First, the excerpt, at the Times Online:
David Starkey offers a fresh vision of Henry VIII
Before he was a brutal dictator, he was a virtuous king: in a new biography, David Starkey offers a fresh vision of Henry VIII
Henry and I go back a long way.
My first essays at Cambridge were on his grandmother, Lady Margaret Beaufort, and his second wife, Anne Boleyn. My doctoral dissertation was a study of his privy chamber and its staff. One of them, William Compton, has a part here.
And next is John Guy’s review of the book, also from The Times online:
Here, ready for the 500th anniversary of Henry VIII’s accession, is the first volume of David Starkey’s two-volume life of the king, which has been eagerly awaited for at least 10 years.
Having read both articles, the first thought that occured to me was…how much of this information about Henry VIII will be different from what Starkey already wrote in his “Six Wives”? It certainly sounds like he is re-hashing his excellent volume about the wives of this Tudor King.
At least John Guy writes that there is there is good information about Henry VII’s reign as that wasn’t covered in “Six Wives”.
My money will be held close to my chest before this book will see my shelf…which already holds quite a few works on this Tudor monarch. Starkey would have to really provide some way-out-there new found information for me to be interested. I expected lots from him in his work on Princess Elizabeth, and only found it to contain information which had been read elsewhere.
I’m avidly awaiting other reviews..those from pro-historians and just every-day Tudorites.
I wonder if Henry will be missing his head in the US jacket cover too.
Nothing in the printed extract was particularly novel, but John Guy’s review had some more intriguing points. Elizabeth of York, usually depicted as a gracious and almost completely immobilized cypher, seems to be positioned by Starkey as an active player with her own agenda who had a great deal of control over young Henry and deliberately directed his education and training. Also, I was very interested by the suggestion that the sudden irruption of Philip the Handsome into Henry’s boyhood left a lasting impression on him of kingly style and image in the late Burgundian mode.
Guy also describes the book as one of the finest histories of the reign of Henry’s father, which to me is quite an achievement, since I usually find myself yawning off after Bosworth, at least until old Henry starts duelling with Ferdinand.
Guy also says that Compton is unmasked “for the first time” as Henry’s pimp and fixer. However, I think this has been covered before in any biography which describes the Lady Huntingdon episode. Certainly Compton is depicted as Henry’s own Sidney Falco in “The Tudors,” which despite its faults, often displays an awareness of some of the more lurid but still scholarly theories currently existing about the dynasty.
A new book by David Starkey which gives a different look at the king Henry which will be in two parts. I did’nt know he was bringing a new book out.
When did the first part come out? and when is the second part out? Must read.