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Henry VIII: King and Court by: Alison Weir

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Review Pages: 1 2 3 4

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Rating: - Good but flawed account of England's most famous king.

This is a fascinating account of the reign of Henry the Eighth, packed with both painstaking scholarship and wonderful anecdotes. Everyday life at court, with its factional in-fighting and constant jockeying for position, is portrayed in abundant detail. Henry's life itself is presented as a fairly tragic story as he declines, over the course of 500 pages, from the physical and intellectual powerhouse that he undoubtedly was in his youth to the capricious, irascible and increasingly illness-ridden figure he became in later life. His (in)famous marriages are presented in enough detail to be comprehensible withing the context of this book, whilst making you feel that perhaps you should also read Weir's earlier book which dealt with the six wives in greater depth.

The main criticism I have with this book (and the reason why it only gets four stars instead of five) is that the single most important aspect of Henry's reign, namely the split from Rome and the subsequent beginnings of the Reformation in England, are not dealt with in any great detail. Perhaps Alison Weir thought that, at 500-plus pages, her book was quite big enough already. But to skimp on what was arguably the central element of Henry's reign leaves this reader feeling slightly short-changed. If any reader is interested in following the Reformation in more detail, I would recommend reading Diarmaid Maculloch's biography of Thomas Cranmer (Archbishop of Canterbury during Henry's reign) alongside Weir's more populist but nonetheless excellent book.

Rating: - More of an account of Tudor court life than a biography

The amount of research for this, the latest work by Alison Weir is truly impressive. She truly manages to cover every single aspect of life at Henry the VIII's court with a careful eye to detail. The book is not addressed to the specialist or the Tudor historian: it is rather a fluid, well documented journey through the life of the great king, designed to be the reader's vessel into an age of splendor, religious passions and intrigue. Still there is in my opinion a quite significant disadvantage of the book. The author had not actually decided whether this was going to be a biography of Henry the VIII or a description of life at his court. You cannot help while reading the book to feel that the author, perhaps by accident, has made the king only one of the protagonists of the book, and sometimes definitely not the main figure. Even a personality as volatile and impressive as Henry's sometimes looks pale in comparison with complexity, the sheer extravagance of his court and palaces. I believe that since the book is not written for a strictly academic audience, and not intended to be a political biography of the king. Alison Weir chose to neglect the many political aspects of the reign and focus instead on the narrative of life at court, which sometimes take precedence over the life, and deeds of the king. The scholar or the researcher will not benefit from the book. The reader who loves Tudor England and the English Renaissance, who looks for an account of life at the palaces day by day, beyond treaties, wars and battles definitely will. When you are through reading the book, even if Henry is the protagonist of a vast cast of characters, what in my opinion captivates the mind is not so much the man but his age.

Review Pages: 1 2 3 4