Palaces of Revolution : Life, Death and Art at the Stuart Court

'There’s less architectural history and more gossip in this lively compendium than in the detailed studies of individual buildings Thurley has already published, but there are myriad floor plans and contemporary engravings, and plenty to set the mind of the general reader wandering through the long galleries' - The Art Newspaper

A fascinating book looking at the buildings and interiors commissioned by the House of Stuart 

Art and architecture for the Stuart monarchs in England—an extraordinary period when the world was turned upside down twice with the execution of one king (Charles I in 1649) and the deposition of another (James II in 1688)—were neither about keeping out the weather nor entirely about outrageous luxury. The royal residences were complex statements of power, authority and rank.  The choices of fine and decorative art from England, Italy, France or the Low Countries, who got to see it—whether an English Mortlake or a Flemish tapestry, a bed made of sturdy Tudor Oak or an opulent French one, swathed in fabulous imported gold-swagged silk were all significant decisions and interpreted as such.

Palaces of Revolution explores this rich history in graphic detail, giving a unique insight into the lives of this famous dynasty. It takes us from Royston and Newmarket, where James I appropriated most of the town centre as a sort of rough-and-ready royal housing estate, to the steamy Turkish baths at Whitehall where Charles II seduced his mistresses.

We see the intimate private lives of the monarchs, presented through the buildings in which they lived and the objects they commissioned, creating an entirely new narrative of the Stuart century. Palaces of Revolution traces this extraordinary period across the places and palaces on which the action played out, giving us a thrilling new history of this remarkable dynasty.

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