Alison Sim. Pleasures and Pastimes in Tudor England. Stroud, England: Sutton Publishing, 1999. iv + 188 pp. $39.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-7509-1833-6.
Reviewed by Sharon D. Michalove (Department of History, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
Published on H-Albion (June, 2001)
I have just been reading a mystery that, among other things, discusses creating Tudor meals and banquets in a reconstructed medieval castle in Colorado. The author of that book would be the ideal reader for this book by Alison Sim. Intended for a general readership, this book is packed with information about the cultural practices, architecture, eating habits, and other aspects of Tudor life. Many primary sources are quoted, although the information has been gleaned from secondary materials. The book is divided into chapters on the household, clothing and fashion, tournaments and pageantry, religion and ritual, dancing and music, reading, and spectator and participant activities such as theater, sports and games. While Sim attempts to cover these subjects across the social spectrum, the book is inevitably more about the upper classes than the lower classes.
While there is much descriptive material in the book, there is little analysis or an outline of the history of the period, except in the introduction, where the author is at pains to delineate the differences between later medieval England and the Tudor period in ways that are not only old-fashioned but frequently wrong. For example, the author claims Henry VIII's court was the first to create a more formal, elegant court when the trend can be seen in the reign of Richard II. In addition, she sees education, especially for the middle classes, as more change than continuity, when in reality the picture in the early Tudor period is very much like that of the mid-to-late fifteenth century. The reader would be well advised to read the book in conjunction with a good general history of Tudor England in order to identify the people mentioned and to put the descriptions into a broader historical context. In terms of factual information, the reader will find this an easy source of cultural tidbits to enliven a lecture or illuminate other reading. The lavish black and white illustrations will be useful for instructors who are looking for ways to make history more immediate to their classes and will interest the general reader.
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Citation:
Sharon D. Michalove. Review of Sim, Alison, Pleasures and Pastimes in Tudor England.
H-Albion, H-Net Reviews.
June, 2001.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=5208
Copyright © 2001 by H-Net, all rights reserved. H-Net permits the redistribution and reprinting of this work for nonprofit, educational purposes, with full and accurate attribution to the author, web location, date of publication, originating list, and H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online. For any other proposed use, contact the Reviews editorial staff at hbooks@mail.h-net.org.