Blog Tour for The Art of Royal Poison by Eleanor Herman.

Welcome to my review for the blog tour of The Art of Royal Poison by Eleanor Herman, published by the wonderful St Martin's Press.

Eleanor Herman

A Devious and Arcane Art

As the French King Henry IV went to receive Holy Communion, his dog suddenly started barking loudly.  The wise King immediately thought that something was wrong and decided not to drink from the Chalice.  He was right!   An evil Cardinal had hoped to poison him.

Others were neither so wise nor so lucky.  Eleanor Herman tells many stories of Royals who were probably poisoned, such as the beautiful Agnes Sorrel, mistress of  Henry VI , who was found to have died after suffering from a huge amount of mercury and  the charming sister of Charles II who was thought to have been poisoned by her husband. Some even poisoned themselves accidentally like Charles 11 who played with his dangerous alchemy experiments in his laboratory too many times, or some of the women who actually wore cosmetics filled with lead and arsenic.. 

This fascinating, well-researched and well-written book will take away any fanciful ideas of travelling back in time, even as a royal! Life really was ‘nasty, brutish and short,’ no matter how glamorous it looks in movies about royalty. If you were not in danger of being poisoned by mercury, arsenic, or another nasty substance, you could die from a terrible disease often caused by the filthy living conditions of the era, such as cholera and typhoid. Until relatively late in the nineteenth century, cholera was believed to have been caused by germs in the air.

I enjoyed much of this book, but I found some of it difficult to read because it was either too gruesome and creepy or the story of the dirt was too revolting! I hope to read more books by Eleanor Herman.

I received this free ebook from Net Galley in return for an honest review.

Eleanor Herman

EDITION    Other

Format        ISBN9781250140869

PRICE         $27.99 (USD)