A Comprehensive Guide to Exploring Elizabethan England Through Time Travel

Helen Musson: Brilliant!

United Kingdom on Nov 01, 2023

Claudia R Bosworth: Scholarly and enjoyable break down of English society. The exact kind of information time travelers would want.

United States on Aug 15, 2023

Larry Vazquez: A truly satisfying ride back in time with such fetal that you can almost sense your in the middle of each scene. Really did not want this book to end.
Much thanks to the author for the experience.

United States on Aug 13, 2023

Amazon Kunde: Vorzüglich recherchiert und geschrieben. Immer spannend!

Germany on Jun 26, 2023

Lawrence Donahue: I was a British studies major in college in the 80s. I wish I had a book like this at that time.

United States on May 30, 2023

Philip Meers: Although well written, and fairly well researched, I've only given 4* because it is not really a book for someone with a knowledge of the period. Generally accurate, there are a number of major inaccuracies, some weak explanations, and a lot of omissions. For the general reader this will not matter greatly, and they can enjoy a tramp through the highways and byways of Elizabethan England. As someone who is very immersed in the period I learned very little that was new to me, and was often annoyed by the book's faults, especially the omissions which often meant that the reader was left with an incomplete idea of an unfinished explanation.

I would certainly recommend this to the general reader. Parts were, in fact, rather amusing. However, in the few years since this was written, there has been a lot of new information about the period that has made this book far less accurate for the more informed reader.

United Kingdom on Dec 04, 2021

LSC: This is one of my favorite books. If you wonder what life was like in 16th England and, presumably, Europe as well, you will find it here. The author knows his readers and answers the questions you may have and some you didnt think to ask. He shares intricate and intimate details of the typical life of the aristocrat, the (scare, but rising) middle class, and the hardships of those who must struggle to survive (and sometimes don't). Details, details, and more wonderful details - I have wondered about them while reading other books but I found the answers here. You can walk through the bustling, dynamic, crowded streets of Shakespeare's London, one of the most populous cities in Europe even 400 years ago, where wealth and poverty live side by side (like in the 21st century) and maybe take in a play at The Globe, where you can actually see Shakespeare perform in his own plays, maybe Hamlet or MacBeth. Visit the little towns of Stratford and Depford, typical of small towns throughout England. While there, you can stop by and pay respects to the two illustrious persons still buried there in their respective resting-places.
There are strict hierarchies re...

United States on Mar 25, 2020

Stefan43: This book is one of my favourite history books, an antidote to the usual linear chronological and elite-obsessed history books about what monarchs and nobles did. This book is for those who wonder where Elizabethan people went to the loo, how they kept clean, what diseases they suffered from, and what happened if they broke the law.

Elizabethan life was violent lawless smelly and usually pretty short (if you didn't die in a brawl then the plague or influenza would probably get you). The part on medicine and diseases is terrifying - medicine was pretty worthless and so many diseases which are innocuous nowadays were fatal then - it was not rare for a third of the population of a town to be carried off by plague or something else.

Queen Bess herself got smallpox at the beginning of her reign, and had black teeth by the end of it, but went topless in Court in front of the French ambassador (a respectable Elizabethan woman would never show any leg, but showing breasts was fine, as long as she was unmarried).

A couple of little suggestions to improve the book: more illustrations would have helped, especially as regards clothes, and musical instruments. A more...

United Kingdom on Aug 12, 2013

Edward Mckenzie: Ian Mortimer has done a lot of reasearch on this book as he did on Mediavel England, its sister. I gave it the rating I did, simply because of the veracity of it references and research.

First off: Don't read it if you have night mares! Going back with Ian to a very sordid history, the frightening part is when you stop to think, this was say 500 years ago. Maybes so, but think ahead and how will people read our history of today, and think.......good grief, how did they manage to exist! That is the scary bit.

I really don't think much has changed since Elizabethan times. The Church has lost a lot of its power, but still carries on in its wicked ways. The cases of paedophilea, and in Eire, the cases of nuns and the Magdalene Convents, which are being investigated today. The bribery we read is still at large, only more sophisticated and devious.

Take the case of cleanliness. Abllutions, all that sort of thing. Then the nonsense we hear from the Church, the Black Death is God's answer to our sinful lives...........till they find the Convents and Church dying like flies! So they have to shut up.

Sailing on a ship, is virtually a floating bedlam. The filth...

United States on Apr 07, 2013

Claire Simmonds: Not everyone can be interested in all aspects of Elizabethan life (not the casual reader anyway). Mortimer obviously is, and covers all topics, from chopping off hands to Shakespeare's sonnets, in detail. Detail is often a very good thing, and some little fascinating nuggets of information are what make this book enjoyable. However, there are some instances where we find out (in seemingly endless lists) exactly what Mr. and Mrs Elizabethan had in their house at the time of their deaths, or exactly how many eggs, quails, eels etc were stored in a kitchen. I am interested in social history, and enjoy learning about day to day life for the 'normal' people of the time, but I found myself skimming the long, long lists of how many pewter jugs they had, how many sheets etc. There are just too many of these - lines and lines of every single household object, which we've already learnt about as the person mentioned in the paragraph before had exactly the same things. So I knocked a star off my rating for that, sorry if that's a bit harsh.
I didn't enjoy this book as much as Mortimers previous 'Medieval' offering, maybe because I knew more about the Elizabethan period initially. It was...

United Kingdom on Jun 16, 2012