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Christina Queen of Sweden: The Restless Life of a European Eccentric
 
 
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Christina Queen of Sweden: The Restless Life of a European Eccentric (Paperback)

by Veronica Buckley (Author)
5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Paperback: 512 pages
  • Publisher: HarperPerennial (6 Jun 2005)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 1841157368
  • ISBN-13: 978-1841157368
  • Product Dimensions: 18.8 x 13 x 3.6 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 510,631 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in this category:

    #20 in  Books > Biography > Social & Health Issues > Cultural History > Scandinavian

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Product Description

Review

'A stunning debut and an absorbing page-turner. Veronica Buckley writes with immense style, vitality and great humanity. As compelling as the most riveting of novels.' Alison Weir 'Her book is much less a debut than the highly polished work of a writer who has been thinking about and loving her subject for years, and her enjoyment in the writing of Queen Christina's life is wonderfully translated into our pleasure in reading it.' Stella Tillyard, Sunday Times 'Veronica Buckley has a flair for description and relates this extraordinary life with sympathy and engaging panache.' John Adamson, Sunday Telegraph 'This is a splendidly robust and colourful account of a remarkable woman and the turbulent age in which she lived. Astonishingly, this is Veronica Buckley's first book. May she write many more.' Philip Ziegler, Daily Telegraph


The Observer

"Christina lived in the most extraordinary life in the most extraordinary times and this engaging book does her full justice." --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews

2 Reviews
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5.0 out of 5 stars (2 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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48 of 49 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Extraordinary, 27 Jun 2005
By Klaus van Amelrode "kmcva" - See all my reviews
(TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)      
is perhaps the word most suited for the book and its subject.

Queen Christina is perhaps - next to her hero father Gustav Adolf - the best known Swedish monarch. Her reign - as a child queen and as a short lived effective ruler - covers partly the time when Swedish power in Europe was at its height. The very daughter of the protestant hero king abdicating and turning into a Roman Catholic is itself a remarkable story. Her personality and her life style after the abdication were the talk of European courts and often provactive to scandalous.

This story has however been told many times. So ist is quite extraodinary that the author manage to shed new light into the personality of the Queen mainly by comparing reality with the very own view the Queen held about events and especially about her very own person. This is a remarkable achievement and very very interesting indeed to read about. So step by step a description of the Queen emerges properly not a flattering, but always an interesing one. She was a person who could not put into a box; one cannot describe her by using stereotypes. She was very special, but that includes not being very easy or in her case not even very likeable. Her very own perspective of her talents, abilities and political judgement did not correspond with the realities. I was wandering whether Sweden was indeed much better off without her as monarch...

Judge for yourself and and above all enjoy this book. It is written in a wonderful style. I would love to give more than just 5 stars as it is really difficult to write a interesting biography with a new persepctive about a personality about whom so many biographies have already been written. The author succeeded brilliantly!

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19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars a flawless biography of a flawed royal, 30 Jun 2004
This review is from: Christina Queen of Sweden: The Restless Life of a European Eccentric (Hardcover)
Reared as a boy by her charismatic, kingly father, and the subject of scandalous gossip regarding her bed-sharing with a female companion, Queen Christina cast aside her crown in favour of the easy life. Buckley's book is packed with action and humour, skilfully side-stepping much of the tortured politics that makes so many other books about Swedish history so difficult to take. But while nothing can fault Buckley's multilingual research, her honesty can backfire: Christina comes across as sad, lonely, and ultimately a trifle stupid. Nowhere is this more apparent than in her grasping attempts to hang onto power, even as she capriciously rejects responsibility. The flighty way she summons the philosopher Descartes, only to indirectly cause his death is another example of her regal self-absorption. But Buckley is not afraid to tell Christina's story warts and all, and that alone is enough to gain her five well-deserved stars.
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