Derek Wilson examines a set of relationships which illustrate just how dangerous life was in the court of the Tudor lion. He tells the interlocking stories of six men - all, curiously, called Thomas - whose ambitions and principles brought them face to face with violent death. Thomas Wolsey was an accused traitor on his way to the block when a kinder death intervened. Thomas More and Thomas Cromwell, whose convictions and policies could scarcely have been more different, both perished bene...

July 1540: the shock news of Cromwell's fall reaches the court of Margaret of Navarre, sister of Francis I of France and arguably the most cultured woman north of the Alps. She sends her courtier and poet, Nicolas Bourbon, an avid reformer with many friends in English court circles, to find out what is happening. What Bourbon discovers from members of Cromwell's family, his proteges and his enemies sets him what becomes a hazardous quest for the real man behind all the competing versions o...

July 1540. The courts of Europe are stunned to hear that Henry VIII has executed his all-powerful minister, Thomas Cromwell.Poet and classicist Nicholas Bourbon is sent from the cultured court of Queen Marguerite of Navarre to investigate. Thrust into a turbulent world of religious, political and personal rivalries, his travels take him far and wide. He endures perils at sea, incarceration in a monastic prison and poisonous intrigue in the Tudor court. Yet this ret...

When paranormal investigator and Cambridge lecturer Dr. Nathaniel Gye is commissioned at a séance to find a dead man's killer, he dismisses the incident as a clumsy fraud by a fake medium. But when Nathaniel's own wife disappears in Italy, an eventuality foretold by the same unquiet spirit, he is forced to look for connections between her predicament and the violent death of a man she never knew.In this dark and fast-paced mystery, the urgent search for answers takes Nathaniel far ...

A haunting in St. Thomas's College, Cambridge bitterly divides the college, and the Cambridge branch of the Psychic Investigation Unit is invited to carry out an experiment to settle the unrest. But when the main opponent of the plan, Professor Hawkridge, insists on being present for the nocturnal investigation and suddenly drops dead that very night the press has a field day and the college needs answersSir Joseph Zuylestein, the College Master, asks Dr. Nathaniel Gye if he can ma...

Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England is an annual volume committed to the publication of essays and reviews related to English drama and theatre history to 1642. An internationally recognized board of scholars oversees the publication of MaRDiE. Readers who wish to deepen their understanding of early drama will find that the journal publishes wide-ranging discussions not only of plays and early performance history, but of topics relating to cultural history, as well ...

They say that history is written by the winners. Not according to Derek Wilson. In this fascinating, revelatory book, Derek Wilson tells the story from the point of view of the losers - collating a catalogue of calamities and catastrophes which have shaped our world more than historians tend to let on.

"Scores highly in thoroughness, clarity, and human sympathy. If you want a model of how to defy uncomprehending power . . . or a model of how to laugh at the Devil, Wilson has provided a reliable guide as to how Luther did it."--- Sunday Telegraph (UK)Martin Luther changed Europe and, through Europe, the world. It was he who originally exposed the myth of a unifed Latin Christendom, in fact only held together by crusades, heresy hunts, Inquisition, and priestly magic...

There has never been a more remarkable national leader in modern history than Peter the Great (1672–1725). He was a giant in every way. In physical stature, willpower, enthusiasm, energy, libertinism, and refusal to accept old conventions, he stood head and shoulders above his contemporaries. He grew up in an atmosphere of fear, suspicion, and court rivalries that often assumed violent forms. He only gained power, at the age of seventeen, by ousting his half sister, Sophia, and shutting he...

The teachings of Jesus Christ, as presented in the Bible, are familiar to millions, but do we really understand them? Keith Ward argues that, by scrutinising the Gospels through the lens of contemporary philosophy, we can discover a profound teaching that is not always apparent in traditional church teaching. Ward's analysis of what Jesus really said uncovers four central themes: - that the Gospel is for everyone (but not necessarily everyone will be saved); - that the Second Coming will l...

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The image of Charles II as a randy monarch who dragged the crown through the moral mire and irredeemably weakened its position has persisted throughout the three centuries since John Evelyn gave his judgement. That judgement, Derek Wilson argues, is okay as far as it goes. The Restoration court did set an example of cynical libertinism that provoked opposition not only from outraged preachers, but also satirical journalists and angry mobs who pelted royal mistresses and burned down brothel...