PERHAPS A GIFT VOUCHER FOR MUM?: MOTHER'S DAY
Steven Gunn studied at Merton College, Oxford. He has held research fellowships there and at the University of Newcastle, and is now Fellow and Tutor in History at Merton College and Professor of Early Modern History at Oxford. His books include Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, c.1484-1545 (1988), Early Tudor Government 1485-1558 (1995), Henry VII's New Men and the Making of Tudor England (2016) and, with David Grummitt and Hans Cools, War, State and Society in England and the Netherlands, 1477-1559 (2007).
A book of extraordinary range and depth, based on an astonishing wealth of archival research and argued with subtlety and conviction. * Lucy Wooding, Times Literary Supplement * Gunn's book is a social history of war, and what a fascinating social history it is... essential reading for anyone hoping to understand not just Tudor warfare, but Tudor society as a whole. It is not conventional military history at all, and it is much the better for it. * Jonathan Healey, Literary Review * Gunn displays a remarkable breadth and depth of scholarship. The book, which has its origins in the author's Ford Lectures of 2014-2015, is based on extensive research in almost 70 archives in the United Kingdom, the United States, Belgium, and France. It is an essential volume for all those interested in Henry VIII's reign and it will remain the key work on English warfare during this period for some time. * Neil Murphy, War in History * Readers will find this book an excellent primer on England and war in the century centred around the reign of Henry VIII... a book which scholars of Tudor government and politics would do well to ponder and absorb. * Paul E.J. Hammer, University of Colorado Boulder, English Historical Review * The value of this book is twofold. Professor Gunn's knowledge of the topic is broad and deep. His forceful argument is written with such stylistic agility that its massive supporting material does not overwhelm it. But the very number of examples, drawn from so many different sources, provides a second value. No student of the Tudor world, or of the early modern military, will be unable to find some new, intriguing fact at every turning of the page. * Eric Klingelhofer, H-War * This book uncouples the study of war from the linear, and sometimes exclusive, patterns of military history and instead integrates Henry's wars into the macrocosm of early modern history at large. * Mark Charles Fissel, American Historical Review * Henry's wars, as Gunn makes very clear in this superb study, also generated their fair share of human and financial costs. Readers will find the eight compact chapters filled with fascinating stories and vignettes that reveal the extent to which war touched the lives of men and women from all orders of English society. * David R. Lawrence, Renaissance Quarterly * This book, like the lectures, is a triumph. * Rory Rapple, Journal of British Studies * I can think of no better example of the very best military history ... Without doubt one of the stand out academic publications of the year in question, it illuminates the crucial transition from a quasi-feudal to a national defence system in England. Lucidly written by one of our leading early modernist historians of war and based on the Ford lectures delivered at Oxford in 2015, it breaks entirely new ground. * Ian F.W. Beckett, The Society for Army Historical Research Annual Booklist, 2019-2020 *
