{"title":"Books by John Matusiak","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"9781803999401","title":"The Prisoner King","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eMuch has been written about Charles I’s reign, about the brutal civil war into which his pursuit of unfettered power plunged the realm, and about the Commonwealth regime that followed his defeat and execution.\u003c\/strong\u003e His reign is one that shaped the future of the British monarchy, and his legacy still remains with us today.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Prisoner King\u003c\/em\u003e provides an examination of the crucial period encompassing Charles I’s captivity after his surrender to the Scots at Newark in May 1646. Not only were the subsequent months before his trial a time when the human dimension of the king’s predicament assumed intensity, they were also a critical watershed when the entire nation stood at the most fateful of crossroads.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFor Charles himself – as subterfuge, espionage and assassination rumours escalated on all fronts, escape attempts foundered, and tensions with his absent wife mounted agonisingly – the test was supreme. Yet, in a painful passage involving both stubborn impenitence and uncommon fortitude in the face of ‘barbarous usage’ by his captors, the ‘Man of Blood’ would ultimately come to merit his unique place in history as England’s ‘martyr king’.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":55206418907509,"sku":"9781803999401","price":14.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781803999401.jpg?v=1786027458"},{"product_id":"9780415620277","title":"Henry V","description":"\u003cp\u003eHenry V of England, the princely hero of Shakespeare's play, who successfully defeated the French at the Battle of Agincourt and came close to becoming crowned King of France, is one of the best known and most compelling monarchs in English history. This new biography takes a fresh look at his entire life and nine year reign, and gives a balanced view of Henry, who is traditionally seen as a great hero but has been more recently depicted as an obsessive egotist or, worse, a ruthless warlord. The book locates Henry's style of kingship in the context of the time, and looks at often neglected other figures who influenced and helped him, such as his father and his uncles, Henry and Thomas Beaufort. John Matusiak shows that the situation confronting Henry at the outset of his reign was far more favourable than is often supposed but that he was nonetheless a man of prodigious gifts whose extraordinary achievements in battle left the deepest possible impression upon his contemporaries.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56289108689269,"sku":"9780415620277","price":43.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780415620277_b93f6420-8c60-4ac1-97ff-fa8554501a60.jpg?v=1786013386"},{"product_id":"9780750986830","title":"James I","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFew kings have been more savagely caricatured or grossly misunderstood than England’s first Stuart. Yet, as this biography demonstrates, the modern tendency to downplay his defects and minimise the long-term consequences of his reign has gone too far.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn spite of genuine idealism and flashes of considerable resourcefulness, \u003cem\u003eJames I\u003c\/em\u003e remains a perplexing figure – a uniquely curious ruler, shot through with glaring inconsistencies. His vices and foibles not only undermined his high hopes for healing and renewal after Elizabeth I’s troubled last years, but also entrenched political and religious tensions that eventually consumed his successor. A flawed, if well-meaning, foreigner in a rapidly changing and divided kingdom, his passionate commitment to time-honoured principles of government would, ironically, prove his undoing, as England edged unconsciously towards a crossroads and the shadow of the Thirty Years War descended upon Europe.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56297031500149,"sku":"9780750986830","price":15.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780750986830_fcaf1e53-66f3-47ad-b72f-4c4e3a606705.jpg?v=1786014529"},{"product_id":"9780750991254","title":"A History of the Tudors in 100 Objects","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThis seminal period of British history is a far-off world in which poverty, violence and superstition went hand-in-hand with opulence, religious virtue and a thriving cultural landscape, at once familiar and alien to the modern reader.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eJohn Matusiak sets out to shed new light on the lives and times of the Tudors by exploring the objects they left behind. Among them, a silver-gilt board badge discarded at Bosworth Field when Henry VII won the English crown; a signet ring that may have belonged to Shakespeare; the infamous Halifax gibbet, on which some 100 people were executed; scientific advancements such as a prosthetic arm and the first flushing toilet; and curiosities including a ladies’ sun mask, ‘Prince Arthur’s hutch’ and the Danny jewel, which was believed to be made from the horn of a unicorn. The whole vivid panorama of Tudor life is laid bare in this thought-provoking and frequently myth-shattering narrative, which is firmly founded upon contemporary accounts and the most up-to-date results of modern scholarship.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56297038610805,"sku":"9780750991254","price":18.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780750991254_817b4ece-b1b8-4b10-822f-7c518f745020.jpg?v=1786014606"},{"product_id":"9780750960892","title":"Henry VIII","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThis compelling account of Henry VIII is by no means yet another history of the ‘old monster’ and his reign.\u003c\/strong\u003e The ‘monster’ displayed here is, at the very least, a newer type, more beset by anxieties and insecurities, and more tightly surrounded by those who equated loyalty with fear, self-interest and blind obedience. This ground-breaking book also demonstrates that Henry VIII’s priorities were always primarily martial rather than marital, and accepts neither the necessity of his all-consuming quest for a male heir nor his need ultimately to sever ties with Rome. As the story unfolds, Henry’s predicaments prove largely of his own making, the paths he chooses neither the only nor the best available. For \u003cem\u003eHenry VIII\u003c\/em\u003e was not only a bad man, but also a bad ruler who failed to achieve his aims and blighted the reigns of his two immediate successors.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFive hundred years after he ascended the throne, the reputation of England’s best known king is being rehabilitated and subtly sanitized. Yet Tudor historian John Matusiak paints a colourful and absorbingly intimate portrait of a man wholly unfit for power.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56298633134453,"sku":"9780750960892","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780750960892_d22121be-2ebf-4544-83c1-3bb323d019fc.jpg?v=1786015285"},{"product_id":"9780750994729","title":"Europe in Flames","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe Thirty Years War claimed more lives proportionately than either the First or Second World Wars – not only from battle and the endemic violence of marauding armies, but also from famine and plague.\u003c\/strong\u003e The bitter struggle encompassed the entire political and religious future of Europe and involved all the major players of the Continent. As the turmoil unfolded, vast mercenary armies exacted an incalculable toll upon helpless civilian populations, while their commanders and the men who equipped them frequently grew rich on the profits, leaving rulers perched on the brink of catastrophe. When peace came in 1648, the underlying tensions were far from wholly resolved.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn \u003cem\u003eEurope in Flames\u003c\/em\u003e John Matusiak provides a compelling account of this most tumultuous time, exploring the causes, course and outcomes of a conflict that not only produced one of the greatest manmade calamities of its kind, but changed the direction of European history forever.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56299440308597,"sku":"9780750994729","price":14.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780750994729_0c79c1da-f7cb-4670-b714-ba87d8a801d6.jpg?v=1786014683"},{"product_id":"9781803999852","title":"The Tudors and Europe","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eIn 1517, a certain Dr Beale, rector of St Mary Spitall in London, roused the capital’s mob by laying the blame for an increase in poverty squarely upon the shoulders of grasping foreigners.\u003c\/strong\u003e ‘God has given England to Englishmen,’ he fumed, ‘as birds would defend their nest, so ought Englishmen to cherish and defend themselves and to hurt and grieve aliens for the common weal.’ But migration was not the only factor influencing Tudor attitudes to Europe. War, religion, commerce and dynastic security were all critical in linking England to developments abroad, in ways that remain strikingly relevant today.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhat were the forces that shaped the shifting perspectives of Tudor men and women and their rulers towards a continent at the crossroads? And what, in turn, were the responses of sixteenth-century Europeans to their counterparts across the Channel? \u003cem\u003eThe Tudors and Europe\u003c\/em\u003e looks at a time when the very survival of England hung critically in the balance and asks if it has lessons for the present.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56307403817333,"sku":"9781803999852","price":18.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781803999852_6a2227ab-9384-452d-80ca-75b6baffe0a4.jpg?v=1786027484"},{"product_id":"martyrs-of-henry-viii","title":"Martyrs of Henry VIII","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWhen Henry VIII passed through Canterbury in 1532, a young woman in her mid-twenties named Elizabeth Barton, widely revered as a visionary and prophetess, burst into his presence and warned him that he was ‘so abominable in the sight of God that he was not worthy to tread on hallowed ground’. Two years later, the self-same ‘Holy Maid of Kent’ would suffer a grisly fate at Tyburn and trigger a wave of bloody repression that consumed not only Sir Thomas More, but two other less widely-known individuals, whose exceptional sacrifices were, arguably, even more compelling.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eOne was a combative cleric as renowned for his integrity as his intellect, prepared to sacrifice both life and country in defence of Queen Catherine of Aragon and the old religion; the other a courtier-turned-ascetic, plucked from the shelter of the cloister by a religious and political revolution, in which he had little stake beyond the dictates of his own conscience. For these three unique individuals of widely contrasting backgrounds, temperaments and motives, drawn together at a critical watershed in English history by a common cause and destiny, the path to Tyburn was a long and painful one, paved with fear, hardships, vilification and intrigue.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57507863921013,"sku":"9781837053940","price":16.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}]}],"url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/collections\/author-john-matusiak.oembed","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}