The Royal Stuarts: A History of the Family That Shaped Britain by Allan Massie (PDF)

Description

“Compelling…A masterly feat…A magnificent, sweeping, authoritative, warm yet wry history.” –The Wall Street JournalIn this fascinating and intimate portrait of the Stuarts, author Allan Massie takes us deep into one of history’s bloodiest and most tumultuous reigns. Exploring the family’s lineage from the first Stuart king to the last, The Royal Stuarts is a panoramic history of the family that acted as a major player in the Scottish Wars of Independence, the Union of the Crowns, the English Civil War, the Restoration, and more. Drawing on the accounts of historians past and present, novels, and plays, this is the complete story of the Stuart family, documenting their path from the salt marshes of Brittany to the thrones of Scotland and England and eventually to exile. The Royal Stuarts brings to life figures like Mary, Queens of Scots, Charles I, and Bonnie Prince Charlie, uncovering a family of strong affections and fierce rivalries. Told with panache, Allan Massie’s The Royal Stuarts is the gripping true story of backstabbing, betrayal, and ambition gone awry.

User’s Reviews

Editorial Reviews: Review “Not just for history lovers but anyone hooked on Showtime’s The Tudors or, currently, The Borgias…An enjoyable, often witty read, which will make for a nice introduction to the Stuarts and a fun refresher for aficionados.” ―Library Journal“A well-fashioned history of the remarkable Scottish monarchs… A palatable history lesson that might help untangle the royal lineage web for American readers.” ―Kirkus“Smart…A delightfully opinionated but nuanced and action-packed history.” ―Publishers Weekly “It drips with blood, cruelty and tears… Evocative, visceral – haunting.” ―Daily Telegraph (UK)“Lively and jauntily paced history.” ―Sunday Times (UK) “Stirring and eloquent account of the Stuarts.” ―Scotland on Sunday“A highly readable and impressively panoramic history.” ―The Scotsman“[Massie] combines dry wit and fondness for well-constructed sentences with a novelist’s sense of the enlivening detail.” ―Daily Express (UK) “A pleasure to read and psychologically compelling.” ―The Spectator (UK) About the Author Allan Massie is the award-winning author of many novels, including his Roman Quartet: Antony, Augustus, Tiberius and Caesar. He lives in the Scottish Borders and writes for the Daily Telegraph, Scotsman and for the Spectator, where he has a regular column.

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐In just 53 years, certainly in the lifetime of many people now living, the English monarchy will observe the jubilee of its first 1,000 years. That would be in 2066 and remembering William the Conqueror and the Norman invasion in 1066 and all that. Sitting on the throne of the United Kingdom at the time will likely be George, who was born and christened this very year, the seventh of that royal name if he chooses to use it. It is called the United Kingdom because it includes other lands than England, paramount among them Scotland which is a crown so old that, unlike the English crown, its origin is lost in the mists of time and of mythology. This wonderful book tells the tale of the Stuarts, by far the most fascinating branch of the family tree that ruled Scotland and whose descendants rule the United Kingdom today.The Stuarts begin in 1371 with the reign of Robert II, at a time when Scots kings were more like terrible tribal warlords than monarchs with kingly dignity. The first proper Renaissance king of Scotland was James IV (1488-1513), who died in war against England at the famously disastrous battle of Flodden, where the flower of Scots aristocracy fell with him. He was followed quickly by the tyrannical James V, the famous Mary Queen of Scots that Elizabeth of England had executed for treason, and then James VI of Scotland who became James I of England and united the crowns of the two lands forever. This happened because, by way of dynastic politics, his great-grandfather James IV married Margaret Tudor, the daughter of Henry VII of England. When Henry VIII’s daughter Elizabeth died never having married, James of Scotland, son of the hated Mary, became king of England and Scotland. And in case you ever wondered how a rather obscure family in Hannover, Germany come to be the current occupants of the throne, that is also because of the Stuarts. The granddaughter of that same James VI and I married the Elector of Hannover and many years later (in 1714), their son was the person who had the nearest blood claim to the throne, and he reigned as George I. The Elizabeth II who reigns now is his direct descendant, and so are Charles, William and the infant George, who are next after her in the present royal succession. The improbable dynasty begins its fourth century next year.It is all a fascinating story and it is told here brilliantly by Massie. I have long been a reader and fan of his, and he writes regularly for what is arguably now the world’s finest publication, The Spectator of England. The story of the Stuarts is a story of tyranny and tragedy, great passion and great cruelty, love and sex and treason and death. Their story is dripping with drama, so Massie tells it with a cool and detached dryness. Of speculation that the marriage of James III was a love match, for example, he writes: “A few of the Stewarts [the spelling of the family name was changed later] were faithful husbands, even uxorious, though most of them were not.” That is a wry understatement. James IV had a retainer who was an Italian alchemist and whom he had hired to discover the “elixir of life”. Much Scots whisky was involved in these researches and he was under the influence of it when he unwisely tried to fly from the battlements of Stirling Castle in 1507 using some homemade wings. Massie records drily: “The design of the wings proved inadequate.”Of course, it is with Mary Queen of Scots and James and then the great, swashbuckling Stuarts of the 17th Century that the story becomes especially fascinating and familiar. The lives of the latter Stuarts are famously and brilliantly told by Macaulay in his multi-volume series The History England. This is one of those old masterpieces that are so very difficult for a modern reader to digest but which repay the effort handsomely. I know it is too much for many people, so if you want the whole story told in fine detail and with urbane concision, The Royal Stuarts is the book for you.

⭐The Stewart/Stuart Dynasty’s origins are “lost in the mists of antiquity,” to use the phrase peerage books used to use to denote a really ancient family tree. Beginning in ancient Scotland and receiving ample infusions of Anglo-Saxon, French, Scandinavian, Norman and other bloodlines along the way, the Stewarts emerged in the Middle Ages as Kings of Scots and eventually came to rule England, Wales, and Ireland (with a claim to France as well) for over a century until political change and their own fecklessness caused them to lose it all. Allan Massie’s excellent family biography traces the rise and fall of a dynasty which despite its innumerable missteps still holds a strong place in the hearts of many with Scots and English blood in their veins.Massie is primarily a novelist, and his ability to weave a fascinating plotline serves him well here. Each Stewart/Stuart monarch (they adopted the later, Frenchified spelling during the reign of Mary Queen of Scots) has his or her own chapter. The lives of the early Stewart Kings of Scots were tumultuous as they attempted to rule a country which was really more a collection of tribal homelands with loyalties to clan leaders rather than Kings. Later as Kings of England the Stuarts attempted to govern as absolute monarchs in the manner of their cousins the Kings of France, which led to one King’s execution and another’s overthrow. Besides political issues the Stuarts were caught up in religious turmoil caused by the Protestant Reformation. Eventually the Stuarts were reduced to living on charity from various European Kings and Popes until the last of their legitimate male line died in 1807.This is a fine work of narrative history, written in a lively style that will appeal to the general reader without sacrificing scholarly rigor. The many tragic and/or glamourous figures of the family, including Mary Queen of Scots, King Charles I and II, and Bonnie Prince Charlie, are all depicted sympathetically but with an open eye to their many faults. By the end of the book readers understand why the Stuarts still continue to appeal to the romantic streak in us all.I’m an American with long ancestral ties to England and Scotland (my grandmother was a Stewart herself!). The Royal Stuarts did much to help me understand the men and women whose rule (and sometimes misrule) had so much influence on British and world history.

⭐The Royal Stuarts grabbed my attention immediately with the prologue. I wondered if they’d keep the fun going, and they did. History, especially British history, is an amazing, seemingly never ending tale of greed, more greed, exploitation, torture, murder, cruelty, and stupidity. Just when you think it couldn’t get any crazier or worse, along comes yet another in an endless stream of douchebags who sets the bar to an even lower level. The net result for those of us who read this stuff is a sad form of hilarity and incredulity. But it doesn’t end there. It’s still going on. Just look at today’s headlines. Someone once said something like, those who can’t remember the past are often doomed to repeat it. Here we go again, and again, and again, and…

⭐This book, though interesting, was not academic. It reads more like a series of National Geographic articles than a history book. However, that’s because it was written by a journalist and not a historian and it shows. History is concerned with dates and some of the chapters in this book might mention a year just three or four times in an entire chapter. That made it difficult to follow at times. It remains a good introduction to the subject although one could probably find a comparable book with much more information than the author included in this one.

⭐This is a Family history of my favorite Royal dynasty,the tumultuous Royal House of Stewart who later became the Royal House of Stuart after the marriage of Mary, Queen of Scots in 1565, by acclaimed historical biographer Allan Massie. This book explores in seventeen dramatic chapters the events and reigns of this enduring and turbulent dynasty. From the first Scottish Stewart monarch King Robert II reigned 1371-90 through to the exiled Jacobite Stuart king James III and VII who did not die until 1766! and 65 years of exile and misery! This book is exhaustively researched and refreshingly good humored as it chronicles the many reigns of these often troubled monarchs who led dramatic and often bloody lives. In particular, the executions of Mary in 1587 and her Grand-son Charles I in 1649 after the divisive and bloody English Civil war (1642-48) which led to the premature exile of the Stuarts who returned to rule once more in 1660 after the break-up of the Republican Regime following the death of dictator Oliver Cromwell in 1658. There are other key events, such as the Glorious revolution of 1688-89 in both Scotland and England which are detailed in this lively and engrossing study of this tempestuous family. In particular each reign is analysed in-depth and with a balanced view not over critical or too sympathetic in its approach which is good given the complexity of the reigns and the truly seismic events which happened in many of these reigns changing the face of England forever in some instances! such as the Parliamentarian victory in The English Civil war which ended in 1646. I found this book engrossing changing many of the preconceptions I had previously had on this famous Dynasty. This is a wonderful read, history at its best on a colorful, lively ultimately tragic Dynasty which you will love from beginning to end!

⭐I was not very interested in the Scottish Monarchs but found the chapters devoted to English Monarchs very good. Each chapter devoted to each Monarch gave excellent portraits of each of the Monarchs. Too often historians put down everything they know and the character and the story of the main subjects of the book gets lost. Whereas Massie illustrates the characters of the Monarchs very well.

⭐I thoroughly enjoyed this fairly short ( at 330 pages) of the Stuarts and learned a lot about the Scottish Kings before Mary Queen of Scots, as well as those who became kings of England as well. This is a very engagingly written book, as a readable as one of Alan Massie’s novels, and was for me an excellent introduction to the period and to various Stewart monarchs (crowed and uncrowned). I will want to learn more about all them now

⭐My daughter will be studying the Stuarts next year for her A level so I bought this so I can ‘argue’ with her and discuss the subjects raised. I know a bit already but there’s no harm in reading more. I like the way each chapter deals with one of the Stuarts, this is good as each chapter can be read on its own when you need a recap. I’ve not read it all yet and am currently on Mary Queen of Scots.

⭐A fascinating and informative history of the Stuarts from their origins in the salt marshes of Brittany through their good fortune to be in the right place at the right time when they gained their first foothold on the Crown of Scotland. The account takes one right through to the usurpation of the Crown by William and Mary and on to the two wretched efforts of the dynasty to recover the lost throne.

Keywords

Free Download The Royal Stuarts: A History of the Family That Shaped Britain in PDF format
The Royal Stuarts: A History of the Family That Shaped Britain PDF Free Download
Download The Royal Stuarts: A History of the Family That Shaped Britain 2013 PDF Free
The Royal Stuarts: A History of the Family That Shaped Britain 2013 PDF Free Download
Download The Royal Stuarts: A History of the Family That Shaped Britain PDF
Free Download Ebook The Royal Stuarts: A History of the Family That Shaped Britain