Overview

A fresh look at the endlessly fascinating Tudors--the dramatic and overlooked story of Henry VII and his founding of the Tudor Dynasty--filled with spies, plots, counterplots, and an uneasy royal succession to Henry VIII. In 1501, England had been ravaged for decades by conspiracy, coups, and violence. Through luck, guile, and ruthlessness, Henry VII, the first of the Tudor kings, emerged as ruler--but as a fugitive with a flimsy claim to England's throne, he remained a usurper and false king to many, and his hold on power was precarious. But Henry had a crucial asset: his queen and their children, the living embodiment of his hoped-for dynasty. His marriage to Queen Elizabeth united the houses of Lancaster and York, the warring parties that had fought the bloody century-long Wars of the Roses. Now their older son, Arthur, was about to marry a Spanish princess. On a cold November day sixteen-year-old Catherine of Aragon arrived in London for a wedding that would mark a triumphal moment in Henry's reign. But Henry's plans for his son would not happen--and waiting in the wings was the impetuous younger brother, the future Henry VIII. Rich with drama and insight, Winter King is an astonishing story of pageantry, treachery, intrigue, and incident--and the fraught, dangerous birth of Tudor England.

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9781439191576

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Reviews

A tour de force. --<i>The Spectator</i>

I feel I've been waiting to read this book a long time. It's a fluent and compelling account of the cost of founding the Tudor dynasty: of a clever, ruthless, enigmatic monarch, a refugee all his early life, king by right of conquest, prepared to harass and frighten his subjects into submission: a man content to be feared and not loved. The level of detail is fascinating and beautifully judged. The book shows what a mistake it is to regard these closing years of the reign simply as a curtain raiser for Henry VIII. I think that, for the first time, a writer has made me feel what contemporaries felt as Henry VII's reign drew to an end; the relief, the hope, the sudden buoyancy. --Hilary Mantel, Author of Bring Up the Bodies and Wolf Hall

I feel I've been waiting to read this book a long time. It's a fluent and compelling account of the cost of founding the Tudor dynasty: of a clever, ruthless, enigmatic monarch, a refugee all his early life, king by right of conquest, prepared to harass and frighten his subjects into submission: a man content to be feared and not loved. The level of detail is fascinating and beautifully judged. The book shows what a mistake it is to regard these closing years of the reign simply as a curtain raiser for Henry VIII. I think that, for the first time, a writer has made me feel what contemporaries felt as Henry VII's reign drew to an end; the relief, the hope, the sudden buoyancy. --Hilary Mantel, Author of Bring Up the Bodies and Wolf Hall

Stunning. . . . This is not a new story--but in Penn's hands, it is a revelation. . . . Penn has pulled off a rare feat: a brilliant and haunting evocation of the Tudor world, with irresistible echoes of the age of fear in which we now live. <p> --Helen Castor, The Telegraph (UK)

Author Information

Thomas Penn is publishing director at Penguin Books UK. He holds a PhD in medieval history from Clare College, Cambridge University, and writes for The Guardian, the Daily Telegraph, and the London Review of Books, among other publications. He is the author of The Brothers York and Winter King: Henry VII and the Dawn of Tudor England.

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