Gareth Russell

Do Let’s Have Another Drink by Gareth Russell takes a look at Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon’s (1900 – 2002) life through a series of anecdotes. Better known as the Queen Mother, she lived 101 years so there are 101 interesting and humorous vignettes – one for each year of her life.

The book has become well known for stripping away the boring bits of traditional biographies and focusing on the charm, wit and iron will of this famous figure. Described by photographer Cecil Beaton as a show more marshmallow made on a welding machine, the general public saw her as the charming, friendly and beloved senior citizen of the Royal family. She kept her opinions for private conversations, and she definitely did have her own opinions. This book highlights her enormous wit, her fondness for gin and Dubonnet (drinky-poos) and her ability to put people at their ease. She was so successful at raising morale during WW II that Hitler called her a dangerous woman. Her ability to hold a grudge is notable, and she blamed Wallis Simpson and her husband, the Duke of Windsor, for the early death of her own husband. She held steadfast and encouraged her daughter to never grant the Duchess of Windsor, the HRH title that they craved.

This was a fun read and painted a side of the Queen mother that we didn’t generally know. Despite the light tone, the author did his research to show this remarkable woman as the generous, at times sarcastic, and always rigid in her old-school views. The author doesn’t go into great detail regarding her political views but it is obvious that she had a great deal of influence on her daughter, the Queen. show less

Real Rating: 4.75* of five

The Publisher Says: A groundbreaking and insightful exploration of King James I, enigmatic successor to Queen Elizabeth I, from the “meticulous researcher” (The Wall Street Journal) and author of the “enjoyable and readable” (Philippa Gregory, #1 New York Times bestselling author) The Palace.

From the assassination of his father to the explosive political and personal intrigues of his reign, this fresh biography reveals as never before the passions that drove show more King James I.

Gareth Russell’s “rollicking, gossipy” (Dan Jones, author of The Plantagenets), and scholarly voice invites us into James’s world, revealing a monarch whose reign was defined by both his public power and personal vulnerabilities. For too long, historians have shied away from or condemned the exploration of his sexuality. Now, Russell offers a candid narrative that not only reveals James’s relationships with five prominent men but also challenges the historical standards applied to the examination of royal intimacies.

This biography stands as a significant contribution to the understanding of royal history, illuminating the personal experiences that shaped James’s political decisions and his philosophical views on masculinity and sexuality.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: I'm in two minds about this read. I like the writing; I'm open, if not warmly welcoming, to the subject being included among our queer ancestors; but he was still medieval about religious stuff, and was inimical to "witches" among his subjects. (There were not, and are not, witches in the sense these people used the term. Pace, modern wiccans.) It really, really bothers me that Edward Gorey is co-opted to be One of Us, when he explicitly said he was not. (Go read my review.) So James VI and I? I'm not mad at or about the folks who want to say he was gay.

It's evident to me, after reading this book, that his greatest love was George Villiers. It appears to have been reciprocated, as much as we can know these things about people 400 years dead (as of this year). The extant evidence supports the conclusion that this complicated, traumatized, deeply and passionately emotional man was lucky enough to find some people...his wife Anna of Denmark, the aforementioned George...in his lifetime who met him where he was, who offered him the precious gift of companionship. Inasmuch as a royal can experience such a commoner's thing, more especially then when royal power was less trammeled than today.

Author Russell is scrupulous in making you au fait with his sources. He specifically says, on the occasions he makes a logical leap, that this is what he's doing. Where people in the past used the lens of homophobia to "tar" a man's reputation (viz, Frank Barlow's William II) with the stench of sodomy, much more often than not the "charge" was made absent solid evidence, and for some sort of political or ideological reason. As my best example, in this book Esmé Stewart, 1st Duke of Lennox, frequently accounted as James's first love(r), is shown to have been at most a crush, with no evidence pointing to a more intense relationship.

So I'm happy to accept Author Russell's well-founded and -informed conclusions about the rest of the King's emotional life. As the life of a king, as the lives of us all, is mostly spent outside the bedchamber and away from our intimate partner, the pretext of the book must needs fall away as events demand attention depart Mary and George territory. (Excellent show, Nicholas Galitzine {George Villiers} naked is a most enjoyable view to have.)

The reign of the king was bound to be complex. He succeeded the longest-ruling, to that point, monarch of the country; he was the first ruler to have an explicit, publicly acknowledged right to both British thrones; he was in power at the dawn of the modern world with its marvels and mysteries supplanting the certainties of his own world, the one he was raised in. It was a morass of warring interests, as the world has always been; James was not always the best one to make good, for the time and information he could have, decisions.

An unenviable position as monarch of two countries who had been at war for centuries, and whose mother he never met because she was imprisoned and murdered by his predecessor. Fractious nobles, upstart commoners, churchmen jealous of their vanishing prerogatives (this despite or because of his commissioning if the King James Version of the Bible), kidnappings, assassination attempts...this is the "remember, remember, the Fifth of November" king...it's no wonder he was paranoid and prone to act as if people were out to get him. They all too often were. It still left me wishing he would pull his head out of his medieval ass and get with the modern world borning in his care. It's irrational, unfair, and quite pointless, but it shows how very invested Author Russell got me into King James.

In all, a read I enjoyed more than didn't, that I finished in a very good time, and found more reasonable and more honest about its royal subject than the vast majority of the biographies I've read.

Your royal-watcher should get one this Yule. A strong corrective for the ick-factor fall of Andrew Windsor. show less

The Six Loves of James I was both riveting and fascinating. Having just read The Scapegoat: The Brilliant Brief Life of the Duke of Buckingham by Lucy Hughes-Hallett (review coming shortly), I was happy to read another accounting of this king, but from a different perspective. And while it did focus on the men who influenced him, this book was so much more than that, something that I really appreciated. This book satisfied me in a way that many others have not.

I am very familiar with the show more life of King James I, but somehow the author made me feel something new for this very fragile king, a connection that made me empathize with this man who struggled with so much on his shoulders from such a young age. Even though I have read about it frequently, I don't think I can still grasp the enormity of the responsibility he had from such a young age, dealing with the tragic outcome of the falling out of both his parents, Mary Queen of Scots and Lord Darnley, two people so equally despised their names still reverberate throughout history today. The political shenanigans from the fallout and what happened afterwards left their indelible mark on this man, something that would haunt him for the rest of his life and colour his perceptions of people and events.

While this book implies it's about the love life of James I, it is so much more than that, showing how much James relied on his relationships in order to survive the day to day struggles of ruling a country that had so many political issues. I liked how the author outlined exactly what James was up against, showcasing his brilliance and his intelligence in dealing with so much, and quite successfully. But there was the darker side to everything as well, and the author wrote about those episodes clearly, leaving it up to the reader to decide for themselves what they choose to believe about what happened. I certainly appreciated the different viewpoints as well as the new research that is exploring some other theories about some of the events that occurred throughout his reign. And perhaps more information will come to light in the future that will change what we know about some of the events that happened as well. To understand things through a man's eyes who possibly had ADHD and more than likely experienced PTSD (both of which were definitely terms that were non-existent during this time period), it gives valuable insight into some of his choices and his reactions when dealing with dangerous situations. I also really liked how the author looked into different sources to give us a better understanding of his physical characteristics, his personality, his intelligence, and other traits that have been twisted over the years, and how this would have happened.

I thought the author did a great job outlining the relationships that James had in his life, the men as well as with his wife and his children. It really gave us a great viewpoint to see who James leaned on during certain times in his life and how important these relationships were to him, but it also gave us great insight into how fragile he was, and how much he needed support and love to keep going. While others around him may not have agreed with his choices, he certainly seemed to choose well and managed to control the vipers at court for many years and balance the power that could be so dangerous at court.

Verdict
The Six Loves of James I was an interesting book, and I will admit that this monarch is one of those monarchs over whom I long have had a huge fascination, both for the contradictions about his life and reign as well as the amount of obstacles he had to overcome. This man survived multiple assassination attempts, religious issues, the death of his children, the loss of his parents, treasonous lords (and ladies), tumultuous relationships (including his wife), the witch trials, the trials over the unification of two countries, quarrelsome courtiers, money issues, and so much more, using intelligence and a whole lot of patience. And there was no way he could have done this without being extremely cunning. That being said, if you are going into this book expecting an outline of James' sexual life, this is not what this book is about. It's more about James' relationships and how it shaped his life throughout his reign, and that suited me just fine. show less

The Scottish throne was a blood-soaked inheritance. James I, crowned at just 11, was murdered in a sewer in 1437. His six-year-old son succeeded as James II and was killed by his own malfunctioning cannon in 1460. Next came James III, aged eight, who died in battle in 1488, leaving the 15-year-old James IV to inherit the crown. He married Margaret Tudor, Henry VIII’s elder sister, only to be killed during the Battle of Flodden in 1513 fighting the English. His 18-month-old son succeeded as show more James V but succumbed to disease aged 30, leaving a six-day-old baby, Mary, as Queen of Scots. Her life was a tempest of intrigue and tragedy: forced to abdicate in 1567, and executed 20 years later by order of her English cousin, Elizabeth. Mary’s 13-month-old son succeeded as king following her abdication, the sixth James to rule Scotland. Despite the weight of his bloody and scandalous ancestry, a point drilled into him by his abusive tutor George Buchanan, James escaped the brutal fates of his predecessors. He lived to the age of 59 and died not on a battlefield, sewer, or scaffold, but in his own bed, monarch of both Scotland and England: Britain’s first king. His final moments were marked not by violence, but by the heartbroken sobs of his lover, George Villiers – the last in a long line of male favourites.

Gareth Russell’s Queen James masterfully illuminates James and the men he loved. The book emotively explores the king’s relationships, offering a nuanced portrayal of James, the man, in a way that only a biography which does not discriminate against his passion for other men can. Russell’s exploration of James’ personal life distinguishes itself by treating his sexual relationships with sensitivity, challenging the historical tendency to either dismiss, condemn, or ignore his same-sex desire. While some historians have previously claimed that the sexual element to James’ relationships with men is irrelevant, Russell’s biography demonstrates the opposite. The king had passionate bonds with men including Patrick Gray, Alexander (Sandy) Lindsay, Robert Carr, and George Villiers. He argued with these men, kissed them publicly, wept when separated from them, and wrote them passionate letters. These letters, as Russell compellingly argues, only make sense when read as expressions of romantic and erotic love. Villiers’ suggestive longing to have the king’s ‘legs soon in my arms’ and James’ own fear that his desire for Villiers might consume him will resonate with any reader who has experienced love. The king could not bear to be separated from his ‘sweetheart’ and ‘sweet wife’.

Read the rest of the review at https://www.historytoday.com/archive/review/queen-james-gareth-russell-review

Jack Beesley is a PhD researcher at Manchester Metropolitan University. show less