Great Biographies
Charming and funny, intelligent and immensely wealthy, Isabella was the true star of the powerful house of Medici. Her father, the duke, allowed her a freedom that was experienced by few women in Renaissance Italy, and she spent her life on a quest for beauty, love and pleasure, determined always to hold her own among men. But when her father died he was succeeded as head of the Medici clan by her unforgiving brother, and Isabella's life took a very different - and tragic - turn.
In 1501 a fifteen years old Spanish princess, Catherine of Aragon, rode out from the magnificent Alhambra Palace in Granada. Ahead lay a journey to distant England, marriage to Prince of Wales - and eventually a crucial place in English history - as the first wife of Henry VIII.
Bold at war, loved by the people and obstinate under attack, Catherine's battle against divorce and Anne Boleyn changed the life of England forever.
Anna Whitelock recounts the remarkable story of a woman who was a princess one moment and a disinherited bastard the next. It tells of her Spanish heritage and the unbreakable bond between Mary and her mother, Catherine of Aragon; of her childhood, adolescene, rivalry with her sister Elizabeth and finally her womanhood. Throughout her life Mary was a fighter, battling to preserve her integrity and her right to hear the Catholic mass. Finally, she fought for the throne.
A woman in a man's world, confident of her destiny to reign, intensely intelligent, passionately sexual yet (she said) a virgin, Elizabeth was to become England's most successful ruler. Finding her way through the plots that surrounded the court, she had to live by her wits, surrounded by betrayal and suspicion, not knowing who to trust with her desire to be queen, or her desire to be a lover.
Alison Weir writes of Elizabeth's intriguing, long-standing affair with Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, of her dealings - sometimes comical, sometimes poignant - with her many suitors, of her rivalry with Mary, Queen of Scots, and of her bizarre relationship with the Earl of Essex, thirty years her junior.
Rich in detail, vivid and colourful, this book comes as close as we shall ever get to knowing what Elizabeth I was like as a person.
Against the monumental canvas of XVII-XVIII century Europe and Russia, Robert K. Massie unfolds the extraordinary story of Peter The Great. A volatile feudal tsar with a taste for barbaric torture; a progressive and enlightened reformer of government and science; Peter The Great embodied the greatest strengths and weaknesses of Russia while being at the very forefront of her development.
Robert K. Massie delves deep into Peter's character, chronicling the pivotal events that transformed the boy tsar into a national icon.
Born into a minor noble family, Catherine transformed herself into Empress of Russia by sheer determination. For thirty-four years, the government, foreign policy, cultural development and welfare of the Russian people were in her hands. She dealt with domestic rebellion, foreign wars and the tidal wave of political change and violence.
Robert K. Massie brings an eternally fascinating woman - together with her family, friends, ministers, generals, lovers and enemies- vividly and triumphantly to life.
