Customer Reviews

Thomas More (Reputations)

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This new book on Thomas More is a must for More fans. Unlike previous biographies which run along like a river of time, the present work wrestles with each part of More's life and character as questions, always attempting to put the known historical facts alongside the accumulated tradition and hagiography surrounding this great man. Professor Guy demonstrates a clear knowledge of the work of other of More's biographers, and has a keen ability to critically discuss them. While the synopis on the back cover warns that those 'satisfied by an idealized vision of More...should not read this book', nothing could be farther from the truth. The book does not attempt to knock down More, but rather to ask some hard historical questions, and if it asks more questions than it answers it is all the better for it. The final assesment of More is left for the reader. Professor Guy makes some astute observations which many historians in the past have taken for granted, for example the link often made with the idyllic picture painted by Erasmus in his letter to Hutten of More's and Holbein's famous painting of the More household in Chelsea. Guy points out that Erasmus never knew More in the house at Chelsea, but only stayed for a short time in More's house in the city of London. Guy also highlights the supposed 'silence' of More with regards to the Act of Supremacy and writes that More 'conyeyed what he really thought to almost anyone who would listen in coded but "safe" language, while pretending to keep "silence"'. The book, however, does not deal only with More's life and the shibboleths surrounding it, but the ways in which More's life and character have been interpreted by the succeeding generations: understanding him as everything from a Protestant 'avant le lettre' to an icon of Communist Russia complete with a memorial to him in Moscow's Alexandrovsky Gardens. Throughout the work one can sense Professor Guy's genuine respect, admiration and even love for Thomas More (warts and all) and it is this ultimately which makes the book such a pleasant read for More fans.