> Skip to content
  • Published: 31 January 2019
  • ISBN: 9780241986899
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 100
Categories:

Mary Queen of Scots

Film Tie-In



For centuries, Mary, Queen of Scots has been a figure of scholarly debate. Where many have portrayed her as the weak woman to Elizabeth's rational leader, John Guy reassesses the young queen, finding her far more politically shrewd than previously believed.

Crowned Queen of Scotland at nine months old, Queen of France by age sixteen and widowed the following year, Guy paints Mary as a commanding and savvy queen who navigated the European power struggles of the time to her advantage.

Her life was one of drama and conflict - Scottish lords constructed labyrinthine plots to wrest power from her and attempts to prove her claim to the English throne were thwarted by English ministers bent on protecting Elizabeth.

Mary Queen of Scots re-examines the original sources, resulting in a riveting new argument surrounding Mary's involvement in her husband Lord Darnely's murder and her subsequent marriage to his suspected assassin.

Guy's accessible treatment of the well-trodden story, his deft storytelling and insightful new arguments provide compelling and dramatic reading.

  • Published: 31 January 2019
  • ISBN: 9780241986899
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 100
Categories:

About the author

John Guy

John Guy is an award-winning historian, accomplished broadcaster and a Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge. His previous books include My Heart is My Own: The Life of Mary Queen of Scots, winner of the 2004 Whitbread Biography Award and the Marsh Biography Award, the highly acclaimed dual biography A Daughter's Love: Thomas and Margaret More and a history, Tudor England, which has sold over 250,000 copies worldwide.

Also by John Guy

See all

Praise for Mary Queen of Scots

An absorbing biography ... meticulously researched... scholarly and intriguing

Peter Ackroyd, The Times

A biography that reads as thrillingly as a detective story, and is rich in details and authoritative in its analysis

Miranda Seymour, Sunday Times

Fascinating... A book based on gold-standard research, the kind of thing that puts most popular history writing to shame

Kathryn Hughes, Mail on Sunday

Rarely have first-class scholarship and first-class storytelling been so effectively combined

John Adamson, Daily Telegraph