Margaret Beaufort

Survivor. Rebel. Conspirator. Mother and grandmother of kings. Margaret Beaufort was one of the most remarkable and influential women of the Middle Ages.

Born the daughter of the Duke of Somerset into a century of conflict, and a descendant of Edward III, she was married at twelve; a mother, orphan and widow at thirteen; and rode the vicissitudes of the Wars of the Roses, and two further marriages, to see her only son Henry ascend the throne of England as the first monarch of the Tudor dynasty. She helped to bring about the marriage of Henry VII to Elizabeth of York, a union that helped heal the wounds of a bitterly divided nation.

During Henry’s reign, she exerted considerable influence at court, and played a part in the upbringing of her grandson, the future Henry VIII.She was a lifelong artistic patron and supporter of academia. In old age she founded a professorship of divinity and two colleges at Cambridge University. By the time of her death in June 1509, she had outlived by two months the son whose birth fifty-two years previously had so nearly killed her.

Lauren Johnson’s life of Margaret Beaufort brings its subject vividly and memorably to life. She delineates the decades of political upheaval that were the backdrop to her long and resilient career, and highlights the shrewdness that kept her afloat amid the churning waters of a brutal civil war, but she also tells Margaret’s story with a profound and touching humanity. This was a woman whose body had to endure the trauma of childbirth when she was little more than a child; who saw her baby boy on only a handful of occasions before he reached manhood; who braved decades of danger and uncertainty, but succeeded in guiding her son – through courage, political astuteness and sheer persistence – to the greatest prize of all: the crown of England.