About this item
From the New York Times bestselling author and master of narrative nonfiction comes the tragic story of Charles I, his warrior queen, Britains civil wars and the trial for his life. Less than forty years after Englands golden age under Elizabeth I, the country was at war with itself. Split between loyalty to the Crown or to Parliament, war raged on English soil. The English Civil War would set family against family, friend against friend, and its casualties were immense--a greater proportion of the population died than in World War I. At the head of the disintegrating kingdom was King Charles I. In this vivid portrait -- informed by previously unseen manuscripts, including royal correspondence between the king and his queen -- Leanda de Lisle depicts a man who was principled and brave, but fatally blinkered. Charles never understood his own subjects or court intrigue. At the heart of the drama were the Janus-faced cousins who befriended and betrayed him -- Henry Holland, his peacocking servant whose brother, the New England colonialist Robert Warwick, engineered the kings fall; and Lucy Carlisle, the magnetic last Boleyn girl and faithless favorite of Charless maligned and fearless queen. The tragedy of Charles I was that he fell not as a consequence of vice or wickedness, but of his human flaws and misjudgments. The White King is a story for our times, of populist politicians and religious war, of manipulative media and the reshaping of nations. For Charles it ended on the scaffold, condemned as a traitor and murderer, yet lauded also as a martyr, his reign destined to sow the seeds of democracy in Britain and the New World.
About the Author
I took a Master's degree in Modern History at Oxford University. Modern history begins in the seventh century at Oxford, so not as modern as some people might suppose! I then became a columnist for a number of high profile magazines and newspapers. Some were funny columns, some serious, and I gained a reputation as a skilled writer. I soon returned to history, and I have spent the last ten years focussing on the Tudor and early Stuart period. I take time over my books - time to research and time to make that research as readable as possible. I hope I improve with each book. I live in a rural area with my husband of twenty-five years and I have three sons - all of them historians, although the youngest one is studying ancient history. We also have a huge brown labrador called Fitz. His full name is Fitz Pepsi - his father was called Pepsi and is still much missed. We don't own a cat, but we have a regular tortoiseshell visitor who stares at my husband in the garden as if he owns the place.
