The Tudor family is the most intriguing royal dynasty in British history. Their era took us out of the Middle Ages through the Renaissance, founded the British Empire and made Britain a world power for the first time. The flowering of literature and music was unprecedented in British history. And what a family! From Henry VII who usurped Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth, through his famous son whose multiple marriages led to the break with the Roman Church, to the brilliant reign of Henry VIII’s and Anne Boleyn’s daughter, Elizabeth I, we see over a century of people and events that sometimes seem more fiction than reality.

Did Henry VIII compose Greensleeves? What were Thomas Cromwell’s bizarre toilet habits? Did Anne Boleyn have six fingers on one hand? We all know the old nursery rhyme: Mary, Mary, quite contrary, How does your garden grow? With silver bells and cockle shells, And pretty maids all in a row. Did you know that this is Mary Tudor, and her garden is an allusion to graveyards which were increasing in size with those who dared stay Protestant? The silver bells and cockle shells were instruments of torture, and the maids were a form of guillotine. For details of these, and many more entertaining Tudor facts, just open this book.