Dissolution of the Monasteries

One of the great strengths of this book was the huge range of sources Clark drew on. Beyond just the range of voices a reader might expect to encounter with the use of primary correspondence he adds in the products of sociology and economic history to add further depth and context to the human stories at the heart of this period in English history. The difficulty is that these sources were not always well integrated: transitions between different sections drawing from different domains with sudden switches from talking about a very personal experience to calculating some profit to the crown or something across only a vague bridge of commonality in subject material underlying the switch in academic lens.

An absolute doorstopper of a book, packed with information, covering every aspect of the dissolution in quite forensic detail, illustrating a lot of the stories around the dissolution and showing what a massive social upheaval England went through during the later years of Henry VIII's reign. Maybe too detailed if you want just a brief overview of the period, but Clark has obviously done a lot of research to draw out all these facts and stories and brought them together in one volume.