Tudor History

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.

On May 7th, 1915 a passenger ship crossing the Atlantic sank with the loss of 1200 lives. On board were some world-famous figures, including multimillionaire Alfred Vanderbilt. But this wasn’t the Titanic and there was no iceberg. The liner was the Lusitania and it was torpedoed by a German U-boat.Wilful Murder is the hugely compelling story of the sinking of the Lusitania. The first book to look at the events in their full historical context, it is also the first to place the human dimension at its heart.

'I was anxious to fight. Hitler was the bastard who had started all this and he needed sorting out. We were under threat. Everything we stood for: our country, our families and our way of life was being attacked by this maniac. He could not be allowed to win. So for me and many, many others like me, there was no alternative. We were in a pickle and something had to be done.’ Johnny Johnson is 92 years old and one of very few men who can recall first-hand the most daring and ingenious air raid of all time.

Sex. If there was one thing the Tudors did well, it was sex! Sex and beheading traitors; although rarely at the same time. With well over one hundred years on the throne, the Tudor dynasty experienced its fair share of sex scandals. This book looks at some of the more interesting and significant ones and explores the issues around them in a fun, non-heavy way.

At the start of the 16th century, England was hardly involved in the wider world, and London remained a gloomy, introverted medieval city. Stephen Alford's evocative, original new audiobook brings to life the network of merchants, visionaries, crooks, and sailors who changed London and England forever. In a sudden explosion of energy, English ships were suddenly found all over the world - trading with Russia and the Levant, exploring Virginia and the Arctic, and fanning out across the Indian Ocean. The people who made this possible are as interesting as any of those at court.

Five Tudor monarchs sat on the throne of England and Ireland from 1485 to 1603. The family earned their royal rights through strategic planning and battlefield prowess, and kept them because of intellect, strength, and sheer determination. The Tudors, one of England’s most powerful and famous royal dynasties, knitted together a fragmented and small island nation that became one of the world’s financial, colonial, and technological superpowers.

Marie Louise Bruce's engrossing account of Anne Boleyn charts the rise and fall of this remarkable young woman through the course of her short life, from her early days at Hever Castle, to the luxurious courts of France and England, to her terrifying last days in the Tower of London. By utilizing a wealth of primary sources, including the love letters between Henry and Anne along with innumerable documents written by courtiers and ambassadors, Bruce brings to life the splendor of the Tudor court and its most famous king and queen.

Today, roses are a sign of love and luxury, but for over 30 years they provided the symbols for two houses at war for control of England. Thousands of people died and many more were injured fighting beneath the white rose of York and the red rose of Lancaster, and the noble families ruling England tore each other apart in a struggle that was as bitter as it was bloody.

The Anne Boleyn Collection" brings together the most popular articles from top Tudor website The Anne Boleyn Files. Articles which have provoked discussion and debate. Articles that people have found fascinating.

The 1590s were bleak years for England. The queen was old, the succession unclear, and the treasury empty after decades of war. Amid the rising tension, William Shakespeare published a pair of poems dedicated to the young Earl of Southampton: Venus and Adonis in 1593 and The Rape of Lucrece a year later. Although wildly popular during Shakespeare's lifetime, to modern readers both works are almost impenetrable. But in her enthralling new book, the Shakespearean scholar Clare Asquith reveals their hidden contents.

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.

Mieux connue comme la fiancée d'Azincourt d'Henri V, de la pièce Henri V de Shakespeare, Catherine de Valois était une femme de foi, courage et conviction extraordinaire dans un âge de femmes puissantes politiquement. La plus jeune fille du roi Charles VI de France terrorisé par sa maladie mentale, Catherine de Valois survécut les ravages de sa schizophrénie, une guerre civile dans son pays, et la guerre d'Henri V contre la France pour devenir une des reines les plus courageuses et fascinantes de la Renaissance.

Mary, Queen of Scots’ marriage to the Earl of Bothwell is notorious. Less known is Bothwell’s first wife, Jean Gordon, who extricated herself from their marriage and survived the intrigue of the queen’s court. Daughters of the North reframes this turbulent period in history by focusing on Jean, who became Countess of Sutherland, following her from her birth as the daughter of the ‘King of the North’ to her disastrous union with the notorious Earl of Bothwell—and her lasting legacy to the Earldom of Sutherland.

Hans Holbein the Younger is chiefly celebrated for his beautiful and precisely realized portraiture, which includes representations of Henry VIII, his advisors Thomas More and Thomas Cromwell, his wives Jane Seymour and Anne of Cleves, and an array of the Tudor lords and ladies encountered during the course of two sojourns in England. But beyond these familiar images, which have come to define our perception of the age, Holbein was a multifaceted genius: a humanist, satirist, and political propagandist, and a deft man whose work was rich in layers of symbolism and allusion.

The inside story of the unprecedented restructuring of Greece’s debt in 2012—the largest restructuring in history—and how the Eurozone was stabilized and Greece was saved from exit from the Euro and economic calamity. In the fall of 2009, the world economy was beginning to recover from the global financial crisis that had shaken global markets and had led to a sharp recession. At the same time, Europe was entering a new phase of economic stress.

North Korea is one of the most troubled societies on earth. The country's 24 million people live under a violent dictatorship led by a single family, which relentlessly pursues the development of nuclear arms, which periodically incites risky military clashes with the larger, richer, liberal South, and which forces each and every person to play a role in the "theater state" even as it pays little more than lip service to the wellbeing of the overwhelming majority.

Sex! The Tudor's loved it. It was often considered a sport, just like hunting and jousting. The court was always awash with rumours and innuendo. For many at the royal court promiscuity was a way of life and marriage was normally no barrier. However, on occasion, events would occur that would be considered shocking for even this, most liberal, of royal courts. This is the second audiobook in the series and we look at more of the sex scandals that were to shake the royal court.

Buy this audiobook to claim your guide to the past, and prepare for an enlightening journey through the ages!

Alice Spencer was born in 1560 to a family on the rise. Her grandfather had amassed a sizeable estate of fertile grazing land and made a small fortune in sheep farming, allowing him to purchase a simple but distinguished manor house called Althorp. With her sizable dowry, Alice married the heir to one of the most powerful aristocratic families in the country, eventually becoming the Countess of Derby. Though she enjoyed modest renown, it wasn’t until her husband’s sudden death that Alice and her family’s future changed forever.

During the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, spy networks were a significant factor in England's security, for the first time in the nation's history. Documents from that era reveal hints of the work of England's agents at home and abroad, as well as the activities of foreign agents within the country. This was, of course, not the first time spies had been used. For as long as there have been nations, people have looked for ways to covertly gather information about each other. But in the 16th century, the information gathering and use of covert actions gained a level of organization and importance, that had not previously been seen in Western Europe.