Reviews

Favourite quote - About the botched execution of Margaret Pole. - “Nearly a century of butchery was coming to an end not by choice but by default: almost all the potential victims were now dead.” pg. 5.

Very entertaining and engaging recount of the era. I knew some of this from school and horrible histories which didn;t offer much detail; being able to fill in those gaps in my knowledge was great.

Sometimes the switching between people’s names and their titles confused me. Especially as this was during a time when titles kept getting passed around as people kept dying or getting exiled, and everyone has one of five names. But I can hardly blame Dan Jones for that. He did his best to clearly tell the tale of a VERY complex time in history in 300 pages and did a good job of it.

slingersjilly's review against another edition

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informative medium-paced

4.5

jasonlaw77's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark informative reflective medium-paced

4.75

ebancroft's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional funny informative reflective medium-paced

3.5

Dan Jones once again manages to turn a particularly dry area of English history into a tale of spectacle, war and intrigue that you literally cannot put down.

Now I know that it isn’t a dry, boring area of history for everyone, but the British schooling system has ruined British history for me, by making it so boring that I never wanted to read about it ever again. But book by book, Jones is doing away with that.

If I’d had this book during my very tumultuous a-levels I may have actually succeeded. Nevertheless, I have these books now, and I’m very grateful they are restoring my love for history, by making facts into stories that are so digestible and exciting.

Think you don’t like historical non-fiction, read one of Jones’s books and think again.

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