Leanda de Lisle – författare

The Tudors are a national obsession; they are our most notorious family in history. But, as Leanda de Lisle shows in this gripping new history, beyond the well-worn headlines is a family still more extraordinary than the one we thought we knew. The Tudor canon typically starts with the Battle of Bosworth in 1485, before speeding on to Henry VIII and the Reformation. But this leaves out the family’s obscure Welsh origins, the ordinary man known as Owen Tudor who would fall (literally) into a Queen’s lap, and later her bed. It passes by the courage of Margaret Beaufort, the pregnant thirteen-year-old girl who would help found the Tudor dynasty; and the childhood and painful exile of her son, the future Henry VII. It ignores the fact that the Tudors were shaped by their past – those parts they wished to remember and those they wished to forget. By creating a full family portrait set against the background of this past, Leanda de Lisle enables us to see the Tudors in their own terms, rather than ours; and presents new perspectives and revelations on key figures and events. We see a family dominated by remarkable women doing everything possible to secure its future; understand why the Princes in the Tower were disappeared; look again at the bloodiness of Mary’s reign; at Elizabeth’s relationships with her cousins; and re-discover the true significance of previously overlooked figures. We see the supreme importance of achieving peace and stability in a violent and uncertain world, and of protecting and securing the bloodline.Tudor tells a family story like no other, and brings it once more to vivid life.

Brought to you by Penguin.Winner of the HWA Crown for Best Work of Historical Non-Fiction 2018Times Book of the Year 2018Less than forty years after the golden age of Elizabeth I, England was at war with itself. The bloody, devastating civil wars set family against family, friend against friend. At the head of this disintegrating kingdom was Charles I. His rule would change the face of the monarchy for ever. Charles I’s reign is one of the most dramatic in history, yet Charles the man remains elusive. Too often he is recalled as weak and stupid, his wife, Henrietta Maria, as spoilt and silly: the cause of his ruin. In this portrait -- informed by newly disclosed manuscripts, including letters between the king and his queen -- Leanda de Lisle uncovers a Charles I who was principled and brave, but also fatally blinkered. He is revealed as a complex man who pays the price for bringing radical change; Henrietta Maria as a warrior queen and political player as impressive as any Tudor. Here too are the cousins who befriended and betrayed them: the peacocking Henry Holland, whose brother engineered the king’s fall; and the magnetic ‘last Boleyn girl’, Lucy Carlisle.This is a tragic story for our times, of populist politicians and religious war, of a new media and the reshaping of nations, in which women vied with men for power. For Charles it ended on the scaffold. Condemned as a traitor and murderer, he was also heralded as a martyr: his reign destined to sow the seeds of democracy across Britain and the New World.

Brought to you by Penguin.A myth-busting biography of Henrietta Maria, wife of Charles I, which retells the dramatic story of the civil war from her perspectiveHenrietta Maria is the most reviled consort to have worn the crown of Britain''s Three Kingdoms. Condemned as that ''Popish brat of France'', a ''notorious whore'' and traitor, she remains in popular memory the wife who wore the breeches and turned her husband Catholic ? so causing a civil war ? and a cruel and bigoted mother.Leanda de Lisle''s White King was hailed as ''the definitive modern biography about Charles I'' (Observer). Here she considers Henrietta Maria''s point of view, unpicking the myths to reveal a very different queen. We meet a new bride who enjoyed annoying her uptight husband, a leader of fashion in clothes and cultural matters, an innovative builder and gardener and an advocate of the female voice in public affairs. No bigot, her closest friends included ''Puritans'' as well as Catholics, and she led the anti-Spanish faction at court linked to the Protestant cause in the Thirty Years War. When civil war came, the strategic planning and fundraising of his ''She Generalissimo'' proved crucial to Charles''s campaign.The story takes us to courts across Europe, and looks at the fate of Henrietta Maria''s mother and her sisters, who also faced civil wars. Her estrangement from her son Henry is explained, and the image of the Restoration queen as an irrelevant crone is replaced with Henrietta Maria as an influential ''phoenix queen'', presiding over a court with ''more mirth'' even than that of the Merry Monarch, Charles II.It is time to look again at this despised queen and judge if she is not in fact one of our most remarkable.© Leanda de Lisle 2022 (P) Penguin Audio 2022