Exclusive interview with author Allan Massie and a review of the his history of the House of Stuart with a few Tudors thrown in
Rating: 3 Stars
by Gabrielle Pantera
“A long time ago I wrote a book called The Caesars, short biographies intended as a companion to Suetonius’ The Twelve Caesars,” says The Royal Stuarts author Alan Massie. “So, when I was thinking about a non-fiction books to write between novels, the idea of treating the Stuarts in a similar form seemed attractive.”
Massie covers the ambitions and family squabbles between the Stuarts and other Royals in this very informative and vastly readable book.
The work spans the era from the first Stuart king to the last of the clan – a time of great turmoil and violence. Scottish King James IV married King Henry VII’s daughter, Margaret Tudor, in 1503. His attempt to guarantee peace with England instead brought war, but also took the House of Stuart into contention for the English throne. The wars of the Stuarts include the Scottish Wars of Independence, the Union of the Crowns, the English Civil War, the Restoration, and more.
Massie says his research was strictly from published sources. “I owe a lot to Sir Walter Scott, the greatest of Scottish writers, about whom I have also written extensively,” says Massie. “Actually since I’ve been reading about the Stuarts for more than fifty years, much of the book is remembered.”
Breton descendants of Banquo changed their name to Stewarts when the family’s leader became the High Steward of Scotland, a hereditary position. Mary Queen of Scots changed the family name to Stuart. Massie covers Mary Queen of Scots, Charles I, and Bonnie Prince Charlie.
English readers may think first of the accession of James I, when the Stuart dynasty replaced the Tudors, but the Stuarts had been ruling Scotland since the late 14th century, having moved to England (originally from Brittany) some centuries earlier. Henry I had made a Stuart an administrator on the Welsh Marches, from where they became Scotland’s main landowners, after acquiring the ‘steward’ – the hereditary office of treasury to the Scottish kings.
Massie uses details from historians, novels, and plays to tell an often riveting tale of the family, from salt marshes of Brittany to the thrones of Scotland and England and eventually to exile.
The Royal Stuarts has yet to be optioned for television or film.
Massie is currently revising the non-fiction book The Spectre of Vichy, that Jonathan Cape will publish next year. “Apart from that, it’s journalism, journalism, journalism,” says Massie.
Massie was born in Singapore to but at the age of six months brought to Scotland by his father, who had been a rubber planter in Malaya. Massie and has lived most of his life in Scotland, with spells in Cambridge, London and Rome.
Massie says he doesn’t have a website, that he wouldn’t know what to do with one. However, at his daughter’s urging, he recently signed up at Twitter as @alainmas.
The Royal Stuarts: A History of the Family That Shaped Britain by Allan Massie. Publisher, Random House, Release date, Dec 20, 2011, Language: English. ISBN: 9780224091008, $32.49 paperback, $24.94 Kindle.
