Books by Glenn Richardson

Glenn Richardson provides the first history in more than four decades of a major Tudor event: an extraordinary international gathering of Renaissance rulers unparalleled in its opulence, pageantry, controversy, and mystery.   Throughout most of the late medieval period, from 1300 to 1500, England and France were bitter enemies, often at war or on the brink of it. In 1520, in an effort to bring conflict to an end, England’s monarch, Henry VIII, and Francis I of France agreed to meet, surrounded by virtually their entire political nations, at “the Field of Cloth of Gold.” In the midst of a spectacular festival of competition and entertainment, the rival leaders hoped to secure a permanent settlement between them, as part of a European-wide “Universal Peace.” Richardson offers a bold new appraisal of this remarkable historical event, describing the preparations and execution of the magnificent gathering, exploring its ramifications, and arguing that it was far more than the extravagant elitist theater and cynical charade it historically has been considered to be.

This new study of Tudor international relations is the first in nearly thirty years. Glenn Richardson and Susan Doran have assembled a team of scholars who bring fresh developments in cultural, gender and institutional history to bear upon the question of England's place in Europe and beyond between 1485 and 1603.

Renaissance Monarchy provides the first single-volume comparative history of the most renowned kings of the Renaissance: the Holy Roman Empire Charles V, Francis I of France and Henry VIII of England.