{"id":15000,"date":"2012-07-30T06:30:42","date_gmt":"2012-07-29T18:30:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=15000"},"modified":"2012-07-27T21:24:29","modified_gmt":"2012-07-27T09:24:29","slug":"what-im-reading-queen-anne-the-politics-of-passion-by-anne-somerset","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2012\/07\/30\/what-im-reading-queen-anne-the-politics-of-passion-by-anne-somerset\/","title":{"rendered":"What I’m Reading: “Queen Anne: The Politics of Passion” by Anne Somerset"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>It’s been a while since I’ve read some non-fiction history so I was very pleased to be able to pick up “Queen Anne, The Politics of Passion”<\/em> (Harper Press), Anne Somerset’s<\/a> biography of Queen Anne (Life: 1665 – 1714; Reign: 1702-1714.)<\/p>\n

So far I am about a third of the way through and really enjoying it. This is serious biography so not a light read, but Somerset writes well, incorporating detailed research into a highly readable account of the life and times of Queen Anne, the last Stuart monarch of the United Kingdom. (And in fact Union between Scotland and England was, I believe, achieved during her reign—although I haven’t got to that bit yet.)<\/p>\n

A tribute to Somerset may be that although Anne herself is not a terribly dynamic personality, the biographer still manages to imbue her story with interest—and the period is certainly fascinating. So far the work is charting the emergence of political parties in national politics (in this case the “Whigs” and the “Tories”), the War of the Spanish Succession in Europe and the genius of John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, as well as the cultural strength of the period with writers such as Swift and Defoe making their mark.<\/p>\n

Anyway, on the strength of what I’ve read so far, I recommend it if you like biography and or non fiction history. But here are links to a couple of\u00a0 more official views:<\/p>\n

Telegraph Review<\/a><\/p>\n

The Literary Review<\/a><\/p>\n

And how about you, dear readers: what are you reading right now?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s been a while since I’ve read some non-fiction history so I was very pleased to be able to pick up “Queen Anne, The Politics of Passion” (Harper Press), Anne Somerset’s biography of Queen Anne (Life: 1665 – 1714; Reign: 1702-1714.) So far I am about a third of the way through and really enjoying […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15000","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-what-im-reading"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15000","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15000"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15000\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15031,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15000\/revisions\/15031"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}