![]() It would be unfair to expect a writer to be Gallant but this isn't even handed - men aren't described in this way by Starkey. Princess Diana is described as "a clothes-horse", Queen Caroline we are told smelt bad, Catherine of Aragon had lost her figure apparently while Catherine of Braganza looked like a bat. Starkey's descriptions of women are strikingly odd. ![]() Professional judgements aside the overall impression is that the text wasn't read through before publication, there are odd contradictions so we are told that Mary Queen of Scots was killed on account of her religion and then later on for her treachery, and there are hopefully inadvertent comparisons for instance implying that George IV was a despot. Starkey is a Tudor specialist with no particular expertise either before or after that period, but even so it was a surprise to read a misleading opinion that is associated with Victorian historians like J.R.Green and Bishop Stubbs. ![]() ![]() It is a bad sign from the first when the Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of Wessex is described as a "participatory society" with "mutual responsibility between crown and people". Written as a TV tie-in this is a light, old-fashioned Kings, Queens and eighteenth-century Prime Ministers account of almost entirely English history that has nothing more than that to recommend itself. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |