Books by Simon Thurley

The story of the Stuart dynasty is a breathless soap opera played out in just a hundred years in an array of buildings that span Europe from Scotland, via Denmark, Holland and Spain to England.

The palaces of Tudors were genuine power houses - the nerve-centre of military operations, the boardroom for all executive decisions and the core of international politics. The author picks through architectural digs, examines financial accounts, plans and drawings to reconstruct the great Tudor houses and understand how they shaped their lives.

Between 1900 and 1950 the British state amassed a huge collection of over 800 historic buildings, monuments and historic sites and opened them to the public. This book explains why the collecting frenzy took place. It locates it in the fragile and nostalgic atmosphere of the interwar years, dominated by neo-romanticism and cultural protectionism.