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Thomas More
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  • Published: 22 May 2025
  • ISBN: 9781405953634
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 576
Categories:

Thomas More

A Life and Death in Tudor England

Formats & editions
Paperback
2 June 2026
EBook
22 May 2025
Audiobook
22 May 2025
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Worshipped as a saint, detested as a torturer, admired as revolutionary, condemned as dogmatic: the definitive biography of the man who dominated England in the first half of the 16th century

Thomas More is one of the most famous – or infamous – figures in English history. Is he a saintly scholar and an inspiration for statesmen, socialists and intellectuals even today? Or is he the stubborn zealot famously portrayed in Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall?

Here is the definitive biography of this hypnotic, flawed figure. Overturning many interpretations of the sixteenth century, Joanne Paul shows More to have been an intellectual and political giant of his age, central to the making of modern Europe. Drawing on new archival discoveries and over a decade's research into More's life and work, this is a richly-told story of family, faith and politics.
  • Published: 22 May 2025
  • ISBN: 9781405953634
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 576
Categories:

About the author

Joanne Paul

Joanne Paul is a writer, broadcaster, consultant, and Honorary Senior Lecturer in Intellectual History at the University of Sussex. A BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker, her research focuses on the intellectual and cultural history of the Renaissance and Early Modern periods. She has written for the Cambridge University Press 'Ideas in Context' series, and has been widely praised for her work on Thomas More, William Shakespeare, Machiavelli and Thomas Hobbes. Her current academic project is an edition of Thomas More’s Utopia for the Oxford University Press. Her first book for the trade, The House of Dudley was published in 2022. Thomas More: A Life was published in May 2025.
JP

Also by Joanne Paul

The House of Dudley
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Praise for Thomas More

A spectacular achievement

Nicola Tallis

Absorbing, meticulously researched and expertly executed

Lindsey Fitzharris

Brilliant and lucid. This is an original and illuminating work

Suzannah Lipscomb

Praise for Joanne Paul

Death, desire, power and scandal - this is riveting stuff. Paul produces a well-written, historically grounded page-turner

Spectator

Magisterial

Smithsonian