Elizabeth was complex and her character often obscure. Her cult was a deliberate creation, says Strong, and his presentation...
Among the manifold lessons history may teach is the skillful use of public relations—as used, for example, in the court of Elizabeth I.
Four centuries ago, the sovereign’s flaks and spinmeisters did a job, unmatched since, in the promotion of the cult of Gloriana (i.e., Elizabeth), celebrated as the maiden ruler for some 45 years during her life (and a long time thereafter). No longer would the Catholic Virgin Mary reign in England; the Protestant Virgin Queen would be venerated in her place. British art historian Strong’s (Elizabeth R, 1971, etc.) study, first published in Britain a generation ago and now available in the US as an elegant paperback, elucidates Elizabethan propaganda as it was practiced through the masterful use of poesy, pictures, and pageants—all designed to enhance the image of the Tudor queen. Familiar Elizabethan pictures are parsed to fix the scene and time. First, the depiction of the social event of 1600 in Peake’s Procession Picture is used by Strong to distinguish and describe various influential nobles who are shown accompanying Her Majesty. Studying Hilliard’s emblematic Young Man Amongst Roses, he identifies the romantic youth who sports the nascent mustache as none other than Essex himself. Then Sir Henry Unton’s Memorial Picture is deconstructed to sketch the life of a representative courtier. The brief guide to the world of Gloriana continues with descriptions of fêtes and pageants. Accession Day festivities, commemorating Her Majesty’s achievement of the throne, were marked by bells, bonfires, bombast, and tournaments. Masques and jousts and parades by the Garter Knights enhanced the secular mythology of majestic chivalry. Puissant PR was indeed at work, but maybe the Age of Elizabeth was, in its way, quite some time after all. Surely it was a time as remarkable and as bizarre as our own.
Elizabeth was complex and her character often obscure. Her cult was a deliberate creation, says Strong, and his presentation is convincing, scholarly, and sophisticated. Knowledge of Latin helpful, but not essential. (91 b&w illustrations, seen)Pub Date: June 15, 2000
ISBN: 0-7126-6481-5
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Pimlico/Trafalgar
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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