Book description
This is the first biography of the fateful relationship between
Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots. It was the defining relationship of
their lives, and marked the intersection of the great Tudor and Stuart
dynasties, a landmark event in British history.
Distinguished biographer Jane Dunn reveals an extraordinary story of
two queens ruling in one isle, both embodying opposing qualities of
character, ideals of womanliness and of divinely ordained kingship.
Theirs is a drama of sex and power, recklessness, ambition and political
intrigue, with a rivalry that could only be resolved by death.
As regent queens in an overwhelmingly masculine world, they were
deplored for their femininity, compared unfavourably with each other,
and courted by the same men. By placing this dynamic and ever-changing
relationship at the centre of the book, Dunn throws new light and
meaning on the complexity of their natures. She reveals an Elizabeth
revolutionary in her insistence on ruling alone, while Mary is not the
romantic victim of history, but a courageous adventurer with a reckless
heart. Vengeful against her enemies and the more ruthless of the two,
she was untroubled by plotting Elizabeth's murder. Elizabeth, however,
was in anguish at having to sanction Mary's death warrant for treason.
Working almost exclusively from contemporary letters and writings, she
lets them speak to us across more than four hundred years, their voices
and responses surprisingly familiar to our own, their characters vivid,
by turns touching and terrible. 'Outstanding, perceptive and
delightfully readable.' Sunday Times Books of the Year
'A deeply satisfying study of royal rivalry which ended in tragedy…Jane
Dunn handles her subject with tremendous flair. Supremely accomplished.'
Anne Somerset, Literary Review
'She writes with vigour and grace. This is an engaging and thoughtful
new rendering of a story worth retelling.' Spectator
'Jane Dunn has written a splendid piece of popular history with the
ready-pen of a highly skilled writer, endowed with remarkable insight.'
Roy Strong, Daily Mail
'Dunn writes with captivating elegance and piercing intelligence, is
tender, scrupulous, ironic and worldly.' Richard Davenport-Hines, Independent
'Jane Dunn is one of our best biographers.' Miranda Seymour, Sunday Times
'Jane Dunn has that sine qua non of the true biographer, an eye for
significant detail and the power to fit it into a larger pattern.'
Richard Holmes, The Times Jane Dunn is the biographer of the
relationship between Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell, Mary Shelley, and
most recently a groundbreaking biography of Antonia White. She is Fellow
of the Royal Society of Literature and lives in Bath.
