биографии и мемуары

This is the first biography of the fateful relationship between Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots. It was the defining relationship of their lives, and marked the intersection of the great Tudor and Stuart dynasties, a landmark event in British history.Distinguished biographer Jane Dunn reveals an extraordinary story of two queens ruling in one isle, both embodying opposing qualities of character, ideals of womanliness and of divinely ordained kingship. Theirs is a drama of sex and power, recklessness, ambition and political intrigue, with a rivalry that could only be resolved by death.As regent queens in an overwhelmingly masculine world, they were deplored for their femininity, compared unfavourably with each other, and courted by the same men. By placing this dynamic and ever-changing relationship at the centre of the book, Dunn throws new light and meaning on the complexity of their natures. She reveals an Elizabeth revolutionary in her insistence on ruling alone, while Mary is not the romantic victim of history, but a courageous adventurer with a reckless heart. Vengeful against her enemies and the more ruthless of the two, she was untroubled by plotting Elizabeth’s murder. Elizabeth, however, was in anguish at having to sanction Mary’s death warrant for treason.Working almost exclusively from contemporary letters and writings, she lets them speak to us across more than four hundred years, their voices and responses surprisingly familiar to our own, their characters vivid, by turns touching and terrible.

литературоведение

Elizabeth and Mary: Cousins, Rivals, Queens

исторические детективы

Россия XX века

расследование преступлений

придворные интриги

исторические события

шпионаж

знаменитые сыщики

From the bestselling author of ‘Elizabeth and Mary’, the remarkable love story of Dorothy Osborne and Sir William Temple, set against the turbulence and romance of 17th-century England. [Note that the family trees contained in this ebook are best viewed on a tablet.]Sir William Temple (1628-99), handsome and intelligent, son of a staunch Parliamentarian, become a celebrated essayist and diplomat in Charles II’s time. Captivating him from their first meeting, when he was just 20, Dorothy Osborne (1627-1696) was an intellectual romantic from a family of committed Royalists. After a long and at times desperate courtship, in which Dorothy rejected numerous other suitors (including Henry Cromwell, son of the Lord Protector), they married in 1654. Their union had been fiercely opposed by both their families, but they went on to build a passionate marriage that brought personal tragedies and public triumphs and betrayals during the huge political upheavals of the age.Their relationship was intellectually collaborative; both were gifted writers, and possessed of strikingly modern sensibilities. Seventy-seven letters written by Dorothy to William during their long clandestine courtship survive, masterpieces of wit and style, with a conversational intimacy that transports the reader to her side. Both were at the social and political centre of life: confidants of William of Orange and Mary, who were instrumental in promoting their marriage, contemporaries of Pepys, and employers of Jonathan Swift.Drawing upon extensive research and the Temples’ own extraordinary writings, Jane Dunn brings to life their remarkable story, offering a rare perspective on one of the most turbulent periods of British history. In illuminating the personal lives, politics and passions of two endearing and independent-minded people, she brilliantly captures not only the story of a marriage, but the spirit of a dawning modern age.

документальная литература

Read My Heart: Dorothy Osborne and Sir William Temple, A Love Story in the Age of Revolution

The Du Mauriers – three beautiful, successful and rebellious sisters, whose lives were bound in a family drama that inspired Angela and Daphne’s best novels. Much has been written about Daphne but here the hidden lives of the sisters are revealed in a riveting group biography.The middle sister in a celebrated artistic dynasty, Daphne du Maurier is one of the master storytellers of our time, author of ‘Rebecca’, ‘Jamaica Inn’ and ‘My Cousin Rachel’. Her success and fame were enhanced by films of her novels and horrifying short stories, ‘Don’t Look Now’ and the unforgettable ‘The Birds’ among them. But this fame overshadowed her sisters Angela and Jeanne, a writer and an artist of talent, living quiet lives even more unconventional than Daphne’s own.In this group biography they are considered side by side, as they were in life, three sisters brought up in the hothouse of a theatrical family with a peculiar and powerful father. This family dynamic reveals the hidden lives of Piffy, Bird & Bing, full of social non-conformity, creative energy and compulsive make-believe, their lives as psychologically complex as a Daphne du Maurier plotline.