This is an awesome history of the Tudors. Don’t be scared by its size. It does not get bogged down with too many unimportant details, and moves along quite quickly. I wish I had read this before I visited the UK a couple years ago! The Tower of London would have been way more interesting to me.

I particularly liked how the author wove in contextual information from the time in “background” sections: Calvinists, the education system, health practices, the Ottomon Empire, etc. It paints a much richer picture that shows shades of variation between cultures and periods that we often lump together into “Medieval Europe.” For example, though no one in Europe knew about germs and the medicinal purposes of keeping clean, the English were particularly foul and slovenly compared to their continental neighbors, and it was so bad that visitors wrote home complaining of it. That classic mental image we have of Henry ripping apart a turkey leg with bare hands and spilling flasks of beer down his front is false, however. His clothes were far too precious and costly to be put through that sort of abuse.

This book does include a LOT of church history, more from the political lens than spending much time about the theological nitpicking. I think it was interesting to see how much time, money, and energy was put into the politics of the divisions between Protestants, Catholics, and the nascent Anglican church. This struggle for religious categorization and control eclipsed the entire House of Tudor and thus is a big chunk of their history.