The Lady Elizabeth – Alison Weir

Rather a slog, with a few sections rather too dry and academic reading and/or drawn out periods of tedious (rather than tense) incarceration. It doesn’t help that you know the end of story already, so the moments of jeopardy can’t really ring as true as they must have done for Elizabeth Tudor herself. On the plus side, there is an interesting extension of the explanation of Elizabeth’s steadfast refusal to marry, together with an interesting take on the romps with Thomas Seymour.

But, having ploughed through to the end, the most intriguing are the numerous references to Anne of Cleves – coming 4th out of the divorced beheaded died, divorced beheaded survived – who, it turns out stayed in England after her divorce from Henry VIII (I’d always assumed she had returned home) which makes me want to find out more about her story.

Amazon.co.uk link: The Lady Elizabeth – Alison Weir