The events of the Wars of the Roses are usually described in terms of the men involved; Richard, Duke of York, Henry VI, Edward IV and Henry VII. The reality though, argues Sarah Gristwood, was quite different. These years were also packed with women's drama and-in the tales of conflicted maternity and monstrous births-alive with female energy.In this completely original book, acclaimed author Sarah Gristwood sheds light on a neglected dimension of English history: the impact of Tudor women on the Wars of the Roses. She examines Cecily Neville, the wife of Richard Duke of York, who was deprived of being queen when her husband died at the Battle of Wakefield; Elizabeth Woodville, a widow with several children who married Edward IV in secret and was crowned queen consort; Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry VII, whose ambitions centred on her son and whose persuasions are likely to have lead her husband Lord Stanley, previously allied with the Yorkists, to play his part in Henry's victory.Until now, the lives of these women have remained little known to the general public. Sarah Gristwood tells their stories in detail for the first time. Captivating and original, this is historical writing of the most important kind.

Blood Sisters: The True Story Behind the White Queen. Sarah Gristwood

Biographies & Memoirs

Gristwood, Sarah

Community & Culture

HarperCollins, Publishers

'Entrancing, compelling, and beautifully written...This is the historical novel as literary fiction - and damned good literary fiction at that.' Alison Weir Jeanne, a young French exile orphaned by the wars of religion on the continent, is brought to London as a young girl disguised as a boy. Growing up, the disguise has not been shed and she finds a living as a clerk, ending up in the household of Robert Cecil. As she witnesses the intrigues and plots swirling round the court of Elizabeth I in the last days of Gloriana's reign, she finds herself sucked into the orbit of the dashing and ambitious young favourite, the Earl of Essex. The queen draws near to the end of her life, with no heir to follow, and the stakes are high. As Essex hurtles towards self-destruction, Jeanne finds her loyalties, her disguise and her emotions under threat - in a political climate where the least mistake can attract dire penalties. This is a beautifully written and evocative novel, rich with the details of life and politics of Elizabeth I's court. Jeanne's struggle for survival and love is interwoven with her passionate pull towards the gardens she documents, a lovely and seductive backdrop to the novel.

Girl in the Mirror

`Entrancing, compelling, and beautifully written...a fabulous novel, bursting with integrity and authenticity, vividly eboking the court of Elizabeth I...I feel I know the characters and was mesmerised by their story. This is the historical novel as literary fiction - and damned good literary fiction at that.' Alison Weir Jeanne, a young French exile orphaned by the wars of religion on the continent, is brought to London as a young girl disguised as a boy. Growing up, the disguise has not been shed and she finds a living as a clerk, ending up in the household of Robert Cecil. As she witnesses the intrigues and plots swirling round the court of Elizabeth I in the last days of Gloriana's reign, she finds herself sucked into the orbit of the dashing and ambitious young favourite, the Earl of Essex. As the queen draws near to the end of her life, with no heir to follow, the stakes are high. As Essex hurtles towards self-destruction, Jeanne finds her loyalties, her disguise and her emotions under threat - in a political climate where the least mistake can attract dire penalties. This is a beautifully layered and textured book, rich with the details of life and politics of Elizabeth I's court. Jeanne's struggle for survival and love is interwoven with her passionate pull towards nature, a lovely and seductive backdrop to the novel.

The excitement surrounding the marriage of Prince William to Kate Middleton has prompted four of Britain's top historical biographers to look closely at Royal Weddings from 1066 to the present day. Professionally, Alison Weir, Kate Williams, Sarah Gristwood, and Tracy Borman do events and television together, and are known affectionately, as the "History Girls." They bring an elan, and a passion for detail and dramatic narrative to all their subjects. Each writer focuses on different areas of interest. Alison Weir deals with the medieval, Tudor and Stuart periods. Kate Williams scrutinizes the Georgians and Victorians. Sarah Gristwood takes up the story in 1919, when Princess Patricia of Connaught revived the tradition of royal brides marrying in Westminster Abbey, and goes on to examine the weddings of the Queen Mother (1923), the Queen (1947), and Princess Margaret in 1960. Lastly, Tracy Borman brings the book right up to date, withaccounts of the wedding of Prince Charles and Diana Spencer through to the fanfare that will celebrate the nuptials of Kate and William. Every kind of wedding features—from those attended by great public celebrations, to the many that took place in private chapels, parish churches and even in secret. Fascinating anecdotal details are revealed in the course of this most informative and entertaining overview of royal weddings through history, some amusing, some poignant, some bawdy. The Ring and the Crown places the royal wedding of the heir to the throne in historical perspective, and it does so with carefully selected illustrations that help make the authors' insights come even more vividly alive.

The Ring and the Crown: A History of Royal Weddings 1066–2011

Williams, Kate

Borman, Tracy

WEIR,Alison

Historical

Hutchinson

View our feature on Sarah Gristwood’s Elizabeth &amp; Leicester.Though the story has been told on film—and whispered in historic gossip—this is the first book in almost fifty years to solely explore the great queen’s attachment to her beloved Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester. Fueled by scandal and intrigue, their relationship set the explosive connection between public and private life in sixteenth-century England in bold relief. Why did they never marry? How much of what seemed a passionate obsession was actually political convenience? Elizabeth and Leicester reignites this 400- year-old love story in a book for anyone interested in Elizabethan literature.

Elizabeth and Leicester: The Truth about the Virgin Queen and the Man She Loved

Penguin Publishing Group

To contemporaries, the Wars of the Roses were known collectively as a cousins' war.” The series of dynastic conflicts that tore apart the ruling Plantagenet family in fifteenth-century England was truly a domestic drama, as fraught and intimate as any family feud before or since. As acclaimed historian Sarah Gristwood reveals in Blood Sisters, while the events of this turbulent time are usually described in terms of the male leads who fought and died seeking the throne, a handful of powerful women would prove just as decisive as their kinfolks' clashing armies. These mothers, wives, and daughters were locked in a web of loyalty and betrayal that would ultimately change the course of English history. In a captivating, multigenerational narrative, Gristwood traces the rise and rule of the seven most critical women in the wars: from Marguerite of Anjou, wife of the Lancastrian Henry VI, who steered the kingdom in her insane husband's stead; to Cecily Neville, matriarch of the rival Yorkist clan, whose son Edward IV murdered his own brother to maintain power; to Margaret Beaufort, who gave up her own claim to the throne in favor of her son, a man who would become the first of a new line of Tudor kings. A richly drawn, absorbing epic, Blood Sisters is a tale of hopeful births alongside bloody deaths, of romance as well as brutal pragmatism. It is a story of how women, and the power that women could wield, helped to end the Wars of the Roses, paving the way for the Tudor ageand the creation of modern England.

Blood Sisters: The Women Behind the Wars of the Roses

Basic Books

"[A] gem of a book... enlivened by incisive analysis, exquisite detail and an elegant and witty style." --Alison Weir The Wars of the Roses, which tore apart the ruling Plantagenet family in fifteenth-century England, was truly a domestic drama, as fraught and intimate as any family feud before or since. But as acclaimed historian Sarah Gristwood reveals, while the events of this turbulent time are usually described in terms of the men who fought and died seeking the throne, a handful of powerful women would prove just as decisive as their kinfolks' clashing armies. A richly drawn, absorbing epic, Blood Sisters reveals how women helped to end the Wars of the Roses, paving the way for the Tudor age--and the creation of modern England.

Blood Sisters

"Sarah Gristwood has written a masterpiece that effortlessly and enthrallingly interweaves the amazing stories of women who ruled in Europe during the Renaissance period."--Alison Weir Sixteenth-century Europe saw an explosion of female rule. From Isabella of Castile, and her granddaughter Mary Tudor, to Catherine de Medici, Anne Boleyn, and Elizabeth Tudor, these women wielded enormous power over their territories, shaping the course of European history for over a century. Across boundaries and generations, these royal women were mothers and daughters, mentors and protégées, allies and enemies. For the first time, Europe saw a sisterhood of queens who would not be equaled until modern times. A fascinating group biography and a thrilling political epic, Game of Queens explores the lives of some of the most beloved (and reviled) queens in history.

Game of Queens: The Women Who Made Sixteenth-Century Europe

Taking as its background what is arguably everyone's favourite period of history, Sarah Gristwood's historical biography focuses on a hitherto forgotten figure: Arbella Stuart, the niece of Mary Queen of Scots and first cousin to James VI of Scotland. Orphaned as a baby, brought up by her powerful and ambitious grandmother, the four times married Bess of Hardwick, introduced at court as a young girl where she was acknowledged as her heir by Elizabeth I, Arbella's right to the English throne was equalled only by James. Kept under close supervision by her grandmother, first at Chatsworth, and later at Hardwick Hall, but still surrounded by plots - most of them Roman Catholic in origin - she became an important pawn in the struggle for succession, particularly during the long, tense period when Elizabeth I lay dying. But the best was yet to come. At thirty-five and upon Jame's succession, Arbella was invited back to court, and fell in love with her cousin, William Seymour, a man twelve years her junior. Notwithstanding the fact that their union was forbidden, and that relationships that did not carry with the the Royal seal of approval was considered treasonous, they married secretly and were immediatly imprisoned. Underterred, Arbella set about organising their escape. Dressed up in men's clothing, she set out for Dover, arranging to meet her husband en route. He did not make their rendez-vous, and she was later intercepted off the coast of Calais, and escorted back to the Tower, where she died some years later, alone and, most probably from starvation.

ARBELLA: ENGLAND'S LOST QUEEN

Leaders & Notable People

BANTAM BOOKS

A singular history of Georgian England through the prism of the rags-to-riches story of Mary Robinson who rose to become mistress of George IV and a cause celebre in 18th century England. Few women’s lives have described such an arc as that of Mary Robinson – or Perdita, as she was widely known. She began her career as an actress, royal mistress and possible blackmailer, and ended it just two decades later as a Romantic poet and early feminist thinker of note. She was the subject of paintings by Gainsborough and Reynolds, and of a hundred political cartoons. Variously portrayed as a wounded innocent and a harlot, she deliberately chose, in her later career, to make a political issue of her sexuality. Born in 1758, she married at fifteen, and shortly after, followed her husband into debtor’s prison where she wrote her first book of poems. Encouraged by Sheridan and Garrick, who admired her beauty, she went on the stage. It was her role as Perdita in A Winter’s Tale that brought her to the attention of the 17-year-old Prince of Wales, and they embarked on a widely satirized liaison. Mary had made her mark in fashionable Georgian high society and, over the next two decades, this was where she contrived to stay. This wonderful biography, vividly and compellingly told by the acclaimed biographer of Arbella Stuart, explores Georgian England during a period of extreme political upheaval through the life of one extraordinary woman. From the Hardcover edition.

Bird of Paradise: The Colourful Career of the First Mrs Robinson

BANTAM PRESS

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Gristwood, Sarah. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Gristwood, Sarah

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Gristwood, Sarah. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Blood Sisters: The True Story Behind the White Queen. Sarah Gristwood

Girl in the Mirror

Girl in the Mirror

The Ring and the Crown: A History of Royal Weddings 1066–2011

Elizabeth and Leicester: The Truth about the Virgin Queen and the Man She Loved

Blood Sisters: The Women Behind the Wars of the Roses

Blood Sisters

Game of Queens: The Women Who Made Sixteenth-Century Europe

ARBELLA: ENGLAND'S LOST QUEEN

Bird of Paradise: The Colourful Career of the First Mrs Robinson