Please help fuel my Tudor addiction

[IvaNighSpare]

(have posted this in both fiction and non fiction)

I'm currently working my way rapidly through my DVD box-set of The Tudors and it has fired my interest in the actual history of the times, particularly during Henry VIII's reign.
Could anyone reccommend any books that make interesting reading that don't read like school history books [yawn] and are truer to the facts than the efforts of Phillippa Gregory?

Thanks

have just finished season 3 of Tudors and all the thrill of the soft porn side of it had worn off by then leaving v little entertainment

Gregory much more accurate than Tudors - there is a list somewhere of hilarious things in the tv series, like a radiator in Henry's bedroom and Victorian springs on carriages and tarmac drives and concrete and stuff

CJ Sansom is great! I have read all four of his Shardlake novels, and they paint a very vivid picture of life in Tudor times, at times they are brutal but they are really interesting and detailed and gripping and you can almost experience the sights and smells of Tudor England. definitely recommend. Also really like Antonia Fraser.

Phillipa Gregory is way more accurate than the Tudors (although I do love the programme!) I actually really like her books.

Alison Weir is very good and I do like David Starky but I have only ever read his books for college work and that was years ago. (I also saw him do a tutorial as a student once!)

Loved CJ Sansom books, am now going to get hold of Wolf Hall, seeing as so many of you are raving about it!

oooh I love the Tudors. Expat is the MN tudor expert - shout out for her if you see her on.

I know you've asked for reading material, but if your after fuel to feed a 'Tudor' passion, have you seen the Ray Winston 'Henry VIII"? Fab viewing, as is Cate Blanchett's 'Elizabeth'. Sorry if I've stated the obvious!

CJ Sansom is brilliant, I do like most Philipa Gregory, though some aren't so hot.
I also read Jean Plaidy as a teenager (a long time ago) and they are good without so much bodice ripping as the Tudors. (She's also good for the Stuarts) I'm sure she's still in print, and your library will probably have her, mine does.

Am going to Alison Weir now.

Margaret Irwin wrote several novels about Elizabeth I and that era, as well as a biography of Walter Raleigh. They were written in the 1940s and 1950s, so the sex is probably downplayed compared to more recent books, although the grue factor is pretty similar.

I read them as a history-hating teenager, and loved them.

I would also support Alison Wier as a good readble writer on the period (and others).

'you're' obviously

Yes, Jean Plaidy is definitely still in print and some of her books, including all the Tudor one have been recently re-released.