2 comments about The Diary of Samuel Pepys: 1664 (Diary of Samuel Pepys, Vol 5).

1. Samuel Pepys must certainly be the most candid of diarists, and the most aware of his time and place. He makes no effort to hide his flaws, nor his accomplishments. We learn about court intrigue, food, household management, plays, the foibles of kings, taverns, music, the navy, architecture, preachers, marriage, family relationships...the man was open to the world around him in an unbelievable way, and conveys it all with zest. It is absolutely enthralling.



2. This is the best edition of Samuel Pepy's Diary and is hugely enjoyable to read. It takes you into the world of a 17th century yuppie par excellance with all his faults and virtues. The scholarship is first rate, meticulous and rigorous and the footnotes add enormously to the interest of the diary. The introductory essays are also first rate and I want the whole set of all 12 volumes!

1 comments about A Greater Love: Prince Charles's Twenty-Year Affair With Camilla Parker Bowles.

1. Here we go again. The so called 'great love story' of an imperious, immature man who has an outstanding sense of entitlement and his future Subjects better like it or lump it. And his immoral companion who wears the title of Mistress like a badge-it seems to run in her family. Adultery for some I suppose is something to be proud of and trumpeted before all the world. C & C deserve each other. I hope they are sent off into Royal exile if Her Majesty should pre-decease these two boring, old sinners. Bring on King William V!
   This book is a waste of time and money. No stars even if I was obliged by the template to give it at least one.

1 comments about Charles George Gordon.

1. This is not so much a biography as a tribute to that unusual man, General Charles Gordon. In typical Victorian style, he is praised lavishly as a fine, upstanding hero -- but his eccentricity and fanaticism come through as well. A very useful book for Gordon enthusiasts and those interested in the past and ongoing issues in the Sudan.

1 comments about Phoenix: Robert, Earl of Essex: An Elizabethan Icarus.

1. First, there is much about this book to commend it. As noted above, it contains some interesting and insightful comments by Essex's contemporaries. The writing is clear and occasionally rather musical. The life of Robert, Earl of Essex and the last of Elizabeth's favorites, is described in considerable detail. The image of a man of great charm but stunningly bad judgement emerges, sometimes in spite of all this detail.

   What I found off-putting was the tone of some of the writing -- a sort of headline hyperboly. And characterizations tend to become caricatures: at one point, the author evokes the image of Elizabeth's successor as "young King James cavorting with his boyfriends." The Scottish king was in his late thirties when he succeeded to the English throne -- hardly young in the Renaissance world. And the author misses a potent parallel: according to many historians, it is likely that James Stuart's physical relationships with his male favorites were not much different from those of the late queen with hers. James VI and I was undoubtedly attracted to handsome young men, and certainly carried on passionate friendships, but it is by no means certain that physical liasons developed.

   Nor is this the only personal judgement offered up. Elizabeth is "nasty, vicious and self-centered." This snapshot opinion is bolstered with documented events and considerable speculation. The author repeatedly and matter-of-factly informs us of this complicated monarch's motives and feelings and thoughts. Sometimes her mood is not difficult to discern; Elizabeth had a famous temper and wasn't above shrieking at a courtier or boxing a lady's ears. These moments are described with relish, and they do indeed flesh out the author's portrait of an aging, difficult woman. The author's depiction of the internal Elizabeth, however, can be exasperating. Most jarring perhaps was the assertion that Elizabeth took up with Essex because "she had nothing to lose." This, when the cover's subtitle breathlessly promises that her "affair" with this young man "nearly dethroned her," is not only presumptous, but contradictory.

   On the other hand, readers whose primary interest is political intrigue are likely find this book of value. If its goal was to show the uncertainties of fortune and the odd machinations of Elizabethan society, it succeeded admirably. There are few books available on the life of Essex, and this one is worth a look.

No comments about Party People, Communist Lives: Explorations in Biography.

No comments about Oliver Cromwell.

No comments about Old Ironsides: The Military Biography of Oliver Cromwell (Phoenix Press).

2 comments about England's Elizabeth: An Afterlife in Fame and Fantasy.

1. Anne Barton, an emerita Cambridge, England professor of literature and history, called this book 'scholarly, wide-ranging, lively and witty', and she doesn't give out praise lightly: she also described it as 'a fascinating cultural history of England itself in terms of its obsession with Anne Boleyn's resilient daughter.' This was in the London Review of Books, which rarely gets that sort of thing wrong, so I bought it. And she was dead right. This is a stunning book -- broadens your whole sense of history. And such a joy and a stimulant to read. I can't think how they'll ever follow it, but thank goodness they wrote it.



2. This is a dazzling piece of cultural history about all the things people have wanted to be true about Elizabeth I whether they are or not, with fantastic pictures drawn from the plays and novels and movies in which her endlessly glamorous afterlife has been lived. It's a great book about why this enigmatic, dangerous woman matters and has mattered: it's funny, it's heartfelt, and it's scholarly too. Perfect for the thinking Glenda Jackson/Bette Davis/Cate Blanchett fan in your life, and a penetrating, witty meditation on fame, womanhood, and history.

1 comments about Elizabeth & Leicester.

1. This book, writes Jenkins in the preface, is not a definitive biography of Lord Leicester. That much is certainly true. But is it the definitive biography of the romance of Leicester and Elizabeth? Not either. According to Jenkins, the romantic feelings of the couple were real, but Elizabeth was almost too much of a monarch, and too much the traumatized daughter of Anne Boleyn, to give into them on ANY level. Jenkins satisfyingly explains this with much attention to detail, saying what Dudley and other important courtiers gave to the Queen at New Year's for example, and then commenting on the spirit in which the gifts were given and received. And she maintains enough of a distance from her subjects, Elizabeth, and Leicester's relationship to her, to keep the mystery of their romance vivid. One feels a History book about this couple OUGHT to be this detached and reverent. One learns a great deal about the personal likes and dislikes of the great Queen (a very sensitive nose, a passion for flirting, a thirst for power) and reads the reported, but obviously public, dialogue between the couple. "You are like my dog," Elizabeth tells Robin, "whenever people see you they know I am coming." Snippets like this make it understandable that Dudley would have been a bit frustrated with his Queen and his love. On the other hand when Dudley becomes curious about the Queen's relationship to her much younger suitor, the Duc D'Alençon, he asks her if "she is a maid or a woman." The Queen laughs and replies "a maid." Jenkins concludes, to the disappointment of Historical novelists everywhere, that this 'shows he had never deflowered her'. Uhuh, or that he didn't want the entire court to know that he had. That could explain why she laughed before answering. Nonetheless, the book is a gift for its information and insight, particularly into the political world in which Leicester operated.

No comments about The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1.