Today I welcome the lovely Amy McElroy to the blog! Amy and I connected when our first books shared a publication day back in January 2023, so I’m delighted to have Amy on the blog to celebrate the release of her second book ‘Women’s Lives in the Tudor Era’ which came out in February 2024. I haven’t finished reading it myself yet but it is chock full of information about the lives of women from birth to death. It is also Amy’s birthday today, so Happy Birthday, Amy!
- Hello Amy, can you tell us a bit about yourself and how you came to be interested in Tudor history?
Hi Helene, thank you for having me! I have always had an interest in the monarchy, but the Plantagenets and Tudors really captured my attention. I would read whatever I could get my hands on, which initially started as mostly fiction, but it led to me going off to read more in non-fiction works and then on to my own research. There are just so many interesting characters and events that happened during that idea, what’s not to love?
- Your first book was ‘Educating the Tudors’ so what made you delve into that topic for your first publication?
I had noticed that Henry VIII is often referred to as a Renaissance Prince and I wanted to know what exactly that meant. For some, the Renaissance brings thoughts of the creative arts, but it majorly revamped education too. I fell down a rabbit hole researching the differences in education across the social ranks as well as Henrys education in comparison to his siblings and his children. It is a fascinating subject and I’m honoured that I actually got to publish a book about it.
- Your new book is ‘Women’s Lives in the Tudor Era’, so what made you move from education in the Tudor period to women’s lives?
My research for Educating the Tudors made it clear that education between males and female (with exceptions of course) was vastly different! It made me wonder what else differed in their lives. There is a lot of literature about the prominent women of the Tudor period and some great books about Tudor life in general, but I wanted to examine as many experiences as I could (within my word-count anyway).
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