Book Description

The Whitbread Award–winning author of Queen of Scots presents a “brilliantly observed” dual biography of Sir Thomas More and his daughter (The New York Times). Sir Thomas More’s life is well known: his opposition to Henry VIII’s marriage to Anne Boleyn, his arrest for treason, his execution and martyrdom. Yet a major figure in his life—his beloved daughter Margaret—has been largely airbrushed out of the story. Margaret was her father’s closest confidant and played a critical role in safeguarding his intellectual legacy. In A Daughter’s Love, John Guy restores her to her rightful place in Tudor history. Always her father’s favorite child, Margaret was such an accomplished scholar by age eighteen that her work earned praise from Erasmus of Rotterdam. She remained devoted to her father after her marriage—and paid the price in estrangement from her husband. When More was thrown into the Tower of London, Margaret collaborated with him on his most famous letters from prison, smuggled them out at great personal risk, and even rescued his head after his execution. Drawing on original sources that have been ignored by generations of historians, Guy creates a dramatic new portrait of both Thomas More and the daughter whose devotion secured his place in history.