New Worlds, Lost Worlds: The Rule of the Tudors, 1485-1603

No period in British history retains more resonance and mystery for contemporary readers than the sixteenth century. For history buffs, or almost any reader, the figures and events of Tudor Britain approach those of myth. Already published to critical acclaim in Great Britain, The Rule of the Tudors traces the course and currents of this formative era from the secretive Henry VII and his charming, capricious, ruthless Renaissance son, Henry VIII, to "Bloody Mary" Tudor and her nemesis, Elizabeth I, who trumpeted her adroit rule of a man's world with "the body of a weak and feeble woman but . . . the heart and stomach of a king". Above all, the Tudor epoch emerges as a battleground between the new world of Protestantism and the old one of unquestioned Catholicism-a great religious rent in the fabric of English society that underlies turbulence and carnage from Henry VIII's break with Rome to the threat of conquest by Spain. The Rule of the Tudors is an authoritative, impeccably written, and startlingly atmospheric history.