Eleanor Of Aquitaine: By the Wrath of God, Queen of England

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When their sons grew to maturity and Henry would not delegate power to them in the territories he had assigned them, they grew angry and resentful, and Eleanor – like Matilda of Flanders in a similar situation - took their part. In 1981 I put forward an idea for a biography of the Princess of Wales but it was considered too short to be a commercial venture, and that people would lose interest in her! The author's well written pages - as in her previous books- lead easily to a rich, deep and accessible understanding of the topic. She visited the cottages of the wretched villagers, comforting them in their grief at being deprived of the sacraments of the Church, and listening with feeling to their accounts of the miseries they had endured. Reared at the convent of Argenteuil, and educated to a standard not normally permitted to girls, even those of noble birth, she was sent, at the age of seventeen, to Paris, to live in the house of her uncle, who was to find her a husband of standing and enrich himself in the process.

At his insistence, and contrary to her own desire, Heloise too entered religion, as a nun at Argenteuil. LOUIS confides in him about the quarrel, and THIERRY persuades him to take a firm line with ELEANOR. Eleanor, having learned these virtues the hard way, emerged from confinement at the age of 67 and ruled England wisely and well. In the interests of France and the succession, the POPE is resolved to bring about a reconciliation.It was said that she was still ‘indefatigable in every undertaking, although advanced in years; her power was the admiration of her age’. So powerful were these legends that it was not until the 19th century that historians thought to question them. Original sources rarely reveal much about people's inner feelings or their sex lives - plenty of room for invention there!

He was there in 1621 when Richard Corbet, the poet Dean of Christ Church, dried up in full flow during an unscripted sermon in the royal chapel. Reading medieval and modern texts on the queen with finesse and respect, Sullivan takes us into the mentality of their authors, whose interests, sensibilities, and values are at once so close to and yet so far from ours. LOUIS rises, moves to the centre front of the stage and kneels facing the audience in a state of religious ecstasy as the other knights go up one by one to BERNARD, who gives them the Cross too. Not only is this deeply disappointing to the kind of people who are interested in history and know a great deal about it, it also misinforms people who but take film and television as gospel truth.

During the first half of Richard’s ten-year reign – for much of which he was abroad - Eleanor was, after him, the chief power in the realm. The tradition linking Rosamund with Everswell is an early one: less than a century after her death, references were being made to `Rosamund`s Chamber`, which by then had become `unroofed by the wind`. It has been suggested that there was a deliberate attempt to recreate, in the pools, cloisters and orchards, the setting of the medieval romance of Tristan and Isolde. Denied for so long the exercise of power, for which she clearly had a natural aptitude, and relegated to a traditional female role which must have been stifling for one of her ability and intelligence, she finally tasted power at an age at which most of her contemporaries were either infirm or dead. When you finish the book you feel you have been put painlessly (but not necessarily without tears) in possession of the facts about this extraordinary, indefatigable woman.

A: Alison Weir's Eleanor of Aquitaine, a bottle of Champagne that refilled itself and my little rehomed papillon, Rene. She is clearly a very frustrated woman, and the row that takes place in this scene, reveals much about the couple's sex life, or lack of it, and the effect on Eleanor. One night in September 1238, a madman, having demanded that the King cede the realm to him and been effectively shown the door, climbed through the window of Henry III`s chamber and hid under the bed, clutching a knife.I have been married to Rankin for twenty-seven years, and have two children, John, aged 17, and Kate, 15.

She personally transacted the business of court and chancery, using her own seal on official documents. She was highly sexed, and had a number of scandalous love affairs, including incestuous ones, while she was married to Louis, who was too monk-like to satisfy her.

Instead, he starts talking about making reparation for the massacre by going on a crusade to free the Holy Land from the Turks, At this, ELEANOR brightens. His son, Henry III, spent lavishly on enlarging the palace and Everswell, which would be renamed `Rosamund`s Well` in the sixteenth century.