Peter Ackroyd is an award-winning novelist, as well as a broadcaster, biographer, poet, and historian. He is the author of the acclaimed Thames: Sacred River and London: The Biography, and the first volume of his history of England, Foundation. He holds a CBE for services to literature and lives in London.
Tudors: The History of England from Henry VIII to Elizabeth I
Paperback
- ISBN-13: 9781250054609
- Publisher: St. Martin's Press
- Publication date: 09/16/2014
- Series: History of England Series , #2
- Pages: 528
- Sales rank: 77,141
- Product dimensions: 5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.50(d)
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Peter Ackroyd, one of Britain's most acclaimed writers, brings the age of the Tudors to vivid life in this monumental book. Tudors is the story of Henry VIII's relentless pursuit of both the perfect wife and the perfect heir; of how the brief reign of the teenage king, Edward VI, gave way to the violent reimposition of Catholicism and the stench of bonfires under "Bloody Mary." It tells, too, of the long reign of Elizabeth I, which, though marked by civil strife, plots against her, and even an invasion force, finally brought stability.
Above all, it is the story of the English Reformation and the making of the Anglican Church. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, England was still largely feudal and looked to Rome for direction; at its end, it was a country where good governance was the duty of the state, not the church, and where men and women began to look to themselves for answers rather than to those who ruled them.
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Praise for Peter Ackroyd
Peter Ackroyd's love of his subject shines through every page. This is a thrilling story that will delight readers interested in this period.
Highly engaging…. Ackroyd presents in rich prose and careful explanations how the English Reformation was not a movement of the people but a personal project of King Henry.
Peter Ackroyd is energetic and gifted enough to have mastered his sources and produced a sparklingly fresh account of Tudor England.?… Ackroyd has a wonderful eye for the telling detail, cameos that stick in the mind. … If you want a finely written, racy account of the monster Henry VIII and his brood, a history book that really fires your imagination and is often so exciting that you cannot put it down, you should get this book.
Ackroyd presents the Tudors in a way frequently overlooked by other popular histories and novels, depicting them as a force that continues to affect both English and international societies today, rather than as an early-modern soap opera. … Each player in this real-life historical drama is clearly drawn, their major contributions and connections made apparent without losing the thread of the overall themes. Tudors takes a comprehensive approach to early-modern English history that is rarely attempted, but is, in Ackroyd's hands, a success.
Ackroyd's thoroughly researched narrative of the notorious Tudors is colorful, engaging, and highly accessible to general readers.
Ackroyd writes with such lightly worn erudition and a deceptive ease that he never fails to engage.
Superbly accessible and readable.
Ackroyd clearly relishes the wicked glamour of the family which presided over the Reformation, saw off the Spanish Armada, founded the British Empire and left the country they ruled a great European power . . . Fluent and colorful.
As so often in Ackroyd's books there are irresistible small details of everyday life in historic London.
Ackroyd's information concerning Cromwell provokes a different reaction from that gained by reading Hilary Mantel. . . . This is a fascinating read, an accessible history where the immense research is wittily presented and where the ideas are profound and moving.
[Ackroyd] has a matchless sense of place, and of the transformations of place across long stretches of time; he is also an inventive and playful English stylist.
Relaxed, unpretentious, and accessible.
The second book of Ackroyd's projected six-volume history of England dives headfirst into its subject matter—with Henry VIII's ascension to the throne. Ackroyd (London: The Biography) covered the roots and earlier years of the Tudor dynasty, including Henry VII's reign, in his previous volume, Foundation. Readers wanting the author's views on the Tudors as a whole should take note. He interweaves his narrative of the Tudor monarchs here with a detailed exploration of the religious reformations and upheavals of the era, sparked by Henry VIII's break with the Roman church and destined to have tremendous and long-lasting effects on English history and culture at all levels. VERDICT A weightier and more focused read than Leanda de Lisle's study, below, this work should be of particular interest to those seeking an in-depth look at the religious changes of the Tudor period and the complex and often violent ways in which religious upheaval intertwined with politics.—Kathleen McCallister, Univ. of South Carolina Libs., Columbia
Prolific British novelist, biographer and critic Ackroyd launches the second volume of his sweeping history less than two years after beginning with Foundation (2012). Readers curious about 16th-century British daily life or culture must look elsewhere; Ackroyd concentrates on Britain's ruling Tudors--minus the first, Henry VII, covered earlier. This installment opens with the 1509 accession of Henry VIII (1491–1547). Few mourned his harsh and rapacious but also unwarlike father, who left a full treasury which Henry soon emptied in wars with France before plunging into the dynastic and religious quarrels that dominated his reign. Obsession with having a male heir, not lust, was responsible for his plethora of wives. No fan of the Protestant Reformation, Henry broke with the papacy over its refusal to grant a divorce from his first wife. Once he had destroyed papal authority and looted its property, he disappointed reformers by largely preserving Catholic credos such as priestly celibacy and transubstantiation. His death and the accession of 9-year-old Edward saw the Anglican Church's transformation into a recognizably Protestant body, which his Catholic sister and successor, Mary, could not reverse in a stormy five-year reign. By this point, readers may be wearying of interminable, fierce and bloody religious controversy, a feeling Elizabeth shared. But religion obsessed 16th-century Britons, so her efforts to cool matters were only partly successful, but she proved a prudent, less bloodthirsty ruler and the most admirable Tudor. As usual, Ackroyd is a fine guide. A solid multivolume popular history: readable, entirely nonrevisionist and preoccupied by politics, religion and monarchs--a worthy rival to Winston Churchill's History of the English Speaking Peoples.