My review of Henry VIII: The King and His Court, by Alison Weir

Henry VIII: The King and His Court

by Alison Weir

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

I love most of Alison Weir's work and this is no exception.

The research is astonishing. The clothes, décor and meals of England's infamous catalyst-king of the reformation, his court and his six wives are wondrously detailed.

The journey of the golden-haired boy, the meaty young lion and the obese, middle-aged tyrant is sumptuously charted. His gargantuan ego and delicate insecurities are thoroughly fleshed out. The human side of 'God's anointed' is sensitively examined.

The extremes he went to for a legitimate male heir were steered by the notion that his daughters would be unable to sustain his father Henry VII's fragile new dynasty (established not by laws of primogeniture but by triumphing in the Wars of the Roses).

Great Harry's struggles with Rome over his insistence on discarding Queen Catherine to marry Anne Boleyn led to the severance of the Church of England from papal authority and the Dissolution of the Monasteries. As the first ruling Supreme Head of the Church of England, he remained a believer in Catholic teachings even after his excommunication from the Roman Catholic Church.

Though Henry VIII has often been depicted as a lustful, insecure tyrant, this is probably not the full picture. His contemporaries considered him in his prime to be attractive, educated and accomplished. Also an author and composer, he has been described as 'one of the most charismatic rulers to sit on the English throne'.

He became obese in later years. With a 54-inch waist, he required mobilisation by mechanical inventions. He probably suffered from gout and was famously covered with insufferable, stinking, pus-filled boils. His obesity and other illnesses went back to a jousting accident in 1536, in which he suffered a leg wound. All these ailments hastened his death at 55, in 1547, at Whitehall Palace.

He was succeeded by his son, the boy king Edward VI, who died at 16, making way for Henry's older daughter 'Bloody' Mary I. She lived only five years on the throne. Henry's younger daughter, Elizabeth I, was the last Tudor, whose forty-four-year reign brought England stability, helping forge its sense of national identity.

Alison Weir's superb biography explores Henry VIII's legacy and the reasons his magnificent offspring turned out as they did. Had Henry been a different man, history might have unfolded differently and today's English-speaking world would probably not be as we know it.

This masterpiece is to be slowly and thoroughly pondered in brief, leisurely sessions, sleepy weekends or long, late nights. It's as thick as a brick and worth a hundred times its retail value.