Word: isabella
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Friar Thomas and his boyhood friend Don Alvero de Rafel ride from Segovia to Seville at the summons of Ferdinand and Isabella. Each man is consulted about Columbus' projected expedition west to the Indies. Don Alvero, a knight who has fought the Moors, assures the Queen that the earth is indeed round like a ball. The King, however, turns down Columbus on the grounds that 1) the earth is flat, and 2) Columbus is a Jew. Actually, Columbus was not Jewish, but for some odd reason Fast does not bother to enlighten the King or the reader...
...Spain itself has never had a King Juan, but four Juans have ruled in the land, two each in the ancient kingdoms of Castile and Aragon. Most famous of them were Juan II of Aragon, father of King Ferdinand, and Juan II of Castile and Leon, father of Queen Isabella...
Brittle Glories. Typical is Valladolid (pop. 158,000), a grey stone city on the Castilian plateau. Known to the 8th century Arab invaders as Belad Walid (Governor's Town), it was for 450 years the court of Spain's Christian kings. Ferdinand and Isabella were married there in 1469; Columbus died there in 1506; Cervantes probably wrote the first part of Don Quixote there. But its glories were brittle, and Valladolid faded into a shabby market center and rail junction...
...JACK, by Louise Hall Tharp. Isabella Stewart Gardner, amasser of a magnificent Renaissance art collection, whose portrait was painted by Sargent and whose tea was sipped by Henry James, was in fact a most improper Bostonian-as Mrs. Tharp's sparkling biography proves...
...JACK, by Louise Hall Tharp. Isabella Stewart Gardner was one Boston dowager who sensed the possibilities of an impregnable social position: with Bernard Berenson at her elbow she shopped Europe for a great art collection and used the Back Bay as a theater in which she played roles from Persian princess to Bohemian girl. A very readable biography...