Penguin History of Britain

Susan Brigden is Fellow and Tutor in Modern History at Lincoln College, Oxford.

• Prologue - new worlds, lost worlds; rather feared than loved -Henry VII and his dominions, 1485-1509; family and friends -religion and society in early Tudor England; ways to reform - the challenge to the church; imperium - Henry VIII and the Reformation in England, 1509-47; bearing rule - the governors and the governed; rebuilding the temple - the reigns of Edward VI (1547-53) and Mary (1553-8); "perils many, great and imminent" - the challenge of securing peace, 1558-70; wars of religion - churches militant in England, Ireland and Europe, 1570-84; the enterprise of England - new world ventures and the coming of war with Spain in the 1580s; the theatre of God's judgements - Elizabethan world views; court and camp - the last years of Elizabeth's reign; epilogue - lost worlds, new worlds.

"* "Susan Brigden has produced a highly readable, compulsive work that will surely take its place amongst the chief secondary sources for the period" Alison Weir * "This is history in the best sense, a doorway flung wide to a whole century of our past, an all-embracing panorama which sweeps the reader along... an extraordinary achievement written by somebody who unashamedly believes that history has a place not just in the academic's study but in the wider world of everyman". - Sir Roy Strong."