Book excerpt: Making available a selection of some of the most significant recent work on the Tudor Monarchy, this Reader gives a good sense of the issues that have preoccupied historians and of the ways in which the traditional concerns of power and politics have been enlarged by growing attention to lessconventional facets of the subject: to the wider agenda of Renaissance statecraft and the phenomenon of female rule, for instance, or to the interdependence of Court and localities and the significance of frontiers and borderlands in the shaping of Tudor political culture. Particular attention isgiven to recent seminal contributions that have shifted the traditional focus, but the debates in the field that continue to fascinate historians and students are well represented. With full introductory sections by John Guy, the volume looks in turn at the broad themes of "Renaissance Monarchy";personality and politics; and polity and government.