Book cover of God's Traitors: Terror and Faith in Elizabethan England

Book description

*Winner of the PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize*
*Longlisted for The Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction*
*A Sunday Times Book of the Year*
*A Daily Telegraph Book of the Year*
*A Times Book of the Year*
*An Observer Book of the Year*

A woman awakes in a prison cell.

She has been…

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Why read it?

1 author picked God's Traitors as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

This is my all-time favourite history book. It’s non-fiction, but is far from dry or academic, it grabs you from the get-go and is like a thriller, a real page-turner.

We all know about the religious persecutions of Mary I’s reign, a queen who has gone down in history as Bloody Mary, but in God’s Traitors, historian Jessie Childs explores just how dangerous it was being a Catholic in Elizabethan England.

Childs focuses on the Vaux family and their experiences of being Catholic as Elizabeth I swings from religious tolerance to viewing Catholics as the enemy.

It’s a fantastic…

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