The Reformation transformed England forever. From peasants in the lanes and fields to the court of Henry VIII, no life was left untouched as the Catholic Church was replaced as the centre of the nation's religious life. Emerging from a dense mesh of European ecclesiastical and political controversy and Tudor dynastic ambition, the British Reformation ended with the Pope supplanted as the head of the national church, the great monasteries - owners of much of the land in the country - disbanded and destroyed, the Latin Mass replaced by vernacular services and parish churches stripped of their colourful wall paintings. This is a fully illustrated introduction that looks at the main players - Thomas More, Henry Tudor, Thomas Cromwell and others - as well as the broad sweep of this era of bitter controversy, brutal persecution and seismic upheaval.
