She-Wolves: The Women Who Ruled England Before Elizabeth

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Faber & Faber, 2010 M10 7 - 763 pages

In medieval England, man was the ruler of woman, and the King was the ruler of all. How, then, could royal power lie in female hands?
In She-Wolves, celebrated historian, Helen Castor, tells the dramatic and fascinating stories of four exceptional women who, while never reigning queens, held great power: Matilda, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Isabella of France and Margaret of Anjou. These were women who paved the way for Jane Grey, Mary Tudor and Elizabeth I - the Tudor queens who finally confronted what it meant to be a female monarch.

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About the author (2010)

Helen Castor is a medieval historian and a Bye-Fellow of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. Her book, Blood & Roses, a biography of the fifteenth-century Paston family, was longlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize in 2005 and won the English Association's Beatrice White Prize in 2006. Her second, She-Wolves, was made into a major BBC TV series. Joan of Arc: A History is her latest published book. She lives in London with her husband and son.

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