For People Who Devour Books

Book Reviews by subject:
16th Century & History

March 2025 Issue

Katie Hickman

The Sultan & the Concubine

The Golden Throne: The Curse of a King

By Christopher de Bellaigue

March 2025 Issue

Peter Marshall

Down with the Ox Tax!

Summer of Fire and Blood: The German Peasants’ War

By Lyndal Roper

March 2022 Issue

Jonathan Keates

Secrets of the Seraglio

The Lion House: The Coming of a King

By By Christopher de Bellaigue

December 2021 Issue

Jonathan Healey

For King & Capitalism

Merchants: The Community that Shaped England’s Trade and Empire, 1550–1650

By Edmond Smith

November 2021 Issue

Stefan Bauer

Waiting for the White Smoke

Conclave 1559: Ippolito d’Este and the Papal Election of 1559

By Mary Hollingsworth

November 2021 Issue

Peter Marshall

Don’t Mention the Eucharist

Zwingli: God’s Armed Prophet

By Bruce Gordon

October 2021 Issue

Lucy Wooding

The View from Across the Channel

Devil-Land: England Under Siege, 1588–1688

By Clare Jackson

October 2021 Issue

Dmitri Levitin

How Philology Changed the World

The Italian Renaissance and the Origins of the Modern Humanities: An Intellectual History, 1400–1800

By Christopher S Celenza

September 2020 Issue

Caroline Finkel

Master of the Universe?

God’s Shadow: The Ottoman Sultan Who Shaped the Modern World

By Alan Mikhail

September 2020 Issue

Peter Marshall

Caught in the Crossfire

The Jews and the Reformation

By Kenneth Austin

April 2020 Issue

Linda Porter

A Catholic & a Gentleman

Mary and Philip: The Marriage of Tudor England and Habsburg Spain

By Alexander Samson

December 2019 Issue

Elizabeth Goldring

How Did Their Gardens Grow?

Gardens for Gloriana: Wealth, Splendour and Design in the Elizabethan Garden

By Jane Whitaker

October 2000 Issue

Jane Dunn

Need for Magnificence

New Worlds, Lost Worlds: The Rule of the Tudors 1485–1603

By Susan Bridgen

July 2019 Issue

Felipe Fernández-Armesto

A Polymath’s Progress

Thomas Harriot: A Life in Science

By Robyn Arianrhod

July 2019 Issue

John Stubbs

Playwright with a Cause?

Shakespeare and the Resistance: The Earl of Southampton, the Essex Rebellion, and the Poems that Challenged Tudor Tyranny

By Clare Asquith

April 2019 Issue

Alexandra Walsham

The Curious Case of the White Radishes

The Voices of Nîmes: Women, Sex, and Marriage in Reformation Languedoc

By Suzannah Lipscomb

December 2018 Issue

Anne Somerset

Marriage Plots

Rival Queens: The Betrayal of Mary, Queen of Scots

By Kate Williams

Devices & Desires: Bess of Hardwick and the Building of Elizabethan England

By Kate Hubbard

November 2018 Issue

Alexandra Gajda

No Longer the Golden Boy

Patriot or Traitor: The Life and Death of Sir Walter Ralegh

By Anna Beer

April 1998 Issue

Diarmaid MacCulloch

Maybe It’s Because He Was a Londoner

The Life of Thomas More

By Peter Ackroyd

Robert Nye

The Dark Side of The Stratford Man

Ungentle Shakespeare: Scenes from his Life

By Katherine Duncan-Jones