Henry VIII

Henry VIII (1491-1547) casts a long shadow over English royalty and biography alike. In 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

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Glittering Court - Rated
This book gives a very thourough and complete insight into all the workings of the Tudor court. It is quite exceptional in it's minute detail. This is a must for serious history students. It's one of those books that needs reading many times as there is just so much detail to be absorbed. Fiction it is not! Totally astonishing was the wealth of Henry VIII's court. Read this book and you will learn all the intricate details of court life for both Henry and his Queens as well as their courtiers. Highly recommended.

It has the stuff they dont put in films that makes it special - Rated
A well put together book. It is a little hard to read. You need to concentrate and you will not wish to be disturbed, but the History is outstanding. Page after page with facts that most of us never know about. It has much detail on the personal side to the great king. It does not dwell on his six wifes like the movie industry. If you want the truth and facts this is it.

Hard work to get through - Rated
This is (almost) excellent for the student of the Tudors, although not for someone with just a general interest in Henry VIII. I saw 'almost' excellent because none of her quotes are clearly referenced. They might say which book, but not which of the forty volumes of that book or the page in the volume! To find out more would be like looking for a needle in a haystack. Antonia Fraser's work is clearly referenced. For the first 100 pages or so, this reads like the accounts of Henry's spending etc., and is hard work even for someone who wanted to like it and was studying the era.

Crippled by Bias - Rated
Whilst there's no denying the enormous amount of research Ms. Weir must have undertaken to write this book, and that for those studying the minutiae of Henrician court-life this book is a must. However, Ms. Weir's bias towards the historical characters dealt with is truly breathtaking.

The hagiographic treatment accorded to Katherine of Aragon contrasts sharply with the utter vituperation of Anne Boleyn's. It seems that the more balanced (and more readable) accounts that characterised her "The Six Wives of Henry VIII" have utterly vanished.

Fleshing Out Henry VIII - Rated
Alison Weir has written a compulsively readable account of Henry VIII's court. She begins by describing his massive inheritance of greater and lesser homes, then proceeds to minutely describe the court. The physical details include such things as floors, tapestries, paintings, gardens, kitchens, foodstuffs. No detail, whether of texture or cost (she helpfully multiplies the contemporary values by 300 to give us today's equivalent), is omitted. She also describes the architectural set-up and how the rooms progressed from the Great Watching Chamber, through the Presence Chamber and into the Privy Chamber.

But into this rich heady brew Weir also throws the complete administrative breakdown of Henry's court, giving us a mind- numbing account of Tudor Human Resources, including the hapless, appropriately named Groom of the Stool who dressed the King and saw to his lavatorial needs.

Throughout the book Weir keeps us up to scratch with Henry's mania for accumulating property - the layout and development of his palaces. In addition, she also details the various staff changes, promotions, demotions and, of course, executions.

Weir provides astute, well-researched snapshots of Henry's entire coterie, from his playmates and companions, through to his mistresses and their families, his advisors, chancellors and churchmen. Everyone is placed in context so that their motivations and actions can be fully understood. So you are getting many biographies for the price of one, especially of people like Thomas More, or Henry's two sisters Margaret (who mothered the Stuart dynasty) and Mary (whose second marriage to Charles Brandon produced the unfortunate Lady Jane Grey, her granddaughter).

One interesting character is Henry Fitzroy, Henry VII's illegitimate son by Bessie Blount. This chap was evidence that the King could produce a male child, if not a legitimate heir, and he was created Earl of Richmond. The poet Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, was a childhood friend of Fitzroy.

The book starts as a loose retailing of topical details, but the biographical framework starts to impose itself, with a strictly chronological account of Henry's reign. His celebrated matrimonial career is presented from HIS viewpoint for a change, although that does not lessen his monstrousness. He loved tilting and tournaments - that leg injury was a sporting injury. Most of his best friends seem to have been chosen for their skill in breaking lances...!

So if you want to know more about the Courtenays, the Boleyns, Norfolks and Suffolks, the Seymours, the Parrs, this is your book. In spades! Weir does it well.

Only one reservation - after the comprehensive genealogies of her "Wars of the Roses," the family trees in this book are insufficient for the ground covered. We really need the background for his wives as well as Henry's own genealogy. (Both trees can be found in the opening pages of the hardback edition of Antonia Fraser's "Six Wives of Henry VIII". They may be in Weir's "Six Wives", too, but are harder to read, being in italic script.)

Otherwise - excellent.