Amberley Publishing Local – The Bell Bookshop

Four Queens And A Countess

Emma — Sun, 15 Sep 2019 00:00:00 +0000

When Mary Stuart was forced off the Scottish throne she fled to England, a move that made her cousin Queen Elizabeth very uneasy. Elizabeth had continued the religious changes made by her father and England was a Protestant country, yet ardent Catholics plotted to depose Elizabeth and put Mary Stuart on the English throne. So what was Queen Elizabeth going to do with a kingdomless queen likely to take hers?Elizabeth had Mary placed under house arrest with her old friend Bess of Hardwick, then married to her fourth husband, the wealthy and influential Earl of Shrewsbury. The charismatic Scotswoman was treated more like a dowager queen than a prisoner and enjoyed an affluent lifestyle until Bess suspected Mary of seducing her husband. But for sixteen years, with the never-ending threat of a Catholic uprising, Bess was forced to accommodate Mary and her entourage at enormous cost to both her finances and her marriage.Bess had also known the doomed Jane Grey and Mary I, Elizabeth’s predecessor. She had been in service in the Grey household and companion to the infant Jane. Mary had been godmother to Bess’s fifth child.Four Queens and a Countess delves deep into the relationships of these women with their insurmountable differences, the way they tried to accommodate them and the lasting legacy this has left.

House Of Grey

Emma — Sun, 15 Sep 2019 00:00:00 +0000

The Grey family was one of mediaeval England’s most important dynasties, serving the kings of England as sheriffs, barons and military leaders from the reign of William the Conqueror. In Henry IV’s reign the rivalry between Owain Glyndwr and Lord Grey of Ruthyn was the backdrop to the Welsh bid to throw off English dominance. His successor Edmund Grey played a decisive role at the Battle of Northampton when he changed allegiance from Lancaster to York. Edmund’s Lancastrian cousin, Sir John Grey, died at the second battle of St Albans, leaving a widow, Elizabeth née Woodville, and two young sons, Thomas and Richard. Astonishingly, the widowed Elizabeth caught the eye of Edward IV and ascended to the throne as the first Yorkist queen, giving her sons a place at the heart of the royal family. The competition for control of the young Edward V between the Greys and Richard, Duke of Gloucester, led to Richard Grey’s summary execution and the disappearance of their royal half-brothers when Gloucester became king. Thomas Grey vowed revenge and joined Henry Tudor in exile.When Thomas’s niece, Elizabeth of York, became queen, the family returned to court, but Henry VII was wary enough of Thomas to imprison him for a short time. Thomas married the greatest heiress in England, Cecily Bonville. Their numerous children gained positions in the court of their cousin, Henry VIII, and his daughter, Mary. The 2nd Marquis was a vigorous supporter of Henry VIII’s divorce from Katharine of Aragon, but his son Henry’s reckless attempt to have his own daughter crowned led to disaster and the execution of Henry, his brother and his daughter, Lady Jane Grey, the ‘Nine Days Queen’. Weaving the lives of these men and women from one family into a single narrative provides a vivid picture of the mediaeval and Tudor court, reflecting how the personal was always political, as individual relationships and rivalries for land, power and money drove national events.

Arbella Stuart

Emma — Mon, 15 Jul 2019 00:00:00 +0000

In 1562, Elizabeth I, the last of Henry VIII’s children, lay dying of smallpox, and the curse of the Tudor succession again reared its head. The queen was to recover, but the issue remained: if the queen did not produce an heir, who was next in line to succeed?Lady Arbella Stuart was cousin to both the English queen and James VI of Scotland, a woman whose parents’ marriage had been orchestrated to provide an heir to the English throne. Raised by her formidable grandmother, Bess of Hardwick, Arbella lived her life in Elizabeth’s shadow and, unfortunately, at her mercy.In this book, Jill Armitage revitalises Arbella’s tale, focusing on her lineage, her life and her legacy. Through her story we discover a well-born, well-educated woman desperate to control her own fate, but who is ultimately powerless against those in the scheming Tudor court; and the author explores the harsh consequence that comes from being on the wrong side of the revenge of a jealous, calculating queen.

Historic England Reading

Emma — Sun, 15 Jul 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This illustrated history portrays one of England’s finest major towns. It provides a nostalgic look at Reading’s past and highlights the special character of some of its most important historic sites.The photographs are taken from the Historic England Archive, a unique collection of over 12 million photographs, drawings, plans and documents covering England’s archaeology, architecture, social and local history. Pictures date from the earliest days of photography to the present and cover subjects from Bronze Age burials and medieval churches to cinemas and seaside resorts.The Berkshire town of Reading has been an important town in England since the Middle Ages. Reading became renowned for industries such as brewing and ironmaking, and the town grew rapidly in the nineteenth century following the arrival of the Great Western Railway. The town also saw the development of other industries such as baking and seed-growing. Today the town is a major commercial centre in the south-east of the country, and has grown to become the largest town in England. This book will help you discover the proud history of this historic town.

Chilterns At Work

Emma — Sun, 15 Jul 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Stretching from Oxfordshire’s Goring in the south to Royston, Hertfordshire, in the north, the Chilterns forms a meandering chalk spine right across four counties: Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire. The Chilterns landscape is justly famous, but this beautiful area reflects centuries of people working the land – including the woodland – and exploiting resources in an imaginative way. This same landscape also gives us glimpses of a once much more widespread industrial past.In Chilterns at Work we explore the rich mixture of work in the area that has developed through the years to the present day. From farming and agriculture, watercress beds, woodland industries and furniture making, milling, wine and beer making, cottage industries and work derived from the Chilterns’ strategic position on transport routes from London to the Midlands, to wartime industries, the chalk, flint and gravel quarries, cement manufacture, brick and tile making, the sarsen industry, modern-day industries based around recreation and leisure, and many others that typify the area. This exploration of the Chilterns provides an interesting, intriguing and sometimes surprising look at professions and industries of the past and the present day. It will appeal to all those with an interest in this corner of south-east England.

Richard Duke Of York

Emma — Tue, 15 Aug 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Richard, 3rd Duke of York is frequently used to recall the colours of the rainbow with the mnemonic ‘Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain’, wrongly believed to be the Grand Old Duke of York who had 10,000 men, or mistaken for his youngest son, Richard III.The son of a traitor, he inherited a dukedom aged four, became the wealthiest man in England at thirteen and later rebelled against his king, and if he is remembered, it is as a man who ignited the Wars of the Roses. Further eclipsed by two of his sons, who would become the mighty warrior Edward IV and the recently rediscovered Richard III, he is an ancestor of the Tudor monarchs and fifteenth great-grandfather to Queen Elizabeth II, yet the man himself is obscured from view.Matthew Lewis pushes aside the veils of myth and legend to challenge the image of Richard as a man whose insatiable ambition dragged a nation into civil war, revealing a complex family man with unparalleled power and responsibilities. The first person ever recorded to use the Plantagenet name, he pushed the political establishment to its limits, dared to fight back and was forced to do the unimaginable.

Battlefields Of England & Scotland

Emma — Thu, 24 Nov 2016 00:00:00 +0000

The battlefields of England and Scotland are a strongly neglected but important part of our national heritage, and what remains today and the current usage of the sites is very varied. Some, like Bosworth and Culloden, have modern visitor centres, shops and cafés, and others such as Homildon Hill and Edgecote have nothing at all.From King Alfred’s victory over the Danes at Ashdown in AD 871 to the defeat of the Jacobites in the April snow at Culloden in 1746, this book covers seventy battles that took place in England and Scotland. The author gives each battle its historical context, describes the action in relation to the landscape and discusses the remains of the site and what can be found today.

Scramble

Emma — Sat, 15 Oct 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This is a fighter pilot’s memoir of four tumultuous years, 1938-1942, when he was first trained, then fought and survived in not one but two of the biggest aerial campaigns of the war, the Battle of Britain and the equally epic, but lesser known, Siege of Malta.When the Germans were blitzing their way across France in spring 1940, Pilot Officer Tom Neil had just received his first posting – to 249 Squadron. Nineteen years old and fresh from training, he was soon to be pitched into the maelstrom of air fighting on which the very survival of Britain would come to depend. By the end of the year he had shot down thirteen enemy aircraft, seen many of his friends killed, injured or burned, and was himself a wary and accomplished fighter pilot.Out of the frying pan and into the fire, Tom was then shipped off to the beleaguered island of Malta to face a second Luftwaffe onslaught. Again heavily engaged, he shot down another enemy fighter and survived a number of engine failures and other emergencies.Now ninety-six, he is one of only a handful of Battle of Britain veterans still alive and this vivid memoir is his last word on his fighter pilot experiences.

Living In Squares Loving In Triangles

Emma — Wed, 15 Jun 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Sisters Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf have long been celebrated for their central roles in the development of modernism in art and literature. Vanessa’s experimental work places her at the vanguard of early twentieth-century art, as does her role in helping introduce many key names – Cézanne, Matisse, Picasso – to an unsuspecting public in 1910. Virginia took these artistic innovations and applied them to literature, pushing the boundaries of form, narrative and language to find a voice uniquely her own.Yet their private lives were just as experimental. Vanessa’s marriage to art critic Clive Bell was shaken early on by his flirtation with her sister, and Virginia’s marriage to Leonard Woolf placed him more in the role of carer than husband as he tried to meet the needs of his wife’s fragile mental health. However, forming the core of the Bloomsbury Group, they welcomed into their London and Sussex homes a host of their talented peers, and caused speculation and scandal by following their hearts, not society’s norms, in their continued pursuit of love.In Living in Squares, Loving in Triangles, Amy Licence explores the brave, passionate and innovative lives these remarkable women lived, and discovers where their strength and talent came from.