A Life

Thomas More

Pre-order now and discover a story 400 years in the making - the definitive biography of the man who dominated England in the first half of the sixteenth century 
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Born into the English Wars of the Roses, educated in the European Renaissance, enthralled by the Age of Exploration and ultimately destroyed by Henry VIII, Thomas More is one of the most famous - or notorious - figures in English history. 
 
Is he a saintly scholar, the visionary author of Utopia and an inspiration for statesmen, socialists and intellectuals even today? 
 
Or is he the stubborn zealot famously portrayed in Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall? 
 
Thomas More: A Life is the definitive biography of this hypnotic, flawed figure. Overturning many received interpretations of the sixteenth century, Joanne Paul shows Thomas More to have been an intellectual and political giant of his age, central to the making of modern Europe. Based on new archival discoveries and drawing on more than a decade's research into More's life and work, this is a richly-told story of family, faith and politics, and a compelling portrait of a man who, more than four hundred years after his death, remains the most brilliant mind of the Renaissance. 
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Death, desire, power and scandal - this is riveting stuff. Paul produces a well-written, historically grounded page-turner

Brilliant and lucid. This is an original and illuminating work

Absorbing, meticulously researched and expertly executed

Joanne Paul is a writer, broadcaster, consultant, and Honorary Senior Lecturer in Intellectual History at the University of Sussex. A BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker, her research focuses on the intellectual and cultural history of the Renaissance and Early Modern periods. She has written for the Cambridge University Press 'Ideas in Context' series, and has been widely praised for her work on Thomas More, William Shakespeare, Machiavelli and Thomas Hobbes. Her current academic project is an edition of Thomas More’s Utopia for the Oxford University Press. 
 
Her first book for the trade, The House of Dudley was published in 2022. Thomas More: A Life is publishing Spring 2025.

Thomas More is one of the most famous – or infamous – figures in English history. Is he a saintly scholar and an inspiration for statesmen, socialists and intellectuals even today? Or is he the stubborn zealot famously portrayed in Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall? 
 
Here is the definitive biography of this hypnotic, flawed figure. Overturning many interpretations of the sixteenth century, Joanne Paul shows More to have been an intellectual and political giant of his age, central to the making of modern Europe. Drawing on new archival discoveries and over a decade's research into More's life and work, this is a richly-told story of family, faith and politics.

Joanne Paul

A New History of Tudor England. A TIMES Book of the Year 2022

Was the House of Dudley out to steal the throne? 
 
This was the question on the mind of Elizabeth I's courtiers when a forbidden book accused generations of the Dudley family of poisonings, plottings, murders, treason, incitement and other 'evil stratagems.' 
 
For decades, the Dudleys had been close to the throne, rising from nobodies to the land's highest offices. Under Henrys VII and VIII, Edward VI, Mary I and, finally, Elizabeth, they risked execution and imprisonment as they audaciously stole, murdered and swindled in the name of the monarch. 
 
But were they loyally protecting the crown, or did they secretly covet it for themselves?

Joanne Paul

The House of Dudley

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