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Elizabeth and Mary: Cousins, Rivals, Queens - Jane Dunn (CD)
Title: Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror Title: Elizabeth and Mary: Cousins, Rivals, Queens Author: Jane Dunn Genre: History, Great Britain Format: CDs (Abridged) Synopsis: The first dual biography of two of the world's most remarkable women-Elizabeth I of England and Mary Queen of Scots-by one of Britain's "best biographers" (The Sunday Times). In a rich and riveting narrative, Jane Dunn reveals the extraordinary rivalry between the regal cousins. It is the story of two queens ruling on one island, each with a claim to the throne of England, each embodying dramatically opposing qualities of character, ideals of womanliness (and views of sexuality) and divinely ordained kingship. As regnant queens in an overwhelmingly masculine world, they were deplored for their femaleness, compared unfavorably with each other and courted by the same men. By placing their dynamic and ever-changing relationship at the center of the book, Dunn illuminates their differences. Elizabeth, inheriting a weak, divided country coveted by all the Catholic monarchs of Europe, is revolutionary in her insistence on ruling alone and inspired in her use of celibacy as a political tool-yet also possessed of a deeply feeling nature. Mary is not the romantic victim of history but a courageous adventurer with a reckless heart and a magnetic influence over men and women alike. Vengeful against her enemies and the more ruthless of the two queens, she is untroubled by plotting Elizabeth's murder. Elizabeth, however, is driven to anguish at finally having to sanction Mary's death for treason. Working almost exclusively from contemporary letters and writings, Dunn explores their symbiotic, though never face-to-face, relationship and the power struggle that raged between them. A story of sex, power and politics, of a rivalry unparalleled in the pages of English history, of two charismatic women-told in a masterful double biography. From the Hardcover edition. Review: Choice (September 1, 2004) Dunn, the author of a well-received biography of two sisters (A Very Close Conspiracy: Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf, 1990), provides an engrossing dual biography of two royal cousins. Dunn usually manages to avoid the "mildly ungrammatical romanticism" that the late Sir Geoffrey Elton deplored in an earlier biography of Mary. She clearly describes the complex political maneuvering between supporters of the Catholic heir presumptive to the English throne and defenders of Protestant Europe, and how it deepened into a deadly intrigue once Mary was Elizabeth's prisoner in England. Dunn also has an eye for the arresting detail--the account of the solemn ceremony that attended Mary as she prepared for death, and the description of the merry-making that erupted in London at the news of her execution, prove especially memorable. Yet Dunn provides nothing in the way of new information and provides few original insights into the lives of the queens. Curiously, the book l