My Life In Books with Red Szell

Leah Redmond Chang

Episode Summary

Join writer, broadcaster and blind adventurer Red Széll for the latest episode of AMI-audio’s My Life in Books. Each fortnight, Red invites you to join him in conversation with a renowned author about their work and the books that inspired them to write. For this episode, Red is joined by Leah Redmond Chang, a historian with a background in comparative literature and research. Her latest book, Young Queens, is a fascinating and highly insightful historical biography of three Renaissance women exercising power in a world dominated by men. It tells the dramatic and intertwined stories of Catherine de Medici (Queen of France from 1547 to 1559), Elisabeth de Valois (Queen of Spain from 1559 to 1568) and Mary Queen of Scots (Queen of Scotland from 1542 to 1567). Fusing new archival research with rich narrative prose, the book also asks profoundly modern questions about women, gender and power. Join Leah and Red as they explore what it meant to be a queen in Renaissance Europe’s real-life Game of Thrones.