Tudors: The History of England from Henry VIII to Elizabeth I by Peter Ackroyd
471 pages
Published 2012
Read from February 20 to February 23
Rating: ★★★½ out of 5
I've been waiting to get my hands on this book since I got to the end of Ackroyd's Foundation last April. My library finally got a copy in November, but then it was immediately checked out and disappeared for two months; it was due December 26 but never reappeared on the shelf all through January, until the computer system mysteriously changed the due date to February 18. I'm at the library almost daily, of course, so when -- sweet manna from heaven -- it finally did show up again, I snatched it up at once.
All that waiting for what turns out to be a straightforward and unremarkable history of Important People. What has always drawn me to Ackroyd's history is his ravenous intake of strange, colorful anecdotes from the small people of England, the odd court transcript or eye-catching bit of commentary that pries open however tiny a glimpse into ordinary lives. A couple years ago I found his London: A Biography almost impenetrable with the depth of fascinating details he had gathered in the strange warrens and blind alleys of his signature city, and ever since then I've thought of this ear for the weird and the usually omitted bits of history to be Ackroyd's thing. The almost total absence of such joyfully obscure civic minutiae turned Tudors into a drily competent list of the expected beats of the time period. Not what I was hoping for at all.
Which is not to say that reading it wasn't a pleasure. I've yet to be wholly disappointed by Ackroyd. No matter what, you can depend on him to glean some grisly details of heretic bonfires at the very least. And it's interesting to see Elizabeth I portrayed by a less than worshipful historian. Ackroyd highlights her tendency to prevaricate and make excuses and delays to avoid forcing a delicate issue, something I can't recall reading in any other English history, which as a rule prefer to dwell on the juicy drama of her early reign and the Golden Age of her mature years.
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