It does not take a professor of English history to recognize that Eric Ives's recent biography of Lady Jane Grey represents a tremendous achievement. The author of several analyses of the Tudor period (including a celebrated account of Anne Boleyn), Ives presents the saga of Jane Grey with unyielding detail: there is no stone left unturned here, no personality left unexposed. And yet, amidst this detail, this thorough research, Ives constructs a compelling (and, it must be said, unusually readable) narrative. The result is a book which provides a fresh - at times controversial - assessment of the characters involved in the girl's demise, but which locates these characters (chief among them, John Dudley and Mary Tudor) within the complicated political dynamics of the mid-Tudor crisis. I'm with Ives: here's to Jane Grey - one of 'brutality's victims.'
No comments:
Post a Comment