Pretty uneven- the sections on Ireland were almost impossible to follow, and there was far too much about the endless, pointless court 'politics' of the Tudors. Do you really care to read functional history about Elizabeth's favorites? That stuff's best left to HBO. When Brigden writes about ever...
In offering an alternative path to salvation, the new religion broke the unity of Catholic Christendom and shattered a world of shared belief. For England, the lost worlds were those of past certainties, of traditional religion, and of all that was destroyed in the name of faith. People in the pa...