The Private Lives of the Tudors

Name: The Private Lives of the Tudors
Rating: 4.4 (3178 reviews)

by Tracy Borman

First published 2016

Amazon

4.4(3,178)

The Private Lives of the Tudors enters the royal households of Henry VII, Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I and Elizabeth I. Drawing on household accounts, inventories, letters and eyewitness reports, Tracy Borman reconstructs the monarchs’ routines from waking and dressing to eating, worship, entertainment, medicine and sleep. Servants and attendants appear as essential witnesses to lives that were public performances even in supposedly private rooms.

Education, clothing, hygiene, sex, childbirth, illness and death show how the body of a monarch carried political meaning. The book also explains how access to the royal person created influence and danger for spouses, favourites, physicians and household officers. Domestic detail becomes a way of understanding authority, revealing the practical machinery and human vulnerability behind Tudor magnificence.

Historical Periods

Tudor Period1485–1603 CE

Genres

Biographical Fiction Court & Political Fiction Dynastic & Royal Fiction Social & Domestic Fiction

Historical people

Henry VIII1491–1547 Catherine of Aragon1485–1536 Henry VII1457–1509 Anne of Cleves1515–1557 Catherine Howard1523–1542 Mary I1516–1558 Edward VI1537–1553 Elizabeth I1533–1603