From Publishers Weekly
The story of Mary Stuart has been told in many contexts (most recently in Elizabeth and Mary), but nowhere has she been defended more rigorously than in this new study. Guy, a fellow at Cambridge University and BBC consultant, describes Mary's formative years in France, but the heart of the book is her short reign in Scotland. Negotiations with Elizabeth Tudor over the succession in England and the shadow of Mary's final fate dominate the narrative, but while Guy effectively establishes that Elizabeth's chief minister William Cecil was Mary's true English enemy, what is most shocking is how suppliant he shows Mary to have been to Elizabeth. The most dramatic moments, however, are supplied by the Scottish nobles, who shifted alliances around her and colluded in kidnappings and assassinations. Though not the first to challenge Mary's femme fatale image, Guy does not even deign to discuss the accusation that she was romantically involved with her Italian secretary Rizzio and convincingly absolves her of involvement in the death of her second husband. He re-examines her actions and choices and offers a lively textual analysis of letters usually used as evidence against her. Yet he does not conclusively argue that she ruled from the head, and, in the end, the question of whether Mary Stuart ruled from her head or her heart appears beside the point. Guy's detailed account of the familial, political and religious machinations of the forces swirling around the queen suggests that it was not flaws in Mary's character but the entire constellation of circumstances that doomed her rule in Scotland and led to her execution. 16 pages of b&w photos. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com
History has not been kind to Mary Queen of Scots. According to contemporary accounts, she went to her death by execution at Fotheringhay Castle on Feb. 8, 1587, with enormous dignity, her calm demeanor and stately bearing worthy of the great queen she had been. Yet the stories most often repeated about that day are shockingly banal. As the executioner held up her severed head by its halo of auburn curls, the hair came away in his hand, revealing itself to be a wig, worn over her thinning grey hair. Hours after the execution, Mary's pet dog, which had managed to hide itself under the folds of her burgundy velvet petticoat, was discovered whimpering and soaked in blood, and could not be persuaded to abandon its mistress's corpse.The true story of Mary Stuart encourages sensationalism. Every incident in her eventful life seems to lend itself to the kind of presentation that dwells on salacious and lurid detail. Born in December 1542, she was crowned queen of Scotland before she was a year old, betrothed to the French dauphin at the age of 5 and his bride before she was 16. Queen of France the following year, she was a widow a year later. Spurning Elizabeth I's former lover Robert Dudley, she chose a dissolute younger man as her new husband, promising to make him king of Scotland. When she was 23, her private secretary was murdered in front of the five-months-pregnant queen, while one of the assailants held a pistol to her head. Her second husband was assassinated in spectacular fashion when the house in which he slept was blown to smithereens in a massive explosion caused by gunpowder packed into its basement. Forced to abdicate in favor of her infant son (later James I of England) in 1567, Mary was betrayed to the English and spent the last 18 years of her life in prison. At the age of 44 she was executed on the orders of her "sister" queen, Elizabeth I. A striking six-foot redhead with flawless skin, Mary was a legendary beauty. Wherever she went she turned heads, and she was the talk of Europe from the day she arrived in France, age 5, as the wife-to-be of the future French king. Gossip swirled around her. Her obstinate determination to pick her own second husband when the callow Francis II died, and her choice of the 17-year-old, pampered, good-looking Henry Lord Darnley against the express wishes of the queen of England, led to her being labeled a wayward woman with an insatiable sexual appetite. The gossip following her swift third marriage to the Earl of Bothwell after Darnley's murder proclaimed her an adulteress, complicit in that murder, and a fatal temptress. To the Scots she was a political liability, headstrong and unreliable. To the English she was a loose-living Catholic harlot, in striking contrast to their beloved Protestant virgin queen.Yet in reality Mary was the dynastic ruler of Scotland, a figure of power and political importance at a critical time of factional strife and instability in that country's history. Her decisions and actions were those of a shrewd major player on the international stage. As John Guy is at pains to point out in his new biography, Queen of Scots: The True Life of Mary Stuart, she was an astute politician and tactician. At several key moments it was she, rather than her ministers and advisers, who "shaped her own destiny" and thereby Scotland's destiny also. On her return to Scotland after the death of her first husband, for example, it was Mary herself, according to Guy, who negotiated a prudent "middle way" between Catholics and Calvinists, one designed to strengthen her position as queen in Scotland without antagonizing her English neighbors. One of those negotiating with the English on her behalf at the time wrote that she displayed "a wisdom far exceeding her age."Using a wealth of contemporary documents, Guy sifts truth from fiction, real report from fabrication and gossip, to give us a gripping yet considered narrative that combines the sleuthing skills of a private detective with the skill of the master historian at reconstructing detailed events from the past. "History is written by the winners, and after her incarceration, [Mary] was to be a spectacular loser," he writes. "When the lords wove their damning fiction, Mary's version of history was forgotten." The task he sets himself is to recover Mary's version of history. By contrast with the lurid tales that have been told about Mary ever since her death, Guy's biography is a masterpiece of moderation that steadfastly avoids the lure of her scandalous reputation. Here is a life of Mary Stuart that painstakingly assembles all the surviving documentary evidence and scrupulously assesses it, weighing the false testimony of her enemies against the whitewashing of her friends. Yet the book wears its scholarship lightly. The easy informality of its style and the accessibility of the prose make it a pure pleasure to read. It is a tribute to the depth and breadth of Guy's understanding of the period that one can predict that Queen of Scots will be the definitive biography of Mary Stuart for many years to come. Copyright 2004, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved.

From AudioFile
[Editor's Note: The following is a combined review with MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS AND THE MURDER OF LORD DARNLEY.]--In the national portrait gallery in Edinburgh, there once was a crudely painted portrait of Mary Queen of Scots. From one angle, one beheld a vision of a lovely woman; from the other the flesh peeled away and left only a grisly skeleton. That is the compelling dichotomy that has bewitched centuries of scholars and history buffs. Mary is the subject of two distinguished, but also distinctly different, recent biographies. Alison Weir attacks the central mystery of Mary's life--the murder of her husband, Lord Darnley--and sets the stage for an eventful night in Edinburgh with meticulous detail. The house where Darnley is staying is blown to bits, and his unscathed body is found nearby, apparently flung free in the blast. Davina Porter narrates masterfully, conveying the gruffness of Scots lords and the lilt of Mary's more musical and feminine voice. The intricacies of court intrigue are rendered more coherent through her characterizations, and this truly scholarly work becomes accessible to a broader audience through her skill. Weir and Porter's queen is a highly emotional and intelligent woman of intrigue. John Guy reads his compelling Queen of Scots himself, bringing his years of experience in lecture halls to this more intimate medium. His is the more complete biography, setting Mary squarely into a time that in turn sends her careening down her doomed path and into the popular imagination. Guy seems to understand his strengths as an audio performer and steers away from investing each character in the tableau with a unique voice. He delivers his captivating story in a clear, unadorned way, which neither adds to nor detracts from the spellbinding text. E.E.E. © AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

From Booklist
Few royal figures from the pages of European history continue to fascinate historian and lay reader alike as much as Mary Stuart, the ill-fated queen of Scots, who has come down to us dressed in the raiment of legend. British historian Guy delves deeply into previously little-mined archival evidence, and, aided by a felicitous style (no drifting into dry lecturing), he arrives not at a whitewash but at a restoration of Queen Mary with respect to the truth about the quality of her character and her performance as monarch. The easiest and quickest way to judge Mary Stuart has always been to compare her to her cousin and fellow queen-sovereign Elizabeth Tudor. Guy, on the other hand, takes Mary on her own terms, seeing as "stereotype" the long-perpetuated concept that Mary "ruled from her heart" while Elizabeth "ruled from the head." Mary's is a complicated story, as were Scottish politics at the time, but Guy explicates the complications--including Mary's marriages, her struggle with the Scottish lords, the murder of her second husband, and her long incarceration and eventual execution in England--with both authority and clear illumination. A major biography. Brad Hooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
"I couldn't put this book down....Never before has [Mary's story] been told with such detail, accuracy, insight and drama." --Gerard DeGroot, Scotland on Sunday

Review
"Spirited and satisfying....Guy's account has all the twists and turns of a good thriller--and plenty of horror, too."

Book Description
The eminent British historian John Guy has unearthed a wealth of evidence that upends the popular notion of Mary Queen of Scots as a femme fatale and establishes her as the intellectual and political equal of Elizabeth I. Guy draws on sources as varied as the secret communiqués of English spies and Mary"s own letters (many hitherto unstudied) to depict her world and her actions with stunning immediacy. Here is a myth-shattering reappraisal of her multifaceted character and prodigious political skill. Guy dispels the persistent popular image of Mary as a romantic leading lady, achieving her ends through feminine wiles, driven by love to murder, undone by passion and poor judgment. Through his pioneering research, we come to see her as an emotionally intricate woman and an adroit diplomat, maneuvering ingeniously among a dizzying array of powerful factions — the French, the English, duplicitous Scottish nobles, and religious zealots — who sought to control or dethrone her. Guy"s investigation of Mary"s storied downfall throws sharp new light on questions that have baffled historians for centuries, and offers convincing new evidence that she was framed for the murder for which she was beheaded. Queen of Scots, the first full-scale biography of Mary in more than thirty years, offers a singularly novel, nuanced, and dramatic portrait of one of history"s greatest women.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

The Eminent Historian John Guy has unearthed a wealth of evidence that upends the popular notion of Mary Queen of Scots as a femme fatale and establishes her as the intellectual and political equal of Elizabeth I. Guy draws on sources as varied as the secret communiques of English spies and Mary's own letters (many hitherto unstudied) to depict her world and her actions with stunning immediacy. Here is a revelatory reappraisal of her multifaceted character and prodigious political skill. Guy dispels the ingrained popular image of Mary as a romantic leading lady, achieving her ends through feminine wiles, driven by love to murder, undone by passion and bad judgment. Through his pioneering research, we come to see her as an emotionally intricate woman and an adroit diplomat, maneuvering ingeniously among a dizzying array of factions -- the French, the English, duplicitous Scottish nobles, and religious zealots -- who sought to control or dethrone her. Guy's investigation of Mary's storied downfall throws sharp new light on questions that have baffled historians for centuries, and offers convincing new evidence that she was framed for the murder for which she was beheaded.sQueen of Scots, the first full-scale biography of Mary in more than thirty years, offers a singularly novel, nuanced, and dramatic portrait of one of history's greatest women.

SYNOPSIS

Guy (history, U. of Cambridge) turns to the original documents, rather than relying on the familiar printed collections or edited abstracts that are often compiled to perpetuate a particular legend of Stuart (1842-87). He portrays her as a whole women whose choices added up and whose decisions made sense, a shrewd and charismatic young ruler who relished power and managed to hold an unstable country together for a time. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

FROM THE CRITICS

Lisa Jardine - The Washington Post

Guy's biography is a masterpiece of moderation that steadfastly avoids the lure of her scandalous reputation. Here is a life of Mary Stuart that painstakingly assembles all the surviving documentary evidence and scrupulously assesses it, weighing the false testimony of her enemies against the whitewashing of her friends.

The New York Times

Guy's scholarly biography, as enthralling as a detective story, provides a wider vision of Tudor history and shows with stunning clarity how the historical narrative was shaped. It shifts the focus from the murderous nobles to the web of deceit woven by Cecil and Walsingham, a web that not only trapped this ''ill-fated queen'' but also formed the basis for all future accounts. She said her heart was her own; but her story has never been. — Gerard Kilroy

Publishers Weekly

The story of Mary Stuart has been told in many contexts (most recently in Elizabeth and Mary, Forecasts, Dec. 8, 2003), but nowhere has she been defended more rigorously than in this new study. Guy, a fellow at Cambridge University and BBC consultant, describes Mary's formative years in France, but the heart of the book is her short reign in Scotland. Negotiations with Elizabeth Tudor over the succession in England and the shadow of Mary's final fate dominate the narrative, but while Guy effectively establishes that Elizabeth's chief minister William Cecil was Mary's true English enemy, what is most shocking is how suppliant he shows Mary to have been to Elizabeth. The most dramatic moments, however, are supplied by the Scottish nobles, who shifted alliances around her and colluded in kidnappings and assassinations. Though not the first to challenge Mary's femme fatale image, Guy does not even deign to discuss the accusation that she was romantically involved with her Italian secretary Rizzio and convincingly absolves her of involvement in the death of her second husband. He re-examines her actions and choices and offers a lively textual analysis of letters usually used as evidence against her. Yet he does not conclusively argue that she ruled from the head, and, in the end, the question of whether Mary Stuart ruled from her head or her heart appears beside the point. Guy's detailed account of the familial, political and religious machinations of the forces swirling around the queen suggests that it was not flaws in Mary's character but the entire constellation of circumstances that doomed her rule in Scotland and led to her execution. 16 pages of b&w photos. (Apr. 14) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

A revisionist biography of Mary Queen of Scots, long considered too passionate for her own good. From a Cambridge history fellow. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews