Carol McGrath

After the death of her brother Maud becomes the heir to her father King Henry. She is the widow of the Emperor of Germany but is made to remarry to a younger man, a mere Count. After her fathers death Maud is also disinherited by her cousin Stephen but with the help of her illegitimate brother Robert she tries to claim her realm. The subsequent war splits England and causes much suffering.
McGrath is a writer of very soft romantic historical novels and this is a little bit of a diversion as no-one could accuse Maud (Matilda) of being a romantic heroine. In fact McGrath has to place the romantic focus on a fictional character, Alice. However I did really enjoy this book as it is strong on the idea of misogyny in medieval life and that Maud is quite an unlikeable character at many points during the book. It is well-researched and very readable.… (meer)

It took me a long time to get through this despite being an undemanding read. This book offered an interesting premise, and the bones of a good story based on solid research and a well-painted view of the period of the Norman Conquest, but it was let down for me by the rather leaden prose and stilted dialogue throughout. Unfortunately the story was all tell and no show, with the same voice and pace used to describe a room full of ladies spending the afternoon in embroidery as was used to describe scenes of distressing violence. I also felt the story rather petered out at the end and the bookending story simply seemed pointless.… (meer)

Carol McGrath, a prolific novelist, here tries her hand at a non-fiction exploration of the role gender and sex in Tudor society. Ms McGrath is certainly knowledgeable; writing accurate historical novels takes loads of deep research. Unfortunately, she is not particularly skilled at presenting this information in a non-fiction form. The structure of the presentation is not tight. There are not enough reference dates sprinkled through the text to keep us oriented. There are far too few inline references. There are too many asides to the reader that amount to editorializing. So I didn't much like the book.

The book is an overview of the topic and if that's all you want, it will be fine. But the text isn't hefty enough, in my view, to merit the hefty price.

I received a review coy of "Sex and Sexuality in Tudor England" by Carol McGrath from Pen and Sword through NetGalley.com.… (meer)