The Field of Cloth of Gold

“Pomp, pageantry and epic showing-off: a vivid re-creation of the 1520 peace-promoting rally between the kings of England and France.”—The Sunday Times Glenn Richardson provides the first history in more than four decades of a major Tudor event: an extraordinary international gathering of Renaissance rulers unparalleled in its opulence, pageantry, controversy, and mystery. Throughout most of the late medieval period, from 1300 to 1500, England and France were bitter enemies, often at war or on the brink of it. In 1520, in an effort to bring conflict to an end, England’s monarch, Henry VIII, and Francis I of France agreed to meet, surrounded by virtually their entire political nations, at “the Field of Cloth of Gold.” In the midst of a spectacular festival of competition and entertainment, the rival leaders hoped to secure a permanent settlement between them, as part of a European-wide “Universal Peace.” Richardson offers a bold new appraisal of this remarkable historical event, describing the preparations and execution of the magnificent gathering, exploring its ramifications, and arguing that it was far more than the extravagant elitist theater and cynical charade it historically has been considered to be. “A sparkling new account of the Field of Cloth of Gold as an extraordinary demonstration of ostentatious rivalry.”—Suzannah Lipscomb, author of A Journey Through Tudor England “Richardson’s book seeks to throw new light on what we know of the Field itself: from how it was organized, provisioned and enacted, to the reasons such a sensational junket should have mattered—and in this it undoubtedly succeeds.”—London Review of Books