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1 comments about Mary Queen Of Scots: Her Environment And Tragedy.

1. Forget Antonia Fraser, Alison Weir, and their sorry ilk; this hundred-year-old work still ranks as perhaps the most definitive biography of this most controversial of Queens to date. Henderson's work remains valuable because, unlike virtually every book to date about Mary Stewart (including John Guy's admirable recent bio,) the author manages to remain coolly objective. He comes neither to praise Mary nor bury her, although in the process he manages to do a judicious amount of both. In addition to this unusual lack of partisanship, his biography is solidly-researched, factually accurate, insightful, and well written. (As a bonus, Henderson is also very funny at times.)
   
   The one major flaw in the book is Henderson's cavalier treatment of the death of Mary's notorious second husband, Henry, Lord Darnley. Here, his usual common sense and restraint seem to utterly desert him. Perhaps overwhelmed by the sheer murky complexity of the crime (despite over four hundred years of effort by numberless historians, Darnley's demise still ranks as one of history's most stubbornly baffling unsolved murders,) Henderson really fails to even try and explain Kirk o'Field at all, retreating into vaguely muttering a recap of the most absurd contemporary efforts to frame Mary and the Earl of Bothwell for the slaying.
   
   When a reputable historian finds himself relying on George Buchanan for source material, you know he's in big trouble.
   
   I also wish Henderson had spent more time analyzing the Casket Letters in the main body of his biography, but I suppose that, having already devoted an entire book to the subject (the indispensable "Mary Queen of Scots and the Casket Letters,") he felt he had said his fill on the matter. He compensates, however, by including an appendix where he gleefully tears into Andrew Lang's famously indecisive book about the letters ("The Mystery of Mary Stuart," a work where Lang seemed to come to a different conclusion about their authenticity with each successive edition.) While this essay is one of the most hilarious historical Fiskings I've ever read, you can't help but squirm while he takes on poor Lang. It's a bit like watching Godzilla going through Tokyo.
   
   This book is one of the relatively few "must-reads" for anyone interested in the human puzzle that was Mary Queen of Scots.

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