My Heart Is My Own by John Guy

This book is a dramatic reinterpretation of the life of Mary, Queen of Scots. Crowned Queen of Scotland at nine months of age, and Queen of France at 16, at 18 Mary ascended the throne that was her birthright and began ruling one of the most fractious courts in Europe, riven by religious conflict and personal lust for power. She rode out at the head of an army in both victory and defeat; saw her second husband assassinated, and married his murderer. She was a woman so magnetic, so brilliant in conversation that her cousin, Elizabeth I, refused to meet her in the course of their lifetimes for fear of being overshadowed or outwitted. At 25 she entered captivity at the hands of her rival queen, from which only death would release her. The life of Mary Stuart is one of unparalleled drama and conflict. From the labyrinthine plots laid by the Scottish lords to wrest power for themselves, to the efforts made by Elizabeth's ministers to invalidate Mary's legitimate claim to the English throne, John Guy returns to the archives to explode the myths and correct the inaccuracies that surround this most fascinating monarch. He also explains a central mystery: why Mary would have consented to marry - only three months after the death of her second husband, Lord Darnley - the man who was said to be his killer, the Earl of Bothwell. He also solves, through careful re-examination of the Casket Letters, the secret behind Darnley's spectacular assassination at Kirk o'Field. With great pathos, Guy illuminates how the imprisoned Mary's despair led to a reckless plot against Elizabeth - and thus to her own execution. The portrait that emerges is not of a political pawn or a manipulative siren, but of a shrewd and charismatic young ruler who relished power and, for a time, managed to hold together a fatally unstable country. The book is a work of historical scholarship that offers radical new interpretations of an ancient story. - Publisher.

Despite being an absolute chonker, John Guy's biography of Mary Queen of Scots never feels like a slog. This book thoroughly re-examines the original sources and presents them in such a way that humanises oor Mary, revealing her personality quirks, putting her lowland Scots accent back in her mouth, and portraying her as a canny and astute wumman that tried her best to hold her country together. There's no doubt that this is an absolutely brilliant book, I only wish Guy had trusted his readers a bit more. We don't need the same snippet of information repeated over and over again. By the time I got to the end of the book, the mere mention of ‘Andrew Ker of Fawdonside, who levelled his pistol at Mary' was absolutely cracking me up. Sorry Andrew.

To say this was a sympathetic biography of Mary Queen of Scots would do an injustice to the word sympathetic. I hate to use the word hagiography but this is as close as it gets.

The author is a specialist in Tudor history and is to be respected but I have come away from this very readable book, and I mean very readable, profoundly confused. He has, in my opinion, let his deep research into the subject cloud his judgement in the presentation of the biography. His sympathy spoils the entire narrative.

Yes he is occasionally critical of Mary's decisions but then there seems to be excuses. Lets be honest, her decision to marry Bothwell must rank as one of the most ludicrous acts by a reigning monarch in British history. Yes the author says as much but makes excuses. I was almost waiting for Stockholm Syndrome to be evoked after she was raped by Bothwell!

The superlatives used to describe Mary are constant throughout:- intelligent, ingenious, razor sharp. And in the end when things have gone disastrously wrong we get told she was “unlucky”.

Well yes, maybe, but her bad luck is apparently just a constant throughout her life. The author works hard to make it all very unlucky that way via some very sympathetic eulogising. I tended to want him to tell the story and let me decide, not editorialise.

My other major criticism is the use of the sources. I have to be critical of the notes, sources and the bibliography used in the research for the fact they are not mapped by footnotes. The book is a revisionist opinion and that is fair enough, but with that, if the author going to make statements as to it being a “cold day”, one of the protagonists feeling “happy”, “sad”` or indifferent at least map the source via a footnote. I mean if Mary was born in the coldest winter (first page of the first chapter) what was the source? This was constant throughout and a distraction from a very good history to tell.

So with all that in mind would I recommend this to others who are interested in the life of Mary Queen of Scots? Yes as at its best this is an an extremely interesting book. I just wish the author had been a bit more circumspect in his delivery.