The Tudors in Love by Sarah Gristwood

The Tudors in Love by Sarah Gristwood

Sarah Gristwood's The Tudors in Love offers a brilliant history of the Tudor dynasty, showing how the rules of romantic courtly love irrevocably shaped the politics and international diplomacy of the period.

Why did Henry VIII marry six times? Why did Anne Boleyn have to die? Why did Elizabeth I's courtiers hail her as a goddess come to earth?

The dramas of courtly love have captivated centuries of readers and dreamers. Yet too often they're dismissed as something existing only in books and song--those old legends of King Arthur and chivalric fantasy.

Not so. In this ground-breaking 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 the devoted lovers and capricious mistresses first laid out in the romances of medieval literature. The Tudors in Love dissects the codes of love, desire and power, unveiling romantic obsessions that have shaped the history of the world.

Sarah Gristwood is a best-selling Tudor biographer as well as a former film journalist and royal critic. She has been featured in nearly every major newspaper and magazine in the United Kingdom. She is the author of two popular Tudor biographies, Arbella: England's Lost Queen and Elizabeth and Leicester, as well as the eighteenth-century story Perdita: Royal Mistress, Writer, Romantic, which was named a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week. Sarah was one of the team delivering BBC Radio 4's live coverage of Prince William and Princess Catherine's Royal Wedding. She is a regular media commentator on royal and historical matters. She is an Honorary Patron of Historic Royal Palaces and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.