HISTORIANS of the Tudors
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What are their credentials ? What is YOUR opinion of their research & writing? Click EasyEdit to add to this page! (Don't see the EasyEdit button above? <a href="/#signin" target="_self">Sign in</a> or <a href="/accountnew" target="_self">Sign up</a>.) |
<embed allowfullscreen="true" height="344" src="http://widget.wetpaintserv.us/wiki/thetudorswiki/widget/youtubevideo/fc249b6334960756f4fbb2d1f22855aa63a8401f" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="425" wmode="transparent"/> David Starkey on Henry VIII "Tudor Obama" |
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Historian | Credentials | Books/TV shows | Your Opinions (please keep it to 1 or 2 sentences) |
David Starkey | born in Kendal, England in 1945 of humble origins. won a scholarship to read history at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, of which he is a Fellow. As a student at Cambridge, he came under the influence of G.R. Elton. Their relationship was stormy. According to Starkey, Elton provided the stern father figure he had never had, against whom to rebel. From 1972 to 1998 Starkey taught history in the University of London (London School of Economics). During this period, he embarked on a career as a broadcaster. He was appointed CBE in the Queen's 2007 Birthday Honours list |
| In "The Six Wives of Henry VIII" Starkey gives the four wives after Katharine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn very short shrift (only about 1/3 of the book). He leaves out a lot of details. I also think Starkey's smugness about his superiority to other writers on the subject is unjustified. angelosdaughter Starkey is a "character" but I enjoy his slightly sarcastic style and he has made Tudor history both interesting and accessible to the average person in his TV series. - MsSquirrly |
Simon Schama Links: <a class="external" href="http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=EAA3E448939B34D8&search_query=history+of+britain+simon+schama" rel="nofollow" target="_blank" title="History of Britain in 15 parts - click to view">History of Britain in 15 parts - click to view</a> | born in London in 1945, he is presently a professor of history and art history at Columbia University. He read history under J.H. Plumb at Christ's College, Cambridge. He worked for short periods as a lecturer in history at Cambridge where he became a Fellow and Director of Studies in History, and at Oxford where he was made a Fellow, specialising in the French Revolution. In 1980 Schama accepted a chair at Harvard University. In 2000 Schama returned to the UK & was commissioned by the BBC to produce a series of television documentary programmes on British History as part of their Millennium celebrations, under the title A History of Britain. In 2001 he received the CBE. |
2000: A History of Britain 2005: Rough Crossings 2006: Simon Schama's Power of Art 2008: The American Future: A History | Schama certainly knows his stuff and his series is very enjoyable & informative to watch. - MsSquirrly |
Eric Ives | born in England in 1931. He is currently Emeritus Professor of English History at the University of Birmingham. He is considered the foremost expert on the history of Anne Boleyn, who he began researching in 1979 after writing about William Brereton who was unjustly condemned to Death with her. He has been in fierce debate with Retha Warnicke over her new theories on Anne's life. |
| Having read all the other books on Anne, this book is the best researched & most balanced and unbiased in my opinion - MsSquirrly Very informative on Anne Boleyn, the leading authority by far. However I felt he was increasingly bias when it came to KoA and JS.- LNor19 His books are interesting, however, I disagree with his argument that Henry VIII did not father Henry Carey. - DuchessGrey |
Alison Weir <a class="external" href="http://alisonweir.org.uk/index.asp" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">alisonweir.org.uk</a> | Educated at the City of London School for Girls and the North Western Polytechnic, trained to be a teacher with history as her main subject but did not pursue that career. Before becoming a published author in 1989, she was a civil servant, housewife and mother. From 1991 to 1997, ran own school for children with learning difficulties, before taking up writing full-time. |
| I found Weir to be very biased & didn't provide references for some of her arguments in the 'Six Wives', however her 'King and his court' book is a real feast ! - MsSquirrly I enjoyed her book on the six wives,very easy to read a good starting point.-coronation I found Weir to be very informative and enjoyed her book.- LNor19 I love reading many of her books. She always makes the historical people she writes about come alive in her biography books. However, I disagree with her argument that Henry VIII did not father any illegitimate children. - DuchessGrey |
Dame Antonia Fraser <a class="external" href="http://www.antoniafraser.com/index.aspx" rel="nofollow" target="_blank" title="antoniafraser.com">antoniafraser.com</a> Video clip: <a class="external" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nOAq45XJSQ" rel="nofollow" target="_blank" title="Lady Antonia in her writing room">Lady Antonia in her writing room</a> | born in 1932 in London England, daughter of the Earl & Countess of Longford. Her family is known as "the literary Longfords" because they are all published writers. She was educated at a catholic convent and earned her BA at Oxford. A renowned beauty in her day, she was married to SIr Hugh Fraser & is the widow of Harold Pinter, playwright & Nobel Laureate in literature. She too has won many literary prizes and awards. Lady Antonia was named as one of 9 dames in the 2011 honours list. |
| Fraser's citation of historical records in her Six Wives book is very detailed and helpful for further research. She strives for objectivity in her assessments of each wife. angelosdaughter Perfect in every way. Fraser details the Tudor dynasty eloquently.- LNor19 Her Mary Queen of Scots is a classic. Not only is it the starting point for most of us, it is the starting point for many of the historians on this list. firstmarie Wonderful. Her 'Six Wives' was quite entertaining and informative. goldenaged.er |
Lucy Wooding | Lecturer in Early Modern History at King’s College, London. Her research interests lie in the political, religious and cultural history of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, in particular the history of the Reformation. |
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A student of Tudor historian G.R. Elton, John Guy completed his PhD on Cardinal Wolsey and received the Yorke Prize from Cambridge University. He currently has a teaching fellowship at Clare College, University of Cambridge. |
| There is no better historian out there on Tudor-Jacobean topics. His True Life of Mary Queen of Scots/My Heart is my Own, is for me the seminal work in the field--He stands alongside Antonia Fraser when it comes to Mary Queen of Scots, and his work on Thomas More and his profoundly inspiring relationship with his daughter Meg is a "must read." firstmarie | |
Julia Fox <a class="external" href="http://juliafox.co.uk/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">juliafox.co.uk</a> | born in London. From a very early age, she set her heart on becoming a teacher and taught in a public and private schools in north London. She left teaching to concentrate on researching and writing 'Jane Boleyn'. She lives in London with her husband, the Tudor historian John Guy, and their two cats. |
| Very detailed and insightful, but the biography of Jane Boleyn is padded with speculations because Jane Boleyn is a minor character in the Tudor court. Until her involvement with Catherine Howard's affairs, there was little about her in the historical record. Fox is a good historian -great citations- and writer; I hope she eventually takes on a subject with more substance. angelosdaughter |
Jennifer Loach | born Darlington 4 May 1945; Research Fellow, Somerville College, Oxford 1969-73, Lecturer 1970-73, Tutorial Fellow 1974-95; Lecturer, Corpus Christi College, Oxford 1973-80; married 1968 Alan Loach (one son, one daughter); died Oxford 29 April 1995. Her empirical approach and profound respect for scholarly accuracy were at odds with some of the more speculative and fashionable trends in current historical writing; and she was a severe critic of work which rested on insecure evidence, however brilliant its exposition. She took pride in her mastery of traditional and austere historical skills and in showing how they could still transform the historical scene.When Jennifer Loach died in 1995, she left the uncompleted manuscript of Edward VI. As a generous act, the book has been brought to publication by George Bernard and Penry Williams, both eminent Tudor historians. |
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Karen Lindsey |
| Very well written and easy read, I would recommend this book to all. - MsSquirrly | |
(born 1939) She is an American historian and Professor of History at Arizona State University. Graduated with a BA from Indiana University, magna *** laude in 1961. She then moved on to Harvard University, where she earned her MA and PhD. She was the first woman hired in the History Department of ASU.Her theories on Anne Boleyn have been harshly criticised by some other historians - particularly E.W. Ives and G.W. Bernard. Philippa Gregory based her novel "The Other Boleyn Girl" on these theories however Warnike has publicly distanced herself from the novel as being a distortion of her theories. |
| Valuable as a counterpoint to other historian's take on the period however I found she took some rather large leaps with some of her speculations. - MsSquirrly Dr. Warnicke makes no secret of the fact that she has a point-of-view. Anyone who thinks she is biased as to Anne Boleyn should read her criticisms of Mary Queen of Scots. But she is such a well credentialed historian that she is not to be overlooked. I own her works . I can see why she would distance herself from Philippa Gregory, who plays it fast and loose with history. Bet she makes more money than any of the biographers on this page. FirstMarie | |
she began her undergraduate work in history at the University of Washington, from which she received her double B.A. degree in 1963. She earned her doctorate in history from Columbia University in 1969. She now lives in Hawaii. |
| Her books are a good starting point for people looking to get their feet wet in Tudor history. Some of her conclusions are puzzling though. -Boudica | |
David Loades <a class="external" href="http://www.davidloades.co.uk/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank" title="davidloades.co.uk">davidloades.co.uk</a> | born 19 January 1934, he is a British historian and an expert on the Tudor Era. He is Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Wales, where he taught from 1980 until 1996, and was Honorary Research Professor at the University of Sheffield from 1996 until 2008. In the 1960s an1970s he taught at the universities of St Andrews and Durham. From 1993 until 2004 he acted as Literary Director of the John Foxe Project at the British Academy;he is now a Honorary Member of the History Faculty at the University of Oxford. After serving in the the RAF 1953–1955,Loades studied with Sir Geoffrey Elton at Cambridge University. He has a special interest in the history of the Tudor Navy. *David Loades has been commissioned by The AmberleyBooksto write a history of the Boleyn Family to be published in 2012 |
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born 1921 - died 1994 He was born in Germany as Gottfried Rudolf Ehrenberg. In 1939, his German Jewish parents fled to England. After serving in the British Army during WWII, he studied early modern history at the University of London, graduating with a PhD in 1949. He saw the duty of historians as empirically gathering evidence and objectively analyzing what the evidence has to say. He taught at the University of Glasgow and from 1949 onwards at Clare College, Cambridge University and was the Regius Professor of Modern History there from 1983 to 1988. Elton worked as publication secretary of the British Academy from 1981 to 1990 and served as the president of the Royal Historical Society from 1972 to 1976. He was knighted in 1986. |
| Holds my favorite statement from any historian: Postmodernism "is the intellectual equivalent to crack." LOL - SemperEadem | |
Diarmaid MacCulloch | born 31 October 1951. For his doctorate Diarmaid studied under the great Tudor historian Sir Geoffrey Elton. He accepted Oxford University’s offer of a lectureship in 1995 and has been there ever since, as a Fellow of St. Cross College and since 1997 also Professor of the History of the Church. He and Eamon Duffy are great rivals and very critical of one another. |
| Has written the book on the Reformation. - SemperEadem |
Eamon Duffy | Professor of the History of Christianity at the University of Cambridge. Chairman of the editorial board of the Calendar of Papal Letters relating to Great Britain and Ireland. He describes himself as a "cradle Catholic" and specializes in 15th to 17th century religious history of Britain. His work has done much to rehabilitate the image of late-medieval Catholicism in England. |
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Professor of History University of Southampton, England |
| Interesting and thorough.--bonnebelle | |
Robert Hutchinson was defence correspondent for the Press Association 1976-83 before moving to Jane's Information Group to launch JANE'S DEFENCE WEEKLY. He is a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London and a contributing author to THE ARCHAELOGY OF THE REFORMATION. He is the author of Last Days of Henry VIII, Elizabeth's Spy Master and Thomas Cromwell. He was appointed OBE in the 2008 Honours List. |
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Lacey Baldwin Smith | Born in Princeton, New Jersey, in 1922. Following graduate work at Princeton University, he went on to teach there and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Northwestern University, where until his retirement he was Professor of History and Peter B. Ritzma Professor in the Humanities. He continues to teach at Northwestern in an emeritus capacity. |
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Elizabeth Norton gained her first degree from the University of Cambridge, and her Masters from the University of Oxford. She lives in Kingston Upon Thames. |
Forthcoming: Catherine Parr: Henry VIII's Reluctant Queen, (Amberley, Spring 2010) | ||
Hester W. Chapman |
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Mary Luke | born 1919 - died 1993 Born in Pittsfield, Mass., Mrs. Luke, whose original name was Mary Munger, graduated from Berkshire Business School and worked in advertising in New York, and later for a documentary film company and RKO Studios in Hollywood. |
| Luke (Catherine the Queen) is very obviously a fan of Katharine of Aragon and cites too many secondary sources. Her failure to use the Imperial Ambassador Chapuy's dispatches as a source is curious given the close friendship between him and K of A who was also the Emperor's aunt. Nevertheless Luke's writing draws one in with its immediacy. One feels like a witness to the events she describes. I love this book. angelosdaughter. |
Marie Louise Bruce |
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Agnes Strickland | (b. 1796-8 d. 1874) English historian, poet, novelist who wrote history that lacked the impartial objective tone modern historians seek to emulate today. Most of what she wrote on the Tudor family is still cited in nonfiction and fiction portrayals of the Tudors despite some of the claims later dismissed as fictional speculation. Her sister Elizabeth assisted in her historical research but the full credit went to Agnes. |
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Josephine Wilkinson received a First from the University of Newcastle where she also read for her PhD. She is currently and scholar-in-residence at St Deiniol’s Library, Britain's only residential library founded by the great Victorian statesman, William Gladstone. She is the author of a Richard III, the Young King To Be, also published by Amberley. She lives in York. |
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Linda Porter <a class="external" href="http://www.lindaporter.net/index.htm" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Linda Porter.net</a> | has a B.A. and a D.Phil from the University of York and for more than twenty years worked as a senior public relations practitioner in British Telecom. Her second book was published in 2010, which is about about wife number six, Katherine Parr, the last queen of Henry VIII If you are having trouble finding her books in the US, it might be because the title is different -- see right for additional names. |
The First Queen of England: The Myth of "Bloody Mary" (US Hardcover Edition) The Myth of "Bloody Mary": A Biography of Queen Mary I of England (US Paperback Edition)
Katherine the Queen: The Remarkable Life of Katherine Parr, the last wife of Henry VIII (US Hardcover Edition) | |
Tracy Bormon <a class="external" href="http://www.tracyborman.co.uk/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank" title="tracyborman.co.uk">tracyborman.co.uk</a> | Studied and taught history at the University of Hull and was awarded a PHD in 1997. In 2002, she was appointed Learning Director at English Heritage. She now works as a full time author, as well as undertaking various freelance heritage projects |
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Carole Levin | Professor of History at State University of New York (SUNY). President of the Elizabeth I Society. |
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Charles Beem AKA <a href="/account/tudorhistorian" target="_self" title="tudorhistorian">tudorhistorian</a> here on the wiki website : <a class="external" href="http://www.tudorhistorian.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank" title="www.tudorhistorian.com">www.tudorhistorian.com</a> | Associate Professor and Coordinator, British Studies Minor at the University of North Carolina, Pembroke (Ph.D., University of Arizona) Currently at work on a study of the colorful but obscure Tudor Renaissance figure George Ferrers. |
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Susan Bassnett | Professor of Comparative Literature, Centre for British and Comparative Cultural Studies, University of Warwick |
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Christopher Haigh | Lectures in Modern History at Oxford. Listed as a Student and Tudor in Modern History at Christ Church |
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Christopher Hibbert | |||
Freelance journalist descended from the Dormer family but married into the Catholic de Lisles. Educated at St Mary’s Convent Ascot. In 1982 she graduated from Somerville College Oxford having read history and in 1990 she completed an MBA –her thesis was on political marketing. Leanda has written columns for Country Life, the Sunday and Daily Express, The Spectator, The Guardian, the Daily Mail, the Sunday Telegraph, the New Statesman. Her husband is Master of the Hounds. |
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Joanna Denny | was born near Hever Castle—Anne Boleyn’s home in Kent, England. She has degrees in history, government, and theology. Her interest in Tudor history was triggered by research into her ancestor, Sir Anthony Denny, who was Henry VIII’s closest servant in his last days. The author of a fictional trilogy on the Tudors, this is her first work of non-fiction. She lives on the Cornish coast of England. |
| The most seriously biased author I've ever read. - Boudica An unbelievably biased author would not recommend-Coronation |
David Cressy | Graduate of Clare College, Cambridge University. Currently employed at Ohio State University. |
| My favorite cultural and social historian of early modern England -SemperEadem |
Peter Gwyn | taught history at Winchester College, where he was also the archivist from 1965 to 1976. He was elected Bowra Fellow at Wadham College, Oxford for 1981-2. He worked on this biography of Thomas Wolsey for eleven years. At odds with Eric Ives regarding the theory of "factionalism" during the Tudor period. |
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Susan Doran | currently a tutor and member of the history faculty at Christ Church, Oxford University where her specific area of interest is stated as being Early Modern British and European history.Previously, Doran was a reader in history, Senior Lecturer in History and Teaching Studies and Director of the History Programme at St Mary's College, Strawberry Hill, part of the University of Surrey. She is also a Senior Research Fellow for History at Jesus College |
| Dr. Doran is always a delight to read, but is she a careful researcher? After reading Mary Queen of Scots, an Illustrated history, I exchanged emails with her concerning some rather apparent errors. For example, she misidentifies the queen of Scots governess, Lady Janet (Jonette, Jean, etc) Stewart, Lady Fleming, as the queen's sister,confusing her with Jean Stewart (aka Joan, Janet, etc) when she was the queen's Aunt, and the mother of, my alter-ego, the first Marie, Marie Fleming (La Flamina, aka Flamy). Perhaps this is not a biggee, but considering the fact that the lady birthed a bastard to the King of France and got herself packed back to Scotland, it is not trivial. A sister of the Queen of Scots would have been more likely to share her sense of morality. Doran graciously admitted that she is more a Tudor that a Stuart historian and relied on her student researchers for her facts. But overall, she produces very good pop histories of the period. |
Geoffrey Moorehouse |
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