Another favourite pops out from behind today’s advent window, Ian Mortimer’s Time Traveller’s Guide to Elizabethan England. In a similar vein to Ruth Goodman’s How to be a Tudor, this guide takes you back, to explore ordinary life in the sixteenth century. Here are the sights and smells of Elizabethan England in all their raw glory. We learn what to wear, what to eat and how to keep healthy. There are hints on avoiding committing a faux pas in this religiously turbulent age, along with valuable advice on manners and travelling by road. We are regaled with likely punishments should we, the visitor, transgress in some way. Being a country bumpkin, I might have wished for a slightly greater emphasis on rural life but this is a very minor point.

There are coloured plates in the book but I did feel a bibliography would have been useful, even though there are many sources mentioned in the detailed notes. As an inveterate note reader I do find endnotes irritating and I am assuming that this would be even more tricky on an e-reader. To me, readers either look at notes or they don’t and if they do, flicking back and forth is a pain, even though it does allow me to utilise two book marks! Footnotes rule – ban endnotes!

This is yet another volume that demonstrates the fact that well researched history does not have to be boring. I enjoyed the time-traveller format. I do of course actually travel to the sixteenth century on a not infrequent basis. Next time I will take this as a guide. I once had to do a seventeenth century presentation in front of Ian Mortimer – that was daunting, all I can say is that he didn’t walk out!

I have chosen this particular book but there are similar volumes on Medieval England and Restoration Britain by the same author. His books, along with many others, feature on our website’s list of books about the sixteenth and seventeenth century.