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The elder daughter of Henry VIII, Mary I (1553-58) became England´s ruler on the unexpected death of her brother Edward VI. Her short reign is one of the great potential turning points in the country´s history. As a convinced Catholic and the wife of Philip II, king of Spain and the most powerful of all European monarchs, Mary could have completely changed her country´s orbit, making it a province of the Habsburg Empire and obedient again to Rome.

These extraordinary possibilities are fully dramatized in John Edward´s superb short biography. The real Mary I has almost disappeared under the great mass of Protestant propaganda that buried her reputation during her younger sister, Elizabeth I´s reign. But what if she had succeeded?

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Edwards, John
John Edwards is Modern Languages Faculty Research Fellow in Spanish at the University of Oxford. His books include The Spanish Inquisition, Ferdinand and Isabella and Mary I: England´s Catholic Queen. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and Correspondiente de la Real Academia de la Historia (Madrid).

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