Accidental History of Tudor England
Product details
- ISBN 9781529333763
- Weight: 41g
- Dimensions: 129 x 198mm
- Publication Date: 04 Jun 2026
- Publisher: John Murray Press
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
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'Brilliant, unpredictable and endlessly fascinating' IAN MORTIMER
'I love this book' TRACY BORMAN
'Gunn and Gromelski cast a brilliant light into a lost world' SUSAN BRIGDEN
A unique new window onto Tudor life, told through ordinary people's untimely deaths.
How did ordinary people live in Tudor England? This unique history unearths the ways they died to find out.
Uncovering thousands of coroners' reports, An Accidental History of Tudor England explores the history of everyday life, and everyday death, in a world far from the intrigues of Hampton Court Palace, Shakespeare's plots and the Spanish Armada. Here, farming, building and travel were dangerous. Fruit trees killed more people than guns, and sheep killed about the same number as coalmines. Men stabbed themselves playing football and women drowned in hundreds fetching water. Going to church had its dangers, especially when it came to bell-ringing, archery practice was perilous and haystacks claimed numerous victims. Restless animals roamed the roads which contained some potholes so deep men could drown, and drown they did.
From bear attacks in north Oxford to a bowls-on-ice-incident on the Thames, this book uses a remarkable trove of sources and stories to put common folk back into the big picture of Tudor England, bringing the reality of their world to life as never before.
Professor Steven Gunn is Professor of Early Modern History at Merton College, Oxford. He writes for BBC History Magazine and History Today, has contributed to radio and television programmes such as In Our Time and Time Team, and speaks regularly to Historical Association branches and sixth-form conferences. He is currently a trustee of the Royal Armouries.
Tomasz Gromelski (Author)
Dr Tomasz Gromelski is Research Fellow at Wolfson College, Oxford, and Associate Lecturer at Oxford Brookes University. He is a researcher on the Everyday Life and Fatal Hazard in Sixteenth-Century England and on the Living Standards and Material Culture in English Households projects, based in Oxford and Cambridge respectively.
