Meet more Tudors than ever before
If you love history and the Tudors, Welsh historian Melita omas has created something very special for you, writes Jenny White
WELSH historian Melita omas has had a passion for the Tudors since childhood. It all began with the BBC TV series e Six Wives of Henry VIII with Keith Michell and Elizabeth R with Glenda Jackson. “I saw them at an impressionable age, and I pestered my grandmother to tell me more about all of the characters,” she says. “She soon ran out of information, so from then on birthday and Christmas presents for me were easy: books about the Tudors and then British monarchs, which developed into a general love of history from ancient times right up to the early modern period.”
omas who was born in Pwllheli, spent part of her childhood in Australia, returned to the Llyn Peninsula, and went on to live in south-east England for more than 35 years before returning to Wales and settling in Magor, Gwent.
Her passion for the Tudors has stayed with her for her whole life – although it was many years before it became her profession. She initially studied urban estate management, which led to an enjoyable career in the real estate industry.
“I am very proud to have been involved in the development of some of the great Welsh millennium projects – Llanelli Coastal Path, e National Botanic Garden of Wales, and, best of all, the Principality Stadium,” she says. “After that, I worked as a management consultant, rst for Ernst & Young, then in my own partnership. But I continued to read history and I wanted to write.”
With that in mind, she took a course in writing biography, and during the research phase for a book she was planning, she and a friend came up with the idea for the Tudor Times website. omas became the chief writer for the site, and nhendry her rst two books, e King’s Pearl: VIII and his daughter Mary and e House of Grey: Friends and Foes of Kings followed.
She then went on to study for a Master’s in Historical Research at the Institute of Historical Research, part of the University of London. When that was completed in 2020, she began research for a PHD at University College London, which she is hoping to complete this year. It uses social network analysis (the basic idea behind Linkedin or Facebook) to examine the social and political networks of Queen Mary I. While studying, she was working on 1000 Tudor People, which grew out of the research she was doing for Tudor Times. “I was researching and writing