Tudor England (review)

Reviews 147 Many readers wiU long for pictures. There aren't any. Nor are there any footnotes and the abbreviated references in the text can present problems. For instance a reference (p. 202) to 'Wdson 1983' turns out to offer a choice between N. G. Wilson, Scholars of Byzantium, and R. J. A. WUson, Piazza Armerinal And then there are a few annoying misprints. However, even without pictures, this is an exciting book. It is likely to become both a standard reference and a starting point for further work in the field. AUson Holcroft Classics Department University of Canterbury Guy, J., Tudor England, Oxford, O. U. P., 1988; paperback; pp. xiv, 582; 34 Ulustrations; R. R. P. AUS$55.00. The study of Tudor and Stuart England is firmly entrenched in N e w Zealand, both at school and university levels. As a university lecturer, teaching early modern English history to both undergraduates and postgraduates, and having been extensively involved in senior schools examinations in which this subject is a compulsory topic, I have read and assessed Dr. Guy's Tudor England with one very practical consideration in mind. For w h o m is it intended and to whom would I recommend it? I have not yet found an answer to either question. Certainly he states his intention clearly enough: 'to write a clear narrative account of the period ... [and] to provide a comprehensive and up-to-date synthesis of the vast amount of recent research on Tudor history'. Unfortunately the two ambitions do not live comfortably together in the one volume. O n the one hand, some stretches of narrative are far too detailed, as if it is Dr. Guy's desire to omit nothing. The result is that his account is often excessive to the needs of school students and most university undergraduates. Moreover the readability suffers, an important consideration if these are the levels at which he is aiming. And if the book is designed for knowledgeable teachers and professional historians, then much of the well-known narrative could be conveniently discarded. O n the other hand, the analytical synthesis of more recent historical research and historiographical debate, grist to the miU of professional historians in thefield,is much too recondite for most students and certainly for the general reader. There are two other related, serious and extended weaknesses. I assume that thefirstof these is no fault of Dr. Guy but of Oxford University Press. Here I should state m y firm belief that a review should critically evaluate the performance of both publisher and author. End-notes are virtually useless, except to the occasional workaholic student or the professional historian who is driven on by innate curiosity or a desire to find a chink in a fellow-worker's armour. The second weakness, Guy's own, compounds the problem. He rightiy 148 Reviews discusses and evaluates the two most important historiographical debates of recent decades. Whether his assessment is acceptable one must leave to the judicious reader. What concerns this reviewer is the way he has dealt with them. The involved historians are not named. O n the prolonged and continuing discussion as to whether the events of the 1530s amounted to a constitutional revolution and whether Thomas Cromwell masterminded it Guy resorts to such vague and uniUuminating phrases as 'it has been argued' and 'the interpretation has been attacked*. Passing like ghosts in the night are unidentified shadows, such as the master, Sir Geoffrey Elton, and his critics, such as David Starkey and Guy himself. Starkey in particular should be identified because his seminal work on the privy chamber, which, regrettably, we are still awaiting seventeen years after the completion of his Ph.D. on the subject, may provide answers to many of the unresolved questions on the 1530s. Likewise Sir John Neale, who saw in the Elizabethan House of Commons the roots of the English Civil War, is reduced to a kind of phantasmagorical image: 'the leading exponent of this interpretation'. It may be significant that the historian who challenged and who more than anyone else brought the Nealean edifice crashing down in ruins, was once again Sir Geoffrey Elton, again not named...