Recommended reading

Here is a list of some of the historical fiction books I've read over the last couple of years.

Philippa Gregory is my favorite. Some of her books.....
- The Constant Princess (about Katherine of Aragon)
- The Other Boleyn Girl (about Mary & Anne Boleyn - will be a movie after the first of the new year!)
- The Virgin's Lover (about Elizabeth I and Robert Dudley)
- The Boleyn Inheritance (about Anne of Cleeves, Catherine Howard and Jane Rochford)
- The Queen's Fool (covers both the time of Queen Mary & Elizabeth I)
- A Respectable Trade (slave trade in 1787 London)

Robin Maxwell is another one.....
- The Secret Diary of Anne Boleyn
- Virgin: Prelude to the Throne
- The Queen's Bastard (about the possibility that Elizabeth I and Robin Dudley secretly had a child)
- To the Tower Born (the two princes in the tower)
- Mademoiselle Boleyn (her newest book which I just finished - covers the years that Anne and Mary Boleyn were at the French Court)

Slightly different period, but I enjoyed The Hidden Diary of Marie Antoinette by Carolly Erickson. She also wrote "The Last Wife of Henry VIII."

I recently finished both Margaret George's "Mary Queen of Scotland and the Isles" and "The Autobiography of Henry VIII: With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers." Both are good but L-O-N-G (like 800+ pages) and kind of slow-going.

I'm currently reading "The Perfect Royal Mistress" by Diane Haeger. It's about actress Nell Gwynne who was mistress to King Charles II.

I think it's been really interesting reading a lot of books by different authors about this same period in history and seeing the different portrayals of the relationships of the same group of people. Who is sympathetic to Anne Boleyn? Is she seen as smart and coniving or as a pawn of the men in her family who want to gain power through her? Who portrays Henry VIII as a tantrum-throwing tyrant? Who thinks Elizabeth I was really the pure virgin queen and who thinks she was Robin's lover?