Lady Jane Grey and Her Times

She was sixteen years old when she was crowned Queen of England, and nine days later she was a prisoner in the Tower. Lady Jane Grey, great-granddaughter of Henry VII, fluent in Greek and Latin, a fervent Protestant in an England sliding toward Catholic restoration, never wanted the crown. But when her cousin Edward VI lay dying, the Protestant faction saw in Jane the perfect pawn: learned, legitimate, and malleable. Her ascension was their last gamble against the return of Catholic Mary Tudor. It failed. Jane's brief reign ended in blood, but her conviction never did. Ida Ashworth Taylor reconstructs the life of the Nine Day Queen with rigor and empathy, tracing Jane from her brilliant childhood in the Grey household to her tragic end on the scaffold. This is not merely a tale of political intrigue, it is the portrait of a young woman whose intellect and faith made her dangerous in an age that had no place for either in a queen.