The dramatic untold story of the Grey sisters, heirs to the Tudor throne. Lady Jane Grey, the Nine Day Queen, is one of the most notorious and yet enigmatic figures of Tudor history. Leanda de Lisle, acclaimed author of AFTER ELIZABETH, reveals that alongside her sisters Lady Katherine and Lady Mary, Lady Jane was at the centre of the close-knit circle which dominated mid Tudor Britain. Although ostensibly victims of the succession crisis following the death of Henry VIII, and the paranoia that ensued, the three sisters were dynamic individuals in their own right. Jane's last letter to Katherine exhorted her fourteen year old sister to 'learn how to die' but Katherine passionately wanted to live. She pragmatically changed her religion in order to retain royal favour but then threw it all away to conduct a passionate affair and then marry the man she loved, Edward Seymour. Lady Mary similarly married for love and also suffered the consequences as her husband was for many years gaoled in Fleet Prison and eventually died there. Their story is one in which high politics had the most personal possible impact on the women whose lives it charts, one in which the pressure for royal women to produce legitimate male heirs ended instead in their brutal deaths or enforced celibacy. Lead title / There is a re-awakened interest in marginal figures of the Tudor period following the massive success of THE OTHER BOLEYN GIRL. / Leanda de Lisle is a well-known and well-connected journalist and now author of AFTER ELIZABETH.
Leanda de Lisle is the author of AFTER ELIZABETH. She was educated at Somerville College, Oxford, where she took an honours degree in Modern History. A successful journalist and writer she has been a columnist for The Spectator, The Guardian, Country Life and the Daily Express as well as writing for the Daily Mail and The Sunday Telegraph. She lives in Leicestershire with her husband and three children.
•’A deep and fascinating account. Leanda de Lisle’s close focus draws us into palace corridors, country houses and city streets where the excitement, intrigue and danger of the times are palpable.’ Jane Dunn on AFTER ELIZABETH. •’This masterly account recaptures superbly the edgy,wary feel of court and country at the key moment when Tudor England was transformed into Stuart Britain. In emphasising the faults of Queen Elizabeth I and the acuity of her successor King James I, Leanda de Lisle has brilliantly subverted the traditional story.’ Andrew Roberts on AFTER ELIZABETH. •`Leanda de Lisle has done what historians, to date, have overlooked. She spots the story in the seemingly uneventful handover of power to James I after Elizabeth’s death, and rediscovers its thrilling drama. James accession was far from inevitable – de Lisle vividly recounts the uncertainty, greed, intrigue and hypocrisy that defined the new age. This is an original, informative,absorbing account, written with verve and style.’ John Guy on AFTER ELIZABETH.
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