Well written and well researched, this is the fascinating story of Katherine Swynford, Duchess of Lancaster, first mistress and then wife of John of Gaunt, the last true knight. Her own history is fascinating - that of a bright, honourable, loyal woman in a man's age, and her legacy (through her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren) was profound. An excellent book about someone who should be more well-known. ( )

I did not enjoy this book as much as I thought. I generally like reading biographies. But somehow, I just did not find myself interested in Katherine. What doesn't help is that she barely figures in the first 50 or so pages of the book. What is written about her, is almost all speculative. The book is filled with maybes, perhapses and possiblies. A lot of the information that is know comes from financial accounts, which leads to a abundance of monetary values, all with their value in today's money, throughout the text. You can hardly find a page without some reference to sums of money. Then the lead finally married John of Gaunt. I was actually looking forward to this bit, hoping the amount of information about her would increase so I would finally get some sense of the woman she was. But one of the first sentences after the marriage informs the reader that Katherine doesn't appear much in the records after the marriage.

I think it was an error to write this book as a biography instead of a historical novel. There are plenty of glimpses of an interesting story but the bare facts are minimal. ( )

The pictures of where Katherine had lived, was buried, etc. were very nice. Otherwise, it was pretty much she could have done this, she might have done that, maybe her father did this. It hit the wall around page 25 and went back to the library.

http://shelfandstuff.blogspot.com/200... ( )

I can't help thinking this should have been called 'Katherine Swynford, John of Gaunt and Geoffrey Chaucer". The recorded documentation on Katherine Swynford was scant, so there was some padding out of her life with her husband's and brother-in-law's lives. It was however interesting to read about Katherine, although the delivery was often dry. ( )