When Henry VIII died in 1547, he left three highly intelligent children to succeed him in turn, to be followed, if their lines failed, by the descendants of his sister, Mary Tudor. Children of England begins at the point where Alison Wier's bestseller, The Six Wives of Henry VIII came to an end, and covers the period until Elizabeth succeeded to the throne in 1558. Her interest is in the characters and relationships with Henry's four heirs.

Making use of a huge variety of contemporary sources, she brings to life one of the most extraordinary periods of English history, when each of Henry's heirs was potentially the tool of powerful political or religious figures, and when the realm was seething with intrigue and turbulent change.