2 comments about Edward VI (Yale English Monarchs) (The English Monarchs Series).

1. This book represents a comprehensive and conclusive study of an important Tudor figure. An academic study of a less well-known English monarch, this book is a fitting epitaph to a leading historian of our time.



2. Very well-researched, with a wealth of primary source material (perhaps too much!), this book is quite academic and dry. Rather than a traditional biography, the book is more a study of various aspects of the reign of Edward VI (e.g. policies on religion, economics, land use, etc.) first under the leadership of Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset, and later, John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland. I did not feel that I really learned anything about these three figures as people. "Fans" of Tudor history, having read a biography or two of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, are likely to be disappointed in this book. It is much more geared to the historian with a serious, even professional, interest in the period.

1 comments about King Edward II: Edward of Caernarfon His Life, His Reign, and Its Aftermath 1284-1330.

1. Roy Martin Haines is a life member Clare Hall, Cambridge University, a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, and the author of numerous scholarly works concerning British history. In King Edward II: His Life, His Reign, And Its Aftermath, 1284-1330, Haines presents a scholarly, exhaustive, painstakingly researched, in-depth, and authoritative account of the days and rule of Edward of Caernarfon (1284-1327). King Edward II inherited a war with Scotland, yet his lack of skill in the art of war would eventually precipitate Scotland's independence. Ultimately, Edward would also become the first anointed king of England to be dethroned since Ethelred in 1013. King Edward II is an informed, informative, and very highly recommended contribution to personal and academic British History & Biography reference collections.

No comments about Eamon Kelly, Storyteller.

No comments about Real Lace (Irish Studies).

5 comments about A Monk Swimming.

1. This book is a series of tales covering the life and times of Malachy McCourt: wit, actor, writer, bartender, boozer and brawler, errant husband and father. Malachy was born in Brooklyn and raised in Limerick, Ireland, in desparate poverty. I admit never to have read brother Frank's best selling memoirs, _Angela's Ashes,_ probably a far more serious autobiography than Malachy's book. _A Monk Swimming_ is, by turns, funny and sad, like Malachy's life. Gaining a reputation as a humorist from customers's commenting on his gift of gab during his stint as a bartender, these commendable traits gained Malachy frequent guest spots on the old Jack Parr show.
   
   Like his father, Malachy abandons his wife and children, while leading a life steeped in drunkeness, womanizing and, eventually, illegal activity. Malachy, hoping to get his wife and children back, continuously promises, in vain, to reform himself. His lovableness quite apparent, as was his violent nature, Malachy is hardly a model spouse or father. I found myself rooting for Malachy despite his behavior and applaud him for his courage in presenting himself, warts and all.



2. It was an ok book but not as good as his brother's. Sorry, I liked Angela's Ashes much better.



3. Frank McCourt wasn't really perfect. He drank quite a bit, left his wife and child. And yet, despite all of that and his affairs he is somewhat endearing. He also went on to become a teacher struggling to teach teenagers who had their minds on other things.
   But, his bother on the other hand. I just don't get him. The way he did foolish things wtihout much thought and was rude to his wife...
   Perhaps I am just judgemental, but I just don't like a Monk Swimming as much as Angela's Ashes. I know the books are entirely different, by different people, but still. Frank's story is the more interesting of the two.



4. Mallachy gives Frank a run for his money or should I say book. I cannot believe the talent in Angela's family. I will not spoil the story for you. Needless to say I thoroughly enjoyed this book. The excesses, the humour, the wit, the heartbreak, the wasted youth, all of it. Kudos McCourt!



5. Malachy McCourt brings a unique perspective to his life and the lives of immigrants struggling to get by years ago. His wit and his disregard for people who don't want to hear the truth are the primary reasons I couldn't put this book down. I am now reading it for a second time - it is the kind of book you can pick up and read again and again. This book has so many details and situations which can be read several ways, and each time I read a piece of the book, I read it again and this results in a new way of looking at his life but I come away with the same appreciation for it.
   
   Read this book!!!

No comments about Casement (Life & Times) (Life&Times).

4 comments about The Boy King: Edward VI and the Protestant Reformation.

1. This book is a good story for researchers as well as the general audience.



2. (This refers to the Softcover Edition, which I bought at a bookstore but notice is not currently offered on Amazon. Much more affordable---)
   
   There is no doubt that author Maccullogh is a first class scholar when it comes to religion in the Tudor Age; however, I faced the same woeful problem with this book that I encountered on his masterful and massive work on my own ancestor, Archbishop Thomas Cranmer--and that is that the attention to infintesimal detail is constructed in such density that it makes for unfortunately slow reading. It's almost like reading a text book...and spending an entire semester on a course in Edwardian Reformation. A historian he is. A storyteller, no.
   
   However, those who would dismiss Edward as merely a "boy king" with a short reign would be well advised to take some time with this work and discover how much of a serious and lasting impact he did manage to have on politics and religion.



3. Diarmaid MacCulloch should have a well merited following by now. His extremely readable books finally made Church History a fascinating subject. His mastery of theology, ecclesiology, iconography, architecture, ceremony, and other dimensions of Tudor England are unrivalled, and he weaves them into a comprehensive whole. The depth and quality of his research are exemplary, and his prose is very good literature.

   In this book he shows how most events which make the pace of Edward VI's reign seem frantic, were prepared but had to be postponed during Henry VIII's last years. Even during his first year, Edward's establishment under the Duke of Somerset's protectorate was reluctantly forced to appease the Emperor Charles V, the majority of lay politicians, and conservative bishops as powerful as Stephen Gardiner of Winchester. After Somerset's disgrace, John Dudley, first Earl of Warwick and later Duke of Northumberland maintained a more consensual relationship with the Lords. He made peace with France and Scotland, and inaugurated a phase of political reconstruction at home, thus permitting the evangelical revolution to recover its pace.

   Dr. MacCulloch lets us see that in England as in the Continent, the cost of being too specific on the Lord's Supper was soon perceived, since the matter was admittedly of more importance to traditionalists and evangelicals alike than justification by faith, and also produced more martyrs. This determines a very gradual, even stealthy accumulation of arguments and liturgical reforms up to 1550, although at least Nicholas Ridley, Hugh Latimer and Thomas Cranmer had much earlier become convinced that the Lutheran doctrine of Christ's real presence in the Eucharist was as blasphemous as the Roman doctrine of transubstantiation. Nevertheless, MacCulloch argues convincingly that Cranmer's convictions on the Lord's Supper are more in agreement with Heinrich Bullinger's than with either Zwingli's or Calvin's theology. Whether, as John Knox believed, had he reigned longer Edward would have evolved into a doctrinaire Calvinist, is now a moot point.

   One of this book's main attractions is that it conveys a sense of indebtedness to a very young and serious boy, a great promise that flickered and died. Edward is portrayed as a real believer, not just an immature tool of vested interests. Since he appears to have been gifted with a more thoughtful and less egotistical character than his father, it's very possible that he would have grown up to be a great leader of the Reformation, and Cranmer could have finally convened the General Council of Reformed Churches of which he dreamt.

   Regardless of how much anglo-catholicism and theological liberalism alike have done to demolish the Edwardian heritage, it's possible that in a critical juncture such as the one Anglicans worldwide find themselves in today, MacCulloch's closing lines might awaken their concern:

   "Perhaps the Anglican Communion, most enigmatic member of the Christian family of Churches, might show more gratitude for Edwardian mischief -or at the very least, some remembrance and understanding".

   The book carries ninety-two well-chosen illustrations, with very helpful captions. The bibliography includes primary sources in manuscript and in print, secondary sources, and unpublished dissertations. Though softbound, the book is very sturdy, and should survive casual handling. It's quality work from the University of California Press.




4. In the years since publication of his award-winning biography of Thomas Cranmer, one cannot stop marveling at the scholarship of Prof MacCulloch, at his indubitable talent of an author, and at how deftly and effortlessly he adapts it to the restrictions of an academic narrative. `The Boy-King: Edward VI and the Protestant Reformation', published in 2001 in hardback and in 2002 in paperback, has been a definitive treat for many Tudor students, providing them with an engaging story of the English Reformation in the years between 1547 and 1553, as well as containing references to a mesmerising range of archives, from the good old British Library to the Hermitage in St. Petersburg.
   
   Thanks to Prof MacCulloch's being one of the leading British church historians, this book has rather successfully done what other monographs did not quite manage to achieve. Its main achievement is in the fact that one can no longer think of Edward VI as a juvenile parrot in terms of his political involvement. Although this does not immediately imply that his raison d'etat was promising to be terrific, his participation in the matters of state must not be underestimated, let alone overlooked. MacCulloch illustrates this, for example, with his brilliant analysis of Edward's proposal for the reform of the Order of the Garter in the light of its deriving from Edward's tutorship and contemporary political discourse.
   
   The reason why this change in the view of Edward seems so important is because scholars until this day continue to debate the political potential and intellectual faculties of a young king, being mostly critical about both. The most blatant example is Stephen Alford's biography of Edward VI and the review of it by George Bernard. Those, however, who read MacCulloch's book attentively will - hopefully - realise by the end of the last chapter that it is futile to either extol Edward or to dismiss him. Indeed, the boy did not reach his 16th birthday, and no matter what promises had been there, these were buried with him in June 1553. He nevertheless contributed to the affairs of state, by writing proposals, notes, discourses, etc. Certainly, one must still see the forest for the trees, but these documents, written by the young king himself, cannot ever be ignored. One must remember that in all times children were engaged in political discourse, however superficial, especially if they had been destined to the throne. Consequently, these documents, even if they had little or no impact, must be read with all due seriousness to catch the glimpses of an emerging character. For this reason, there cannot be too much praise for MacCulloch, who with a simple phrase `the boy-king' captured the whole ambiguity of Edward's reign and his contribution to the mid-Tudor politics.
   
   The book's attention to the representation of power in Edward's reign only further stresses this ambiguity. The careful analysis of many `personas' attributed to Edward VI at different stages of his life in politics shows that today's historians are preoccupied with the same paradox, as perplexed Edward's contemporaries. As A. Pollard said, for the first time a ten-year-old became the head of the Church, and MacCulloch studies two main religious `images' attached to Edward - Josiah and Solomon. He carefully investigates the rationale for choosing these exact kings and the incongruities of the lives of these biblical characters, to see how those were adapted to the mid-Tudor realities.
   
   This is all the more significant, as prior to MacCulloch's book there was no in-depth study of this peculiarity of the English Reformation in Edward VI's reign, which stemmed from the fact that the Church reform was now heralded by a child. Some scholars, most successfully, perhaps, the late Jennifer Loach, paid much attention to Edward's secular activities and representation of him as the head of the State, which, although giving out new information, hardly made historians any more serious about the boy-king. Normally, before and even after her post-mortem book, scholars have preferred to focus on political moves of Somerset, Northumberland, Cranmer, et al., overlooking, for example, the necessity those had to represent the king's age and his legitimacy in both domestic and external affairs. MacCulloch's study of representation of Edward as the head of the Church puts the reader in the position of making a choice: to look at the years 1547-1553 as a series of farcical attempts of mid-Tudor officials to pretend that England was high and mighty; or to admit that political farce has always been there, and hence Edward VI's reign is not an exclusion and must then be treated appropriately. Books by both Loach and MacCulloch are the examples of this kind of treatment: they both showed the full awareness of the fact that their study of either mid-Tudor monarchy or Church would not break free from any conventions, unless they constantly kept the boy-king in the focus.
   
   In addition to a variety of sources used, MacCulloch's book is rich in illustrations, supporting his arguments that derive from the reading of the written documents, and thus providing his reader with much food for thought. In that, his book dwells both on Loach's monograph, as well as on a brilliant, although not always definitive study by Margaret Aston, `The King's Bedpost'. The trend was continued by Stephen Alford in his biography of Edward VI, and will certainly carry on.
   
   Together with the books by Loach, Aston and, most recently, Alford, `The Boy-King' by Diarmaid MacCulloch underlines the importance of the ever-wide scholarship and the use of different sources, if one wants, in Ranke's words, to penetrate history. And this is exactly what MacCulloch's book allows to do to its reader. To a professional historian, like myself, it gave insight into new sources and the way to employ them, as well as highlighted the questions that require an answer. To those who are simply interested in Tudors, the book tells the story of one of the most ambiguous yet fascinating periods in English history, after reading which one may be compelled to understand why it is better if the monarch is mature, even if he is not very popular.

2 comments about Casualty of War: A Childhood Remembered (Eastern European Studies, 18).

1. This book should be read by all Danube Swabians and their offsprings as well as all freedom-loving, truth seeking and fair minded people of this world.



2. Luisa Lang Owen's recounting of her childhood and the losses she and others experienced before, during and after the war, including three years in a concentration camp is, at once, both hauntingly beautiful and horrific. Her captors, in seeking to exterminate individuals and their culture ironically distilled, in this young woman, the essence of being. Her lush and loving attention to detail, her artistic perceptions were heightened and strengthened in those years, and what we sometimes refer to as the "strength of the human spirit" is clearly defined in the telling of this woman's coming of age under life-threatening conditions. Both fascinated and saddened by the telling, I felt as if I'd entered the spirit of someone who has always lived and continues to live fully and attentively in the world.

No comments about The Misfit Soldier: Edward Casey's War Story, 1914-1932 (Irish Narrative Series).

No comments about King John: England's Evil King?.