And if you want a shrewd, effective, intellectually gifted monarch, look no further than the frequently ignored Henry VII.

Tudor England: A History by Lucy Wooding | Goodreads Tudor England: A History by Lucy Wooding | Goodreads

The daughter of Catherine of Aragon and a staunch Catholic, Mary saw it as her spiritual mission to reverse many of the reforms of the previous two decades. So, if you are going to talk about the religious politics of the 1530s and 1540s, it’s getting a little bit close to home and you might well find yourself in trouble. In this episode bestselling author Kate Mosse takes us to the heart of one of the most dramatic and violent episodes in French history – the St.Drawing on the latest scholarship, Wooding reappraises the reigns of the five Tudor monarchs, as well as assessing the times in which they lived. WOODING: Yes, but Shakespeare’s got to be careful because Elizabeth is, you know, still a very powerful memory. Having so recently lived through the early phase of the Reformation, the nation experienced a series of jolts.

Tudor England: A history by Lucy Wooding | Book review - TLS Tudor England: A history by Lucy Wooding | Book review - TLS

In Tudor England: A History, Lucy Wooding lets their voices speak, exploring not just how monarchs ruled but also how men and women thought, wrote, lived, and died. What did Tudors believe about the landscape of their country that makes it so ripe with significance? He takes part in a lot of jousting, which was actually a bit irresponsible of him, because kings were not really supposed to risk their lives in this way. You had, Scotland was hostile territory, and Ireland a big political problem, and Wales, the separate country, and the Cornish spoke another language. Their envoy in London could begin a letter by announcing that ‘I presented the King with the cherries in my lady’s name, which he was very glad of, and thanks you and her both for them.Ugaz’s case is all too familiar in Peru, where powerful groups regularly use the courts to silence journalists by fabricating criminal allegations against them. Of course I understand how important religion was to Tudor England, from the big rituals to regional traditions and people's personal faith, but man did she just go on about it.

Tudor England by Lucy Wooding | Waterstones Tudor England by Lucy Wooding | Waterstones

Now, within a church that might be within a statue, within a holy relic, something like that, but out in the countryside, you also see holy wells and holy trees and sights associated with saints and pilgrimage ways. During the good harvests of the later fifteenth century, barley bread had been replaced as a staple by wheaten bread, although commentators thought it worrying that labourers now expected this.She opens her book with a chapter about the almost mystical connection Tudor people felt to the land that they inhabited. Remarkable in its range and depth, Tudor England explores the many tensions of these turbulent years and presents a markedly different picture from the one we thought we knew. WOODING: I think it created the most extraordinary sort of mindset, and one that’s not just limited to, you know, the occasional genius playwright. Mary I's reputation as the sadistic burner of Protestants is put into the context by the more than double the number killed under Elizabeth after the failed Northern uprising (although of course it is the burnings that did for Mary's reputation, not simply the number).