Jenny Wormald: Mary Queen of Scots: A Study in Failure' (1988)
Jenny was the doyenne of early modern Scottish History until her death in 2015, and was a Glasgow graduate - she taught in Scottish History until 1985, before moving to St Hilda's College in Oxford. She had an ability to take major topics in Scottish History - the relationship between the centre and periphery, structures of noble power, the impact of the renaissance, the life and times of James VI and Mary Queen of Scots - and see them in wholly new ways, and this biography of Mary was no different. Completely ignoring the centuries of romance and drama around Mary's personal life, Jenny set out to judge her by the standards of performance of her predecessors in the Stewart dynasty, and made no excuses for Mary's upbringing in France, her youth, or her gender in explaining why her personal rule was such a disaster. The book is a polemic tour de force, and when it was released in the US after its UK edition the subtitle was changed to 'Politics, Passion and Kingdom Lost' because the original title was felt to be too explosive! Jenny received death threats from die-hard Marian fans for the book, which is really more of an extended essay than a monograph. It is highly readable, and a great example of Jenny's trademark style - eloquent, acerbic and very witty.
