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Highland Surrender
4
4.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
In the reign on James V (son of Margaret Tudor, the sister of Henry VIII, and father of Mary Queen of Scots) Fiona and Myles, representatives of two feuding clans, are told by the King that they must marry and form an alliance.....

Sadly, Fiona, the heroine, appears as a right Little Madam for most of the first part of the book. Even after feeling betrayed by her brothers, she is unable to reasonably question anything beyond the clan indoctrination and acts simply like a spoilt child. It's quite hard to see why Myles falls for her at all.

That said, overall this isn't a bad book. I think a bit more on the history side would have made this a more solid and exciting novel, as the ending was really rather good, but it seemed that it couldn't decide if it wanted to be an historical novel, with a romance element (think Elizabeth Chadwick) or something more akin to a bodice ripper (and nothing wrong with that!). You started off feeling there was a bigger plot at play, but this seemed to get a bit lost in the middle, before a quite exciting ending after all.

Not sure it's worth a second read, but I'd consider this author again in the future.
  
The Queen's Head (Nicholas Bracewell, #1)
The Queen's Head (Nicholas Bracewell, #1)
Edward Marston | 2012 | History & Politics, Mystery, Thriller
7
6.5 (2 Ratings)
Book Rating
148 of 250
Book
The Queens Head ( Nicolas Bracewell book 1)
By Edward Marston

Once read a review will be written via Smashbomb and link posted in comments

1587, and Mary, Queen of Scots, dies by the executioner's axe, her head, shorn of its auburn wig, rolling across the platform. Will her death end the ceaseless plotting against Mary's red-haired cousin, Elizabeth?1588, the year of the Spanish Armada, is a time of more terror and triumph, not just for queen and court but for the whole of England. The turmoil is reflected in its theatres and under the galleries of inns like London's The Queen's Head where Lord Westfield's Men perform. The scene there on grows even more tumultuous when one of the actors is murdered by a mysterious stranger during a brawl.Nicholas Bracewell, the company's bookholder, a role far wider than mere producer, faces two immediate repercussions. The first is to secure a replacement acceptable to its temperamental star -- and chief shareholder -- Lawrence Firethorn. The second is to keep his promise to the dying Will Fowler and catch his killer.Soon further robberies, accidents, and misfortunes strike Lord Westfield's Men even as their stage successes swell. Bracewell begins to suspect a conspiracy, not a single murderous act, but where lies the proof? Then the players are rewarded with the ultimate accolade -- an appearance at court -- and the canny bookholder senses the end to the drama is at hand....

It was good not something I’d come back to reading again but good enough to take me to book 2. I love this era and found the descriptions one of the best parts of the book. I did have it sussed from just after the murder though.
  
TC
The Children of Henry VIII
John Guy | 2013
6
6.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
I was surprised to see that this book, covering a fair subject - the four known children of Henry VIII - had only about 200 pages of actual text. A rather different prospect to Guy's weighty biography of Mary Queen of Scots. As reams of paper and oceans of ink of already been expended on the Tudors, I'm not sure quite what the impetus behind this book was. It's not that it wasn't well written, because it was, but that I felt that it offered up almost nothing new. As an introduction to the subject to a reader new to the period I think I would recommend it, but to someone for whom this is already an area of interest, you've probably heard it all before.

The one new point that Guy does bring up, is the theory that Henry VIII belonged to a rare blood group, which resulted in problems with offspring surviving. We can see that no one woman appears to have more than one surviving child by him, but I would have liked a little more detail to support this - how did Henry come by his rare blood group? He was one of several siblings who survived infancy and his surviving sisters themselves had more than one surviving child.

A good brief guide to the subject, probably more suited to a reader fairly new to the subject. I felt disappointed as there was nothing new in here for me.
  
40x40

Ian McCulloch recommended Berlin by Lou Reed in Music (curated)

 
Berlin by Lou Reed
Berlin by Lou Reed
1973 | Rock
7.7 (3 Ratings)
Album Favorite

"I don’t know what concept it was. Whatever the concept was that came out of his addled mind, to me, he’s just got a cob-on with someone and she’s probably shagging around, and obviously he’s set it in Berlin, where he’d probably never have been, and just gets stuck into the misery of it. I remember in an interview with Nick Kent in the NME Lou slagged it off and then changed his mind and said it was absolutely brilliant. At the time everything I played was always in the dark – and I’d tell my mum not to come out of the living room door, and I’d be upstairs and I could sense the light coming from downstairs and it would spoil my vibe. Playing that was just, “woah.” ‘Caroline Says II’, is like, “jeez…” - turning the tables on old Caroline, in a nasty way. I just loved the production. The atmosphere was so dense and the concept is just that the songs ran into each other and this gave it a sense of order. What he was singing about made me think, “hang on, am I really being allowed into this?” It was a bit weird. It’s like a psychopath’s night in, and it got me. Whenever I play that, it’s got a very German, emotive feel. And any emotional German, it’s going to be heavy emotions, bad ones. They’re not renowned for their joie de vivre. Obviously Hitler had emotions, but fuckin’ hell… So it does capture that weird European coldness. It’s weird because you don’t know if Lou really cares, he’s not exactly Sinatra or Lanza, you don’t know if he’s taking the piss. He probably thinks halfway through a song, this isn’t any good, I better sing it weirdly. “She looked like Mary Queen of Scots seemed very regal to me, just shows how wrong you can be". Pure Lou Reed that was. I couldn’t do that because I don’t do sinister. That’s someone who has a different kind of relationship – it’s not just sad, it’s weird. Big favourite with Jimmy Savile at the time, I heard."

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