Children of England

When Henry VIII dies in 1547 he left three highly intelligent children to succeed him in turn - Edward, Mary and Elisabeth - to be followed, if their lines failed, by the descendants of his sister Mary Tudor, one of whom was the ill-fated Lady Jane Grey, Edward was nine years old, Mary thirty-one and Jane ten. Edward, Elizabeth and Jane were staunch Protestants, Mary a devout Catholic; each had a very different mother and they had grown up in vastly different circumstances.

In "Children of England", Alison Weir's interest is not in constitional history but in the characters and relationships of Henry's four Heirs. Making use of a huge variety of contemporary sources, she brings to life one of the most extraordinary periods of English history, when each of Henry's heirs was potentially the tool of powerful political one religious figures, and when the realm was seething with intrigue and turbulent change.