2 January – The Creation of Anne Boleyn: A New Look at England’s Most Notorious Queen by Susan Bordo
‘Religious revolutionary, power-hungry seductress, innocent victim, traitor – why are there so many Anne Boleyns and what makes us care so much?
Part biography, part cultural history, The Creation of Anne Boleyn is a fascinating reconstruction of Anne’s life and an illuminating look at her afterlife in the popular imagination. Why is Anne so compelling? Why has she inspired such extreme reactions? What did she really even look like?! Was she the flaxen-haired martyr of Romantic paintings or the raven-haired seductress of twenty-first-century portrayals? (Answer: neither). And perhaps the most provocative questions concern Anne’s death more than her life. How could Henry order the execution of a once beloved wife? Drawing on scholarship and critical analysis, Bordo probes the complexities of one of history’s most infamous relationships.
Bordo also shows how generations of polemicists, biographers, novelists, and filmmakers imagined and re-imagined Anne: whore, martyr, cautionary tale, proto ‘mean girl’, feminist icon, and everything in between. In her inimitable, straight-talking style Bordo dares to confront the established histories, stepping off the well-trodden paths of Tudoriana to expertly tease out the human being behind the myths.’
Further details – Amazon.co.uk
28 January – Richard III: The Road to Leicester (Paperback) by Amy Licence
‘Following the dramatic announcement that Richard III’s body had been discovered, past controversies have been matched by fresh disputes. Why is Richard III England’s most controversial king? The question of his reburial has provoked national debate and protest, taking levels of interest in the medieval king to an unprecedented level. While Richard’s life remains able to polarise opinion, the truth probably lies somewhere between the maligned saint and the evil hunchback stereotypes. Why did he seize the throne? Did he murder the Princes in the Tower? Why have the location and details of his reburial sparked a parliamentary debate? This book will act as both an introduction to his life and reign and a commemoration to tie in with his reburial this summer in Leicester Cathedral.’
Further details – Amazon.co.uk
6 February – Cranmer and the Reformation Under Edward VI (Paperback) by C. H. Smyth
‘This essay by C. H. Smyth won the Thirlwall and Gladstone Prize, awarded by the History Faculty in the University of Cambridge, in 1925 and was first published in the following year. The text looks in depth at the English Reformation under Edward VI, which was almost unique in the fact that it was primarily concerned with social and domestic considerations, rather than foreign policy, and emphasises the role of foreign figures such as Martin Bucer in working with Archbishop Cranmer to create an intellectually rigorous form of Anglicanism. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in the English Reformation and Protestantism in England.’
Further details – Amazon.co.uk
14 February – Disease, Disaster and Death in Mid-Tudor England (Paperback) by John Moore
‘Presenting a new analysis of the population and mortality figures for this era, “Disease, Disaster and Death in Mid-Tudor England” examines the epidemic of 1556-60 which is the greatest, yet most under-examined disaster in English history since the Black Death. Looking at how England’s population was reduced by about twenty percent by the two worst harvests of the sixteenth century, followed by a pandemic of influenza and typhus, John Moore uses a variety of historical sources, from taxation records, muster rolls and wills, parish registers, chantry certificates and the 1563 diocesan census to re-analyze the death-toll caused by disease. He examines how: the death of Queen Mary, Cardinal Pole and many of the Catholic bishops from influenza led to the accession of Elizabeth I to the throne and the Anglican religious settlement which she sponsors; the dramatic drop in population reduced the pressure for food on the countryside, allowing rural industries to grow and new agricultural methods to flourish. Protestantism encouraged a sense of national identity which was increasingly focussed against Catholic Spain, leading to new trading and colonial ventures and eventually to the first British empire. Including clearly tabulated statistical information, this is an essential book for any student of Tudor Britain.’
Further details – Amazon.co.uk
14 February – The Wars of the Roses by Anthony Goodman
‘The second half of the fifteenth century was one of the most turbulent periods of English history. Popular knowledge of the bitter struggle for the throne between the rival houses of York and Lancaster derives largely from Shakespeare’s history plays, which in their turn were coloured by Tudor propaganda, and most books on the Wars of the Roses have concentrated on politics and personalities. This new edition of Anthony Goodman’s highly successful volume The Wars of the Roses is a military as well as social history of the wars. It has been expanded to include the latest research and additional maps and illustrations. In the first part of his survey Anthony Goodman presents an overall view of the campaigns, for the first skirmishes of 1452 to the last campaign in 1497, and examines the generalship of the commanders in both camps. In the second covering military organization – how armies were recruited, paid, fed, billeted, armed and deployed – he shows that in a period of rapid change in European methods of warfare the English were not so old-fashioned as has sometimes been supposed. In conclusion he assesses the effects of the wars on society in general. The book makes extensive use of fifteenth-century sources, both English and Continental, including chronicles, civic records, and letters, and presents a vivid picture of the wars as they were seen and described by contemporaries.’
Further details – Amazon.co.uk
28 February – Inside the Tudor Court: Henry VIII and His Six Wives Through the Writings of the Spanish Ambassador Eustace Chapuys… by Lauren Mackay
‘The reports and despatches of Eustace Chapuys, Spanish Ambassador to Henry VIII’s court from 1529 to 1545, have been instrumental in shaping our modern interpretations of Henry VIII and his wives. Through his personal relationships with several of Henry’s queens, and Henry himself, his writings were filled with colourful anecdotes, salacious gossip, and personal and insightful observations of the key players at court, thus offering the single most continuous portrait of the central decades of Henry’s reign. Beginning with Chapuys’ arrival in England, in the middle of Henry VIII’s divorce from Katherine of Aragon, this book progresses through the episodic reigns of each of Henry’s queens. Chapuys tirelessly defended Katherine and later her daughter, Mary Tudor, the future Mary I. He remained as ambassador through the rise and fall of Anne Boleyn, and reported on each and every one of Henry’s subsequent wives – Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves, Katherine Howard, and Katherine Parr – as well as that most notorious of ministers Thomas Cromwell. He retired in 1545, close to the end of Henry VIII’s reign. In approaching the period through Chapuys’ letters, Lauren Mackay provides a fresh perspective on Henry, his court and the Tudor period in general.’
Further details – Amazon.co.uk
3 March – The Third Plantagenet: George, Duke of Clarence, Richard III’s Brother by John Ashdown-Hill
‘Less well-known than his brothers, Edward IV and Richard III, little has been written about George, Duke of Clarence and we are faced with a series of questions. Where was he born? What was he really like? Was it his unpredictable behavior that set him against his brother Edward IV? George played a central role in the Wars of the Roses played out by his brothers. But was he for York or Lancaster? Who was really responsible for his execution? Is the story of his drowning in a barrel of wine really true? And was ‘false, fleeting, perjur’d Clarence’ in some ways the role model behind the sixteenth-century defamation of Richard III? Finally, where was he buried and what became of his body? Can the DNA used recently to test the remains of his younger brother, Richard III, also reveal the truth about the supposed ‘Clarence bones’ in Tewkesbury? John Ashdown Hill exposes the myths surrounding this pivotal and central Plantagenet, with remarkable results.’
Further details – Amazon.co.uk
6 March – God’s Traitors: Terror and Faith in Elizabethan England by Jessie Childs
‘The Catholics of Elizabethan England did not witness a golden age. Their Mass was banned, their priests were outlawed, their faith was criminalised. In an age of assassination and Armada, those Catholics who clung to their faith were increasingly seen as the enemy within. In this superb history, award-winning author Jessie Childs explores the Catholic predicament in Elizabethan England through the eyes of one remarkable family: the Vauxes of Harrowden Hall.
God’s Traitors is a tale of dawn raids and daring escapes, stately homes and torture chambers, ciphers, secrets and lies. From clandestine chapels and side-street inns to exile communities and the corridors of power, it exposes the tensions and insecurities masked by the cult of Gloriana. Above all, it is a timely story of courage and frailty, repression and reaction and the terrible consequences when religion and politics collide.
Further details – Random House
Further details – Amazon.co.uk
13 March – Queen’s Gambit (Paperback) by Elizabeth Fremantle
‘The court of henry VIII is rife with intrigue, rivalries and romance – and none are better placed to understand this than the women at its heart.
Katherine Parr, Widowed for the second time aged thirty-one, is obliged to return to court, but, suspicious of the aging king and those who surround him, she does so with reluctance. Nevertheless, when she finds herself caught up in a passionate affair with the dashing and seductive Thomas Seymour, she believes she might finally be able to marry for love. But her presence at court has attracted the attentions of another.
Captivated by her honesty and intelligence, Henry Tudor has his own plans for Katherine and no one is in the position to refuse a proposal from the king. So with her charismatic lover dispatched to the continent, Katherine must accept the hand of the ailing egotistical monarch and become Henry’s sixth wife – and yet she has still not quite given up on love.’
Further details – Amazon.co.uk
28 March – Elizabeth of York: The Forgotten Tudor Queen (Paperback) by Amy Licence
‘As Tudors go, Elizabeth of York is relatively unknown. Yet she was the mother of the dynasty, with her children becoming King of England (Henry VIII) and Queens of Scotland (Margaret) and France (Mary Rose) and her direct descendants included three Tudor monarchs, two executed queens and, ultimately, the Stuart royal family. Although her offspring took England into the early modern world, Elizabeth’s upbringing was rooted firmly in the medieval world, with its courtly and religious rituals and expectations of women. The pivotal moment was 1485. Before then, her future was uncertain amid the turbulent Wars of the Roses, Elizabeth being promised first to one man and then another, and witnessing the humiliation and murder of her family. Surviving the bloodbath of the reign of her uncle, Richard III, she slipped easily into the roles of devoted wife and queen to Henry VII and mother to his children, and has been venerated ever since for her docility and beauty. Yet was she as placid as history has suggested? In fact, she may have been a deeply cultured and intelligent survivor who learned to walk a difficult path through the twists and turns of fortune. Perhaps she was more of a modern woman than historians have given her credit for.’
Further details – Amazon.co.uk
1st April – Tudor Secrets & Scandals by Brian Williams
‘What constituted a secret or a scandal in times gone by? This entertaining title in this new series gives an overview of the times and attitudes to ‘secrets’, and what was meant by a ‘scandal’. The series uncovers revelations of spies and plots, financial scandals, secrets of the royal bedchambers, dynastic tangles, and the exploits of both villains and so-called saints. Noble lords and ladies sampled the same pleasures and sometimes met the same ghastly fate as common criminals. Enemies of the state plotted and were plotted against, while a horrible fate awaited those found guilty of treason, hanged, drawn and quartered to the jeers of the mob. Assassins lurked in alleys, ghoulish body snatchers opened graves in the dead of night…This highly illustrated guide includes places associated with the stories.’
Further details – Amazon.co.uk
April – The Creation of Anne Boleyn: A New Look at England’s Most Notorious Queen (Paperback)by Susan Bordo
‘Religious revolutionary, power-hungry seductress, innocent victim, traitor – why are there so many Anne Boleyns and what makes us care so much?
Part biography, part cultural history, The Creation of Anne Boleyn is a fascinating reconstruction of Anne’s life and an illuminating look at her afterlife in the popular imagination. Why is Anne so compelling? Why has she inspired such extreme reactions? What did she really even look like?! Was she the flaxen-haired martyr of Romantic paintings or the raven-haired seductress of twenty-first-century portrayals? (Answer: neither). And perhaps the most provocative questions concern Anne’s death more than her life. How could Henry order the execution of a once beloved wife? Drawing on scholarship and critical analysis, Bordo probes the complexities of one of history’s most infamous relationships.
Bordo also shows how generations of polemicists, biographers, novelists, and filmmakers imagined and re-imagined Anne: whore, martyr, cautionary tale, proto ‘mean girl’, feminist icon, and everything in between. In her inimitable, straight-talking style Bordo dares to confront the established histories, stepping off the well-trodden paths of Tudoriana to expertly tease out the human being behind the myths.’
Further details – Amazon.co.uk
16 April – Henry VIII and the Anabaptists by Albert Pleysier
‘Henry VIII and the Anabaptists describes a bloody chapter in the reign of the infamous Tudor king. The book begins with the birth of Anabaptism in the city of Zurich and follows the Anabaptists as they search for religious freedom across the European Continent and into England. Intolerant of religious diversity and sensitive to potential threats to his political authority, Henry’s suppression of the Anabaptists leaves them with two choices: recant or burn.’
Further details – Amazon.co.uk
1 May – Henry VIII’s England: A Guide to the Historic Sites of the Tudor Monarch and His Six Wives (Paperback) by Peter Bramley
Further details – Amazon.co.uk
5 May 2014 – Digging for Richard III: How Archaeology Found the King by Mike Pitts
‘The events of Richard IIIs reign and his death in 1485 at the Battle of Bosworth are known worldwide through Shakespeare’s most performed, filmed and translated history play. Digging for Richard III is the page-turning story of how his grave was found, the people behind the discovery and what it tells us. It is the first complete narrative of a project that blended passion, science, luck and detection. Told by a noted archaeologist with access to all the parties involved, it follows the quest from an idea born in an Edinburgh bookshop to the day, fourteen years later, when two archaeologists carefully raised the bones from a car park in Leicester, and the scientific studies that resulted. The vivid tale of a king, his demise and now his rediscovery, this is also an insiders gripping account of how modern archaeology really works, of how clues meticulously assembled and forensically examined are pieced together to create a narrative worthy of the finest detective fiction.’
Further details – Amazon.co.uk
22 May – Sisters of Treason by Elizabeth Fremantle
‘Sisters of Treason is a powerful and moving story of passion and peril in Tudor England, perfect for fans of Hilary Mantel.
Mary Tudor clings fearfully to the English throne.
Seeing the threat posed by her cousin, Lady Jane Grey, the Queen orders her execution. But what of Lady Jane’s young sisters – Katherine and Mary? Cursed with royal blood, they must endure the perils of a Tudor court, closely observed by its paranoid Queen.
Entranced by the drama, intrigue and romance of court life, young Lady Katherine’s desire for love leads her to make ill-advised and dangerous liaisons. Burdened with a crooked back, her younger sister, Lady Mary – the ‘mouse’ – is seen as no threat and becomes privy to the Queen’s most intimate secrets. Yet Mary, who yearns to escape court dramas, knows her closeness to the Queen could be her undoing.
For the Queen is childless and in ill-health. If she should die, her fearsome sister Elizabeth will inherit the crown. Then Katherine and Mary will find court a maze of treachery and danger – where possessing royal blood is the gravest crime of all . . .’
Further details – Amazon.co.uk
30 June – Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, and the World of Elizabethan Art: Painting and Patronage at the Court of Elizabeth by Elizabeth Goldring
‘This book is the first comprehensive survey of aristocratic art-collecting and patronage in Elizabethan England, as seen through the activities of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester (ca. 1532-1588). One of the most fascinating and controversial people of his day, Leicester was also the most important patron of painters at the Elizabethan court. He amassed a substantial art collection, including commissioned works by Nicholas Hilliard, Paolo Veronese and Federico Zuccaro; helped foster the birth of an English vernacular discourse on the visual arts; and was an early exponent, in England, of the Italian Renaissance view of the painter as the practitioner of a liberal art, and thus fit company for the educated and well-born. Although Leicester’s picture collection and personal papers were widely dispersed after his death, this volume’s pioneering research reconstructs his lost world and, with it, a turning point in the history of British art. Some of the paintings featured here are little-known images from private collections, never before reproduced in colour.’
Further details – Amazon.co.uk
5 June – Tudor: The Family Story (Paperback) by Leanda de Lisle
‘The Tudors are a national obsession; they are our most notorious royal family. But, as Leanda de Lisle shows in this gripping new history, beyond the well-worn headlines is a family still more extraordinary than the one we thought we knew.
The Tudor canon typically starts with the Battle of Bosworth in 1485, before speeding on to Henry VIII and the Reformation. But this leaves out the family’s obscure Welsh origins, the ordinary man known as Owen Tudor who would fall (literally) into a Queen’s lap, and later her bed. It passes by the courage of Margaret Beaufort, the pregnant thirteen-year-old girl who would help found the Tudor dynasty; and the childhood and painful exile of her son, the future Henry VII. It ignores the fact that the Tudors were shaped by their past – those parts they wished to remember and those they wished to forget.
By creating a full family portrait set against the background of this past, Leanda de Lisle enables us to see the Tudors in their own terms, rather than ours; and presents new perspectives and revelations on key figures and events. We see a family dominated by remarkable women doing everything possible to secure its future; understand why the Princes in the Tower were disappeared; look again at the bloodiness of Mary’s reign; at Elizabeth’s relationships with her cousins; and re-discover the true significance of previously overlooked figures. We see the supreme importance of achieving peace and stability in a violent and uncertain world, and of protecting and securing the bloodline.
Tudor tells a family story like no other, and brings it once more to vivid life.’
Further details from Amazon.co.uk
5 June – Bosworth: The Birth of the Tudors (Paperback) by Chris Skidmore
‘On the morning of 22 August 1485, in fields several miles from Bosworth, two armies faced each other, ready for battle. The might of Richard III’s army was pitted against the inferior forces of the upstart pretender to the crown, Henry Tudor, a 28-year-old Welshman who had just arrived back on British soil after fourteen years in exile. Yet this was to be a fight to the death – only one man could survive; only one could claim the throne.
It would become one of the most legendary battles in English history: the only successful invasion since Hastings, it was the last time a king died on the battlefield. But BOSWORTH is much more than the account of the dramatic events of that fateful day in August. It is a tale of brutal feuds and deadly civil wars, and the remarkable rise of the Tudor family from obscure Welsh gentry to the throne of England – a story that began sixty years earlier with Owen Tudor’s affair with Henry V’s widow, Katherine of Valois.
Drawing on eyewitness reports, newly discovered manuscripts and the latest archaeological evidence, Chris Skidmore vividly recreates this battle-scarred world in an epic saga of treachery and ruthlessness, death and deception and the birth of the Tudor dynasty.’
Further details – Amazon.co.uk
31 July – The Children of Henry VIII by (Paperback) John Guy
‘Behind the facade of politics and pageantry at the Tudor court, there was a family drama. Nothing drove Henry VIII, England’s wealthiest and most powerful king, more than producing a legitimate male heir and so perpetuating his dynasty. To that end, he married six wives, became the subject of the most notorious divorce case of the sixteenth century, and broke with the pope, all in an age of international competition and warfare, social unrest and growing religious intolerance and discord. Henry fathered four living children, each by a different mother.
Their interrelationships were often scarred by jealously, mutual distrust, sibling rivalry, even hatred. Possessed of quick wits and strong wills, their characters were defined partly by the educations they received, and partly by events over which they had no control. Henry Fitzroy, Duke of Richmond, although recognized as the king’s son, could never forget his illegitimacy. Edward died while still in his teens, desperately plotting to exclude his half-sisters from the throne. Mary’s world was shattered by her mother’s divorce and her own unhappy marriage. Elizabeth was the most successful, but also the luckiest. Even so, she lived with the knowledge that her father had ordered her mother’s execution, was often in fear of her own life, and could never marry the one man she truly loved. Henry’s children idolized their father, even if they differed radically over how to perpetuate his legacy.
To tell their stories, John Guy returns to the archives, drawing on a vast array of contemporary records, personal letters, and first-hand accounts.’
Further details – Amazon.co.uk
7 August – Fatal Rivalry, Flodden 1513: Henry VIII, James IV and the battle for Renaissance Britain (Paperback)by George Goodwin
‘On the back of historian George Goodwin’s critically accalimed debut, FATAL COLOURS, comes FATAL RIVALRY providing the first in-depth examination of the Battle of Flodden, the biggest and bloodiest in British history.
This book captures the importance of the key players in the story – the kings and their respective queens, their nobles, diplomats and generals – as the rivalry brought the two countries inexorably to war. Fatefully, it would be an error by James, that most charismatic of commanders, and in the thick of engagement, that would make him the last British king to fall in battle, would condemn the bulk of his nobility to a similarly violent death and settle his country’s fate.’
Further details – Amazon.co.uk
4 September – The Hollow Crown: The Wars of the Roses and the Rise of the Tudors
‘The fifteenth century experienced the longest and bloodiest series of civil wars in British history. The crown of England changed hands violently seven times as the great families of England fought to the death for power, majesty and the right to rule. Dan Jones completes his epic history of medieval England with a new book about the Wars of the Roses – and describes how the Plantagenets tore themselves apart and were finally replaced by the Tudors.
With vivid descriptions of the battle of Towton, where 28,000 men died in a single morning, to Bosworth, where the last Plantagenet king was hacked down, this is the real story behind Shakespeare’s famous history plays.’
Further details – Dan Jones (Facebook)
Further details – Amazon.co.uk
11 September – Thomas Cromwell by Tracy Borman
‘Thomas Cromwell is the leading character in Hilary Mantel’s bestselling Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies. But who was the real Thomas Cromwell?
Henry VIII’s right hand man, he presided over some of the most famous events in our history. From Henry’s controversial divorce from Catherine of Aragon and marriage to Anne Boleyn, and Anne’s subsequent execution, to England’s split with the Roman Catholic Church, the dissolution of the monasteries and the English Reformation, Cromwell’s influence was far reaching.
Although for years he has been reviled as a Machiavellian schemer who stopped at nothing in his quest for power, he was also a loving husband, father and guardian, and a loyal and devoted servant to both Cardinal Wolsey and Henry VIII. In this definitive biography, Joint Chief Curator of Royal Palaces Tracy Borman sheds new light on the period, and examines the life, loves and legacy of the man who changed the shape of England forever.
Further details – Amazon.co.uk
11 September – The Real Tudors: Kings and Queens Rediscovered (Paperback) by Tarnya Cooper and Charlotte Bolland
‘Who were the Tudor kings and queens and what did they really look like? Mention Henry VIII and the familiar image of the rotund, bearded fellow of Hans Holbein the Youngers portraits immediately springs to mind reinforced, perhaps, by memories of a monochromatic Charles Laughton wielding a chicken leg in a fanciful biopic. With Elizabeth I its frilly ruffs, white make-up and pink lips in fact, just as she appears in a number of very well-known portraits held in the Collection of the National Portrait Gallery in London. But the familiarity of these representations has overshadowed the other images of the Tudor monarchs that were produced throughout their reigns. During the sixteenth century the market for portraits grew and so the monarchs images multiplied as countless versions and copies of their likeness were produced to satisfy demand. Taken together, these images chart both the changing iconography of the ruler and the development of portrait painting in England. In considering the context in which these portraits were made, the motivations of the sitters and the artists who made them, the purposes to which they were put, and the physical transformations and interventions they have undergone in the intervening five centuries, the authors present a compelling and illuminating investigation into the portraiture of the Tudor monarchs.’
Further Details – National Portrait Gallery
Further details – Amazon.co.uk
28 September – Eleanor of Castile: The Shadow Queen by Sara Cockerill
‘Eleanor of Castile has been effectively airbrushed from history, portrayed as the archetypal submissive queen. In fact Eleanor had perhaps one of the most fascinating lives of any of England’s queens. Her childhood was spent in the centre of the Spanish reconquest and was dominated by her famed military hero of a father (St Ferdinand) and her intellectual polymath brother. Married at the age of twelve and a mother at thirteen, she gave birth to at least fourteen children, most of whom died young. She was to live for extended periods in five different countries, venture on Crusade and endure destitution and captivity amid a civil war in which her husband’s life was in acute danger. As Queen of England she enjoyed, alongside Edward I, the full glory of returning Crusaders and conquerors. Personally she was a highly dynamic, forceful personality who acted as part of Edward’s innermost circle of advisers, and successfully accumulated a vast property empire for the English Crown. In cultural terms her influence in architecture, design and even gardening can be discerned to this day, while her idealised image speaks to us from Edward’s beautiful memorials to her, the Eleanor crosses, the most complete and ornate set of monuments to a beloved spouse ever seen in this country. The only biography of this fascinating woman.’
Further details – Amazon.co.uk
2 October – Joan of Arc by Helen Castor
‘Acclaimed historian Helen Castor brings us afresh a gripping life of Joan of Arc. Instead of the icon, she gives us a living, breathing young woman; a roaring girl fighting the English, and taking sides in a bloody civil war that was tearing fifteenth century France apart.
Here is a portrait of a 19-year-old peasant who hears voices from God; a teenager transformed into a warrior leading an army to victory, in an age that believed women should not fight. And it is also the story behind the myth we all know, a myth which began to take hold at her trial: that of the Maid of Orleans, the saviour of France, a young woman burned at the stake as a heretic, a woman who five hundred years later would be declared a saint.
Joan and her world are brought vividly to life in this refreshing new take on the medieval world. Helen Castor brings us to the heart of the action, to a woman and a country in turmoil, a world where no-one – not Joan herself, nor the people around her, princes, bishops, soldiers or peasants – knew what would happen next.’
Further details – Amazon.co.uk
2 October – Witches: James I and the English Witch Hunts (Paperback) by Tracy Borman
‘September 1613.
In Belvoir Castle, the heir of one of England’s great noble families falls suddenly and dangerously ill. His body is ‘tormented’ with violent convulsions. Within a few short weeks he will suffer an excruciating death. Soon the whole family will be stricken with the same terrifying symptoms. The second son, the last male of the line, will not survive.
It is said witches are to blame. And so the Earl of Rutland’s sons will not be the last to die.
Witches traces the dramatic events which unfolded at one of England’s oldest and most spectacular castles four hundred years ago. The case is among those which constitute the European witch craze of the 15th-18th centuries, when suspected witches were burned, hanged, or tortured by the thousand. Like those other cases, it is a tale of superstition, the darkest limits of the human imagination and, ultimately, injustice – a reminder of how paranoia and hysteria can create an environment in which nonconformism spells death. But as Tracy Borman reveals here, it is not quite typical. The most powerful and Machiavellian figure of the Jacobean court had a vested interest in events at Belvoir.He would mastermind a conspiracy that has remained hidden for centuries.’
Further details – Tracy Borman
Further details – Amazon.co.uk
28 October – The Six Wives & Many Mistresses of Henry VIII: The Women’s Stories by Amy Licence
‘For a king renowned for his love life, Henry VIII has traditionally been depicted as something of a prude, but the story may have been different for the women who shared his bed. How did they take the leap from courtier to lover, to wife? What was Henry really like as a lover? Henry’s women were uniquely placed to experience the tension between his chivalric ideals and the lusts of the handsome, tall, athletic king; his first marriage, to Catherine of Aragon, was, on one level, a fairy-tale romance but his affairs with Anne Stafford, Elizabeth Carew and Jane Popincourt undermined it early on. Later, his more established mistresses, Bessie Blount and Mary Boleyn, risked their good names by bearing him illegitimate children. Henry did not see that casual liaisons might threaten his marriage, until he met the one woman who held him at arms length. Anne Boleyn’s seductive eyes helped rewrite history. After their passionate marriage turned sour, the king rapidly married Jane Seymour. Her death in childbirth left him alone, without wife or lover, for the first time in decades. In the quest for a new queen, he scoured the courts of Europe, obsessed with the beautiful Christina of Milan, whose rejection of him spurred him into the arms of Anne of Cleves and soon after the lively teenager Catherine Howard. Henry’s final years were spent with the elegant and accomplished widow Catherine Parr, who sacrificed personal pleasure for duty by marrying him while her heart was bestowed elsewhere. What was it like for these women to share Henry’s bed, bear his children or sit on the English throne? He was a man of great appetites, ready to move heaven and earth for a woman he desired; their experiences need to be readdressed in a frank, modern take on the affairs of his heart. What was it really like to be Mrs Henry VIII?’
Further details – Amazon.co.uk
28 October – Katharine of Aragon: The Tragic Story of Henry VIII’s First Unfortunate Wife (Paperback) by Patrick Williams
‘Katharine of Aragon was a central figure in one of the most dramatic and formative events of Tudor history – England’s breach with Rome after a thousand years of fidelity. She lived through traumatic and revolutionary times and her personal drama was played out against dramas of European significance. The heroic and dignified first wife of Henry VIII, Katharine was cast aside for reasons of dynastic ambition but resolutely and unbendingly stuck to her principles and her dignity at enormous cost to herself. Katharine’s story tells so much about the exercise of power, and about being married to a lover who became slowly but perceptibly a tyrant in public life and a monster in his private affairs. Professor Patrick Williams has been immersed in Spanish history for over forty years and his monumental new biography is the first to make full use of the Spanish royal archives; he presents a very new portrait of Katharine, most notably in establishing that her marriage to Prince Arthur, elder brother of Henry VIII, was never consummated. This biography thus forces a radical reappraisal of Henry VIII, his marriages and his reign – and of the origins of the Reformation in England.’
Further details – Amazon.co.uk
13 November – Elizabeth: Renaissance Prince by Lisa Hilton
‘Lisa Hilton’s majestic biography of Elizabeth I, ‘The Virgin Queen’, provides vibrant new insights on a monarch who continues to compel and enthral readers. It is a book that challenges readers to reassess Elizabeth’s reign, and the colourful drama, scandal and intrigue to which it is always linked. Lisa Hilton uses new research in France, Italy, Russia and Turkey to present a fresh interpretation of Elizabeth as a queen who saw herself primarily as a Renaissance prince, delivering a very different perspective on Elizabeth’s emotional and sexual life, and upon her attempts to mould England into a European state. Elizabeth was not an exceptional woman but an exceptional ruler, and Hilton redraws English history with this animated portrait of an astounding life. Her biography maps Elizabeth’s dramatic journey from timid, newly crowned queen to one of the most powerful and vivid monarchs ever to rule England.’
Further details – Amazon.co.uk
4 December – Edward VI (Penguin Monarchs): The Last Boy King by Stephen Alford
‘ Edward VI, the only son of Henry VIII, became king at the age of nine and died wholly unexpectedly at the age of fifteen. All around him loomed powerful men who hoped to use the child to further their own ends, but who were also playing a long game – assuming that Edward would long outlive them and become as commanding a figure as his father had been.
Stephen Alford’s wonderful book gives full play to the murky, sinister nature of Edward’s reign, but is also a poignant account of a boy learning to rule, learning to enjoy his growing power and to come out of the shadows of the great aristocrats around him. England’s last child monarch, Edward would have led his country in a quite different direction to the catastrophic one caused by his death.’
Further details – Amazon.co.uk
