An interesting book which takes the approach of going back to the earlier characters in the story of the Tudor family, starting with Owen Tudor who married the widowed Queen of France after a wild dance leap landed him in her lap! The book goes through each of the personnel, giving a good insight especially into the women who usually are background characters such as Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry VII, and Margaret Douglas, daughter of Henry VIII's eldest sister and her second husband the Earl of Angus. The part played by such women in the great events of the period is examined, as well as the more usual emphasis on Henry VIII and his treatment of his wives.

There were some interesting insights such as the parallels in character between Henry VIII and his maternal grandfather, Edward IV. The examination of the life of Queen Elizabeth I was also interesting as the author doesn't romanticise her, but gives the warts and all portrayal. There is also somewhat of a rehabilitation of her elder sister Mary and an examination of how the stereotypes and prejudices against women have played a part in demonising both her and certain other royal women.

The author does however have a tendency at times to reiterate the same point about who people are, but to skim over the date so that we're told something happened in August but it's not clear which year. That and a bit of clunkiness in the prose here and there is why I am awarding this 4 stars rather than 5. ( )

I used this to brush up on my Henry VIII details, did not read on. What a world that was. He is just as much of a monster as you thought. Bring up the Bodies was the first time I had heard of the jousting accident when H was 44 y.o. that left him unconscious for 2 hours. There is an idea that this brain injury is to blame for his rages and paranoiac disposal of people. But while it may have worsened the case he was already well on his way having put monks to the stake and so on. ( )

This was very readable and fairly well paced. This was history lite in a lot of areas. The author did not care much for Anne Boleyn or Queen Elizabeth I. However I think she made good points about Queen Mary I. I also enjoyed the background on the more obscure Tudor family members. The complicated politics regarding Margaret Douglas. Whew was Henry VIII a jerk. ( )

This is a good book. A very good book. But I made the mistake of reading all of Dan Jones books before hand and the author cannot hold a candle to him. It does make a good supplement to books of the era. Well researched and well written, But Jones corners the market on this subject. A must have for fans of English history. ( )

Something Old, Something New, Something Absolutely Fascinating

When I was a child (circa 1970) my entire family spent weeks watching the BBC series The Six Wives of Henry the Eighth. That marked the beginning of my interest in Tudor history.

When a new popular book on one of the Tudor monarchs comes out, I’m always eager to read it, to see how it confirms or challenges the understanding I have of Tudor history based on my previous reading. So, I was delighted to be offered an electronic review copy of Leandra De Lisle’s Tudor: The Family Story, just published earlier this month. This is the first book I’ve read that focuses on the entire family, instead of just one or a few individuals, and it’s added a great deal to my understanding of the era.

De Lisle is a historian who’s a relatively new arrival on the scene (her first full-length work was published in 2005)—and a prolific one, given that Tudor is her third title in the seven years since then. The 2005 volume was a study of the transition from Elizabeth I to James I and VI. The 2008 volume looked at the Grey sisters, the eldest of whom had a brief reign as Queen Jane during the interval between the death of Edward VI and Mary Tudor’s rise to power. In other words, she’s focused on some very interesting transitional moments in addition to the lives of the monarchs themselves.

Given this focus on transitions of power, Tudor is an engaging read, whether you’ve been reading Tudor history for years or are looking for a first book on the subject. De Lisle’s prose is crisp; she piles up detail without ever becoming tedious. I particularly appreciate the clarity with which she treats her sources—she takes time to explain her interpretation of key documents, and she’s also done some digging to locate documents not used in previous biographies of members of this family.

Tudor offers a blend of continuity and revelation. The continuity helps readers see the period as a series of related historical events, rather than as individual reigns in isolation from one another. The revelations are many (at least if I didn’t forget a great deal of my Tudor history just prior to reading this book) and well-explained.

One example of these revelations is her discussion of the deaths of the two princes in the tower that preceded the rise of Richard III. She asks, as many have, why Richard didn’t firmly acknowledge the prince’s deaths, putting to an end the possibility of uprisings led by pretenders. She also asks (a question that to the best of my knowledge is a fresher one) why Henry VII didn’t search for the prince’s bodies after his ascension. After all, proving Richard a regicide would seen an appropriate move to strengthen Henry’s claim that he served by moral, as well as military, authority. De Lisle’s answer to both these questions draws on the instability of these two reigns and the popularity of pilgrimage in still-Catholic England. Both Richard III and Henry VII were threatened by the growing cult of and movement to canonize Henry VI: the last thing they needed was a new, more-threatening religious movement viewing the princes as innocent martyrs whose deaths could unite citizens in opposition to either regime. She reminds us of the gathered throngs after Princess Diana’s death, suggesting a similar response were the prince’s deaths to be publicized. That’s the sort of new, interesting thinking this book is full of.

I also appreciated de Lisle’s commentary at the end of the book, offering analogies like the above one between events in the Tudor period and our own. She compares the political villification of Catholicism in Protestant England with the west’s current villification of Islam. She reminds us of the biases created by our own popular culture: Elizabeth is played by Cate Blanchett, Mary Tudor by Kathy Bates.

If you want an interesting historical read that does more than rehash earlier work and that surprises with its reflections on the past and out own time, I absolutely recommend de Lisle’s Tudors. ( )