Hi!

Background: I specialized in Tudor history (specifically the reign of Henry VIII) after splitting my time between Early Modern English history and Julio-Claudian Rome as an undergrad. I enjoy academic and popular works, as well as historical fiction, and I believe people can learn about these eras through a variety of entry-points.

Most of my recs will be around the Tudor era/Cousins’ War (War of the Roses), although I’ll give some general for wider English history where I have some familiarity.

Henry VIII

J.J. Scarisbrick’s biography is probably still the best, but it does focus a lot on foreign policy and especially the canonical aspects of the Great Matter. However, that aside, it’s still a good general biography that will give you a sense of Henry from his birth to death. My next choice would be Lucy Wooding’s biography, which I think works well with Scarisbrick, as it focuses a little more on Henry’s character (or how we might attempt to understand his character based on the evidence/interpretation choices), and how that impacted his reign. Alison Weir’s The King and his Court is not so much a biography, but a focus on Henry’s court – what he and his wives owned, how they and their court traveled, behavior and status, etc. Not the place to start about Henry VIII, but if you eventually want to know how many clocks and beds he owned, or details about his habits, or the social aspects of his life and times, you’ll get it and more. A more scholarly option to Weir would be Henry VIII and the Court: Art, Politics, and Performance with Lipscomb and Betteridge as editors. Additionally, Suzannah Lipscomb’s 1536 takes an in depth approach to a pivotal year in Henry’s life and is worth a read. David Loades biography is okay, but I personally feel the others offer more in analysis and presentation style.

General books on the Tudor era/dynasty

I recommend Leanda De Lisle’s Tudor. Easy read. Analysis could be better, but it’s a good basic history intro. You can always delve into more critical works later. Avoid Peter Ackroyd’s book. If you want something more academic, there’s G.R. Elton’s England under the Tudors (political focus), but it’s very much a product of the mid-20th century school of history; it’s also not a place for beginners. A more up-to-date work is Lucy Wooding’s Tudor England: A History, which gives a fuller scope of the times including social, political, and even geographical history, but it might be a lot for a beginner (however, you can download a sample and see if you’re to it - I’d pick this over Elton these days). Another option is Susan Brigden's New Worlds, Lost Worlds which is not as gripping a narrative as De Lisle's Tudor but not as dense as Elton and Wooding. I personally think her London and the Reformation is way better, but the latter is more a focus on the effects of the Reformation on the Tudor era/monarchs. This is a textbook and expensive, but Bucholz and Key’s Early Modern England 1485-1714 is a pretty straightforward narrative of the Tudor and Stuart eras.

Cousins' War (War of the Roses)

Dan Jones's The War of the Roses is a good, popular overview with a "gripping" narrative style.

Alternate option for an overview: Cora Scofield’s Edward IV. This is a two-volume study of Edward IV that is unlikely to be beat in terms of pure content. However, the first 20-30% of Volume 1 sets the stage with background on Richard of York, Margaret of Anjou, Henry VI, and other major players and can serve as an intro to the war. You can always switch to another work if you don’t want to read the rest about every detail of Edward’s reign (because you will learn way more about diplomacy, the courts, and taxes than you thought possible – which she surprisingly often makes quite interesting and funny – but there’s almost too much info sometimes).

A shorter more digestible Edward IV biography is the one by Charles Ross.

There's also a collection of primary sources related to Edward IV’s reign and a collection of primary sources about Henry VI and Margaret of Anjou.

Hi there anyone interested in recommending things to OP! While you might have a title to share, this is still a thread on /r/AskHistorians, and we still want the replies here to be to an /r/AskHistorians standard - presumably, OP would have asked at /r/history or /r/askreddit if they wanted a non-specialist opinion. So give us some indication why the thing you're recommending is valuable, trustworthy, or applicable! Posts that provide no context for why you're recommending a particular podcast/book/novel/documentary/etc, and which aren't backed up by a historian-level knowledge on the accuracy and stance of the piece, will be removed.