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Henry VIII: King and Court
Henry VIII (1491-1547) casts a long shadow over English royalty and biography alike. In
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Henry VIII: King and Court, Alison Weir takes on this forbidding reputation to produce an admirably detailed, if somewhat cumbersome, biography of a king who marrie...
4 out of 4 similar offers for Henry VIII King and Court - Alison Weir
Henry VIII: King and Court
Henry VIII (1491-1547) casts a long shadow over English royalty and biography alike. In
... more
Henry VIII: King and Court, Alison Weir takes on this forbidding reputation to produce an admirably detailed, if somewhat cumbersome, biography of a king who married six times and presided over England's cataclysmic split with Roman Catholicism. Weir's main task is to overturn the "caricature" of Henry "as a man who thought of nothing but chasing the ladies, and who threw chicken bones over his shoulder". This seems a rather obvious characterisation to challenge, but Weir proceeds to amass an extraordinary wealth of detail about Henry's cultivated court, from its learning, architecture and political machinations, to how many people handled Henry's bedsheets and the food that his horses ate. The early sections get bogged down in too much detail, and detract from the political drama of Henry's growing estrangement from his first wife, Katherine of Aragon, and his fateful marriage to Anne Boleyn in 1532. The second section is much more convincing in tracing how "the young, idealist humanist with liberal ideas about kingship was giving way to a selfish, dogmatic tyrant", as Henry dispenses with Wolsey, Sir Thomas More, Anne and then Cromwell, and the court increasingly sinks into factionalism and intrigue. Weir's biography is a lively recreation of the everyday life of Henry, his court and what he called his "ill-conditioned wives", but it neglects the wider European dimensions of Henry's reign, and sweeps over many crucial aspects of the split with Rome. Detailed and scholarly, Henry VIII: King and Court provides a strangely colourless portrait of the most colourful of English monarchs. --Jerry Brotton
Advantages: brilliant! Disadvantages: wanted to know more.
...Browsing in Waterstones at Gatwick airport recently looking for something to read, I came across AlisonWeir’s six wives of Henry V111. I have always been interested in history and the Tudor period is my favourite so this book really appealed to me. The reviews on the back cover claimed that the book was an entertaining account of Henry V11’s complicated domestic history, full of interesting detail. It was the promise of interesting detail taken from reliable sources, which persuaded me to buy this book as opposed to other accounts on offer. So heres a brief taster of what this book has to offer, I certainly don’t intend to give you a history lesson!
The content
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At the front of the book is a really well detailed chronology starting from 1485 when Henry Tudor wins the battle of Bosworth Field and the Tudor Dynasty begins...
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Ciao members have rated this review on average very helpful
very helpful 12.09.2004
Murder Most Foul Review ofThe Princes in the Tower - AlisonWeirby
jillmurphy
Advantages: Intelligent, accessible writing, great storytelling. Disadvantages: Hmmm @ Thomas More.
...Prince of Wales and Duke of York has never, in the public imagination at least, been satisfactorily solved. Did the boys' uncle, Richard III really "do them in"? Or should we look elsewhere, to Henry VII perhaps, or perhaps even further afield? These are the questions AlisonWeir hopes to answer in her book, The Princes in the Tower.
AlisonWeir writes "straight history". Although her subjects are usually the famous, romantic figures from history – HenryVIII, Eleanor of Aquitaine and here, Richard III – hers is not the sensationalist style of other current best-selling historians. She is not a Simon Schama or a David Starkey. Neither does she attempt a political or philosophical analysis of her subjects. You will not find Hobsbawm-style Marxist theory here. Rather, you will find a straightforward examination of the available sources...
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Ciao members have rated this review on average very helpful
Advantages: Set in a fascinating period of history, excellent main character Disadvantages: Not my favourite writing style, minor characters aren't so good
...and has to cope with the consequences. As Weir mentions in the author's note, Elizabeth may seem precocious to some readers, but she was very intelligent and highly educated (very unusual for a girl). This episode is based on an actual quote: "Why, governor, how hath it, yesterday Lady Princess and today but Lady Elizabeth?"
It's Elizabeth's intelligence and determination that gets her through, relatively unscathed, the difficult years that ensue. First, upon HenryVIII's marriage to Jane Seymour, she hopes that Jane will be a loving stepmother and that she can live contently, with only the memory of her mother's fate disturbing the peace. Things seem to be going perfectly when Jane gives birth to a son and heir, but soon take a turn for the worse she dies shortly afterwards.
Given the high infant mortality rate, the future of the house...
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Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful
helpful 23.06.2008
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