The last office by Geoffrey Moorhouse

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Genre - Non Fiction


This is the story of the monks of Durham Priory & their fate when Henry VIII split with Rome over his divorce from Catherine of Aragon & created the Church of England. The Dissolution of the Monasteries was a complete break with religious life as it had been lived for hundreds of years. Henry & his chief minister, Thomas Cromwell, were eager to get their hands on the riches of the Church & to have complete control on the religious life of the nation. Small monasteries & nunneries were broken up & the monks & nuns pensioned off or sent to other houses. Gradually it was time for the larger priories such as Durham to be transformed from Catholic communities into Anglican cathedrals with priests rather than monks. Moorhouse describes the life of the Priory before the Dissolution & how the Bishop of Durham & the Prior guided the monks in their care towards an accommodation with the new order.

---- Reviewed by Lyn, Headquarters

The sisters who would be queen by Leanda De Lisle

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Genre - Non Fiction


Lady Jane Grey, the Nine Days Queen, is a well-known figure. Her two younger sisters are not so well-known. This excellent biography follows the three sisters as they are each caught up in the murky world of Tudor politics. Protestant Jane was declared heir to the throne by the dying Edward VI in preference to his Catholic half-sister Mary. Jane was less of a victim of powerful men than has been supposed, & De Lisle shows that she was determined to rule in her own right. However, Mary’s supporters deposed Jane & she was executed when she became a focus for rebellion. When Elizabeth I came to the throne in 1559, Katherine Grey was seen as her heir by the English nobility. She foolishly fell in love & secretly married without Elizabeth’s permission. When she then gave birth to two sons (the second child conceived while both parents were imprisoned in the Tower), the Queen’s anger was terrible, the couple were separated & Katherine died young. The youngest sister, Mary, also married without the Queen’s permission. Her choice was one of her jailers, Thomas Keyes, who was imprisoned in terrible conditions for falling in love with an heir to the throne. This is a fascinating look at the Tudor court & the perils of being too close to the throne.

---- Reviewed by Lyn, Headquarters

Pauline Bonaparte by Flora Fraser

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Genre - Non Fiction


Pauline was Napoleon’s favourite sister & lived a privileged life when her brother was First Consul & then Emperor of France. She was a beautiful woman who married twice – once for love & once for money - & had many lovers. Flora Fraser specializes in writing the lives of 18th century women. Her previous books have included biographies of the daughters of George III, Emma Hamilton and Caroline of Brunswick. Pauline Bonaparte is a less interesting character than these women, her life was essentially aimless. She was privileged & she created a lot of scandal but her life was purposeless. Her most attractive quality was her loyalty to Napoleon. She followed him into exile on Elba when the rest of their siblings had abandoned him.

---- Reviewed by Lyn Baines

Lady Worsley's whim by Hallie Rubenhold

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Genre - Non Fiction


This story of an 18th century marriage is a cautionary tales about sex, scandal & divorce. Seymour Fleming was only eighteen when she married Richard Worsley. It was a marriage of convenience, & after the birth of a son & heir, Richard neglected his young wife, who ran wild with her friends & behaved indiscreetly with a number of young men. When Seymour fell in love with George Bisset, a friend of her husband, Richard seemed happy to accommodate the relationship & all three lived together. When the lovers eloped, however, Richard Worsley took his revenge. He sued his wife’s lover for criminal conversation, a legal way of separating from his wife without actually divorcing her & allowing her to remarry. The trial transfixed society, the newspapers & cartoonists of the day reporting on every scandalous detail. Neither party came out of the trial with their reputations intact. Richard escaped the gossip by travelling in Europe & Seymour dropped out of society altogether. This is a sad story of two young people hurried into marriage & suffering the consequences of incompatibility. Rubenhold has done a wonderful job piecing it together from contemporary documents & newspapers.

---- Reviewed by Lyn, Headquarters

Read my heart by Jane Dunn

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Genre - Non Fiction


Dorothy Osborne & William Temple were lovers during the Civil War in England, separated by their families who wanted them both to marry rich partners. Their story is known because they wrote letters to each other for over 6 years before they were finally able to marry. Only the last two years of Dorothy's side of the correspondence survives. They had promised to burn the letters to prevent discovery but William couldn't bring himself to destroy Dorothy’s letters. Even when their families finally consented to the marriage, tragedy was never far away. One week before the wedding, Dorothy caught smallpox & nearly died. Her looks were ruined but William stayed beside her throughout her illness & they married & were devoted to each other for 40 years, although they were frustrated in their desire to have a family. Seven babies died at birth or soon after, & their two surviving children died young. The Temples created beautiful gardens at their homes in England & Ireland & also lived in Brussels where William was a diplomat. Dorothy had an almost equal role in his work as Lady Ambassadress & was even suspected of writing his letters for him. Apart from the great human interest of the story, this is an fascinating look at a period of civil war, Commonwealth & Restoration.

---- Reviewed by Lyn, Administration

Marie-Therese by Susan Nagel

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Genre - Non Fiction


When Louis XVI & Marie-Antoinette were guillotined during the French Revolution, they left two children behind in the Temple Prison. Their son, the little King Louis XVII, died soon after of neglect & abuse, but their daughter, Marie-Therese survived. She escaped from prison on her seventeenth birthday, but her experiences during the Revolution affected her for the rest of her life. She was tormented all her life by rumours that she was an imposter & that her brother had survived. After her escape, she lived in Vienna with her mother’s family, but, apart from short periods back in Paris when her uncles were restored to the throne, she was in exile from France for the rest of her life. Marie-Therese married her cousin, the Duc D’Angouleme, but had no children. She became a mother to her orphaned niece & nephew, & was known as a kind, charitable woman, but with an indefinable sadness caused by the shocking experiences of her childhood.

---- Reviewed by Lyn, Headquarters

Becoming Queen by Kate Williams

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Genre - Non Fiction


Queen Victoria was never meant to be Queen of England. Her cousin, Princess Charlotte, daughter of the Prince Regent, was the heir to the throne. Charlotte’s tragic death in childbirth meant that George III’s many children had to scramble to marry & have legitimate children, one of whom would inherit the throne. Although George III & his Queen had fifteen children, when Charlotte died, there were no other legitimate heirs. The royal Dukes had illegally married unsuitable women or kept mistresses & had over 50 illegitimate children. There was an undignified rush to ditch their partners & find respectable princesses to marry. The Duke of Kent married Victoire of Saxe-Coburg & Victoria was born. This fascinating book tells the story of Charlotte & Victoria. Charlotte’s childhood was unhappy as her parents hated each other & used her to score points off each other. Victoria’s childhood was dominated by her mother as her father died when she was a baby. Victoire came under the influence of Sir John Conroy, who ran her household. They were determined that Victoria would not rule alone & made plans for a regency if her uncles should die before she was eighteen. Victoria was equally determined to rule without her mother or Sir John. Her childhood was one of virtual imprisonment as her mother schemed to promote her daughter to the public as the heir to the throne. An interesting picture of the formative years of a Queen.

---- Reviewed by Lyn, Headquarters

The fears of Henry IV by Ian Mortimer

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Genre - Non Fiction

Henry IV is one of the lesser-known English monarchs. Most lovers of English history would know that he deposed Richard II, had leprosy & was the father of Henry V, & most of that was learned from Shakespeare. Actually, he didn’t have leprosy, just a nasty skin disease. He did depose Richard II, but Richard was far from the noble monarch depicted by Shakespeare. He was a paranoid tyrant who planned to disinherit Henry when his father died & threatened the inheritance rights of all the nobility. Parliament virtually begged Henry to accept the crown, but once Henry was king, they thwarted his plans by keeping him short of money. His reign was plagued by rebellions in Wales & in the North of England, wars with France & Scotland, & the struggle with Parliament. In contrast with the glorious military achievements of his son, Henry V, his reign seems disastrous. However, Mortimer’s portrait of the king is a sympathetic one. He had little choice but to depose an unfit monarch, but then had to live with the consequences of an act that was seen to be violating God’s laws.

---- Reviewed by Lyn, Headquarters

The dig by John Preston

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The Sutton Hoo ship burial is the greatest archaeological discovery made in Britain in the 20th century. On the eve of WWII, Edith Pretty, the owner of Sutton Hoo House, asked Basil Brown, a local archaeologist, to excavate the curious mounds in the grounds of her estate. As he did so, he realized he had found a ship burial, the largest ever found in Britain. The beautiful gold & garnet jewellery, the helmet, silver bowls & other objects found in the burial chamber inspire awe, envy & greed. John Preston's novel is told in the voices of Mrs Pretty, Basil Brown & Peggy Piggott, a young woman on honeymoon with her archaeologist husband. The Piggotts are invited to help on the dig once the professionals from the British Museum, led by C W Phillips, take over. Mrs Pretty is in ill-health, secretly visiting a London spiritualist, hoping to hear from her long-dead husband and struggling to connect with her young son, Robert. Basil is dismayed as his careful discoveries are taken over by the "real" archaeologists and he's sidelined. As his wife, May, says, "My Basil may be self-taught and not have the right letters after his name...that's no reason to treat him like he's all sappy in the head." Peggy has realized already that her marriage is a mistake, and the discoveries she makes on the dig confirm her feelings. The atmosphere of excitement at the dig overshadowed by the coming war, the mystery of the discoveries, and the effect of all this on the characters is beautifully observed.

---- Reviewed by Lyn, Headquarters

The far traveler by Nancy Marie Brown

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Genre - Non Fiction


This book combines history, archaeology & the storytelling of the sagas to tell the story of Gudrid, an Icelandic Viking woman who sailed to Vinland – America - in the 11th century. Gudrid’s story is told in two of the Icelandic sagas, stories combining myth and history. They were written down 200 years after the Viking Age, but they represent the oral stories handed down since that time. In this book, Brown retells the sagas & also shows how archaeology has proven some of the stories to be true. The Vikings are known to have reached the coast of America hundreds of years before Columbus. Evidence has been found of a settlement there, founded by Eirik the Red. It was abandoned only a few years later, but stories of Vinland (Vine Land) were told in Greenland and Iceland long after. Gudrid was a great traveler. She went on a pilgrimage to Rome as well as traveling in Europe & America. The book tells the story of Gudrid by bringing in details of the lives of other Viking women known about from history & saga. It brings to life the harsh conditions of life in the far north, and the struggle for survival which led people to explore the outer limits of their world.

---- Reviewed by Lyn, Headquarters