Tudor History

There is untold history of Tudor England - the history of the several million subjects of their famous kings and queens. What did ordinary people do all day, in their homes, their work, their leisure and travel? An Accidental History of Tudor England explores the history of everyday life, and everyday death.

History has lied. Anne Boleyn has been sold to us as a dark figure, a scheming seductress who bewitched Henry VIII into divorcing his queen and his church in an unprecedented display of passion. Quite the tragic love story, right? Wrong. In this electrifying exposé, Hayley Nolan explores for the first time the full, uncensored evidence of Anne Boleyn’s life and relationship with Henry VIII, revealing the shocking suppression of a powerful woman.

Elizabeth Tudor, daughter of the ill-fated Queen Anne Boleyn and temperamental King Henry VIII, was never meant to rule the country. Yet, when her time came, she didn’t stumble under the weight of the English crown. Elizabeth was perhaps the most intelligent, forward-thinking monarch who ever sat on the throne before or since. Her reign is responsible for the strength of the Royal Navy, the cultivation of fine arts, the long-term stability and safety of her nation from foreign attacks, and the first steps toward international colonization.

The volatile years of England's Tudor dynasty (1485–1603) and the five monarchs who ruled England during this period continue to fascinate and intrigue. Thanks to the paintings of artists like Hans Holbein, we have very definitive ideas about the appearance and personalities of Henry VII, Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I and her successor Elizabeth I. It is through their eyes of artists that we still see the dynasty which ruled England for just over a century.

Drawing on the records of national and regional archives as well as archaeological remains, James Clark explores the little-known lives of the last men and women who lived in England's monasteries before the Reformation. Clark challenges received wisdom, showing that buildings were not immediately demolished and Henry VIII's subjects were so attached to the religious houses that they kept fixtures and fittings as souvenirs. This rich, vivid history brings back into focus the prominent place of abbeys, priories, and friaries in the lives of the English people.

Like its popular and acclaimed predecessors, Restoration London and Dr Johnson's London, this fascinating evocation of Elizabethan London is the result of the author's passionate interest in the practical details of everyday life and the conditions in which most people lived, which most history books ignore: the streets, houses and gardens; cooking, housework and shopping; clothes, jewellery and make-up; medicine and sex; education, etiquette and hobbies; religion, law and crime.

A young pretender raises an army to take the throne. Learning of his father’s death, the adolescent, dashing and charismatic and descended from the old kings of the North, vows to avenge him. He is supported in this war by his mother, who has spirited away her two younger sons to safety. Against them is the queen, passionate, proud, and strong-willed and with more of the masculine virtues of the time than most men. She too is battling for the inheritance of her young son, not yet fully grown but already a sadist who takes delight in watching executions.

After eight months as a maid of court, Catherine Howard has become Queen. Separated from past friends and surrounded by people who resent her rise to the throne, the sole close companion she has left is Jane Boleyn, the infamous Lady Rochford. And this is not the only strain upon Catherine. People from her past come calling, the threat that the King may find out she is not the pure, innocent maiden he thinks she is puts her in peril. Catherine must imitate the Queens of the past in order to survive.

Hans Holbein the Younger is chiefly celebrated for his beautiful and precisely realized portraiture, which includes representations of Henry VIII, his advisors Thomas More and Thomas Cromwell, his wives Jane Seymour and Anne of Cleves, and an array of the Tudor lords and ladies encountered during the course of two sojourns in England. But beyond these familiar images, which have come to define our perception of the age, Holbein was a multifaceted genius: a humanist, satirist, and political propagandist, and a deft man whose work was rich in layers of symbolism and allusion.

In lively, absorbing prose that rivals the finest literary fiction, prize-winning historian Carolly Erickson recreates the life of the notorious Tudor king, Henry VIII. In his youth as a charming national hero, his reign as a monstrous king, and his final days as a tottering old man, Erickson draws a thoroughly convincing portrait of one of English history’s most notorious characters.

The Sudkan Trilogy - a story of destiny,love and duty set in the Middle Ages of Utopia's history. Book Two – Blood Brothers For her services to him, Iohn has made Margarita his secret blood friend, and in public, the official Sudkan Ambassador. To further preserve her reputation, Iohn marries Margarita and at first all is well. But the arrival of Consort Cely changes everything and after a terrible row, Iohn sends Margarita into exile at Castle Roc until she is willing to give a public apology. Determined not to show her distress and to survive the privation of Castle Roc, Margarita ...

A fresh look at the endlessly fascinating Tudors - the dramatic and overlooked story of Henry VII and his founding of the Tudor Dynasty - filled with spies, plots, counter-plots, and an uneasy royal succession to Henry VIII. Near the turn of the sixteenth century, England had been ravaged for decades by conspiracy and civil war. Henry Tudor clambered to the top of the heap, a fugitive with a flimsy claim to England’s crown who managed to win the throne and stay on it for 24 years.

1399: England’s crown is under threat. King Richard II holds on to his power by an ever-weakening thread, with exiled Henry of Lancaster back to reclaim his place on the throne. For Elizabeth Mortimer, there is only one rightful King - her eight-year-old nephew, Edmund. Only he can guarantee her fortunes and protect her family’s rule over the precious northern lands bordering Scotland.

Some of the greatest heroes and villains in British history were thrown together in these turbulent times: Henry V, whose victory at Agincourt and prudent rule at home marked the high point of the medieval monarchy; Edward IV, who was handed his crown by the scheming soldier Warwick the Kingmaker, before their alliance collapsed into a fight to the death; and the last Plantagenet, Richard III, who stole the throne and murdered his own nephews, the Princes in the Tower.

1399: Constance of York, Lady Despenser, proves herself more than a mere observer in the devious intrigues of her magnificently dysfunctional family, the House of York. Surrounded by power-hungry men, including her aggressively self-centred husband, Thomas, and ruthless siblings, Edward and Richard, Constance places herself at the heart of two treasonous plots against King Henry IV. Will it be possible for this Plantagenet family to safeguard its own political power by restoring either King Richard II to the throne, or the precarious Mortimer claimant?

In 1987, when Hilary Mantel was first published in the London Review of Books, she wrote to the editor, Karl Miller, ‘I have no critical training whatsoever, so I am forced to be more brisk and breezy than scholarly.’ This collection of 20 reviews, essays and pieces of memoir from the next three decades tells the story of what happened next.

1521. Young Mary Boleyn arrives at court, maid in waiting and favourite to Queen Katherine of Aragon. Yet Mary catches the eye of the capricious king and – propelled by the ambitions of the powerful Boleyn family – she betrays her queen, and takes her place as Henry VIII’s new mistress. But while Mary is in childbed, a rival comes to court – her sister Anne, a young woman ruthless in her drive to become queen. With her own destiny unknown, and the Boleyn enemies gathering, Mary must defy her family – and command her own fate.

For almost two decades before her execution at Fotheringhay Castle in 1587, Mary, Queen of Scots was a prisoner. From her chambers, she wrote countless letters, many encrypted using complex ciphers to prevent her communications from being intercepted. In this way, she used language to exert her will and her influence, even while incarcerated. More than four hundred years after Mary's death, the discovery of further encoded letters has led to renewed interest in the breadth of her correspondence while in captivity.

North Korea is one of the most troubled societies on earth. The country's 24 million people live under a violent dictatorship led by a single family, which relentlessly pursues the development of nuclear arms, which periodically incites risky military clashes with the larger, richer, liberal South, and which forces each and every person to play a role in the "theater state" even as it pays little more than lip service to the wellbeing of the overwhelming majority.

When Robert Catesby, the charismatic son of a Catholic gentleman, marries heiress Catherine Leigh and inherits the rich Oxfordshire manor house at Aston from his grandmother, it seems that the future happiness of the couple must be assured. However, Robert’s deep involvement in plots to overthrow the Protestant queen Elizabeth I and his increasingly dangerous behavior threaten the lives of his wife and their young son.