"The Field of Cloth of Gold" by Glenn Richardson

The Field of Cloth of Gold Glenn Richardson

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Format:: Hardback
Publication date:: 07 Jan 2014
ISBN:: 9780300148862
Imprint:: Yale University Press
Dimensions:: 288 pages: 229 x 152mm
Illustrations:: 12 b-w illus.
Sales territories:: World

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Glenn Richardson provides the first history in more than four decades of a major Tudor event: an extraordinary international gathering of Renaissance rulers unparalleled in its opulence, pageantry, controversy, and mystery.

Throughout most of the late medieval period, from 1300 to 1500, England and France were bitter enemies, often at war or on the brink of it. In 1520, in an effort to bring conflict to an end, England’s monarch, Henry VIII, and Francis I of France agreed to meet, surrounded by virtually their entire political nations, at “the Field of Cloth of Gold.” In the midst of a spectacular festival of competition and entertainment, the rival leaders hoped to secure a permanent settlement between them, as part of a European-wide “Universal Peace.” Richardson offers a bold new appraisal of this remarkable historical event, describing the preparations and execution of the magnificent gathering, exploring its ramifications, and arguing that it was far more than the extravagant elitist theater and cynical charade it historically has been considered to be.

Glenn Richardson is professor of early modern history at St. Mary’s University, London.

“Glenn Richardson is rare among scholars of Tudor England in approaching the subject from an international perspective.”—David Gelber, Literary Review

‘Richardson’s book seeks to throw new light on what we know of the Field itself: from how it was organised, provisioned and enacted, to the reasons such a sensational junket should have mattered – and in this it undoubtedly succeeds.’—Thomas Penn, London Review of Books