What was it like to lead an ordinary life in 16th-century England? If you lived in the country, as most people did, you would probably rise in the summer at 4am (accompanied by the first crow of your cockerel). You would wash in cold water (hot was considered unhealthy); clean your teeth with soot from a wax candle; look forward to a series of meals that, if you were poor, might be composed almost exclusively of bread.
Some of these details are well known; others are more obscure. But Ruth Goodman’s presentation of them is always entertaining, and her narrative is often lifted by the fact that she has taken the trouble to experience many of the alien aspects of Tudor life (how people slept, washed, ate) herself. This imbues the book with a palpable sense of the texture of our ancestors’ day-to-day lives – and makes this reader grateful to be living now.
How to Be a Tudor is published by Viking (£20). Click here to buy it for £16
