Six Wives: The Queens of Henry VIII - Softcover

Starkey, David

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0060005505 ISBN 13: 9780060005504

Publisher: Harper Perennial, 2004

Synopsis

No one in history had a more eventful career in matrimony than Henry VIII. His marriages were daring and tumultuous, and made instant legends of six very different women. In this remarkable study, David Starkey argues that the king was not a depraved philanderer but someone seeking happiness -- and a son. Knowingly or not, he elevateda group of women to extraordinary heights and changed the way a nation was governed.

Six Wives is a masterful work of history that intimately examines the rituals of diplomacy, marriage, pregnancy, and religion that were part of daily life for women at the Tudor Court. Weaving new facts and fresh interpretations into a spellbinding account of the emotional drama surrounding Henry's six marriages, David Starkey reveals the central role that the queens played in determining policy. With an equally keen eye for romantic and political intrigue, he brilliantly recaptures the story of Henry's wives and the England they ruled.

About this title

Review:

David Starkey's massive Six Wives: The Queens of Henry VIII follows on the huge 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

Review:

"Extraordinary. . . . With each queen, Starkey offers a vivid character study."--Sunday Times (London)

"Exciting. ... Very acute. ... It is so gripping that one finishes it wishing it were even longer."--Mail on Sunday

"Truly, this is history made as fluent and compelling as excellent fiction."--Booklist (starred review)

"Brilliant. ... Six Wives provides an intriguing new perspective on this key period in English history."--Daily Telegraph (London)

"Acute and imaginative. ... [Starkey's] communication of subtle points in simple and vivid language is masterly."--Sunday Telegraph

"[An] impressive biography. . . . [Starkey's] language is fresh, alive, current. . . . Possibly the greatest strength of Starkey's work is that he remains steadfastly focused on these six women . . . revealing much about them that was previously unknown and unfathomed, but also disproving many of the prominent myths."--Christian Science Monitor

About this edition

• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0060005505
• ISBN 13: 9780060005504
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 896