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Title: Fanfare for Elizabeth
Author: Edith Sitwell
Narrator: Emerald O'Hanrahan
Format: Unabridged
Length: 7 hrs and 56 mins
Language: English
Release date: 05-13-13
Publisher: Audible Studios
Ratings: 5 of 5 out of 3 votes
Genres: History, European
Publisher's Summary:
Sitwell's Fanfare for Elizabeth is a striking account of love, betrayal, and religion as it unfolds in the court of King Henry VIII. Sitwell navigates elegantly through the capricious nature both of Henry's court, and his love life. The youthful hardships of little Elizabeth are played out against the backdrop of the great drama of Henry's struggles with the Pope, and his six wives. Charming in style, Fanfare for Elizabeth ends on a vignette of Elizabeth in her early teens, still oblivious to the grandeur she will ultimately inherit.
Edith Sitwell (1887-1964) was born into an aristocratic family and, along with her brothers, Osbert and Sacheverell, had a significant impact on the artistic life of the 20s. She encountered the work of the French symbolists, Rimbaud in particular, early in her writing life and became a champion of the modernist movement, editing six editions of the controversial magazine Wheels. She remained a crusading force against philistinism and conservatism throughout her life and her legacy lies as much in her unstinting support of other artists as it does in her own poetry.
Members Reviews:
Fanfare BEFORE Elizabeth
In Fanfare for Elizabeth, Ms. Sitwell gives us a striking account of love, betrayal, and religion as it unfolds in the court of King Henry VIII. She deftly navigates through Henry's court and his notorioulsy fickle love life. We hear something of Elizabeth and her youthful hardships (exiled to a summer estate, a toothache at the age of three, a dearth of nice dresses) only as asides in this grand drama of Henry and his struggles with wives and Popes.
Ms. Sitwell is an extremely talented writer, and there is no doubt that the book was well researched. Why then, was I so disappointed with it? Because the book is not about Elizabeth I, Queen of England. It's about her father.
Fanfare for Elizabeth is a lovely, lightweight account of Henry's adult life. The book is charming in it's style and comes across as rather quaint (Katherine Howard's teenage indiscretions are never directly addressed, nor are Henry's adult ones). The book ends with a vignette of Elizabeth in her early teens, still oblivious of the grandeur that awaits her. Fanfare for Elizabeth is not a bad book - it's just not what you think it should be.
Captivating style but completely unreliable
Edith Sitwell was a brilliant stylist, but an egregiously poor scholar. This book is thick with misconceptions, misinterpretations, and outright factual inaccuracies. Worse, many of the myths Sitwell dredged up (or, I suspect, invented) have been repeated by other authors overly impressed with Sitwell's research. No, Anne Boleyn did not have even a micro-sliver of a sixth finger. No, Catherine of Aragon was not murdered. Utter hogwash, both of them, and a thousand more.
Read this book for the prose, but don't believe a word she says.