The Battlement Garden: Britain from the Wars of the Roses to the Age of Shakespeare

Walter Hodges traces the flowering of the Tudor period, with emphasis on two events, both of which took place in 1485; first, the printer William Caxton published Sir Thomas Malory's Morte d'Arthur, and second, the Battle of Bosworth that brought Henry VII to the throne.The Civil Wars were ended, prosperity was possible, and the English could dream, with Malory, of the ideal English past of Arthurian England--a past that gave them confidence they could re-establish and even surpass. And thus, by 1603, when Henry VII grand-daughter Queen Elizabeth I died ,she left a peaceful country, rich in literature, painting, architecture, music, and strong abroad as well.