Helen Mirren Wins 2 Best Actress Golden Globes 2007

The amazing Helen Mirren won two Golden Globe awards at the 64th Awards ceremony held January 15, 2007.  She won the award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture - Drama for her portrayal of Queen Elizabeth II in The Queen.  

She won another award for Best Performance for an Actress in a Miniseries or Television Film for her portrayal of Queen Elizabeth I in Elizabeth I on HBO.  She was nominated for the same award for her work as Detective Superintendent Jane Tennison in Prime Suspect: The Final Act.

Helen Mirren wins Golden Globe for Best Actress for Elizabeth I

Helen Mirren wins 3rd Primetime Emmy Awards 2006

Dame Helen Mirren won her third Primetime Emmy at the 58th ceremony held August 27, 2006. She took home the award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or Movie for her performance in Elizabeth I, a miniseries aired on HBO. It was her ninth nomination.

Gillian Anderson was also nominated for the same award for her performance in Bleak House.

Megan Mullaly won Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series for her performance in Will & Grace.

Jeremy Irons won Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Miniseries or Movie for Elizabeth I.

The wonderful Cloris Leachman won Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series for her appearance in Malcolm in the Middle.

Sir Francis Bacon born 1561

Sir Francis Bacon, born January 22, 1561, developed the scientific method, scientific knowledge based on inductive reasoning and observation of events in nature.  Scientists could achieve knowledge by use of a sceptical, methodical approach so not to mislead themselves.

He served as Queen Elizabeth I's legal advisor.  James VI knighted him in 1603 and made him Baron Verulam in 1618.  Bacon became the first Viscount St. Alban in 1621.

He passed away in 1626 of pneumonia. 

Happy birthday, Dame Judi Dench!

One of my most favorite actresses, Dame Judi Dench, was born December 9, 1934 in York. She was appointed an Officer of the British Empire in 1970, and a Dame Commander of the OBE in 1988.

She's been nominated for an Academy Award seven times and won Best Actress in a Supporting Role in 1999 for her portrayal of Queen Elizabeth I in Shakespeare in Love.  She's been nominated for a Golden Globe 11 times and won twice, once in 1998 for her portrayal of Queen Victoria in Mrs. Brown.

I remember her joking about winning the Academy Award for being on screen for only 6 minutes, but I remember her performance in the movie.  If she had been given any more time, they would have had to rename the movie Elizabeth, but there was already a film out at the same time with the same name.

Book review - "The Siren Queen" by Fiona Buckley

After the events of The Fugitive Queen, Ursula Blanchard de la Roche Stannard is still caught up in the conspiracies to put Mary Stuart on the throne of Scotland and eventually that of England as well. In The Siren Queen, Ursula and her current husband are contacted by the duke of Norfolk, wanting to betroth a young man in his employee to Ursula’s daughter Meg, who is not yet fourteen.  Ursula and Hugh decide to see what the duke has to offer. 

Ursula immediately dislikes the young man and plans to depart, but a messenger of the duke is stabbed as he is trying to deliver documents to the north.  Then another young man, a servant, is brutally murdered and hung up on a meat hook.  Like it nor not, Ursula is urged by Elizabeth’s Secretary of State Cecil Williams to find out why the men were killed.  She uncovers coded messages being passed between Norfolk and the conspirators with Mary. 

Thrown into this mix is Ursula’s woman Gladys, who, despite Ursula’s efforts to keep her clean and groomed, still manages to get accused of witchcraft.  Meg, being the sulky teenager, is in love with Edward Dean, the man Norfolk wants to betroth her to. 

As usual, Ursula engages in a lot of spying, eavesdropping and intercepting encoded messages to help Cecil get back in Elizabeth’s good graces.  She even has to speak to the Earl of Leicester, Robert Dudley, one of the queen’s favorites.

The ending is a little predictable but it does have some exciting moments.  It isn’t on the level as The Fugitive Queen as intrigue, but The Siren Queen does have more of the whodunit element.

Book review - "The Fugitive Queen" by Fiona Buckley

I found The Fugitive Queen by Fiona Buckley (pen name for Valerie Anand) to be one of her better novels.  This is her seventh in the series featuring Elizabethan sleuth Ursula Faldene Blanchard de la Roche Stannard.  She’s on her third husband and only in her early 30’s. 

In this story, the queen in the title refers to Mary, Queen of Scots, who has made it to England, making her cousin Elizabeth I very uneasy.  Ursula is “asked” by Queen Elizabeth to make a journey to Tyesdale, a parcel of land owned by Robert Dudley.  He is giving it go Ursula’s ward Penelope Mason as a dowry so she can attract a good husband.  Pen is not a looker by any means so finding a male suitor isn’t going to be easy. 

Ursula isn’t fooled since she is aware that the manor is close to Bolton, where Mary is housed.    She is instructed to give a private message to Mary from Elizabeth, but the queen’s man Cecil also wants her to find out if Mary had anything to do with the murder of her husband, Lord Darnley.  As in earlier novels, she knows she’s being tricked once again and has no choice to obey her queen.

This book reads more like an action novel rather than a mystery but it is a refreshing read.  There is plenty of intrigue to go around.  There are plots of treason, kidnapping, and revenge.  Imagine a spy story set in Elizabethan times. 

I’m not aware of the circumstances behind Mary’s bid to overthrow her cousin and assume the throne of England, as well as France and Scotland.  The Fugitive Queen is a work of fiction but seems as though it could be fact and it is fun and gives you a taste of life in late 1500’s England.

To Ruin a Queen by Fiona Buckley

Fiona Buckley continues her excellent Elizabethan series featuring Lady Ursula Faldene Blanchard La Roche in To Ruin a Queen. Buckley advances Ursula’s life, marriage to Matthew La Roche and her daughter Meg, but it seems that Elizabeth I cannot do anything without tricking Ursula into investigating threats to her throne. She knows that Queen Elizabeth is cunning and devious but still finds herself brought into a pit of treachery and treason.

After she loses a son in childbirth in France, she longs to have her daughter Meg, still in England, back with her. Ursula sends her loyal servants, Dale and Brockley to fetch her, but they return empty-handed. Meg is missing.

Ursula immediately departs for England, suspecting that Elizabeth is somehow behind her daughter’s mysterious disappearance. She doesn’t have to wait long. When she arrives at the manor where Meg was staying, Elizabeth and Cecil are waiting.

The queen tells her where Meg is, but there is a mystery at Castle Vetch as well. Elizabeth knows Ursula can’t resist unraveling a complicated knot of conspiracy and intrigue, but to sweeten the pot, she promises to return lands confiscated from Matthew. Ursula promises the queen two weeks, then she will return to France with Meg.

The Castle Vetch is occupied by the innately ambitious Mortimers. The mother of the lord in residence is convinced her son is plotting something against the crown, since he keeps hinting at it. She has no idea what it is.

Ursula is charged with finding out if there is anything to Mortimer’s boasts. When she arrives, she finds Meg in good condition so she sets out to uncover the secrets of Mortimer.

She finds out there is a lot more going on than plots against Elizabeth: an aging woman desperate to cling to her youth, an old crone accused of being a witch, a lovesick girl promised to an older man and two manservants fiercely loyal to their lady.

It seems to me that Buckely inserts more Tudorian history into this story than before with references to Anne Boleyn and her purported lover Mark Smeaton. She also gives a clearer insight as to what Elizabeth’s thoughts on love, marriage and family might have been since the queen remained unmarried throughout her reign. How would she have regarded someone’s sense of family through love and devotion, something she may not have experience personally since her father beheaded her mother on baseless rumors. This paints a plausible picture of a grand woman often portrayed as cold, tough and ruthless. It’s good to see the woman underneath the crown, and not just the queen.

To Ruin a Queen raises the bar on Elizabethan mysteries, although the whodunit was a tad predictable. However, Buckely does leave the reader with a tantalizing and surprising taste of the supernatural at the end.

The Queene's Cure by Karen Harper

The fourth book in Karen Harper’s excellent series involving sleuth Queen Elizabeth I is the best so far and easily the most exciting. The Queene’s Cure has a fast-paced climax against the backdrop of the horrors of the pox in Elizabethan London. What also makes this novel frightening is the brief glimpse into the medical profession in the mid-sixteenth century. Harper mentions in her Author’s Notes that medicine during this era was frequently shocking. With some of the cures mentioned in The Queene’s Cure, it’s a wonder more patients didn’t die from the medicine rather than the disease. Did no one ever question the source of ground unicorn’s horn?

But people, including Elizabeth, were so scared to death of the pox and the plague that they were willing to try anything. Not as lethal as the plague, the pox left its survivors horribly scarred for life.

In The Queene’s Cure, someone leaves a very life-like effigy of Elizabeth in her coach during a visit to the London Royal College of Physicians. The face of the effigy has been scored to imitate pox scars. She sets her Private Privy Council to investigating who put it in her coach and how.

Her Private Privy Council without Meg Milligrew. Her former apothecary Sarah Wilton alias Meg Milligrew has been banished from court for borrowing one of Elizabeth’s gowns without permission and impersonating her Majesty, even forging her signature.

Sarah runs an apothecary with her brutish and often violent husband Ben. She longs to be back in good graces with her Queen and in her court. Until then she must hang out on the fringes of the crowd and in alleyways when Elizabeth appears in public.

The Private Privy Council is finding the investigation frustrating. Then a body of a young woman is found in a fountain in the royal courtyard. She’s first thought to be a pox victim but when the nature of her death is revealed, the mystery takes a very dark turn.

Then Elizabeth nearly dies of the pox. She recovers but soon realizes that her infection was not an act of God. She’s stunned at the measures her enemies will go to remove her from the throne. In pursuing the conspirators, the queen and friends are caught in a rather too-convenient trap.

Harper turns up the action and suspense as Elizabeth nearly meets the same fate as the girl in the fountain. The author also bridges the seemingly impossible gap between amateur sleuth and queen of the realm with no problem. One would think that a monarch of her standing would not be involved in such adventures. However, Harper spins stories that show Elizabeth consistent with everything else that has been written about her. The conundrums and mysteries that face her are those that directly affect her and the ones closest to her, like her life-long companion Kat Ashley, her advisor Lord Cecil, her fool Ned Topside and the mute Gil. Therefore, Elizabeth has a personal and vested interest in solving murders.

The first three novels were exciting but Harper bumps up the action and suspense in The Queene’s Cure. I hope the trend continues.

Face Down Among the Winchester Geese by Kathy Lynn Emerson

Having met the lovely Ms. Emerson at Bouchercon 2008 in Baltimore, I deem it doubtful that she has first-hand knowledge of brothels in London during the reign of Elizabeth I. But after reading Face Down Among the Winchester Geese, I began to wonder. Kathy Lynn has brought the Elizabethan era alive in her previous novels featuring sleuth Lady Susanna Appleton with beautiful imagery and vivid descriptions. However, she outdoes herself in the third novel of the series. She describes the areas surrounding the brothels, their workings and their décor so vibrantly one would suspect she was there. Fortunately, this is obviously not the case.

‘Winchester geese’ is, according to Ms. Emerson, a reference to a prostitute or a woman who is considered to be one. When Susanna’s husband, Lord Robert is implicated in a murder of such a person, she begins to investigate. Not necessarily to clear her husband’s name but to find the truth so justice may be done. Her sleuthing takes her to the seedy side of the city where brothels reside. To her dismay, she finds out that a woman has been killed every St. Mark’s Day for several years and her husband and his friends haven’t been far from the body. Another disturbing fact that she discovers is that all the women had similar features.

Susanna grills her husband and his friends. Lord Robert gives her the identity of the assassin but Susanna is not convinced, finding his revelation too convenient for her satisfaction.

She forms an unlikely alliance with the madam of the brothel where the latest victim was found. The dead woman visited Susanna shortly before her death looking for Lord Robert. The madam is also a young woman who bears a remarkable resemblance to the previous victims, making Susanna wonder if she was the intended target.

As Lady Appleton digs further into the mystery, she begins to mistrust her husband more and grows suspicious of his reason for being in London. She discovers that he has papist tendencies and is trying to restore the Old Faith, the one supported by Queen Mary. She is horrified to find out just how far he will go, including kidnapping Lady Mary Grey, sister to the ill-fated Lady Jane.

Kathy Lynn Emerson churns out an exciting page turner in this third novel. As Susanna slowly uncovers Robert’s perfidy, Emerson pours on the intrigue and thrills, while Susanna and Sir Walter Pendennis chase down Lord Appleton and his hostage. She shows a knack for writing suspense, which is unfortunately absent in the first two novels; however those works are not lacking by any means. It seems that Emerson is developing a taste for excitement and bringing her readers along.

The subterfuge and intrigue in Elizabeth’s court in the first years of her reign gives Emerson plenty of fodder for the complex plot and characters, savory and unsavory, for Winchester Geese. It’s surprising that her Lord Appleton is one of the more treasonous of these vermin. It’s also interesting that Susanna appears to be wooed by one of her husband’s friends. Motherhood, an affection companion and wifely duties have rarely concerned her, but her servant Jennet’s happy domestic existence begins to tug at Susanna’s consciousness.

There hasn’t been this much development in Emerson’s characters since their introduction into the first novel, Face Down in Marrow Bone Pie. It makes one can’t wait to read the fourth novel.

Queen's Ransom by Fiona Buckley

The third appearance of Ursula Blanchard, Lady of the Privy Chamber to Queen Elizabeth I, reads more as an action/suspense novel than a mystery/whodunit. Mistress Blanchard desperately wants to get away from the intrigue and dangers of court for a while. Queen Elizabeth, wanting to help her escape, sends her on a mission into France, a country on the verge of civil war. She gives Ursula a message to deliver to Queen Caroline, offering assistance and arbitration if war breaks out.

Ursula is accompanied by her former father-in-law, who is traveling to France to pick up his ward. Ursula has never gotten along with the father of her first husband Gerald and he has yet to forgive his son for marrying her.

The path they take through the country is meandering and takes time with back-tracking to cater to the young ward's whims. She is Helene, a sixteen-year old shrew, who claims she aspires only to be a nun. Ursula is not convinced, but she uses the girl's demands as a cover to contact her estranged second husband, Matthew de la Roche, a wanted man in England but living nearby in France. They manage to spend a few passionate hours together before the inn is set on fire. She helps Matthew escape and soon finds out that the men in her own traveling party were responsible for the arson. They were using her as bait to flush de la Roche out.

Seething with fury, she presses forward to Paris and delivers Elizabeth's message to Catherine. Before she can turn towards home, her own maid-servant is arrested and accused of plotting to poison Queen Caroline. To free Dale from the French prison and certain execution, Ursula races to Antwerp to find a treasure hidden two years earlier by her first husband. It is a large enough treasure to ransom a queen.

A merchantman with murderous Turks on his trail joined the group while on its way to Paris and now accompanies Ursula to Antwerp. With her intelligence and wit and his connections and worldliness, they outwit Turkish assassins and French mercenaries loyal to Catherine, bent on getting the treasure for themselves.

Back in the French Court, a meeting with an Englishman also carrying a message from Elizabeth to Catherine reveals just how deeply she has been betrayed by her own queen, making her decision about staying with her husband crystal clear.

In "Queen's Ransom", Ursula is not called upon to solve mysterious murders by person or persons unknown, rather to pierce the veils of secrecy, conspiracy and treachery to prevent her servant from being burned at the stake and to protect her husband from the queen's court from arresting him and taking him back to England. She finds herself surrounded by betrayal from all directions.

Fortunately, this novel is kept moving as Ursula travels to Paris, Antwerp and back to Paris, facing numerous and exciting adventures along the way. The story does not get bogged down while the reader waits for Ursula to interview suspects and search for clues. Her adventures keep up a fast pace and the result is an exciting page turner. Ursula Blanchard is the Elizabethan Renaissance equivalent of Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan.

(previously published on ezinearticles.com)