My Heart Is My Own

Despite being an absolute chonker, John Guy's biography of Mary Queen of Scots never feels like a slog. This book thoroughly re-examines the original sources and presents them in such a way that humanises oor Mary, revealing her personality quirks, putting her lowland Scots accent back in her mouth, and portraying her as a canny and astute wumman that tried her best to hold her country together. There's no doubt that this is an absolutely brilliant book, I only wish Guy had trusted his readers a bit more. We don't need the same snippet of information repeated over and over again. By the time I got to the end of the book, the mere mention of ‘Andrew Ker of Fawdonside, who levelled his pistol at Mary' was absolutely cracking me up. Sorry Andrew.