Eric Ives, being a highly respectable historian, offers something different amid the forest of books on England's first queen. Instead of the usual recycled guff, he goes back to basics - to contemporary sources and indisputable facts - and reassesses everything. Some of his conclusions may be arguable but you can't question the rigour with which he got there.
Why it's called a mystery I cannot fathom. If anything was done in the full light of day, so far as the record is concerned, it was the Nine Day Rule. Other than that, a superb addition to the canon which deserves to be top of the list for anyone fascinated by the Mid Tudor Crisis.
I was sorry to learn that Professor Ives died last September. He wrote the classic study of Anne Boleyn (which I already have on my to-read pile) and brought a welcome scepticism to popular Tudor history.
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