KATHERINE SWYNFORD Paperback – International Edition, August 7, 2008

How do you write the biography of a woman who died six hundred years ago, has no extant letters or even a will, and is only mentioned briefly in official documents and occasionally and mostly negatively in contemporary accounts? It might seem an impossible task, but the well regarded historian Alison Weir has accomplished it, and successfully, in this account of the life of Katherine Swynford, Duchess of Lancaster in the reigns of Kings Richard II and Henry IV of England.Katherine has had a bad press through the centuries. Although widely praised for her beauty and charm, she was regarded as a courtesan and practically a prostitute because she was the mistress of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster and son of King Edward III, for many years, bearing him four children before finally marrying him in middle age. After her death she became a target for political opponents of the Lancastrian Kings and of her own Beaufort descendants, many of whom felt ashamed of her. Nevertheless, Katherine is a distant grandmother of every British monarch since 1461, of at least six US Presidents, and of countless other people (including me, I'm proud to say).Alison Weir accomplished her herculean task by amassing an enormous amount of data. This yielded much material, such as where Katherine must have been living, when her children were most likely born, what she was wearing, and what her emotions were at different times. Of necessity Weir includes many "must have beens" and "perhaps she felts" and "possiblys" in her reconstruction of Katherine's life. Fortunately Katherine lived her life in the well documented English court as companion of John of Gaunt, one of the most important men in at least two kingdoms for much of his life, so there's a lot of information available. I was pleased to read that Katherine was well liked by many people and that she was indisputably as intelligent and shrewd as she was beautiful. I also enjoyed Weir's appendix discussing Anya Seton's novel Katherine, which I read many years ago but have never forgotten.Mistress of the Monarchy will appeal to students of English and women's history. Its another worthy production by Alison Weir, who I hope will continue to chronicle English medieval history for many years to come.

As noted by earlier reviewers, there are quite a lot of "we might imagines", "we could guesses"; and "since so and so was there, Kathryn was probably theres". As a History buff and former teacher of same, this leap of faith type language jarred me every time I read some of it (and there were a lot of jars). Considering the book jacket blurbs about Ms. Weir being a deeply researching writer, I, as a student of British History, would not describe her this way. Her research of it is deep, but her use of it is shaky. It is true that records of medieval times are sparse, but if records are sparse, one doesn't imagine what they might have been.To add to my dismay, is a section, several pages long, "dissing" Anya Seton's book about Kathryn as a ancestor of the bodice slasher romance novels of more recent times as if to distance "Mistress of the Monarchy" from Ms. Seton's book. Ms. Weir is on shaky ground considering her own writing.Having said this, I should add that this is a good read. I own several Weir books and have and will enjoy them all. All in all, I would recommend this book and any other of Ms. Weir's writings as long as you approach them with a grain of salt.

When I want to read a book on a topic that interests me and I don't know much about the author, I really enjoy reading the reviews - both for and against. I especially value the reviews that summarize the contents briefly so I can get some idea of how the topic is treated. Sometimes the evaluations for are unbelievably favorable, and I could well believe they are written by friends and relatives. On the other hand, the negative reviews go far in the other direction, especially when the author has hit nerves on sensitive issues or debunked a point of view. The negative reviews of this book are good illustrations of that.I read KATHERINE by Anya Seton in the late 1950s, and I loved it. I reread it many times. I've been fascinated by medieval England since I first read Howard Pyle's stories of King Arthur and Robin Hood when I was in grade school. As I grew older and started reading nonfiction and histories, I started putting myth and legend into perspective with historical research. I went through a period of almost sadness to learn my favorite stories had maybe just a smidgen of fact, but I quickly shifted into appreciating the imagination of the storytellers who could bring dry records to life to form a picture of what life was like in the distant past.One of my college professors in a history of England class gave us a beginning assignment - write your version of the conquest of England using only sources dating no later than 100 years (I think - maybe 200 years) of 1066. These included the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the Bayeaux tapestry, three or four other chroniclers - when we looked at them, there was maybe five or six pages of information mostly from Norman French sources. None of us had brains enough in gear to attempt to evaluate who the writers of these "histories" were and who they were trying to impress or were paid by, or to think that just maybe none of them even attempted to give us the whole story. Yup, I was one of those who flunked the paper big time.Historical research is not for sissies. I knew even back in the late 50s that KATHERINE was a romance. It wasn't until maybe 10-15 years later when I had studied the sociology as well as the history of the middle ages that I realized just how romanticized it was. We surely don't think about ourselves and our values today as did people living centuries ago. Ms Seton's book is still a good story (I still own it and reread it with pleasure), and it fed my interest in studying history. Thank you, Anya Seton. And thank you, Alison Weir. You have both made my life much richer.