The Tudors in Love: The Courtly Code Behind the Last Medieval Dynasty
by Sarah Gristwood
Oneworld, £20, 400 pages
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Sarah Gristwood is one of our finest historians, and a great writer. Her latest book is a masterclass in marshalling a vast canon of research into a riveting, pacy page-turner. She takes us on a virtuoso romp through the loves and tropes of medieval and Tudor royalty, all seen from the novel perspective of courtly love.
It’s hard to comprehend that anyone could come up with a new angle on England’s most famous and chronicled dynasty, but here are the Tudors (and a good few others) as you have never seen them before. No one has ever studied the Tudors in this context, which is why this book is so fresh and compelling. Gristwood’s inimitable style is elegant, her approach concise, measured and incisive. This is a treasure of a book, an important milestone in our understanding of how love – or the courtly ideal of it – informed the acts of royalty.
