Black Tudors

Refreshing narrative and intimate insight

Fascinating insight into the remarkable, and less glamorous, lives of Black people in Tudor England. I enjoyed learning about the unique skills and crafts of many of these individuals, as well as the accompanying context about industries such as the textile and ordnance trades of the 16th and 17th centuries. My secondary school history curriculum covered the Tudors on 3 separate occasions; how differently I would have understood our country’s history had some of this knowledge been included. While I was attracted to this book as an alternative narrative on Black history to the oversaturated subject of slavery, I did appreciate the balanced representation of England’s role in slavery - I did not know slavery was never legal in England, but the book did not let us off the hook and made clear connections to the English dealings in the Transatlantic slave trade. I dropped one star simply because some chapters seemed to focus mostly on the backstory (and often, the drama) of the white people rather than the Black individual for whom the chapter was supposed to be about, and in some cases we barely learnt anything about them. But overall an enjoyable read whose piecemeal structure made it an accessible read.