My last Shardlake novel, Heartstone, centred on the sinking of the King’s warship Mary Rose during the battle of the Solent in July 1545. Since its publication the new Mary Rose Museum has opened in Portsmouth, showing the surviving half of the ship with, as a mirror image, the widest ranging and most beautifully presented collection of Tudor artefacts anywhere in the world. It is truly an extraordinary place, which I have been privileged to be associated with, and I am again grateful to the museum, the staff and especially Rear-Admiral John Lippiett, for continued insights into the vanished world of the 1540s.

Many works were invaluable for my research. Catherine Parr has received some deserved attention in recent years. Janel Mueller’s (ed.) Katherine Parr: Complete Works and Correspondence (Chicago, 2011) is a work of fine scholarship, as well as an exhaustive compendium, which includes the text of Lamentation of a Sinner. Anthony Martinssen trod the biographical ground a generation ago with Queen Katherine Parr (New York, 1971). Two excellent recent biographies are those by Susan James, Catherine Parr (Stroud, 2008) and Linda Porter, Katherine the Queen (London, 2010). For other characters, Dairmaid MacCulloch’s biography, Cranmer (London, 1996), was yet again an invaluable resource. Samuel Rhea Gammon’s Statesman and Schemer: William, First Lord Paget – Tudor Minister (Devon, 1973) is an excellent biography of this unshowy, and therefore perhaps neglected, Tudor politician. Along with McCulloch, he gives the remarkable Bertano affair the attention it deserves. Glyn Redworth’s In Defence of the Church Catholic: The Life of Stephen Gardiner (Oxford, 1990) was very helpful, though it failed to convince me that Gardiner did not play a leading role in the events of 1546. Stephen Alford’s Burghley: William Cecil at the Court of Elizabeth I (Yale, 2008) was helpful on Cecil’s early career and first steps on the political ladder.

Dakota L. Hamilton’s The Household of Queen Katherine Parr (unpublished PhD thesis, Oxford, 1992) was a treasure trove on the structure of the Queen’s Court. Simon Thurley’s Whitehall Palace, The Official Illustrated History (London, 2008), Whitehall Palace, An Architectural History of the Royal Apartments 1240–1690 (London, 1999) and his The Royal Palaces of Tudor England (Yale, 1993) brought the vanished palace back to life, although a good deal of my reconstruction had of course to be imaginative. David Loades’s The Tudor Court (London, 1996) and Maria Hayward’s Dress at the Court of King Henry VIII (London, 2007) were also of great help.

For the wider London world, Liza Picard’s Elizabeth’s London (London, 2005) was once again invaluable and, as with MacCulloch’s Cranmer, never far from my side. James Raven, The Business of Books (Yale, 2007) was especially helpful on the early printing trade. Susan Brigden’s London and the Reformation was another book which, again, was always near to hand. Irvin Buckwalter Horst’s The Radical Brethren: Anabaptism and the English Reformation to 1548 (Holland, 1972) was a mine of information on the early Anabaptists.