Tudor: The Family Story - Tapa blanda

"A wonderfully fluent portrait of five generations... de Lisle brings an entirely fresh feel to the Tudor story, reminding us of the one thing the monarchs themselves wanted us to forget: the sheer improbability of their royal rule" -- Dan Jones, author of The Plantagenets The Times (Saturday Review) "Violent, heady, glamorous stuff, this is popular history of a very superior sort" -- Lucy Worsley Country Life "In de Lisle's hands, this is a deeply human tale, a family tree come to vivid life, rather than a narrative of politics and power structures (Book of the Week)" -- Helen Castor Sunday Telegraph "One of the most interesting of today's historians, with her easy scholarship, fresh interpretation and presentation, Leanda De Lisle succeeds in casting a revealing light on what one had thought familiar. The pace never flags. Time and again she says something new in one of the most exciting and enjoyable books I have read for a long time." -- Desmond Seward History Today "For those wanting a more grown-up experience of the Tudor past, there are few better places to start the Leanda de Lisle's new study. Many have told this story before. What makes de Lisle's account so fresh is her decision to start her "family story" not in 1485. but three generations earlier. Rarely has [this] story been told as well as here" -- John Adamson Mail on Sunday

The Tudors are a national obsession. From TV bodice-rippers to Booker-prize winning novels and scholarly journals, they are our favourite family in history. Their story is packed with famous and thrilling tales: Henry VIII and his wives, Elizabeth the Virgin Queen, the Princes in the Tower, the Armada. But, as Leanda de Lisle shows in this exciting new history, if we look beyond these familiar headlines, much that is new and surprising is revealed. The Tudor canon starts with Bosworth in 1485 and really gets going with Henry VIII and the Reformation. But this leaves out the obscure Welsh origins of Owain ap Maredudd ap Tudur, the man who would become known simply as 'Owen Tudor' and fall (literally) into the lap of Katherine de Valois, widow of Henry V. It leaves out the courage of Margaret Beaufort, the forgotten pregnant thirteen-year-old girl who through her son Henry VII went on to found and shape the Tudor dynasty. It casts Elizabeth as the paradigm of power, and misses the effects of Mary's influence as they were growing up. Over and above everything else, the Tudors' is a family story. A family struggling at every turn to establish their right to the throne. A family dominated by remarkable women doing everything possible to secure influence and the family line. What emerges here is a story like no other, packed with all the headlines we know and love, but which also brings to life in a completely new - and very human way - this extraordinary family and their times.