The Elizabethan World was a world remade. At the dawn of the sixteenth century, Europe was emerging from an age of ignorance and uncertainty. New lands were being discovered and old ones revitalized. People abandoned the ideals of medieval times to make startling advances in technology, science, and art. Here, award-winning historian Lacey Baldwin Smith vividly brings to life the story of Queen Elizabeth - perhaps the most influential sovereign in England's history - and the age she create...

The story of Anne Boleyn goes to the root of all history; what makes an individual or event memorable to later generations? Anne is an exceptional case for her life was a double helix intertwining extraordinary human drama with profound historical crisis. A young lady of no particular importance or talents – she was neither a great beauty nor a captivating charmer – married a man who turned out to be England’s most notorious monarch, and then three years later she was publically executed f...

In this engrossing exploration of martyrdom, Lacey Baldwin Smith takes us on a riveting journey through history as he examines one of the most baffling characteristics of the human species: its willingness to die to sanctify a deity, to defend a cause, or simply to prove a point. In telling the stories of his chosen martyrs, by delving into their psyches, politics, and remarkable personalities, he illuminates the complex and elusive subject of martyrdom as it has evolved over two and a hal...

At seven oclock on the morning of 13 February 1542, Catherine Howard stepped out into the cold of the great courtyard of the Tower of London. Slowly she was escorted across the yard and carefully helped up the steps of the wooden scaffold. Only a small group of sightseers had gathered to watch the death of a queen; there was no weeping, no remorse, only chilly curiosity. The axe rose and fell, a life ceased, an episode came to an end.The life and death of Catherine was truly a Tudo...

Here at last is a history of England that is designed to entertain as well as inform and that will delight the armchair traveler, the tourist or just about anyone interested in history. No people have engendered quite so much acclaim or earned so much censure as the English: extolled as the Athenians of modern times, yet hammered for their self-satisfaction and hypocrisy. But their history has been a spectacular one. The guiding principle of this book's heretical approach is that "history ...

Tudor England abounded with traitors great and small, whose ill-timed, self-defeating and irrational antics guaranteed their failure. Yet from the inept and calamitous intrigues of 'Sweet-Lips' Gregory Botolf in 1540 and Lord Admiral Thomas Seymour during the reign of Edward VI, to the bungling efforts at a palace coup by Robert Devereux, second Earl of Essex, during the final years of Elizabeth's reign, treason didn't prosper. Modern historians tend to dismiss the wave of political disast...

Behind nearly every government in England - and sometimes in front of it - has been a lord of Burghley, Exeter, or Salisbury, all of them descended from plain David Cecil, yeoman. Here, in this essay from the eminent historian Lacey Baldwin Smith, is the story of England's second most powerful family, the Cecils.

The Henry VIII of popular legend and historical fiction is a bacchanalian figure of gargantuan proportions. Historical fact, however, is another matter. A deeply insecure man constantly in need of reassurance, a ritualist, a prude unsure of his prowess and easily embarrassed by sex - these are the faces which Lacey Baldwin Smith reveals hidden behind the mask of royalty. Opening with Henry on his death bed, a monstrous bloated figure ravaged by pain, disease and suspicion, the story revolv...

"Whosoever commands the sea commands the trade; whosoever commands the trade of the world commands the riches of the world, and consequently the world itself." This sentiment was first voiced by English explorer Sir Walter Raleigh, but for the British, it was a lesson that came at a great human and economic cost. Here, in this essay, is the story of how England struggled to settle the New World.

Thomas Cromwell, the king’s Principal Secretary, Mark Smeaton, court songster and musician, and Henry VIII are all caught up in Anne Boleyn’s catastrophic fall from power and grisly death. Anne is the supreme opposite of the king’s first wife, Katherine, who dutifully washed her husband’s shirts, never complained about his lovers, and rarely expressed an opinion but concealed behind a mantle of piousness the pride of a Spaniard. In contrast, Anne Boleyn possesses only two attributes that h...