Tanzanite's Castle Full of Books

The Anglo Saxon era is one o the most important in English history, covering the period from the end of Roman authority in the British Isles to the Norman Conquest of 1066 in which the very idea of England was born. Starting off with an examination of the problematic textual sources and the historiography, Timothy Venning argues that it is time to return to a more linear view of this period and to re-examine ideas about the Anglo-Saxon settlement of England. In The Anglo-Saxon Kings, the author examines the rules of Anglo-Saxon England, those whom the sources tell us most about, beginning with the legendary leaders of the Anglo-Saxon invasion as Hengest and Horsa or Cerdic and Cynric and moving on through such figues and Aethelberht of Kent, who received the mission led by Augustine of Canterbury to re-Christianize England, Saint Oswald of Northumbria to Alfred of Wessex and his dynasty, the Viking invasions and the last of the Anglo-Saxon kings, Harold Godwineson.



The Painted Lady by Maeve Haran. UK release August 5, 2011.

Is any woman strong enough to resist the King’s advances?

Sixteen-year-old Frances Stuart arrives at the Restoration court to find her innocence and beauty are highly prized commodities, envied by the women and desired by the men. Before long, King Charles II falls passionately in love with her and will stop at nothing to make her his mistress.

But Frances is no conventional court beauty. She is determined to make her own choices in life, and to be with the man she loves. Can she overcome the dangerous pitfalls of the King’s obsession, the Queen’s jealousy, and the traps set for her by the King’s notorious mistresses, and make the life she wants for herself?

Set against the drama of the Great Plague and the Fire of London, The Painted Lady brings to life the vibrant and decadent court of Charles II and, in Frances Stuart, reveals a passionate young woman prepared to fight for her own destiny.



Matilda:  Queen of the Conqueror by Tracy Borman. Non-fiction. UK release September 1, 2011.  (reposted with summary)

Matilda, wife of William the Conqueror, was the first woman to be crowned Queen of England and formally recognised as such by her subjects. Beyond this, though, little is known of her life. No contemporary images of her remain, and in a period where all evidence is fragmentary and questionable, the chroniclers of the age left us only the faintest clues as to her life. So who was this spectral queen?

In this first major biography, Tracy Borman elegantly sifts through the shards of evidence to uncover an extraordinary story. In a dangerous, brutal world of conquest and rebellion, fragile alliances and bitter familial rivalries, Matilda possessed all the attributes required for a woman to thrive. She was born of impeccable lineage and, possessed of a loving and pious nature, was a paragon of fidelity and motherhood. But strength, intelligence and ambition were also prerequisites to survive in such an environment. This side of her character, coupled with a fiercely independent nature, made Matilda essential to William’s rule, giving her unparalleled influence over the king.

While this would provide an inspiring template for future indomitable queens, it led eventually to treachery, revolt and the fracturing of a dynasty. Characterized by Tracy Borman’s graceful storytelling, Matilda: Queen of the Conqueror takes us from the courts of Flanders and Normandy to the opulence of royal life in England. Alive with intrigue, rumour and betrayal, it illuminates for the first time the life of an exceptional, brave and complex queen pivotal to the history of England.



The Swerve: How the Renaissance Began by Stephen Greenblatt. Non-fiction. US and UK release September 2011 (US title is The Swerve:  How the World Became Modern)

One of the world’s most celebrated scholars, Stephen Greenblatt has crafted both an innovative work of history and a thrilling story of discovery, in which one manuscript, plucked from a thousand years of neglect, changed the course of human thought and made possible the world as we know it.

Nearly six hundred years ago, a short, genial, cannily alert man in his late 30s took a very old manuscript off a library shelf, saw with excitement what he had discovered, and ordered that it be copied. The book was the last surviving manuscript of an ancient Roman philosophical epic, On the Nature of Things, by Lucretius – a thrillingly beautiful poem of the most dangerous ideas: that the universe functioned without the aid of gods, that religious fear was damaging to human life, and that matter was made up of very small particles in eternal motion.

The copying and translation of this ancient book, the greatest discovery of the greatest book-hunter of his age, fueled the Renaissance, inspiring artists such as Botticelli and thinkers such as Giordano Bruno; shaped the thought of Galileo and Freud, Darwin and Einstein; and had revolutionary influence on writers from Montaigne to Thomas Jefferson.



Foundation: The History of England, Volume 1 by Peter Ackroyd. Non-fiction. UK release September 2, 2011.

The first volume in a new six-part history of England from acclaimed author Peter Ackroyd. Having written enthralling biographies of London and of its river, the Thames, Peter Ackroyd now turns to England itself. This first volume of six takes us from the time that England was first settled, more than 15,000 years ago, to the death in 1509 of the first Tudor monarch, Henry VII.

In it, Ackroyd takes us from Neolithic England, which we can only see in the most tantalising glimpses – a stirrup found in a grave, some seeds at the bottom of a bowl – to the long period of Roman rule; from the Dark Ages when England was invaded by a ceaseless tide of Angles, Saxons and Jutes, to the twin glories of medieval England – its great churches and monasteries and its common law. With his extraordinary skill for evoking time and place, he tells the familiar story of king succeeding king in rich prose, with profound insight and some surprising details. He also gives us a powerful sense of how our forebears lived: the homes they built, the clothes they wore, even the jokes they told. All are brought vividly to life by one of our finest writers.



Winter King: The Dawn of Tudor England by Thomas Penn. UK release September 11, 2011.


It was 1501. England had been ravaged for decades by conspiracy, violence, murders, coups and counter-coups. Henry VII had clambered to the top of the heap - a fugitive with a flimsy claim to England's crown who through luck, guile and ruthlessness had managed to win the throne and stay on it for sixteen years.But Henry had a crucial asset: his queen and their children, the living embodiment of his hoped-for dynasty. Now, in what would be the crowning glory of his reign, his elder son would marry a great Spanish princess. The sixteen-year-old Catherine of Aragon arrives in London for a wedding upon which the fate of England would hinge ...In his remarkable debut Thomas Penn takes the reader straight into an England which is both familiar and very strange - a country that seems medieval yet modern, in which honour and chivalry mingle with espionage, realpolitik, high finance and corruption.Rich with incident and drama, Winter King is an unforgettable story of pageantry, surveillance, the thirst for glory - and the fraught, unstable birth of Tudor England.