Search results for ""author dominic pearce""

James Graham was a Scottish nobleman, poet and soldier who joined the Covenanters but sided with Charles I as the English Civil War progressed. Through a string of brilliant military victories, Montrose won the civil war in Scotland until it was plain that Charles I’s failure in England was so total that nothing could be salvaged. Montrose mesmerised all Europe. His triumphs make him one of the outstanding figures of the era. In the end he was a victim of politics, a fate he gave every sign of welcoming. If he could not prevail as a warrior, he preferred to pay the ultimate price. In his own exuberant writings, both prose and poetry, Montrose expresses an astonishing confidence in his Godgiven role as hero. Hanged and with his body mutilated and cut to pieces in 1650, in 1661 his limbs were brought back from Glasgow, Perth, Stirling and Aberdeen, his head removed from a spike and he was re-buried in Holyrood Abbey. This is the first full biography of this extraordinary man in fifty years.

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At the heart of the English Civil War stands the wife of Charles I, Henrietta Maria. She came to England in 1625 at the age of fifteen, undermined by her greedy French entourage, blocked by the forceful Duke of Buckingham and weighed down by instructions from the Pope to protect the Catholics of England. She was only a girl, and she had hardly a winning card in her hand; yet fifteen years later she was the terror of Parliament. We see Henrietta Maria in the portraits of van Dyck, and hear her voice in the letters which she wrote to her husband and many others. She is a historic queen who inherited from her father, the great French statesman Henri IV, undying convictions about royal and divine authority and about just governance. There was always brutal violence in the background of her life from the early moments (her father was assassinated when she was six months old); she lived through civil war both in England and in France (the Fronde); she was tortured by the fate of Charles I; but her spirit – and her family – prevailed. Two of her children sat on the throne of England (Charles II and James II) and three of her grandchildren followed them (William III, Mary II and Anne). Her life is a story of elegance, courage, wit, energy and family devotion on a grand scale.

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