
A beautifully presented, colourful and accessibly written tome, 1000 Tudor People aims to deliver a broad insight into life during the Tudor period by researching and compiling hundreds of miniature pen-pictures. Some of these are just a few short sentences, reflecting the paucity of the source material for those whose lives might have been considered common at the time, but it is to Melita Thomas’ great credit that she has clearly put so much time and effort into the research required to shine a light on the lives of the types of people whom we so rarely hear about in the often glamorous retellings of the Tudor courts.
So, as well as members of the nobility and their fascinating entourages (Barnabas Saul, for instance, who was employed to scry a crystal ball on behalf of Elizabeth I), we also get snippets of the lives of artists, playwrights, farmers and clerks. In her introduction, Thomas notes the difficulty in finding sources for non-noble women’s lives, in particular, but even here she still gathers some fascinating cases – alongside the baronesses and their handmaidens are authors, heretics and calligraphers. Taken together, these brief flashes of biography add up to provide a rounded and informative slice of life during a period of significant transition in British history.
1000 Tudor People, Melita Thomas (Graffeg)
Price: £40. Info: here
words HUGH RUSSELL