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Henry VIII: King and Court by: Alison Weir List Price: £8.99 City Travel Guides Price: £6.99 You Save: £2.00 (22%)Prices subject to change. |
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Binding: Paperback Dewey Decimal Number: 941 EAN: 9780712664516 ISBN: 0712664513 Label: Pimlico Manufacturer: Pimlico Number Of Pages: 672 Publication Date: May 05, 2005 Publisher: Pimlico Studio: Pimlico Sales Rank: 2981 Related Items:
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Editorial Review: Amazon.co.uk Review: 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 Frank McLynn, Independent: ‘...one of our best popular historians and one, moreover, with an impressive scholarly pedigree in Tudor history…her latest offering is a very fine book.’ Daily Telegraph: ‘A glittering evocation of the Tudor Court, its splendour as well as its vulgarity…a responsive, rounded portrait.’ Lisa Jardine, Literary Review: '...a compelling, readable account of the life and times of the king who put England firmly on the map of power politics.’ Synopsis: This magnificent new book is Alison Weir's greatest achievement: a detailed biography of Henry VIII, set against the cultural, social and political background of his court - the most magnificent court ever seen in England - and the splendour of his many sumptuous palaces. Seen from this new perspective, Henry VIII emerges as a fully-rounded and realistic personality, not the two-dimensional caricature of popular misconception. This book is not just an entertaining narrative packed with colourful description and a wealth of anecdotal evidence, but a comprehensive analytical study of the development of both monarch and court during a crucial period in English history. As well as challenging some recent theories, it offers controversial new conclusions based on contemporary evidence that has until now been overlooked. This is a triumph of historical writing which will appeal equally to the general reader and the serious historian. About the Author: Alison Weir lives and works in Surrey. Her books include Britain’s Royal Families, Elizabeth the Queen and Eleanor of Aquitaine. Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
 Rating:  - Glittering CourtThis 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. Rating: - It has the stuff they dont put in films that makes it specialA 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. Rating:  - Hard work to get throughThis 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. Rating: - Crippled by BiasWhilst 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. Rating: - Fleshing Out Henry VIIIAlison 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 ... Read More: |
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