书名：The Tudors: The Complete Story of England’s Most Notorious Dynasty都铎王朝

作者：G.J. Meyer梅尔
出版社名称：Bantam
出版时间：2011
语种：英文
ISBN：9780385340779
商品尺寸：13.9 x 3.5 x 20.9 cm
包装：平装
页数：656
英国都铎王朝（Tudor dynasty，1485年－1603年），是在亨利七世1485年入主英格兰、威尔士和爱尔兰后，所开创的一个王朝，统治英格兰王国及其属土周围地区。

伯爵亨利·都铎于1485年8月，在法国援助下杀死理查三世，夺取王位，建立都铎王朝，史称亨利七世。都铎王朝统治英格兰王国直到1603年伊丽莎白一世去世为止，历经120余年，共经历了五代君主。
都铎王朝处于英国从封建主义向资本主义过渡时期，被认为是英国君主专制历史上的黄金时期。

美国作家梅尔在The Tudors《都铎王朝》一书中，对传说中的都铎王朝进行了全新的审视，还原了一个真实的王朝历史。书中每个章节的开端都有一些社会背景介绍，帮助读者从文化和社会微观层面来理解都铎王朝的历史。
For the first time in decades, here, in a single volume, is a fresh look at the fabled Tudor dynasty, comprising some of the most enigmatic figures ever to rule a country. Acclaimed historian G. J. Meyer reveals the flesh-and-bone reality in all its wild excess.
In 1485, young Henry Tudor, whose claim to the throne was so weak as to be almost laughable, crossed the English Channel from France at the head of a ragtag little army and took the crown from the family that had ruled England for almost four hundred years. Half a century later his son, Henry VIII, desperate to rid himself of his first wife in order to marry a second, launched a reign of terror aimed at taking powers no previous monarch had even dreamed of possessing. In the process he plunged his kingdom into generations of division and disorder, creating a legacy of blood and betrayal that would blight the lives of his children and the destiny of his country.

The boy king Edward VI, a fervent believer in reforming the English church, died before bringing to fruition his dream of a second English Reformation. Mary I, the disgraced daughter of Catherine of Aragon, tried and failed to reestablish the Catholic Church and produce an heir. And finally came Elizabeth I, who devoted her life to creating an image of herself as Gloriana the Virgin Queen but, behind that mask, sacrificed all chance of personal happiness in order to survive.
 
The Tudorsweaves together all the sinners and saints, the tragedies and triumphs, the high dreams and dark crimes, that reveal the Tudor era to be, in its enthralling, notorious truth, as momentous and as fascinating as the fictions audiences have come to love.

Review
“[A] sweeping history of the gloriously infamous Tudor era. Unlike the somewhat ponderous British biographies of the Henrys, Elizabeths and Boleyns that seem to pop up perennially, Meyer displays some flashy, fresh irreverence… Meyer cut[s] to the quick of the action… Energetic and comprehensive. ”  —Kirkus Reviews

“History buffs will savor Meyer’s cheeky, nuanced, and authoritative perspective on an entire dynasty, and his study brims with enriching background discussions, ranging from class structure and the medieval Catholic Church to the Tudor connection to Spanish royalty. ”  —Publishers Weekly, starred review

“Historian/journalist Meyer does an excellent job of recreating the Tudor epoch, both in his dramatic narrative and in the alternating ‘background’ chapters that illuminate 16th-century culture, politics, etc... Meyer’s book is a rich and vibrant tapestry depicting England’s most notorious—and most remembered—monarchs.”  —The Newark Star-Ledger
梅尔（G.J. Meyer），职业作家，他的作品经常出现在《纽约时报》《洛杉矶时报》《波士顿环球报》等美国主流报刊杂志上。他从少年时代就迷恋上了一战史，翻阅大量书籍后，发现每一本书虽都有精彩之处但也都留有遗憾。于是，他耗费20年的时间搜集各种有关第1次世界大战的信息和故事，用5年时间写出了这段精彩绝伦的历史。

G. J. Meyeris a former Woodrow Wilson Fellow with an M.A. in English literature from the University of Minnesota, a onetime journalist, and holder of Harvard University’s Neiman Fellowship in Journalism. He has taught at colleges and universities in Des Moines, St. Louis, and New York. His books includeA World Undone: The Story of the Great War,ExecutiveBlues, and TheMemphis Murders, winner of an Edgar Award for nonfiction from the Mystery Writers of America. He lives in Goring-on-Thames, England.
None of the events that have made the second Henry Tudor the most famous king in history happened in 1534. Henry VIII divorced no one that year, married no one, killed no eminent person. But the year was a milestone all the same, arguably the great turning point in his stunningly eventful career. When it began he had deteriorated only enough to be the sort of person you would hate to be seated next to at a dinner party: arrogant, opinionated, a bully inclined to self- pity, invincibly confident of his own charm, and certain that he knew best about everything that mattered. Before the year ended he had become what he would remain for the rest of his life: a full-fledged tyrant in the strictest sense of the word, a homicidal monster, absurd, pathetic, mortally dangerous.

A person in Henry’s predicament, a man whose pride has walled him up in such impregnable isolation, becomes incapable of an emotion as healthy as gratitude. Certainly he cannot see himself as merely lucky. His fate, he thinks, is coterminous with divine will. Everything good that befalls him does so in fulfillment of God’s great plan for the universe. Every disappointment can be traced neither to God nor to some failure on his own part (that is impossible; he could never commit a serious error) but to something outside himself that is cosmically out of joint. Nonetheless, lucky is what Henry was—one of the luckiest human beings who ever lived.

Much of his good fortune he owed to his father. In the quarter- century between his victory at Bosworth and his death in 1509, Henry VII had made the English Crown more secure and powerful than it had been in generations. He had filled the royal treasury with gold and accustomed his subjects to the benefits of peace. He is today a remote and elusive figure, a king about whom most people know almost nothing, and he appears to have been much the same in his own time. Though his life before Bosworth had been studded with moments of high drama and hairsbreadth escapes, little of the excitement had been of his choosing. Mainly his early years had been spent waiting. Even what we know of his part in the fight that won him the crown suggests that it could have been played by a deaf mute, a mannequin. Henry was attacked, Henry was defended, Henry was crowned—every episode finds him in a passive role.