Mary, Queen of Scots

In a programme first broadcast in 2017, Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history of Mary, Queen of Scots, who had potential to be one of the most powerful rulers in Europe, yet she was also one of the most vulnerable. In France, when she was the teenage bride to their future king, she was seen as rightful heir to the thrones of England and Ireland, as well as Queen of Scotland and one day of France, which would have been an extraordinary union. She was widowed too young, though and, a Catholic returning to Protestant Scotland, she struggled to overcome rivalries in her own country. She fled to Protestant England, where she was implicated in plots to overthrow Elizabeth, and it was Elizabeth herself who signed Mary’s death warrant.

→ Play on BBC Sounds website

Guests

• David Forsyth No other episodes
  Principal Curator, Scottish Medieval-Early Modern Collections at National Museums Scotland
• Anna Groundwater No other episodes
  Teaching Fellow in Historical Skills and Methods at the University of Edinburgh
• John Guy 6 episodes
  Fellow of Clare College, University of Cambridge

Reading list

• David Forsyth
  Principal Curator, Scottish Medieval-Early Modern Collections at National Museums Scotland
• Anna Groundwater
  Teaching Fellow in Historical Skills and Methods at the University of Edinburgh
• John Guy
  Fellow of Clare College, University of Cambridge
• Mary, Queen of Scots
  Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
• Mary, Queen of Scots
  Wikipedia
• The Enigma of Mary Stuart
  Ian B. Cowan (Sphere, 1972) Google Books →
• Scotland Re-formed: 1488-1587
  Jane E. A. Dawson (Edinburgh University Press, 2007) Google Books →
• All the Queen's Men: Power and Politics in Mary Stewart's Scotland
  Gordon Donaldson (Batsford Press, 1983) Google Books →
• Mary Queen of Scots: An Illustrated Life
  Susan Doran (British Library Publishing Division, 2007) Google Books →
• Mary, Queen of Scots
  Antonia Fraser (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2009) Google Books →
• My Heart is My Own: The Life of Mary Queen of Scots
  John Guy (Harper Perennial, 2004) Google Books →
• Queen of Scots
  Rosalind K. Marshall (Mercat Press, 2000) Google Books →
• Mary Queen of Scots and the Murder of Lord Darnley
  Alison Weir (Vintage, 2008) Google Books →
• Mary Queen of Scots: A Study in Failure with a new foreword and afterward by Anna Groundwater
  Jenny Wormald (Birlinn, forthcoming June 2017) Google Books →
• Mary, Queen of Scots: Politics, Passion and a Kingdom Lost
  Jenny Wormald (Tauris Parke, 2001)

Related episodes

• Margaret of Anjou
  
  24 May, 2018 940 History of Europe
• The Death of Elizabeth I
  
  15 Oct, 2009 900 History
• Marie Antoinette
  
  9 Apr, 2020 940 History of Europe
• William Cecil
  
  7 Mar, 2019 940 History of Europe
• The Jacobite Rebellion
  
  8 May, 2003 940 History of Europe
• Eleanor of Aquitaine
  
  28 Jan, 2016 940 History of Europe
• Cryptography
  
  29 Jan, 2004 650 Management and public relations
• Melisende, Queen of Jerusalem
  
  21 Nov, 2019 900 History
• Maria Theresa
  
  22 Oct, 2020 940 History of Europe
• The Davidian Revolution
  
  5 May, 2022 940 History of Europe
• Tristan and Iseult
  
  31 Dec, 2015 800 Literature, rhetoric and criticism
• The Trial of Charles I
  
  4 Jun, 2009 940 History of Europe
• The Interregnum
  
  27 May, 2021 940 History of Europe
• The Monarchy
  
  10 Jun, 1999 940 History of Europe
• The Treaty of Limerick
  
  7 Nov, 2019 940 History of Europe
• The Tudor State
  
  26 Oct, 2000 940 History of Europe
• Margery Kempe and English Mysticism
  
  2 Jun, 2016 270 History of Christianity
• Is Shakespeare History? The Plantagenets
  
  11 Oct, 2018 820 English and Old English literatures
• The Covenanters
  
  12 Mar, 2020 940 History of Europe
• The Battle of Bannockburn
  
  3 Feb, 2011 940 History of Europe

---

Programme ID: b088fs7z

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/b088fs7z

Auto-category: 940.2 (Europe - History)