Thomas More

Most previous biographers of Thomas More have sought to prove him a saint; in this, the first full-scale biography of More in half a century, Richard Marius, a leading Reformation historian, seeks to restore the man. More’s life spanned a tumultuous period in Western history. He was born in 1478 into a society still medieval in its customs and laws. But by the time of his death in 1535 England was already shaken to its depths by the powerful and unsettling ideas of the Renaissance. Marius draws upon important recent research and his profound knowledge of More’s own voluminous writing to make a coherent whole of the life and work of the immensely complex man who was both a product of the times and a singular figure in them.