English History Tudors

The Early Tudors A Level History series takes you through the OCR specification step by step, ensuring that you have the necessary knowledge to perform throughout the period of your course and to help prepare you for your A Level. The series is produced by Nick Fellows, a lead examiner for OCR who has written many textbooks on The Tudors, Katie Fellows, who is currently studying for her D.Phil in History at St Peter's College, Oxford, and Oxford historian, Dr Glyn Redworth, who is a specialist in Early Modern British & European history.

In the year 1526 King Henry VIII is facing a great personal crisis. He has been married to Queen Catherine of Aragon for seventeen years. But he has no son and the kingdom is without an heir. He has fallen in love with a maid of honor named Anne Boleyn. But she refuses to become his mistress and insists on being recognized as his lawful wife. The tragedy of “The King’s Great Matter” begins to unfold with terrible consequences for all concerned.

Autumn, 1541. King Henry VIII has set out on a spectacular Progress to the North to attend an extravagant submission of his rebellious subjects in York. Already in the city are lawyer Matthew Shardlake and his assistant Jack Barak. As well as assisting with legal work processing petitions to the King, Shardlake has reluctantly undertaken a special mission - to ensure the welfare of an important but dangerous conspirator being returned to London for interrogation.

More than 400 years after her death, Mary Queen of Scots remains one of the most romantic and controversial figures in British history. Antonia Fraser's classic biography of her won the James Tait Prize when it was first published in 1969. It became an international best-seller and was translated into nine languages.

Listeners can discover all the foul facts about the Terrible Tudors on this audiobook, including why Henry VIII thought he'd married a horse, which shocking swear words they simply loved to say and how an awful Tudor axeman kept botching the job. These bestselling titles are sure to be a huge hit with yet another generation of Terry Deary fans.

Illegitimate children, adulterous queens, impotent kings, and a whole dynasty resting on their shoulders. Sex and childbirth were quite literally a matter of life or death for the Tudors.

Margaret Tudor, the elder sister of her more famous brother Henry VIII, is the single most important Tudor figure of this era that historians have consistently overlooked. Married at thirteen to the charismatic James IV of Scotland, a man more than twice her age, she would learn the skills of statecraft that would enable her to survive his early death, and to construct a powerful position in her adopted country of Scotland as she dealt with domestic issues as well as navigating international relations with England and France.

In 1987, when Hilary Mantel was first published in the London Review of Books, she wrote to the editor, Karl Miller, ‘I have no critical training whatsoever, so I am forced to be more brisk and breezy than scholarly.’ This collection of 20 reviews, essays and pieces of memoir from the next three decades tells the story of what happened next.

An intimate, myth-shattering new biography of Mary Queen of Scots by a premier historian that draws on a trove of newly discovered sources. Queen of Scots, the first full-scale biography of Mary in more than 30 years, offers a singularly novel, nuanced, and dramatic portrait of one of history's greatest women.

Step into the turbulent world of Tudor England, where ambition, betrayal, and love intertwine amidst the backdrop of royal courts and political upheaval. Delve deep into the lives and reigns of some of history's most fascinating rulers. From the rise of Henry VII, the shrewd and determined founder of the Tudor dynasty, to the iconic reign of Henry VIII, whose quest for a male heir reshaped the course of English history, this book offers a vivid portrayal of the triumphs and tribulations of the Tudor monarchs.

Born in the midst of the Wars of the Roses, Margaret Beaufort became the greatest heiress of her time. She survived a turbulent life, marrying four times and enduring imprisonment before passing her claim to the crown of England to her son, Henry VII, the first of the Tudor monarchs.

When Robert Catesby, the charismatic son of a Catholic gentleman, marries heiress Catherine Leigh and inherits the rich Oxfordshire manor house at Aston from his grandmother, it seems that the future happiness of the couple must be assured. However, Robert’s deep involvement in plots to overthrow the Protestant queen Elizabeth I and his increasingly dangerous behavior threaten the lives of his wife and their young son.

Born into the English Wars of the Roses, educated in the European Renaissance, enthralled by the Age of Exploration and ultimately destroyed by Henry VIII, Thomas More is one of the most famous - or notorious - figures in English history. Thomas More: A Life is the definitive biography of this hypnotic, flawed figure. Overturning many received interpretations of the sixteenth century, Joanne Paul shows Thomas More to have been an intellectual and political giant of his age, central to the making of modern Europe.

The Tudor dynasty presided over one of the most dynamic periods in English history, an era that witnessed courtly conspiracies and public executions, religious reformation and exploration. Its fearsome monarchs transformed England from a minor medieval kingdom into a major player on the world stage. The Tudors reveals the complex personalities behind this powerful family, and the passions and jealousies that spurred them on.

In this remarkable biography, Carolly Erickson brings Elizabeth I to life and allows us to see her as a living, breathing, elegant, flirtatious, diplomatic, violent, arrogant, and outrageous woman who commands our attention, fascination, and awe. With the special skill for which she is acclaimed, Carolly Erickson electrifies the senses as she evokes with total fidelity the brilliant colors of Elizabethan clothing and jewelry, the texture of tapestries, and even the close, perfumed air of castle rooms. Erickson demonstrates her extraordinary ability to discern and bring to life psychological and physical reality.

The monarchs of the Tudor period are among some of the most well-known figures in British history. John Guy presents a compelling and fascinating exploration of the Tudors in the new edition of this Very Short Introduction audiobook.

Regal and dazzlingly beautiful, Mary Stuarts succumbed to the irresistible impulses of passion and gambled away her throne for love in a deadly game of power against her envious cousin, Elizabeth I. She not only lost her kingdom, but also her life. Betrayed by those she trusted most, pampered and adored even as she was led to her own beheading, she remained an enigma five centuries after her death.

1399: England’s crown is under threat. King Richard II holds on to his power by an ever-weakening thread, with exiled Henry of Lancaster back to reclaim his place on the throne. For Elizabeth Mortimer, there is only one rightful King - her eight-year-old nephew, Edmund. Only he can guarantee her fortunes and protect her family’s rule over the precious northern lands bordering Scotland.

Blood, Iron, and Gold reveals the huge impact of the railways as they spread rapidly across the world, linking cities that had hitherto been isolated, stimulating both economic growth and social change on an unprecedented scale. From Panama to the Punjab, Christian Wolmar describes the vision and determination of the pioneers who developed railways that would one day span continents, as well as the labour of the navvies who built this global network.

Grace O'Malley, daughter of a clan chief in the far west of Ireland, went from marriage at fifteen to piracy on the high seas. She soon had a fleet of galleys under her commander, but her three decades of plundering, kidnapping, murder and mayhem came to a close in 1586, when she was captured and sentenced to hang. Saved from the scaffold by none other than Queen Elizabeth herself—another powerful woman in a man's world—Grace's life took another extraordinary turn, when it was rumored she had become intelligencer for the queen's spymaster, Sir Francis Walsingham.