A few days ago, I posted a guest post at Natalie Grueninger’s On the Tudor Trail website to explain why I wrote A Visitor’s Companion to Tudor England and why I think people should visit historic places.
It begins:
‘I am frequently asked two questions: why am I a Tudor historian? And why do I think people remain fascinated by this period? The answer is the same: the Tudor era has all the best stories.
Consider: the remarkable sixteenth century contains our tabloid king – the much married Henry VIII – and our virgin queen – the unmarried Elizabeth I – and huge religious change – the overthrow, restoration and eventual displacing of the Roman Catholic church in England; centuries-old monasteries dissolved; heretics burnt and priests tortured. It is an age of threats against England – the attempted French invasion and the Spanish Armada – and of the discovery and colonisation of new worlds, the beginnings of empire and the founding of the navy. It is the age of Holbein and Shakespeare, of glorious architecture and palaces, and of some of the most extraordinary characters in British history…’
