Book Reviews

Book News May 2018

An American Princess: The Many Lives of Allene Tew Paperback – 1 April 2018 (US) & 1 May 2018 (UK) The true story of a girl from the wilderness settlements of a burgeoning new America who became one of the most privileged figures of the Gilded Age. Born to a pioneering family in Upstate New York [read more]

Alexandra of Denmark

Inside the Royal Wardrobe: A Dress History of Queen Alexandra by Kate Strasdin Book Review

Queen Alexandra used clothes to fashion images of herself as a wife, a mother and a royal: a woman who both led Britain alongside her husband Edward VII and lived her life through fashion. Inside the Royal Wardrobe overturns the popular portrait of a vapid and neglected queen, examining the surviving garments of Alexandra, Princess of Wales [read more]

Book Reviews

Book News April 2018

Cecily Neville: Mother of Richard III Hardcover – 30 April 2018 (UK) & 2 August 2018 (US) Wife to Richard, Duke of York, mother to Edward IV and Richard III, and aunt to the famous Kingmaker , Richard, Earl of Warwick, Cecily Neville was a key player on the political stage of fifteenth-century Britain England. Mythologically [read more]

Book Reviews

Darling Queen, Dear Old Bones (edited) by Emerentia van Heuven-van Nes Book Review

This book presents a remarkable collection of letters from Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands (1880–1962) and her governess, Elizabeth Saxton Winter (1855–1936), an Englishwoman. The earliest letters are those of a child, sent to Miss Winter when she was on holiday in England, but after Wilhelmina’s education was finished in 1896 and she had no [read more]

Book Reviews

Queens of the Conquest: England’s Medieval Queens by Alison Weir Book Review

The lives of England’s medieval queens were packed with incident—love, intrigue, betrayal, adultery, and warfare—but their stories have been largely obscured by centuries of myth and omission. Now esteemed biographer Alison Weir provides a fresh perspective and restores these women to their rightful place in history. Spanning the years from the Norman conquest in 1066 [read more]

Book Reviews

Book News February 2018

The King Who Had To Go: Edward VIII, Mrs. Simpson and the Hidden Politics of the Abdication Crisis Paperback – 4 September 2018 (US) & 1 February 2018 (UK) How does the machinery of government respond when a King steps out of line? The relationship between Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson created a constitutional crisis that [read more]