As anyone who’s read my blog before will know, I’m a big fan of the Tudors (see Reading the Tudors and Bring up the Bodies). So when my Dad’s partner Pat got me Tudors by Peter Ackroyd for Christmas, I knew it would be a good way to while away the February commute.

Surprisingly, I had never read Peter Ackroyd before. I’ve always meant to read London as I’ve heard so many good things about it, but somehow I’ve never got round to it. Tudors is Volume 2 in the History of England series and it’s now made me want to read Volume 1 Foundation. I stopped history at aged 13 at my comprehensive, despite my Dad being a History lecturer, and have since been on a quest to fill in the gaps of my knowledge.

Having indulged myself in the last couple of years in whole books about characters of the Tudor period, this was a tearing rip through the era, with Henry’s wives passing through one by one at great pace, and characters such as Thomas Cromwell, the subject of hundreds and hundreds of pages by Hilary Mantel not dwelling for long. This was not a problem for me however, as the whole book gave the historical context for everything else I’ve been reading about the period. And whilst this is a book that has the royals at its centre, it is really a book about the Reformation and the change of England’s culture to a more secular nation. It seems that so much of what defines us as a people was set here, in these 100 years.

If you like history and are interested in the period, all 471 pages of Tudors are a pleasure to read.