House of Tudor - A Grisly History written by Mickey Mayhew and published by Pen & Sword Books - £20 - Hardback - Pages 200
Gruesome but not gratuitous, this decidedly darker take on the Tudors, from 1485 to 1603, covers some forty-five ‘events’ from the Tudor reign, taking in everything from the death of Richard III to the botched execution of Mary Queen of Scots, and a whole host of horrors in between. Particular attention is paid to the various gruesome ways in which the Tudors despatched their various villains and lawbreakers, from simple beheadings, to burnings and of course the dreaded hanging, drawing and quartering. Other chapters cover the various diseases prevalent during Tudor times, including the dreaded ‘Sweating Sickness’ – rather topical at the moment, unfortunately – as well as the cures for these sicknesses, some of which were considered worse than the actual disease itself. The day-to-day living conditions of the general populace are also examined, as well as various social taboos and the punishments that accompanied them, i.e. the stocks, as well as punishment by exile. Tudor England was not a nice place to live by 21st century standards, but the book will also serve to explain how it was still nevertheless a familiar home to our ancestors.
This book follows the House of Tudor dynasty but we have just the grisly bits, kind of like the grown-up version of Terry Deary’s Horrible Histories. The book is split into 45 chapters and starts with the death of Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth, the following chapters are then titled along the lines of The Terrible Death of a Tudor Traitor, Hacking the Head of Margaret Pole, Henry VIII Horrible Leg, The Rough Wooings of Mary Queen of Scots and The Babington Plot: Tudor Honey Traps to name a few. Now the book is very well written and I loved the fact that the chapters were short, punchy and to the point. After all, this was about the best bits of Tudor history.
There were however a couple of things that I wasn’t really keen on in the book and the first was all the popular culture or modern-day references made throughout the book. I don’t watch much television so the film and TV references kind of went over my head a bit. The second problem was the little mention about Henry VII other than I think the opening chapter, yet as usual plenty of mentions about Henry VIII. But other than that, I really did enjoy this book and especially the snappy little chapters, I would happily recommend this book to anyone wanting to get into Tudor history or students that would like to study the period.
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