A Crown for Elizabeth

The book was easy to read. There were just a few words I did not know but was eager to find out their meaning. I really enjoyed the detail that went into this book. You can really empathize with Elizabeth. It didn't take long to read at all. Once I started I had a hard time putting it down. I loved it!

This proves to be a very entertaining history on the early years of Elizabeth and its deals a lot with her siblings, namely Edward and Mary who were rulers before her. Backgrounds on Elizabeth's parents, Henry VIII and doomed Anne Boleyn comes in handy in explaining the tension between Elizabeth and her half sister, Mary. The author takes a Thomas Costain approach to history as she kind of mixed some fictional by-lines to moves the characters around within the historial context of the book. I think one reviewer before me called it "casual" and that might be a good word for it. But the book reads very well, its interesting and fun to read. Its probably don't stand up to the test of the time thanks to recent books that have come up on Elizabeth's early life but I think I think this book will be a nice first step on to that subject.

This book takes a rather casual tack with history -- putting likely thoughts into historical personage's minds -- but detailed and exacting footnotes reassure the reader that there is some scholarship to be had here. This book covers the history of the Tudor family from 1536 to 1558, from the death of Catherine of Aragon and the execution of Anne Bolyen to the ascention of her daughter Elizabeth I to the throne. In those twenty-two years, England would have two kings, two queens, major shifts in religion and politics, five royal marriages, royal scandals beyond counting, births, deaths, literally hundreds of executions for heresy and treason, and in the middle of it all, a Princess fearing for her life, locked up in stone towers and seduced by a dashing rogue.And it's all true!(And what was so wrong with the Courtney information that one reviewer felt compelled to disclaim it twice?)

In this account of royal power and conspiracy, Mary M. Luke accurately portrays the plight of England's most famous heirs to the throne, the three children of Henry the Eighth, while focusing on Elizabeth I especially. Throughout the reigns of her brother and sister, Elizabeth's position was always very precarious, and she came close to execution several times, but escaped, gaining with each close call the shrewdness needed to survive the Tudor monarchy. An excellent book!