The Lady in the Tower by Alison Weir

April 28, 2015 by Christina

Nonfiction – print. Ballantine Books, 2010. 464 pgs. Purchased. Subtitled “The Fall of Anne Boleyn”, Weir focuses on how Anne came to lose her head on May 19, 1536 (the first English queen to be executed) and why the same man who broke with Rome in order to start an entirely different church in order to marry her was so quick to sign her death warrant. Rumors as to why Anne fell from grace abound, and many of them have […]

Categories: 2015 Reads, Chunkster, Europe, Fiction, United Kingdom • Tags: Alison Weir

The Six Wives of Henry VIII by Alison Weir

January 10, 2015 by Christina

Nonfiction — print. Grove Press, 2000. Originally published 1991. 656 pgs. Purchased. Known either as an infamous bunch or through the way they died, the six wives of Henry VIII are examined as individuals in Weir’s collective biography. As the back cover states, Henry VIII’s first wife, Katherine of Aragon, emerges as a staunch though misguided woman of principle; Anne Boleyn, an ambitious adventuress with a penchant for vengeance; Jane Seymour, a strong-minded matriarch in the making; Anne of Cleves, […]

Categories: 2015 Reads, Chunkster, Europe, Nonfiction, United Kingdom • Tags: Alison Weir

Elizabeth of York by Alison Weir

June 19, 2014 by Christina

Nonfiction — print. Ballantine Books, 2013. 572 pgs. Library copy. The mother of the infamous King Henry VIII of England and grandmother of Elizabeth I, the life of the first Tudor queen, Elizabeth of York, spanned one of England’s most dramatic and perilous periods. Her birth was as much pomp and ceremony as that of a male heir; proof that King Edward IV was the true and lawful King of England. But the Lancasters and those aligned with them continued […]

Categories: 2014 Reads, Chunkster, Europe, Nonfiction, United Kingdom • Tags: Alison Weir

The Children of Henry VIII by Alison Weir

March 31, 2011 by Christina

Nonfiction — print. Ballantine Books, 1997. Originally published 1996. 385 pgs. Purchased. Formerly entitled Children of England, Weir’s biography of the children of this infamous king serves as a bridge between her book about the wives of Henry VIII (which I have read a couple of chapters from and own) and her biography of Elizabeth I. If you’re looking for a book about the “Virgin Queen”, this is not the book for you as this particular book covers the reigns […]

Categories: 2011 Reads, Europe, Nonfiction, United Kingdom • Tags: Alison Weir

Queen Isabella by Alison Weir

January 25, 2009 by Christina

Nonfiction — print. Ballantine Books, 2005. 482 pgs. Library copy. Isabella arrived in London in 1308, the spirited twelve-year-old daughter of King Philip IV of France. Her marriage to the heir to England’s throne was designed to heal ld political wounds between the two countries, and in the years that followed she became an important figure, a determined and clever women whose influence would come to last centuries. But Queen Isabella’s political machinations led generations of historians to malign her, […]

Categories: 2009 Reads, Europe, Nonfiction, United Kingdom • Tags: Alison Weir