BOGAEV: Well, bringing this up some more to modern times, I’m, I’m thinking the Tudors had just been getting so much pop culture airtime lately. You have Hilary Mantel’s novels and the spinoffs on TV, and then on stage, and The Tudors on Showtime. So why do you think there’s this particular interest in the period right now? At the heart of this book are some important convictions about historical method. The first long chapter of this volume is a very interesting and thought-provoking discussion of the author’s methodology, which in Sharpe’s view, is too often neglected or avoided by most early modern historians. His approach is grounded on an awareness of the ‘readers’ turn’, invoking Terry Eagleton, insisting that it is how these images were read that gives them meaning. ‘The turn from authors to readers in critical studies has been central to my approach’, he states firmly, and he is highly critical of historians who, ‘anxious about the risk of anachronism’, have shied away from examining representations, images, appearances, and chose to concentrate instead on ‘what they regard as substantial and real’. He therefore rejects the ‘traditional historical distinction between events and representations’. He also presents a lively manifesto for the importance of studying material culture and bridging the gaps between history, literary criticism, art history and other pertinent disciplines. This is a vivid and provocative chapter, which embraces sources as various as the Bayeux Tapestry and Victoria’s Highland Journals. Thankfully, predictably, even Wooding can’t escape the reigns or doesn’t want to – we move steadily from Henry VII, the usurper who founded the dynasty, to his son Henry VIII, to the teen-king Edward VI and his successors Mary I and the great Elizabeth I. But it’s only when you watch how steadily Wooding poles away from personalities and toward larger societal and political forces that you realize just how refreshing such an approach can be when it’s done with this much verve and lightly-worn erudition.

WITMORE: Lucy Wooding is a Langford fellow and tutor in history at Lincoln College, Oxford University. Her book, Tudor England: A History is out now from Yale University Press. WOODING: Yeah, in a way. I think that… I mean, one of the problems with Henry VII was that he was very efficient, and he was very efficient at extracting the money that was their due from the more elite members of society. Lucy Wooding’s Tudor England: A History is a beautifully written account of the society, culture, and beliefs of the Tudor period. Along the way, she punctures many of the stubborn myths that clinging to the period and its headlining figures. The Times of London called it, “A classic in the making.” In cities, towns, and villages, families and communities lived their lives through times of great upheaval. In this comprehensive new history, Lucy Wooding lets their voices speak, exploring not just how monarchs ruled but also how men and women thought, wrote, lived, and died. We see a monarchy under strain, religion in crisis, a population contending with war, rebellion, plague, and poverty. Remarkable in its range and depth, Tudor England explores the many tensions of these turbulent years and presents a markedly different picture from the one we thought we knew.

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But you’ve got to remember that for the first sort of 20 years of his reign, he is very popular and very successful, I think, in the eyes of his subjects, and does a pretty good job of creating an image of the Renaissance prince who is godly, who is artistic, musical, who is good at the arts of war. He rises to playing that role and does so to good effect, I think.

William Harrison, The Description of England, ed. G. Edelen (Washington, DC, and London, 1994), 216.

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I mean, she keeps a vernacular New Testament in her chamber for people, for her friends to read. She understands that excitement at the encounter with scripture. But that doesn’t make you a Protestant. Not overnight, anyway.

There is this phenomenon that he marries the women he knows. You know, he marries his former sister-in-law. He marries, most unusually, a succession of women from the court. Well, you know, that’s not really how an early modern monarch is supposed to behave. You’re supposed to make a grand, dynastic match with foreign royalty. The one occasion that he does that, with Anne of Cleves, is a disaster. No, I think he is quite cautious when it comes to his private life. WOODING: Yes. I don’t know whether the inequalities were quite as glaring as they are now in the modern world. This extract from the book looks at the food that the Tudors ate, from sturgeon and quail at the table of Henry VIII to the trenchers of pottage of ordinary people.WOODING: Because this is the era of Renaissance and because everyone in Europe is preoccupied with the past—with the classical past and with the biblical past. in the 16th century, their idea of progress is not forward looking like ours might be today. I mean, nowadays, you know, we look forward to—I don’t know—colonizing Mars or finding a cure for cancer. At the start of this period before the Reformation, you also have a way of looking at the world which sees sacrality. Which sees, you know, spiritual meaning and indeed spiritual power invested in material things. Thomas Betson, The Syon Abbey Herbal: The last monastic herbal in England, c. AD 1517, ed. John Adams and Forbes Stuart (London, 2015). BOGAEV: Well, we’ve barely scratched the surface, but how could we? It’s been so interesting. Thank you so much for talking today.

Now that we are questioning whether in fact there was that much Protestant commitment when she comes to the throne in 1553, we can look at her in a slightly different light and think, “Ah, okay. Well…” I mean, she herself always said that she was ruling over a largely Catholic population with a small vocal minority of Protestant troublemakers. The giving and consumption of food underlines an important political point about Tudor England: namely, that the most important relationships were always understood as having a personal element. William Cecil, Lord Burghley, advising his son Robert on the rules of political life, told him how to maintain a friendship with anyone eminent: ‘Compliment him often with many, yet small, gifts, and of little charge. And if thou hast cause to bestow any great gratuity, let it be something which may be daily in sight.’ [26] The Lisle family in Calais maintained their links with Henry VIII by sending everything from boar’s head to sturgeon, as well as the quails that Jane Seymour craved while pregnant. [27] Their envoy in London could begin a letter by announcing that ‘I presented the King with the cherries in my lady’s name, which he was very glad of, and thanks you and her both for them.’ [28] The Lisles adopted a particularly familiar tone in their exchanges to underline the point that they really were family: Arthur, Lord Lisle, was Elizabeth of York’s illegitimate brother. Thomas Cromwell’s accounts record the rewards dispensed to those who brought gifts such as arti­chokes, quinces and porpoise; and Robert Dudley responded to tributes, including a brace of puffins from the earl of Derby. [29] The rarity of certain foodstuffs, or the fact that – like cherries – they were only briefly in season, heightened the value of the gift. Water and Beer These are the difficult-to-articulate disputes that baffled me as a bright-eyed undergraduate. While a lesser work would lose its way in a forest of difficult and often contradictory scholarship, Wooding is refreshingly clear and balanced. Tudor England is so well-cited that it’s easy to recommend to someone trying to get up to speed with current historical debates, but it’s also far from dry – liberally scattered with grisly tales and memorable digressions into everything from gardening to the theatres.Gervase Rosser, ‘Going to the fraternity feast: Commensality and social relations in late medieval England’, JBS 33 (1994), 431. Become a Teacher Member Get full access to the latest resources and ongoing professional development Our memory of Bloody Mary’s reign, and her unfortunate sobriquet, are still heavily informed by the horrifying tales recorded by Foxe. In Lucy Wooding’s radical new history, she argues that singling out her tenure as uniquely bloody is a deliberate decision made by subsequent writers – a way of telling the story that ignores, for instance, those murdered by Protestant mobs under Edward VI when he dissolved the chantries, and the 700 Yorkshire people with Catholic loyalties who were executed during the period of martial law that Elizabeth I imposed in the wake of the 1569 Rising of the North. One of the myths that you talk about is, you write that while Henry VIII and Elizabeth usually get all the attention. Henry VII was actually the most effective and impressive Tudor king. So why is he so overlooked? BOGAEV: This education that they were getting, it wasn’t just for elites, right? It sounds as if it was learned or absorbed or felt on every level of Tudor society.