The Clean Light of Morning
/It wasn't a fat, sick, wife-killing madman who came to the English throne in 1509 - as a new book reminds readers, it was a glorious teenage prince.
Read MoreThe World in Her Image
/Bestselling author of Tudor historical fiction Philippa Gregory takes up the familiar tragedy of Lady Jane Grey - and her forgotten but equally compelling sisters - in her new book, as A Year with the Tudors II continues.
Read MoreThe Sooner Disquieted
/What compromises did women in Tudor England face? What joys? What prospects, if any, for fulfillment? A sweeping new history cross-sections the issue.
Read MoreThe Most Happy
/As she did with Katherine of Aragon, Alison Weir gives Anne Boleyn the saintly treatment in her new novel. But does Anne, like Katherine, deserve it?
Read MoreThe Face in the Locket
/Margaret Douglas was the niece of Henry VIII - and a tireless, lifelong schemer and rule-breaker. A definitive new biography portrays the life of the woman who was almost Queen Margaret
Read MoreLèse-Majesté
/"A Year with the Tudors II" continues with a comprehensive new biography of King Henry VIII's fifth wife, the flighty teenager Catherine Howard.
Read MoreA Year with the Tudors II: A Flash, a Thud, a Crimson Deluge
/Poor innocent Lady Jane Grey has been an ostentatious martyr to the Protestant cause for centuries; a new book tells her brief but familiar life story as continues.
Read MoreBook Review: Hardwick Hall
/The great old fortress of good taste, Hardwick Hall, is the focus of a beautiful new anthology of essays on the place's storied art and architecture
Read MoreA Year with the Tudors II: Have You Heard It?
/A new book on the famous Tudor dynasty promises that most alluring of all perspectives on royalty: the back-stage details. But can it succeed? A Year with the Tudors continues.
Read MoreA Year with the Tudors II: “You Are My Grace”
/Jane Seymour is in many ways the most elusive of all the wives of King Henry VIII, dying just weeks after giving the king his longed-for male heir. A new novel delves into the human connection between Henry and his third wife.
Read MoreKeeping Up With The Tudors: Bernard’s Theorem
/At her trial, Anne Boleyn was accused of adultery, witchcraft, and incest - charges long mocked by historians. But a new book asks: is it possible Anne was actually guilty?
Read More‘To the Great Infamy of the King’s Highness’
/Church and State collided in Henry VIII’s England, and Durham Cathedral was caught in the middle. Steve Donoghue returns to his Tudor beat to review Geoffrey Moorhouse’s The Last Divine Office.
Read MoreThey Were Almost Tudors
/In the penultimate installment of his “Year with the Tudors,” Steve Donoghue pauses to consider some of the young men and women who didn’t quite make it onto the roster of Tudor monarchs.
Read MoreThe Master Touch: One Encounter with Shakespeare’s Henry VIII
/William Shakespeare lived under the Tudors for most of his life, but he only wrote about them once, in his play The History of the Life of King Henry VIII – or did he? In our latest One Encounter, and also the new installment in his “Year with the Tudors,” Steve Donoghue takes a look at that play and the fractious theories attendant.
Read MoreA Difficult Woman
/Mary Tudor’s fierce Catholic faith and merciless persecution of Protestants gave her the immortal nickname of “Bloody Mary.” In our ongoing feature A Year with the Tudors, Steve Donoghue reviews Linda Porter’s The First Queen of England: The Myth of “Bloody Mary.”
Read MoreQ & A with Linda Porter
/An in-depth addition to our Year with the Tudors: Open Letters chats with a writer equally hip-deep in the subject, Linda Porter, author of The First Queen of England: The Myth of “Bloody Mary.” Our first Q & A!
Read MoreMy Eyes Are Up Here, Milord
/There’s something going on in the latest trend of Tudor book-covers, and we’re not sure what it is, although a pair (shall we say?) of aspects is quite obvious. What are these publishers thinking? Take a look for yourself! and a second look! and a third!
Read MoreWorthy of a Tale or Two
/Without him, there would be no “Year with the Tudors,” and in the latest chapter of his year-long feature, Steve Donoghue examines Henry Tudor, who took the crown from Richard III at Bosworth Field and became Henry VII – the first Tudor monarch.
Read MoreExtravagant Things
/There is so much Tudor fiction in our world today that no one but the Tudors themselves could justify the extent of it. Even Steve Donoghue can’t read it all, but he has read more of it than is healthy, and he reports back in this installment of his “Year With the Tudors.”
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