Profiles each of Henry VIII's six wives, describing their backgrounds, personalities, relationship to the king, and ultimate demise, and shows how each reflected the perceptions of... more
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commercial success of Elizabeth. Like its predecessor, Starkey's latest book mixes its author's scholarly erudition with a mischievous eye for a contemporary comparison or salacious soundbite. Starkey's topic is, as he admits from the outset, "one of the world's great stories"--the lives, and deaths, of the six wives of King Henry VIII. The story has been told before, but as Starkey points out, it has been wrapped in the romantic myth of 19th-century historiography. Starkey's virtue lies in his return to the archives to unearth new evidence for his story of Henry's wives. The result is a weighty blockbuster that will annoy the purists but delight the popular reader. Henry is portrayed as a fairytale prince gradually transformed into a "prematurely aged and bloated monster". Starkey concludes that "like us, he expected marriage to make him happy", but this simple desire had increasingly disastrous consequences. Henry worked his way through a series of wives from Catherine of Aragon to Catherine Parr who, according to Starkey, encompass "the full range of female stereotypes: the Saint, the Schemer, the Doormat, the Dim Fat Girl, the Sexy Teenager, and the Bluestocking". While this tends to flatten out the complexity of many of Henry's wives, there is plenty on the cataclysmic impact of the Reformation, new evidence on Henry's first wife's marriage to his brother, and a reconsideration of Henry's final wife, Catherine Parr, as "the first Queen of the Age of Print", to keep even the most sceptical reader happy. --Jerry Brotton
Advantages: brilliant! Disadvantages: wanted to know more.
...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, ... ...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 to 1558 when Elizabeth1 comes to the throne.
Part 1 of the book is devoted to Katherine of Aragon, Henry’s wife for over 20 years. There is a wealth of excellent data about this queen as she was a princess in her own right. The book charts her life from her early ...
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12.09.2004
Quick review of The Six Wives of Henry VIII - Alison Weir Review ofThe Six Wives of Henry VIII - Alison Weirby
windsor10yellow
The smell of the Tudor court and life style permeates from every page while the book takes you through the life of Henry's six wives in colourful detail. Each chapter contains a wealth of information not just on the biography of the characters but hugely interesting facts that keeps the pages turning with a mixture of horror and amusement. Full credit to Alison for creating a very readable account of this fascinating period in our history.
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Profiles each of Henry VIII's six wives, describing their backgrounds, personalities, relationship to the king, and ultimate demise, and shows how each reflected the perceptions of women and marriage at the time.
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