but Edith, the youngest, never married and therefore she was only slightly talked about. The main plot actually evolves around the four older sisters,(Georgie, Agnes, Alice and Louisa) because these four "main" sisters ended-up marrying famous men (such as Rudyard Kipling's father) and had more exciting lives than poor Edith , who ended-up being the parents' caretaker and stayed home most of the time.
   
   Each chapter of this book describes a "stage" in the sisters' lives (eg: meeting their mates, marriage, their children, infirmary, strange health issues, old age, death, etc.).
   
   The author does a very nice job with even the slightest details of each sisters` life....Example, from what they wore and ate the day one sister met her future husband (eg: Alice was biting into an onion when first approached by John Lockwood Kipling in KIPLING PARK), to when another sister had to deal with infidelity (ie: Georgie's husband's affair).
   
   The other interesting part of this book is that it describes, in detail, how each of the sisters' children felt and how each turned-out, in the long run! For instance, I think that readers will be quite surprised to learn, how Trix and Rudyard Kipling grew-up and how their personalities changed because of their environments and upbringing.
   
   I don't want to say much more, because that might ruin the story, but I must say that after reading this book I knew more about the MacDonald sisters, the Victorian Era, and the sisters' relatives, than I had ever imagined.



2. This isn't something that I would recommend to every reader. The title sounds a lot more warm and fuzzy than the sisters were. If you are expecting a heart-warming tale of the days when all families were close and unfailingly took care of one another, this isn't it. One recommendation I would make is to look up the Rudyard Kipling, Stanley Baldwin, Edward Burne-Jones and Edward Poynter in an encyclopedia, the Dictionary of National Biography or on the internet if they are not familiar. I say this not by way of faulting the book, there are too many characters to give each a full treatment, but it helps to have some idea of who these people were.
   
   The book focuses on the daughters of a Methodist minister. Four either married men who became famous or had sons who became famous. Unfortunately, these are generally not terribly charming personalities, so it is no great delight getting to know them unless one is interested in the period or these particular people. But for those with a special interest, I think it will probably be quite interesting. There were also two brothers, one who was rather unsuccessful and one who was quite successful as a Methodist clergyman, but they take a back seat to their sisters both in the book and in the sisters' lives.
   
   The one thing that I would have liked to have seen developed better is successful relations within the extended family. Georgiana Burne-Jones was very close to her nephew Rudyard, but I'm not really certain why. This may be a problem with a lack of sources on this particular point - Flanders can infer from guest books which relatives saw little of each other but more positive information would be necessary for this.
   
   The MacDonald sisters: Alice, Georgiana, Agnes, Louisa and Edith, came from a modest, barely middle-class background. It is quite interesting that three of them married men from equally undistinguished roots, one a man who was perhaps upper middle-class. Despite these seemingly unpromising beginnings, two of the initally undistinguished husbands, Edward Burne-Jones and Edward Poynter (married to Georgiana and Agnes, respectively) became very successful and famous in the field of art. The third husband, Lockwood Kipling, married to Alice, was successful in his field, and their son, Rudyard, would become an international literary success and quite wealthy. The fourth, husband, Alfred Baldwin, married to Louisa, was a model as an industrialist, noted for public service, who went into politics. Their son, Stanley Baldwin, was three time Prime Minister. Many of the less famous members of the family pursued successful careers as writiers, sometimes quite well known in their time. A few were failures as life: either suffering psychological problems, perhaps due to a frustration of their creative potential, or too comfortable as the children of the famous. Judith Flanders attempts to discover how nurture, i.e., being related to the MacDonalds, may have lead to the surprising achievements. I don't think that she really succeeds, not that I believe that we necessarily can ferret out these influences, but she does draw a probing picture of an interesting family. She considers not only the facts, but draws reasonable inferences about the human beings they refer to. She is quite clear about when she is speculating.
   
   Flanders has done an enormous amount of research. There are many notes, a 12-page "Select Bibliography" and an index. There are eight pages of plates, with 45-50 well-selected pictures of the extended family. I particularly want to commend how the notes and index were done. The notes have both the chapter number and chapter running title, making it much easier to match them with the notes in the text. The index has brief explanatory notes in parentheses after the names of less important characters, e.g. (niece of so-and-so), which is often all that is needed, as well as cross-reference to variant names.
   
   Probably not for everybody, but a excellent work for its subjects.



3. Ms. Flanders' previous work, Inside the Victorian Home, was as delightful as it was informative. That's why A Circle of Sisters is such a letdown- its informative alright, if you care about a group of self-absorbed cold-natured odd ducks. (In 30 years, brother Harry received two visits from his loved ones. Sister Edie was disparaged as a failure for remaining unmarried, even as they all expected her to play nurse and nanny as their situations saw fit.)The subjects, including Rudyard Kipling, never quite come alive on the page. This may not be entirely Ms. Flanders' fault--there seems to have been an awful lot of letter burning in this family. (Plus its hard to feel empathy for people who kept their emotional lives so tightly buttoned down.) The writing, addtionally, is not as crisp as Inside the Victorian Home. You'll forget these women soon enough, and be glad you did.
   
   
   That said, her book Inside the Victorian Home is excellent. I highly recommend it.

4 comments about Edward IV (The English Monarchs Series).

1. Excellent portrait of this facinating King. Highly recommended. Buy the paperback though....$28.00 as opposed to $60.00.



2. Charles Ross presents an unforgettable tale of the most confusing, uneven and adventurous reign of any king in the English history. Edward IV remains the only king who was able to loose a kingdom and them successfully reclaim the crown. Possessing remarkable talents in administration and warfare, he however managed to bring the treasury to almost complete ruin by the end of his term, and botch the most impressive show of force in France any English king (including Edward III and Henry V) can ever master to assemble. Edward IV lived in the extraordinary age, full with great personalities like Richard Warwick the "Kingmaker", Margaret, the queen of Henry VI, and his own kid brother Richard, future most vilified by Shakespeare king Richard the III.

   It is very easy to fell victim to novelized history when relating the events as extraordinary as the events of Edward's reign. Not Charles Ross. He is extremely well researched and versed in the records of the period, and presents the somewhat dry details of the records of the Household and Exchequer, in an interesting way and extremely well cross-referenced. Internal English sources are corroborated by continental and papal records. I would recommend this book to a serious student of history.

   Also see Charles Ross's "Richard III" for a mysterious, bloody, and tragically brief concluding reign of Plantagenet dynasty. This one is also highly recommended.




3. Edward IV is one of the great enigmas of history. Even how he was able to become King is not self-evident. His seizing the throne was then followed by government marked by occasional brilliance and great folly. For someone who at times was keenly aware of dynastic considerations, his own marriage was the height of folly compounded by giving far too much influence to the Queen's relatives. He gave far too much trust, power and wealth to a few individuals, especially the Earl of Warrick and his traitorous brother Clarence alienating in the process much of the established nobility and wrecking in his early years the King's finances. Overthrown in the course of his reign, he nevertheless succeeded in recapturing the throne in short order and then repairing his fortunes spectacularly. Even so, this was accompanied by the strangest series of preparations for invasion of France, ending in an almost farcical procession in Northern France and a pusillanimous retreat. Lazy, debauched, perceptive and effective-many such adjectives can be applied to him - and all miss the puzzling essence of the man and his reign. What a set of stories could be woven out of this material without clearly capturing the essence of the situation! One cannot help wondering why of the adult kings between Richard II and Henry VII, Edward IV alone did not attract Shakespeare's pen.

   Charles Ross wrote a fascinating book on this puzzling ruler, making as clear as the scanty and somewhat unreliable records allow the course of Edward's life and reign, and the various episodes that both fascinate and puzzle. The book (with a short introduction by R.A. Grifffiths rather than a revision by him) proceeds first by laying out the story, and then returning to give separate investigation of various aspects of Edward's rule, such as governance, his relations with the community and his finances. This latter subject is particularly well handled, as is the penultimate chapter on law and order. The story is well told, without excessive pedantry and without any attempt to hide when the record is unclear or the author has had to make large interpretations. One may not really know or understand Edward by the end of the book, but one's feeling is that it is the man himself who escapes capture by the biographer's art, not any weakness of the biographer himself. For those interested in such matters - and this is not light reading - Griffith's biography should prove highly satisfying.




4. The late Charles D. Ross presents here one of the most readable and interesting presentations of of English monarch ever written. Highly recommended for anyone interested in the king or his era-I used it extensively in my senior thesis!

2 comments about Aubrey's Brief Lives (Nonpareil Books, No 77) (Nonpareil Books, No 77).

1. Lives of the rich and famous recorded a time when there were no libel laws meant that even the dirt that wasnt fit to print could be disseminated, whether true or not. It still makes fascinating reading.



2. "Brief Lives" has always been a delight, but it was Oliver Lawson Dick's scholarly editing that revealed Aubrey's genius. And Lawson Dick's Introduction, "The Life and Times of John Aubrey", is a miracle of synthesis and compression: certainly one of the finest biographical essays ever written. This Nonpareil Books edition is sumptuous - a joy to read in these days cheap, quickly produced paperbacks.