The triumphs of the Tudor age are well known; less apparent is the pain that went hand-in-hand with success. This book considers the cost of great achievement. Michael Foss, author of The World of Camelot and The Search for Cleopatra, holds a microscope up to the lives of key Tudor figures. He paints a portrait of key Tudor figures undone by the stern course of the century - Walsingham, made poor and hurried to the grave by the laborious demands of Elizabeth's administration; Philip Sidney, who found no place for his chivalrous idealism in the faithless world of contemporary polity - in an age which resembled 'a bow too long bent'.