Black Tudors: The Untold Story

“It’s a very interesting book. The author, Miranda Kaufmann, found evidence, in the National Archives in London, of the presence of 360 black people, in the period 1500 to 1540, who lived in England. She chooses ten of these individuals and writes biographies of them. They’re ten very diverse individuals, and she writes about their lives in a very interesting way. The anecdotes are quite startling at times.” Read more...

The Best History Books: the 2018 Wolfson Prize shortlist

Carole Hillenbrand, Theologians & Historians of Religion

***Shortlisted for the 2018 Wolfson History Prize***

In his book, Black and British, historian David Olusoga decries the absence of Black people in his history lessons growing up. If his book seeks to remedy that absence over a couple of millennia, Miranda Kaufmann’s book, Black Tudors, looks at one period in particular, Tudor England. This is the era before the slave trade got going in Britain, and the pseudo-scientific theories of race of the Victorian era cast their long shadow. As she writes, “Tudors were far more likely to judge a new acquaintance by his or her religion and social class than by where they were born or the colour of their skin, though these categories did on occasion intersect.” The book is a series of portraits of individuals, so is quite easy to dip in and out of.

Books for Black History Month