The peculiar origins of the Tudor family and the improbable saga of their rise and fall and rise again in the centuries before the Battle of Bosworth have been largely overlooked. Based on both published and manuscript aources from Britain and France, The Making of the Tudor Dynasty sets the record straight by providing the only coherant and authoritative account of the ancestors of the Tudor royal family from their beginnings in North Wales at the start of the thirteenth century, through royal English and French connections in the fifteenth century, to Henry Tudor's victory at Bosworth Field in 1485.

Did Richard, Duke of York, the younger of the Princes on the Tower, survive his imprisonment? In this revealing new book medieval historian David Baldwin presents an original and intriguing scenario. On 27 December 1550 an old man named Richard Plantagenet was buried at Eastwell in Kent. He had spent much of his life working as a bricklayer at St John's Abbey, Colchester, but, unusually for a bricklayer, he could read Latin. Reluctant to give any account of his background, he eventually told his employer that he was a natural son of Richard III. Yet, if this was true, why was he not publicly acknowledged by the king? Richard III made provision for his other bastards, John of Gloucester and Katherine. The fact that he was called Richard Plantagenet is also revealing. Had he simply been Richard III's bastard, he would have been styled 'of Gloucester' or given the name of his birthplace. And, most tellingly of all, where is the evidence that Prince Richard actually died? David Baldwin opens up an entirely new line of investigation and offers a startling solution to one of the most enduring mysteries in English history and a final exoneration for Richard III.

Five centuries have passed since Richard III was King of England. He reigned for just two years. Then retribution swept away his throne, his life, his dynasty and, above all, his reputation. He has been vilified as a murderer and a monster. It is through Shakespeare's portrayal that subsequent generations knew Richard III as an evil king. Then, in this century, Richard III has found his advocates: those who regard him as more sinned against than sinning. The process of rehabilitation has begun. This study by an acclaimed scholar of Richard III strips away the legends, propaganda and the posturing of the centuries and rescues Richard from his critics and supporters alike and, by revealing contemporary evidence and attitudes, recreates the world of Ricardian politics and ideo­logical warfare, and seeks to explain Richard's bewildering transformation in his own lifetime from the model of nobility, via kingship, to tyrant and monster.

The Tudors are England’s most notorious royal family. But, as Leanda de Lisle’s gripping new history reveals, they are a family still more extraordinary than the one we thought we knew. The Tudor canon typically starts with the Battle of Bosworth in 1485, before speeding on to Henry VIII and the Reformation. But this leaves out the family’s obscure Welsh origins, the ordinary man known as Owen Tudor who would fall (literally) into a Queen’s lap—and later her bed. It passes by the courage of Margaret Beaufort, the pregnant thirteen-year-old girl who would help found the Tudor dynasty, and the childhood and painful exile of her son, the future Henry VII. It ignores the fact that the Tudors were shaped by their past—those parts they wished to remember and those they wished to forget. By creating a full family portrait set against the background of this past, de Lisle enables us to see the Tudor dynasty in its own terms, and presents new perspectives and revelations on key figures and events. De Lisle discovers a family dominated by remarkable women doing everything possible to secure its future; shows why the princes in the Tower had to vanish; and reexamines the bloodiness of Mary’s reign, Elizabeth’s fraught relationships with her cousins, and the true significance of previously overlooked figures. Throughout the Tudor story, Leanda de Lisle emphasizes the supreme importance of achieving peace and stability in a violent and uncertain world, and of protecting and securing the bloodline. Tudor is bristling with religious and political intrigue but at heart is a thrilling story of one family’s determined and flamboyant ambition.

A BBC History Magazine Book of the Year ‘One of the most important books to be written about the Tudors in a generation.’ Tracy Borman In this groundbreaking history, Sarah Gristwood reveals the way courtly love made and marred the Tudor dynasty. From Henry VIII declaring himself as the ‘loyal and most assured servant’ of Anne Boleyn to the poems lavished on Elizabeth I by her suitors, the Tudors re-enacted the roles of devoted lovers and capricious mistresses first laid out in the romances of medieval literature, but now with life-and-death consequences for the protagonists. The Tudors in Love dissects the codes of love, desire and power, unveiling obsessions that have shaped the history of this nation. ‘A riveting, pacy page-turner… the Tudors as you’ve never seen them before.’ Alison Weir

The Oxford History of Classical Reception (OHCREL) is designed to offer a comprehensive investigation of the numerous and diverse ways in which literary texts of the classical world have stimulated responses and refashioning by English writers. Covering the full range of English literature from the early Middle Ages to the present day, OHCREL both synthesizes existing scholarship and presents cutting-edge new research, employing an international team of expert contributors for each of the five volumes. OHCREL endeavours to interrogate, rather than inertly reiterate, conventional assumptions about literary 'periods', the processes of canon-formation, and the relations between literary and non-literary discourse. It conceives of 'reception' as a complex process of dialogic exchange and, rather than offering large cultural generalizations, it engages in close critical analysis of literary texts. It explores in detail the ways in which English writers' engagement with classical literature casts as much light on the classical originals as it does on the English writers' own cultural context. This second volume covers the years 1558-1660, and explores the reception of the ancient genres and authors in English Renaissance literature, engaging with the major, and many of the minor, writers of the period, including Shakespeare, Marlowe, Spenser, and Jonson. Separate chapters examine the Renaissance institutions and contexts which shape the reception of antiquity, and an annotated bibliography provides substantial material for further reading.

"This book grew from the inaugural E. H. Gombrich Lectures in the Classical Tradition that I delivered in the autumn of 2013 at the Warburg Institute of the University of London, under the title, "Ancient Strength: Shakespeare and the Classical Tradition"--Preface, page ix.