Christine Stevenson

Yale University Press, £30, pp 312

ISBN 0 300 08536 2

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There were more than a thousand medieval English hospitals, almost all modest. From the middle of the 15th century, rulers in western Europe commissioned great new hospitals for their own and their cities' glory, as well as deeds of charity that might secure them and their families life everlasting. Their motives included piety, prestige, and pleasure. Our renaissance ruler Henry VII based his vast 100-patient Savoy hospital on these motives and Italian models. He ensured there were Tudor roses on the gowns of the staff and on the Tudor coloured counterpanes of the beds; the roof and stained glass windows were also of royal quality.