Tracy Borman

**I received an advanced reader's copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review**

Borman continues her amazing research and work on the Tudors by connecting Elizabeth I's actions and writings with her mother Anne Boleyn's life. As queen, Elizabeth combines her father's legacy while subtly including her mother's influences. Borman does well with this connection, showing how Elizabeth balances keeping her mother's spirit alive while walking that fine line between legitimacy, her father's legacy, and the need to prove herself as a female ruler. I greatly enjoyed seeing these connections and welcome the scholarship being published in the last couple of decades that tries to provide a truer picture of Anne Boleyn.… (mais)

Despite the subtitle on my copy - James I and the English Witch Hunts - which lead me to expect more of a focus on the detail of James I of England/VI of Scotland's involvement in witch trials, this is more a general study of the witchcraft persecutions in both England, Scotland and the Continent, with an acknowledgement of the later outbreak in Salem. As such it is a good grounding in the subject with an examination of the way the persecutions focused on women and used women's supposed inferiorities as an explanation of their predilection to direct malice against others, form pacts with the devil, etc.

The author also mentions various men who were sceptics - I knew of the most famous, Reginald Scot, whose 'The Discoverie of Witchcraft' drew the ire of King James because of its massive debunking of the witch craze - but not of the others.

The book does give the impression at the beginning of being an in-depth examination of the case of the Flower women who were accused of bewitching the sons of the Duke of Rutland, with tragic consequences. In practice not a great deal of the book is devoted to this case, partly due to the fact that, despite its being unusual in involving a favoured nobleman and his wife as accusers rather than village compatriots, the court papers were destroyed in the early 19th century by a clerk who decided everything prior to 60 years previous could be junked as useless and the only source is a sensationalist pamphlet which went into several editions as a best seller.

That was probably the biggest lesson taken away from the book for me, that our understanding of history is fragile and fragmentary, given the existence of vandals such as this - so many records have been lost and we don't know what really happened. That is the case with the Flowers also - it isn't known, for example, if the mother, Joan, really called for bread in an attempt to prove her innocence and choked or if her death was due to mistreatment by her captors. So I found this an interesting book, but a little disjointed in terms of where its focus lay and accordingly a 3 star read.… (mais)