Immersive, engrossing...a reminder that while we believe we see the past from a detached, enlightened perspective, our view is often blinkered, and so is our notion of what constitutes human needs and nature. It's one thing to pay lip service to how much the Western family has changed over the past several centuries and another to witness someone recreating the way it once worked...The revelatory truth behind the sumptuous gowns and palaces of Wolf Hall isn't how badly those kings and princesses smelled but just how hard everyone else was working in the rest of their world. -- Laura Miller - Slate
[Goodman's] enthusiasm is exhilarating and contagious; her writing is clear and clean, sharply observant of tactile details and what they reveal about 16th-century life...Goodman approaches a plainspoken lyricism, a prosaic celebration of her ancestors and the world they made. -- Kate Tuttle - Boston Globe
Engagingly written and awash in the practicalities of life in the age, [How to Be a Tudor] presents a vivid, fascinating era of British history and reminds us that we're never as far from the past as we like to think. -- Genevieve Valentine - NPR.org
Goodman's latest foray into immersive history is a revelation...This fascinating book shows us commoners at their patriotic Sunday afternoon archery practice and Henry VIII playing tennis in a crimson satin doublet, with evening prayers for all. It's the next best thing to being there. -- Sarah Ferguson - New York Times Book Review
An intimate look inside the 16th-century household. In this natural follow-up to How to Be a Victorian (2014), historian Goodman mines advice manuals, poems, letters, Shakespeare's plays, and even cookbooks to etch in captivating detail a portrait of life in Tudor and Elizabethan England.... Fresh and illuminating history. -- Kirkus Reviews
Ruth is the queen of living history, long may she reign! -- Lucy Worsley, author of The Art of the English Murder
A deeply researched and endlessly fascinating account of what it was like to live as a Tudor. The narrative is rich in period detail and based upon a thorough review of the contemporary sources, but what makes it unique is the fact that Goodman has put it all into practice-sleeping, eating, washing and dressing like a Tudor. As a result, How To Be a Tudor is one of very few books which can justifiably claim to bring every aspect of this enduringly popular period dazzlingly to life. -- Tracy Borman, author of Thomas Cromwell
