David Souden

This is a glossy, shiny introduction to the major players in the history of Hampton Court Palace, which is most commonly associated with Henry VIII. I particularly liked that it was published or otherwise endorsed by Historic Royal Palaces, the independent charity set up to run Hampton Court and four other unoccupied royal residences (The Tower of London, Kensington Palace, Kew Palace, and Banqueting House). Seeing all the furniture, tapestries and paintings on display made me want to go visit! The only drawback to this book is that the layout and size of the images sometimes caused photo references to be several pages away from the photos they were referencing; also, some of the references were out of numerical order. And some photos appeared twice: once as a two-page spread, and then again in a smaller size next to some text. It seemed a waste of photo space to repeat the photo in a smaller form (but the two-page spreads were great).

Recommended if you like tours of stately homes, are an Anglophile, or want a good jumping-off point for British history.… (meer)