Margaret Beaufort

Have we ever had a more successful yet somehow forgettable king than Henry VII? A century ago, the Dictionary of National Biography could still hail him as the ‘Solomon of England’. But if he is remembered now it is almost solely for the dynasty he founded, with the domestic and international achievements of his own long and prudent reign largely ignored in the country’s bizarre obsession with the later Tudors.    There must have been an unusual mix of calculation and audacity to Henry’s character, because calculation alone could never have brought him to the throne. Over the first 30 years of his life, regime change had become the violent norm

The history of princesses and queens has become well-trodden ground in the women’s history genre, particularly the Tudors. Linda Porter’s The Thistle and the Rose, a life of Margaret Tudor, queen consort to James IV and mother of James V, provides a refreshing change in subject. Margaret has had to share the stage with some of the most famous names and voices of the 16th century: Henry VII and his queen, Elizabeth of York; Henry VIII and his wives; and, of course, her namesake, Margaret Beaufort, the formidable Tudor matriarch who deftly helped place her son, the victor of Bosworth, on the throne. Margaret Tudor, though less considered in popular