Peter tells of the cataclysmic break of England with Rome brought about by Henry VIII due to his relentless pursuit of the perfect heIr and perfect wife. He tells of how the short reign of Edward VI the teenage king resulted in the reign of Bloody Mary who violently reimposed Catholicism. Any issues with the book list you are seeing? Or is there an author or series we don’t have? Let me know!

The 'great theme' of this book is the Reformation of the church in England. At the beginning of Henry VIII's reign (1509-1547) the Church in England was entirely Catholic, its forms of organisation and worship essentially medieval. The Pope in Rome held supreme authority, the Church lords and institutions held great lands and treasures, thousands of men and women lived religious lives as monks and nuns, and the monasteries and convents provided what we would now call social services like relief for the poor and medical care. It was taken for granted that every man must have a lord. Lordship was no longer dependent upon tribal relations, but on the possession of land. Mastery was assumed by those who owned the most territory. No other test of secular leadership was necessary. Land was everything. It was in a literal sense the ground of being. Land granted you power and wealth; it allowed you to dispense gifts and to bend others to your will." Their faith under Henry and Elizabeth, but the numbers don’t hold up b/c Mary reigned for a scant five years compared to Elizabeth’s 45 years and Henry’s 39+. The author writes with wit and great insight. I love the details of history and the amazing connections that if I made up in one of my novels readers would say I was over the top-- but in this book they're the real deal. Truth is indeed stranger than fiction. The Mass was said in English, not Latin. An authorised translation of the Bible into English was placed in all churches. For the first time people could understand the words of the religious services and engage with the scriptures themselves.I've never really 'done' any history - my ideas of the Tudors until recently were Henry VIII = a sort of half-timbered shouting Brian Blessed and Elizabeth I = Miranda Richardson - so I guess I'd probably have liked any book which told their crazy stories fairly competently. It is probably not easy to write an account of English history that would satisfy both the layman and the expert and that would cover all the aspects and choose the vantage point every potential reader could wish for, and so all I can say is that if you want to read a history focusing on the monarchy and its representatives and adding vignettes of everyday history in between, this is the right book for you.

There is no doubt that he [Henry VIII] had conceived an overpowering passion for her [Anne Boleyn], and she in her turn was doing her best to retain his affection without alienating him." He recounts the foreign wars, the civil strife and warring kings. He also offers a vivid sense of how life was in England from the jokes people told, the houses they built, the food they ate and the clothes they wore. We are led from the very early days of the native peoples right through a series of conquests and colonisation, wars, famous battles and rivalries, mythical figures and folklore, up until the end of Henry VII. Though he claims it's a history of England and the people, it more honestly a history of the Kings of England during this period, each chapter taking them one at a time. I have to say, that suits me fine but it seems to have annoyed some. We do start to get a sense of England as it develops, slowly, usually through inconsequential turns of events and chance occurrences but it's far from the main focus. Between the main chapters are shorter vignettes into various aspects of daily life, the food, agriculture, playthings etc. that make up life. They're good but over too soon. Henry VIII began the process of breaking away from Rome for political and dynastic reasons, not because he was swayed by the new teachings of Luther or Calvin. By the end of his reign, the monasteries were destroyed, much of the church lands and treasure confiscated and the monarch was head of the Church in England. Growing up, his mother was employed in the human resources department of an engineering organization. He never saw his father as he had abandoned the family when he was but a baby. By the time he was five years old, he was reading newspapers and wrote a play inspired by Guy Fawkes by the time he was nine.After Edward’s early death, his deeply conservative Catholic eldest sister, Mary, came to the throne. Under her rule, Protestants were ruthlessly pursued and thousands were burned at the stake as heretics. Calvin is partly responsible for this sadistic religious crap; Calvin had declared that Christian had a duty to “destroy” false gods. Let’s look at linear progress: under Henry VIII Catholics were burned, while under Elizabeth “some 200 Catholics were strangled or disemboweled.” Vive la difference. Whether your Tudor monarch was a man or woman, looked like Bette Davis or not, you still had to live in fear in a sadistic land. And that violence wasn’t confined to royalty: the stone throwers at executions and that “the people would rather go a bear-baiting than to attend a divine service”. The Book of Common Prayer effectively set the doctrine and liturgy of the Church of England for the future. It would be difficult to find a more informative and entertaining volume. You are drawn into the barbarity of much of English history and entertained by the more whimsical descriptions of life, particularly in the middle ages. The power plays as England pulled together and became a nation has enough intrigue and interesting historical facts to make even the non-history buff enjoy reading it.