Houses of Power: The Places that Shaped the Tudor World

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Review ------ "An absorbing account of the lives of these royal houses. It is a journey not just from palace to hunting lodge to castle, but into the small and poignant details of domestic existence." (Times Literary Supplement) "This is a landmark book. Nobody interested in Tudor England can afford not to own a copy of this gateway into a lost world … compulsively readable." (Sir Roy Strong Country Life) "Unrivalled architectural expertise... Superb writing...A triumph: a masterly collective biography of [Tudor Royal] buildings, replete with ins into their owners’ private lives and into politics, diplomacy and court etiquette." (Literary Review) "[Simon Thurley] certainly loves his subject. An enthusiasm that steadily bubbles forth from Houses of Power....Thurley’s reconstruction of these rooms is fascinating, but even more so is his description of what went on in them ... A suitably opulent book" (Gerard DeGrout The Times) "Excellent... Fresh, learned, readable and full of life, [Houses of Power] is the Tudors At Home, as you've never seen them before." (Dan Jones Mail on Sunday) From the Inside Flap -------------------- This is the story of the Tudor monarchs, as told through the royal houses they built and lived in. When Henry Tudor won the English throne in 1485, he inherited a network of residences, ranging from mighty castles, such as Pontefract and Dover, to elegant Thames-side retreats. These were houses like no other: places not merely to live in but to govern from. For English monarchs ruled both day and night – at the table, in the bath, in bed and in the saddle. Whichever house they chose to stay in had to serve as Cabinet room, nerve-centre of operations and theatre of international diplomacy. As a result, these royal buildings developed in very particular ways. During the century that followed, five Tudor kings and queens built, extended and refurbished an extraordinary number of houses in response to their own personal taste, the fashions of their time and political expediency. In understanding how these houses were designed and decorated, and evolved, we gain a detailed picture of the private life, character and convictions of each sovereign, how their vast households operated, and how sixteenth-century England and Wales were governed. Houses of Power is the result of thirty years of research. Simon Thurley has picked through architectural digs, and examined financial accounts, original plans and drawings to reconstruct what the great Tudor houses looked like, why they were built that way and what went on within their walls: how their inhabitants worshipped, entertained and ate; who slept where and with whom; and how courtiers coped when the monarch came to stay. The result is far more than simply an architectural history. A study of private life as well as politics, diplomacy and court, it gives an entirely new and remarkable in into the Tudor world.