This book was published in 2003. Thomas Stukeley was one of the most colourful characters of the Elizabethan age, whose exploits brought him fame and notoriety throughout Europe. Described variously as picturesque, quixotic, cloudy minded, remarkable, and (by Evelyn Waugh) as a "preposterous and richly comic figure", Stukeley remains a flamboyant and fascinating character in the imagination of succeeding generations. Yet whilst these portrayals may be accurate, they do not in themselves do full justice to a multifaceted man whose remarkable career included stints as mercenary, pirate, forger, colonial adventurer, political advisor, diplomat and traitor, and who rubbed shoulders with princes, kings and popes. In this new biography, Professor Tazon makes extensive use of previously neglected documents from British, Spanish and Italian archives to produce a much more rounded and complete portrait of Stukeley and the events in which he participated. He brings Stukeley forth as a real figure, urging the reader to view in parallel English, Spanish, Irish and wider European history.
Biography
Juan E. Tazón is Professor of English at the University of Oviedo, Spain. A specialist in the Renaissance period, he was one of the founders and first president of the Spanish Society for English Renaissance Studies, as well as a research fellow of the John Carter Brown Library
'The Life and Times of Thomas Stukeley is a product of substantial archival research and should be the standard work on the subject for many years.' Times literary Supplement '...a major study of an important but almost forgotten figure in European history. There is no comparable work, in any language.' Geoffrey Parker (Ohio State University) '... restores Stukeley and his cause to the center of the sixteenth-century political world... Tazón's important biography fills a neglected gap in Spanish and English history.' Renaissance Quarterly 'Tazón's excavation of Stukeley's career offers much to enrich our understanding of the multinational political world in which such men lived, occasionally thrived, and, sooner or later, died.' Sixteenth Century Journal
