Here are 100 books that Terrifying Tudors fans have personally recommended if you like
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I’ve studied and written about the Tudors for many years including a monthly article in Tudor Life magazine, plus I’ve written several successful books looking at the lives of ordinary people in history and now, my first full scale look at the Tudors. The Tudor period is one of the best known in our history and is dominated by so many well-known and fascinating characters but my interest rests with the ordinary folk and how their lives changed so fundamentally in this time. The dissolution of the monasteries changed everyday life for many and marked the end of the medieval period and the beginning of a more enlightened time.
This is a guide to being a Tudor, everything from getting up in the morning to going to bed at night. Ruth Goodman gives us all the details of everyday life.
History very often concentrates on the lives of the rich and famous, the kings and queens, but it's the life of the ordinary person that always interests me. And this book fully illuminates that.
Known to many as a TV presenter, Ruth writes in an easily readable style.
On the heels of her triumphant How to Be a Victorian, Ruth Goodman travels even further back in English history to the era closest to her heart, the dramatic period from the crowning of Henry VII to the death of Elizabeth I. A celebrated master of British social and domestic history, Ruth Goodman draws on her own adventures living in re-created Tudor conditions to serve as our intrepid guide to sixteenth-century living. Proceeding from daybreak to bedtime, this "immersive, engrossing" (Slate) work pays tribute to the lives of those who labored through the era. From using soot from candle wax…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
I’ve studied and written about the Tudors for many years including a monthly article in Tudor Life magazine, plus I’ve written several successful books looking at the lives of ordinary people in history and now, my first full scale look at the Tudors. The Tudor period is one of the best known in our history and is dominated by so many well-known and fascinating characters but my interest rests with the ordinary folk and how their lives changed so fundamentally in this time. The dissolution of the monasteries changed everyday life for many and marked the end of the medieval period and the beginning of a more enlightened time.
Ian Mortimer gives us a fascinating insight into Elizabethan life, and I think this edition of his Time-Traveller’s Guide is as entertaining and informative as the others in the series.
I really enjoyed the details of everyday life, such as what would be in the kitchen or larder, although sometimes the lists were a little long. I enjoy the format of this type of book being written as a travel guide, it is educational as well as easy to read.
'A fresh and funny book that wears its learning lightly' Independent
Discover the era of William Shakespeare and Elizabeth I through the sharp, informative and hilarious eyes of Ian Mortimer.
We think of Queen Elizabeth I's reign (1558-1603) as a golden age. But what was it actually like to live in Elizabethan England? If you could travel to the past and walk the streets of London in the 1590s, where would you stay? What would you eat? What would you wear? Would you really have a sense of it being a glorious age? And if so, how would that glory…
I’ve studied and written about the Tudors for many years including a monthly article in Tudor Life magazine, plus I’ve written several successful books looking at the lives of ordinary people in history and now, my first full scale look at the Tudors. The Tudor period is one of the best known in our history and is dominated by so many well-known and fascinating characters but my interest rests with the ordinary folk and how their lives changed so fundamentally in this time. The dissolution of the monasteries changed everyday life for many and marked the end of the medieval period and the beginning of a more enlightened time.
I enjoyed this study of all the many places of interest with a Tudor connection, from sumptuous palaces to the new theatres, and from forbidding castles to ruined abbeys.
Professor Lipscomb takes us on a journey revealing some hidden treasures and details of fascinating characters that won’t be known to everyone.
Join historian Suzannah Lipscomb as she reveals the hidden secrets of palaces, castles, theatres and abbeys to uncover the stories of Tudor England. From the famous palace at Hampton Court where dangerous court intrigue was rife, to less well-known houses, such as Anne Boleyn's childhood home at Hever Castle or Tutbury Castle where Mary Queen of Scots was imprisoned, follow in the footsteps of the Tudors in the places that they knew.
In the corridors of power and the courtyards of country houses we meet the passionate but tragic Kateryn Parr, Henry VIII's last wife, Lady Jane Grey the nine-day…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
I’ve studied and written about the Tudors for many years including a monthly article in Tudor Life magazine, plus I’ve written several successful books looking at the lives of ordinary people in history and now, my first full scale look at the Tudors. The Tudor period is one of the best known in our history and is dominated by so many well-known and fascinating characters but my interest rests with the ordinary folk and how their lives changed so fundamentally in this time. The dissolution of the monasteries changed everyday life for many and marked the end of the medieval period and the beginning of a more enlightened time.
This is an indispensable summary of sixteenth-century English history, but it’s not as short as you might expect (the second edition actually includes greater content). The facts are well-researched, and the details are concise.
If you know nothing of the Tudors this is a good place to start, but being ‘very short’ it will leave you wanting to know more.
The monarchs of the Tudor period are among some of the most well-known figures in British history. John Guy presents a compelling and fascinating exploration of the Tudors in the new edition of this Very Short Introduction.
Looking at all aspects of the period, from beginning to end, he considers Tudor politics, religion, and economics, as well as issues relating to gender and minority rule, and the art, architecture, and social and material culture of the time. Introducing all of the key Tudor monarchs, Guy considers the impact the Tudor period had not only at the time, but also the…
I’ve loved the theater ever since I first stepped on stage in a high school production of You Can’t Take It With You. I had one line and was hooked! And as for Shakespeare–I fell in love with the Bard when I was 13 and saw Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet. My best friend and I spent hours reciting the lines (I still remember whole speeches). So, when I was looking for an artsy subject (I love the arts) for my third novel, I naturally turned to the theater. I have a Master of Arts in Drama from the University of Toronto and when I’m not writing, I run Art In Fiction, a website showcasing 1700+ novels inspired by the arts.
I loved this swashbuckling tale of Shakespeare’s fight master because it took me back to Elizabethan England and right on to the stage at The Globe theater. There’s plenty of action and intrigue (the main character’s not only an actor and fight master but a spy!) that inspired me when I was writing the action scenes in my book. The author fills the pages with an impressive amount of historical detail while maintaining a brisk, page-turning pace.
A gripping historical adventure packed with intrigue, deception, rebellion, politics, love and war, that fans of C.J. Sansom will love.
London 1599, a city on the brink of revolution...
He is Queen Elizabeth's last, perhaps her greatest, love - Robert Deveraux, Earl of Essex. Champion jouster, dashing general...and the man that John Lawley, England's finest swordsman, most wishes to avoid. For John knows the other earl - the reckless melancholic - and has had to risk his life for him in battle one time too many.
All John wants is to be left alone to win back the heart of…
I’ve been fascinated by British colonial history for decades. Learning little about it as a child, I was shocked to learn, as a university student, how little I’d been taught about the British Empire at school. So, I set out to study it. Inevitably, this academic interest later combined with my fondness for country walking. I once trekked 1000 miles from the tip of Scotland–John O’Groats–to the southernmost part of England, called Land’s End. This took me 2 months. I’ve since explored the UK countryside’s colonial past in a humane history book called The Countryside, recounting my rambles through these lovely landscapes with ten walking companions.
This is a well-written book with a strong sense of history’s human stories. It is painstakingly researched—but beautifully narrated—and based on archival evidence to explore the lives of Africans in Britain during the Tudor period.
It tells so many diverse stories about Black divers, servants, circumnavigators, and so much more. Teachers have since used this book to update their school lessons about the Tudor period.
A Book of the Year for the Evening Standard and the Observer
A black porter publicly whips a white Englishman in the hall of a Gloucestershire manor house. A Moroccan woman is baptised in a London church. Henry VIII dispatches a Mauritanian diver to salvage lost treasures from the Mary Rose. From long-forgotten records emerge the remarkable stories of Africans who lived free in Tudor England...
They were present at some of the defining moments of the age. They were christened, married and buried by the Church. They were paid wages like any…
I am a historian and historic buildings consultant with a longstanding interest in 15th and 16th century England. In addition to my own work on memorials, funerals, and the Howard family, I have worked as a researcher and consultant for television and books, including being a production researcher for the BBC adaptation of Wolf Hall.
In this thought-provoking book, Onyeka Nubia encourages us to re-examine Tudor concepts of race and ethnicity in Tudor (and Stuart) England without assumptions based on post-colonial narratives. What emerges is a nuanced picture of complex interactions, attitudes, and prejudices. As well as studying the writings of Tudor scholars, theologians, and authors, Nubia looks at the lives of individual Africans in England, showing that they weren’t “strangers” but lived as part of English communities - whether in cosmopolitan London parishes such as St Botolph without Aldgate, or in rural villages.
The Tudor period remains a source of timeless fascination, with endless novels, TV programmes and films depicting the period in myriad ways. And yet our image of the Tudor era remains overwhelmingly white. This ground-breaking and provocative new book seeks to redress the balance: revealing not only how black presence in Tudor England was far greater than has previously been recognised, but that Tudor conceptions of race were far more complex than we have been led to believe.
Onyeka Nubia's original research shows that Tudors from many walks of life regularly interacted with people of African descent, both at home…
I am an author of history books as well as children’s fiction. My books for Pen and Sword Publishing tell the stories of the places associated with Henry VIII, and with the Princes in the Tower, the boys who mysteriously disappeared from the Tower of London during the reign of King Richard III. So it was obvious that I should use my passion for late medieval and Tudor history when it came to deciding on a setting for my first children’s book; The Secret in the Tower is set during Henry Tudor’s invasion and his assumption of the English throne. I hope readers enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed researching and writing it!
Not many children’s books set in historical times manage to incorporate “contemporary” concerns within their narrative such as how children with learning difficulties interact with the world around them – but I liked The Queen’s Fool for doing just that, with its story of Cat Sparrow, whose sister is abducted from their convent home and taken to one of Henry VIII’s palaces.
The trail Cat follows to rescue her sister takes her to the Field of the Cloth of Gold, a great diplomatic shindig between Henry and the French King, Francis.
The author explains in a historical note at the end of the book how her research into a little-known genetic condition known as Williams Syndrome inspired her portrayal of Cat, whose unique talents and character form the book’s heart.
Most people have not heard of a female playwright before Aphra Behn so I’ve been passionate about restoring the work of Shakespeare’s ‘sisters’, or female contemporaries, to the stage and to public awareness. Early play scripts by women are often dismissed as ‘closet drama’: unperformed, not written for performance, and unperformable. To challenge such assumptions, I staged productions of female-authored plays, most recently Wroth’sLove’s Victory. A good deal of writing about women’s drama now exists, including my book Playing Spaces.I have made this selection to encourage you to discover the plays for yourselves. I hope you enjoy reading, and perhaps watching or acting, them.
I found this historical novel about the life of Mary Sidney Hebert, the Countess of Pembroke really enjoyable because it offers me the fantasy of filling in the gaps in the historical record about one of the early women writers.
I find it impressive because it draws on years of research on Mary Sidney Herbert by the author who is a renowned literary critic. Miller tells Mary Sidney Herbert’s story ingeniously by paralleling it with the life of a fictional character, Rose, who serves as her waiting woman.
Although I know the historical facts, the twists and turns in the narrative successfully cast new light on how I read Mary Sidney Herbert’s poetry and her play Antonius, though, for me, the co-authorship that the novel imagines remains entirely fictional.
A remarkable life lost to history is brought into sharp focus
England, 1575. Young Mary Sidney is bearing a devastating loss while her father plans her alliance to Henry Herbert, Earl of Pembroke. But Mary is determined to make her mark on the world as a writer and scientist.
As Mary Sidney Herbert steps into her new life with the earl at his home, Wilton House, an unusual friendship is forged between her and servant Rose Commin, a country girl with a surprising artistic gift, that will change their lives for ever.
Defying the conventions of their time, mistress and…
It was during the epistemological craziness around the year 2000 that I christened myself a truth warrior. I was already a scientist. Yet I knew there were other important truths, not of the mind but of the heart, truths we discover and marvel over in the realm of art. So as a biology professor I was granted a sabbatical to write the second of three of my novels, about Pliny the Elder. It is through literature, some of my own making, that I find new ways of seeing and experiencing the world: and of discovering and validating what is true, and what is not.
Though I did enjoy the earlier Wolf Hall I found Bring Up the Bodies more readable and compelling.
Hilary Mantel paints intimate word pictures of Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, and especially Thomas Cromwell, struggling to make his way through the minefield of political intrigue at Henry’s court. Though it is against almost every principle he holds dear, Cromwell charts a course which one step at a time ultimately brings Anne Boleyn down.
Finding himself in an almost impossible situation, he agonizes over every decision, looking at it from many sides: legal, political, ethical, spiritual, and religious. Meanwhile not far in the background we see the Church’s Pope Clement trying desperately, like Oz’s man behind the curtain, to control events.
Mantel’s genius was her ability to transform dry history into compelling, character-driven stories.
The second book in Hilary Mantel's award-winning Wolf Hall trilogy, with a stunning new cover design to celebrate the publication of the much anticipated The Mirror and the Light
An astounding literary accomplishment, Bring Up the Bodies is the story of this most terrifying moment of history, by one of our greatest living novelists.
'Our most brilliant English writer' Guardian
Bring Up the Bodies unlocks the darkly glittering court of Henry VIII, where Thomas Cromwell is now chief minister. With Henry captivated by plain Jane Seymour and rumours of Anne Boleyn's faithlessness whispered by…
