Tracy Borman The Stolen Crown. Grove Atlantic will publish this new book by Tracy Borman about treachery, deceit, and the death of the Tudor dynasty, on November 4 in 2025. Here you can read information about the content of the book, the author and the publication.
Tracy Borman The Stolen Crown review
- “Pacy … makes the case that Elizabeth I played ‘a masterstroke of statecraft’ by not naming her successor … Borman tells the story with panache and urgency.” (The Times)
- “Reveals sensational new evidence which throws doubt on everything historians thought they knew about the dying days of the Tudors . . . With this bit of dynamite in her toolbox, Borman now casts an eye back over the last decades of Elizabeth’s reign. And what she discovers is far more contorted, contested and downright bloody than previously understood … her interpretation of the latest forensic scholarship on the Elizabethan end days makes this a model work of popular history.” (Daily Mail)
- “In tracing the history of the rival claimants, secret letters, and palace intrigues that marked the tumultuous end of the Tudor dynasty and start of the Stuart, Borman – thanks to newly uncovered material – lays bare the 400-year lie (zounds!) of Elizabeth I’s supposed deathbed naming of James I as her successor (“I’ll have none but him” she was purported to have declared).” (Globe and Mail)
The Stolen Crown
Treachery, Deceit, and the Death of the Tudor Dynasty
- Author: Tracy Borman (England)
- Book type: British history
- Publisher: Grove Atlantic
- To be released: November 4, 2025
- Length: 448 pages
- Format: hardback / ebook
- Prize: £ 30.00
- Order book from: Amazon / Bol
Blurb of the book by Tracy Borman the end of Tudor and launche of the Stuart Dynasty
In the long and dramatic annals of British history, no transition from one monarch to another has been as fraught and consequential as that which ended the Tudor dynasty and launched the Stuart in March 1603. At her death, Elizabeth I had reigned for 44 turbulent years, facing many threats, whether external from Spain or internal from her cousin Mary, Queen of Scots. But no danger was greater than the uncertainty over who would succeed her, which only intensified as her reign lengthened. Her unwillingness to marry or name a successor gave rise to fierce rivalry between blood claimants to the throne—Mary and her son, James VI of Scotland, Arbella Stuart, Lady Katherine Grey, Henry Hastings, and more—which threatened to destabilize the monarchy.
As acclaimed Tudor historian Tracy Borman reveals in The Stolen Crown, according to Elizabeth’s earliest biographer, William Camden, in his history of her reign, on her deathbed the queen indicated James was her chosen heir, and indeed he did become king soon after she died. That endorsement has been accepted as fact for more than four centuries. However, recent analysis of Camden’s original manuscript shows key passages were pasted over and rewritten to burnish James’ legacy. The newly-uncovered pages make clear not only that Elizabeth’s naming of James never happened, but that James, uncertain he would ever gain the British throne, was even suspected of sending an assassin to London to kill the queen. Had all this been known at the time, the English people—bitter enemies with Scotland for centuries—might well not have accepted James as their king, with unimagined ramifications.
Inspired by the revelations over Camden’s manuscript, Borman sheds rare new light on Elizabeth’s historic reign, chronicling it through the lens of the various claimants who, over decades, sought the throne of the only English monarch not to make provision for her successor. The consequences were immense. Not only did James upend Elizabeth’s glittering court, but the illegitimacy of his claim to the throne, which Camden suppressed, found full expression in the catastrophic reign of James’ son and successor, Charles I. His execution in 1649 shocked the world and destroyed the monarchy fewer than 50 years after Elizabeth died, changing the course of British and world history.
Tracy Borman was born on January 1, 1972 in Scothern, Lincolnshire, England. She is Chief Historian of Historic Royal Palaces, Chief Executive of the Heritage Education Trust, and Chancellor and Professor of Tudor History at Lincoln Bishop University. She is the author of many highly acclaimed books, including Anne Boleyn and Elizabeth I; Crown and Sceptre; Henry VIII and the Men Who Made Him; The Private Lives of the Tudors; Thomas Cromwell; Queen of the Conqueror; Elizabeth’s Women; Witches; as well as the trilogy of novels The King’s Witch, The Devil’s Slave, and The Fallen Angel. Borman is also a regular broadcaster and accomplished public speaker. She was awarded an OBE in the King’s Birthday Honours 2024 for services to heritage.
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