The Palace: From the Tudors to the Windsors, 500 Years of British History at Hampton Court

Historian Russell (The Ship of Dreams) offers an entertaining chronicle of England’s Hampton Court Palace, the only Tudor palace still intact and open to the public. Ranging from King Henry VII’s reign to Elizabeth II’s, Russell details how events at the palace, which was occupied periodically by most British monarchs until the mid-18th century, had a significant impact on England and Wales under the Tudors, on Scotland under the Stuarts, and on Ireland under Oliver Cromwell. Beyond the administration of nations, the palace was also the site of shenanigans, trysts, hauntings, and poxes. Russell reports not only on royals’ behavior upstairs but also on the activities of scullery maids and messenger boys downstairs, and he considers the inhabitants in “grace and favor apartments,” including the last Romanov tsar’s sister, Xenia, who was moved deep in the palace’s bowels to protect her from Russian assassins after the revolution. In an especially moving chapter, Russell follows one of the palace’s oak trees, felled by order of George V after WWI for the coffin of the Unknown Warrior, who is buried in Westminster Abbey. Throughout, Russell’s turns of phrase add levity, as when he describes a songbird killed by “a peckish feline who preferred a meal to a melody.” This is a delight. (Dec.)