5 comments about Lady Jane Grey: Nine Days Queen.

1. A book with Catherine Parr on the cover using a few embellished facts, very little research and fanciful story telling make this a book only for the passive reader.



2. I had eagerly anticipated this book for a long time, but I found it very dissapointing.

   It's more of a quick retelling of the struggle for the throne after Henry VIII's death than a biography of Jane. She's a minor character in her own biography, emerging only for brief, tersely described events.




3. Jane Grey was queen for nine short days, during a period of great turmoil. The documentary evidence from this time is rather spare; even the coins minted during this brief reign are so rare as to be valued collectors' items. Author Alison Plowden uses documentary evidence and secondary sources to reconstruct the world around this brief reign. Indeed, Jane Grey remains a shadowy figure, even with this and other biographies available, given that, as a child, she was not party to much life at court, and did not have ongoing correspondence with many people likely to preserve such writing (only a handful of personal letters remain from her).

   Plowden introduces the world of the Tudors and their friends, hangers-on and rivals from the time of Lancaster/York conflict, and Henry VII, the first Tudor king, forward. This reads like a soap opera, and indeed it was a time of intrigue, deception, jockeying for position and occasional outright evil behaviour. The executioner's task at the Tower was never wanting for more; the Tudors, Seymours, Brandons, Dudleys and other such families were intertwined in the political, religious and dynastic machinations of the time, and sometimes this late medieval machinery caught up the people as it would grind along.

   Lady Jane Grey was not born to be queen. This does not make her unique among monarchs in British history; when the current queen Elizabeth was born, it seemed very remote that she should ever advance to be monarch. Indeed, even the great Henry VIII wasn't the heir apparent when born; his brother Arthur was Prince of Wales -- Henry married his brother's widow Catherine of Aragon, and the successive sequence of wives and offspring commenced from there. Lady Jane Grey was born of none of these wives, nor even from Henry directly, but rather through one of his younger siblings, Mary, one-time queen of France.

   Plowden's tracing of the history is very much personality driven. Events and issues take a secondary role to the history she recounts here -- it is very much the people involved, who are somewhat hard to keep straight at times (when one would acquire a new title, the name changes; since these names often had predecessors also active in royal and governmental affairs, one sometimes needs charts and graphs to keep the players distinct).

   Lady Jane Grey was a mere teenager when she came to power, such as it was. A precocious and intellectual child, she still lacked the political savvy of the Privy Council and other chief executors and leaders from Henry and Edward's reigns; she was the not-always-willing but not-unwilling pawn of her family's ambitions -- at one time thought to be a possible wife for the king Edward, her family jumped at the chance of settling the crown directly on her head, under the ostensible purpose of preserving a Protestant succession.

   Ultimately, the venture was doomed to failure, for as much as the royal and parliamentary authorities like to believe they rule England, ultimately it has been the people en masse, and those whom they do not support do not last long. The common folk, still largely Catholic in leaning, also understood royal succession in simple terms -- Mary Tudor was the next in line for the throne, so they supported her (largely they would support Elizabeth, a moderate Protestant, for the same reason five years later). Lady Jane fell victim again to the problems of politics; Mary Tudor, once queen, was inclined to be lenient until it was felt that Jane's presence continued to be a rallying point for Protestant dissidents.

   Plowden's book is not a simple biography of Jane Grey, but rather a survey of the historical period, from the generation prior to the aftermath. If Jane Grey seems to be a bit lost in the sea of people in this text, that is understandable, for even though she was queen for a short time, it was hardly her own reign or her own doing, and she didn't last long enough for contemporary histories in personal detail to be written (nor was it really in the interests of others to do so during the reign of either Mary or Elizabeth). Taken as a snapshot of a short time in the Tudor dynasty, and a very unique period in British history, this is a good survey.

   This is not an historical romance, nor a narrative history done in novel style. It is a little light on notes, placed at the end rather than as footnotes, for a 'grand' history, but is still built on strong authority. The select bibliography is worthwhile, as is the index. While Plowden's language could take a little polish to good effect, the text remains interesting and factually well-executed, keeping speculation and romantic embellishment to a minimum, and clearly delineating between documentary fact, gossip and hearsay, and later interpretations and reconstructed memories.




4. I was honestly hoping that the issue with the cover portrait would have been resolved with the reprint. There is no new information that I had so hoped for from a writer as well-known as Alison Plowden. I am disappointed and would not recommend that anyone seeking facts about Lady Jane read this book. In an "information age", I had really hoped for facts, the book is so reflective of 1986. There are plenty stories about the Tudor period of our history but little factual compositions.



5. I didn't read much of "Lady Jane Grey: Nine Days Queen", but that's due to the author. However, the book is skimpy and regulated to "this event happened" and "He/she did/said this and that". Alison Plowden is a good and factual writer, but this time she paints by the numbers. Also, in her excellent four-book biography of Elizabeth I, Plowden's attitude resembles Hester W. Chapman's; she tends to get a bit terse and condescending. I guess this is why I didn't finish "Lady Jane Grey: Nine Days Queen". I simply didn't want to encounter Plowden's attitude again while reading about my favorite Tudor princess.

5 comments about Diana (Diana Princess of Wales).

1. This book is garbage. The writing is near-illiterate and the facts wrong. Save your money. "Diana: The Life of a Troubled Princess" is so much better as to be in a different world.



2. This book is partly a biography of Diana's life, with some color photographs, but mostly a commentary upon Diana's life in the context of the House of Windsor. The author is sympathetic to Diana's plight as an innocent girl who married for love, but found out too late that Prince Charles would not give up his mistress Camilla. The author severely castigates Prince Charles and Camilla, and the Queen and the entire House of Windsor, as callous hypocrites and morally bankrupt pretenders to the throne and the Church of England. The author concedes that Diana had some problems and weaknesses of her own, but overwhelmingly takes the side of Diana against the House of Windsor, and scathingly considers Prince Charles to be a third-rate character unworthy to be king. The author has a great way with words, sometimes angry, sometimes mocking, and sometimes wickedly funny, with a few obscenities interspersed, in her attacks upon Prince Charles and Camilla, and the House of Windsor, although sometimes written in a subtle way that would probably only be understood by someone very familiar with Diana's life and British history of the past twenty years. If the reader has a similar love for Diana, and a similar very low opinion of Prince Charles and Camilla and the House of Windsor, the book would probably be enjoyable to the reader.



3. I've got this book in the hardback edition and I've got to say this is one mean spirited book. Ms. Burchill writes for The Guardian, a liberal left leaning British paper and she is obviously what the British would call a strong republican. It appears to me that this book is an attack on the Monarchy from the first page to the last. Princess Diana herself would probably not have been spared if she'd gone along with the system. As with all the other Diana books you get some good photos but this one is a little too mean otherwise.



4. Julie Burchill's book "Diana" is one of the most honest, get to the point, in your face books I have ever read. Not only does she paint Diana, Princess of Wales as an ordinary person in extraordinary circumstances, she gives us some insight into what her life must have really been like in the Palace. It consist of, what I consider, very passionate writing. She expresses her opinions very strongly and quite adequately. You can "feel" her words in ways that many other books attempt to but fail. Diana struck out at getting the love she so needed from the man she adored and married but in the process received the love and adoration of the world. I've read just about every book on the subject of Diana and this is by far one of my absolute favorites and one of the most thought provoking. You do not have to agree with the general feelings towards the Royal Windsor Family or appreciate the sometimes strong language to enjoy what has to be one of the most exceptional books written on Diana. Julie Burchill has does a great job in expressing the feelings many people, the world over, have felt towards this lovely, real life, Fairy Tale Princess, who unfortunately, left this world too soon.



5. I read this book in 2005. So quite some time has passed since emotion ran high in the wake of the untimely death of Diana, POW. Given that, it was quite a read. In a lot of ways a grand mea culpa for all the trash that was written about this woman in her own lifetime. Much of it was far more mean-spirited than anything written after her death. Despite all of its quick-drawn conclusions on things that we'll never really know the truth about -- nor should we, perhaps -- I have to see it as an interesting testament to its time. Maybe we've forgotten now, and if you weren't victim to the blaring everyday headlines about Diana in Britain you'd never know, but there wasn't a single aspect that was deemed personal or private for this woman during the last years of her life. And what did she ever do that was so wrong? To my mind her grand mistake -- to which she paid for dearly -- was to marry way too young. A Greek tragedy played out before our very eyes from 1981 to 1997. An interesting read.

3 comments about Eleanor of Aquitaine: Queen and Legend.

1. This book was an accurate account of Eleanor of Aquitaine. He does a wonderful job in depicting her life.



2. This is a great book. I learned so much from this book. I am doing a project on Queen Eleanor and it helped me so much.I hope everyone else learns as much as I did! I hope that she will still have her name in history in a houndred years from now. ENJOY the book.



3. The late D.D.R. Owen was Professor Emeritus of French at Scotland's University of St. Andrews. He had acquired the languages, the deep cultural knowledge and the scholar's discipline that equipped him to compose a fine, restrained biography of Eleanor of Aquitaine. Owen's treatment is careful to draw a line between rumor and fact (insofar as that line can be drawn more than eight centuries later). He exposes rumors, plays them down and turns his attention to accenting history.
   
   Eleanor was a patron and sponsor of troubadours at her many courts. Verses and songs in her praise inevitably fueled the whiff of scandal. Her enemies' verses and whisperings, her larger than life character and the written records of tut-tutting clerics from Paris to Antioch all darkened her record. Owen set himself the task of rubbing away the grime of ages to expose the life at the core. His account of Eleanor's limitations and excesses is no less interesting for that. Thus he can show more clearly than most how much authority this amazing woman did, or did not, exercise through sixty-seven years during which she counseled, provoked or scorned four kings, two of them her husbands, two of them her sons.
   
   Owen's "Eleanor of Aquitaine: Queen and Legend" is the book for readers who want their Eleanor, beauty, warts and all, but shorn of celebrity fluff. In that sense it complements Bonnie Wheeler's and John Parsons' "Eleanor of Aquitaine: Lord and Lady." Both books offer scholarly approaches. They are well matched in presenting well-crafted interpretations of violent, turbulent, very strange times, with a strong-willed queen presiding.
   
   Robert Fripp, author of
   Power of a Woman. Memoirs of a turbulent life: Eleanor of Aquitaine

No comments about Diana (Diana Princess of Wales).

No comments about Harry's War: The True Story of the Soldier Prince.

1 comments about The Duleep Singhs: The Photograph Album of Queen Victoria's Maharajah.

1. This vendor never delivered the book or ever contacted me after 3 e mails. I would never buy anything from them at lest they could have responded to enquiry.

4 comments about Raider.

1. Galen Kittleson's uncanny ability to see the enemy first and valor under fire behind enemy lines are legend. I just finished his biography and am thankful for his service to his country. Through Charles Sasser's words the persona of Kittleson is clear and his humility is reminiscent of medal of honor recipients.

   I gained insight into the horrific conditions of our prisoners of WWII (especially Baatan) and Viet Nam (Son Tay and Hanoi Hilton) and the bravery of men like Galen Kittleson who dared try to return them home. De Opresso Liber. Thank you Command Sargeant Major Kittleson. You are the epitome of a Special Forces Quiet Professional.




2. Galen Kettleson is the most courages person that has inspired many people though out his life. Reading this book has given me a much higher respect for this man. Kettleson has been a friend of my family for close to thirty years, on May 4th 2006, Galen passed away. We have lost a true American Hero. ALAMO ALL THE WAY



3. I served with CSM Kittleson in 1973, on Okinawa, in 1st SFG. He was a father figure to me and kept me, a young soldier in line.... if you enjoy reading exciting and educational books I suggest reading this one.



4. I had the honor of being Team Leader of A-402/A-403 for a short period while Galen Kittleson was Team Sergeant and about to leave Vietnam. He was a very steadying force in our unit and greatly admired for his dedicated service and exploits in WW II, the Korean War, and in the Vietnam War. He was also a very gentle and compassionate man. The book's a must read for all soldiers and anyone wanting insight into a real hero, superb gentleman, family man, and all-round great person. However I didn't particularly care for the author's constant use of "Little Sergeant" as an aka for Galen; though only 5'8" he was built like a refrigerator and no one in our unit considered him "little." De Oppresso Liber

No comments about The Reign of Henry VIII: Personalities and Politics.

No comments about The Last Kaiser.

3 comments about Queen Victoria's Secrets.

1. this is not a straight forward story, very hard to follow and a little confusing, if you have to buy it, get the paper back.



2. This book strives to show the influence Queen Victoria had on her age. Many of the ideas seem far fetched to me and this is a boring read at best. Unless you are EXTREMELY interested in the culture of the Victorian age, pass this one by.



3. This is a path breaking work of rigorous scholarship on the cultural impact of Queen Victoria in the 19th century. Not for everyone but definitely worthwhile reading for those who have the patience to learn something new.