Embroidering Her Truth: Clare Hunter on Mary Queen of Scots

Tickets £5-£12.99

This is a live, in-person event.

Location: Christ Church Centre, 6A Morningside Road, EH10 4DD

Clare Hunter joins us to chat about her latest book, Embroidering Her Truth: Mary Queen of Scots and the language of power.

About the Book:

In this eloquent cultural biography, Clare Hunter exquisitely blends history, politics and memoir to tell the story of a queen in her own voice.

I felt that Mary was there, pulling at my sleeve, willing me to appreciate the artistry, wanting me to understand the dazzle of the material world that shaped her. 

In sixteenth-century Europe women’s voices were suppressed and silenced. Even for a queen like Mary Stuart, her prime duty was to bear sons. In an age when textiles expressed power, Mary exploited them to emphasise her female agency. From her lavishly embroidered gowns as the prospective wife of the French Dauphin to the fashion dolls she used to encourage a Marian style at the Scottish court and the subversive messages she embroidered in captivity for her supporters, Mary used textiles to advance her political agenda, affirm her royal lineage and tell her own story.  

"In this charmed feat of imagination and learning, the beauties and disasters of Mary Stuart's life unfold again... with the flavour of a memoir, but dense with fascinating information that the less inspired might miss. Clare Hunter is at ease in this glittering, alien world." Hilary Mantel (January 2022)

About the Author:

Clare Hunter has been a banner-maker, community textile artist and textile curator for over twenty years and established the community enterprise NeedleWorks in Glasgow. Her first book, Threads of Life, won the Saltire First Book Award, was a Waterstones Scottish Book of the Month and a Radio 4 Book of the Week.