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30 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Fascinating Tudor history, August 9, 2004
This review is from: Six Wives: The Queens of Henry VIII (Paperback)
The story of Henry VIII, his six wives, and his endless and strangely poignant pursuit of a male heir, is so well-known that yet another book on the subject automatically runs the risk of being superfluous. It seems as if author David Starkey is well aware of this fact, and in a pompous introduction to the book he quickly trashes the previous "Six Wives" books (there are three, I think) and then proclaims himself a "child of the sixties" and thus lacking the prudishness of many a historian. Um, ok.
Once I got into the actual book, however, I found the history fascinating. Starkey focuses a bit less on the personal lives of the 6 queens and more on the ruthless, scheming political climate at the Royal Court. He shows how Catherine of Aragon, often considered to be merely pious and stubborn, was in fact a clever political machinator in her own right. She had powerful allies all over Europe, and did not hesitate to use them in the most sensational Divorce case of all time. Anne Boleyn's mistreatment of Henry and Catherine's daughter Mary thus comes across less as a traditional evil stepmother and more as a political power play. Anne, who also had trouble producting male heirs, had to promote her own daughter (Elizabeth I).
Starkey devotes most of his time to Catherine, the woman Henry was married to for 28 years, and Anne Boleyn, the mother of Elizabeth I. The other 4 wives merit considerably less time and attention. Like most historians, Starkey has a bit of a "leading question" personality: he likes to make the facts fit his own personal theories. Some theories are more convincing than others. He argues effectively, I think, that Catherine of Aragon's first marriage to Henry's brother Arthur WAS consummated, and thus Henry had more legal standing for the annullment than is commonly thought. However, Starkey's insistence that Catherine Howard's affair with Thomas Culpepper was "platonic" is less convincing. He's sympathetic to Catherine Howard, who was merely a teenager when she was beheaded. But her story is sympathetic, even if she did commit adultery. It could not have been easy being married to an overweight, 50-year-old, increasingly paranoid king. Starkey's insistence on her "innocence" smacks of revisionist history.
Another weakness of the book is that Starkey is fond of chronicling journeys and processions and ceremonies, and I must admit the endless accounts of Catherine of Aragon, clothed in a red velvet cape, travelling from Wales to London, with an entourage of this servant or that counsellor, got tiring.
Despite these caveats, I dont want you to think this book is not worth reading. The six wives of Henry VIII come across as remarkable women, all sympathetic in their own way. Their actions are more understandable once you realize how discardable the queens really were. Henry's fourth wife, Anne of Cleves, became his "sister" after Henry could not become sufficiently aroused to consummate the marriage. The "consummated" marriages were hardly luckier -- Catherine of Aragon's 28-year-old marriage is a depressing series of miscarriages, stillbirths, and more miscarriages. Starkey also recreates a political climate that was so ruthless and brutal even Henry VIII in the end can be seen as a mere pawn. In modern times, Princess Diana was famously unhappy with the demands of royal life. She should have been grateful she was not born about four hundred years earlier.
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70 of 84 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
God's gift to English history, July 22, 2004
This review is from: Six Wives: The Queens of Henry VIII (Paperback)
Or so David Starkey would have you believe. He sets the tone when, in the introduction to this book, he comes right out and says that previous books on Henry's six wives (by Alison Weir and Antonia Fraser) aren't nearly as good as his. The quote: "Inevitably, the 20th century versions of the Six Wives have stood in Strickland's [a 19th century biographer] shadow. Both...Weir and Fraser...have reverted to Strickland's tried-and-tested formula." Strickland caused scholars to "see things" and by balancing their books among the Six Wives (instead of doing as Starkey does, devoting the lion's share of his book to Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn), the other authors are "distorting the record."
And that's just the beginning. Through out the book, Starkey will interrupt his own historical narrative with the "I" point of view, citing facts or anecdotes that *he* has found that other historians have "overlooked" or "ignored" or "misinterpreted." Examples: p. 447, "In fact, though much has been made of St. German by some modern historians, his ideas fell at the first fence." From p. 435, "Here it is important to be clear about Henry's developing strategy. From the moment of the failure of the Blackfriar's trial, it had been taken for granted that an English verdict on the Divorce would somehow have to be sanctioned by Parliament. There is no mystery about this, as some modern historians like to claim." These are only two of many, many instances where Starkey pats himself on the back about how brilliant he is, and how everyone else has gotten it so, so wrong. He claims to be the only one to have properly identified Catherine Howard's and one of Catherine Parr's portraits. He also claims to be revealing much information "for the first time ever." Apparently no one else does their research but him.
Another complaint I had was with the structure of the book; as previously mentioned, Starkey devotes about 75% of the book to the first two wives, Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn. He goes on for far too long about Henry's divorce from Catherine, to the point where the detail becomes mind-numbing, and it's difficult to keep track of who's doing what. In addition, the sections on Catherine and Anne are kept completely separate, despite the fact that their histories with Henry overlap by a number of years. As a result, Starkey ends up repeating much of his story twice over, once in the "Divorcing Catherine" section (where Anne's name is never mentioned) and once again in the "Anne Boleyn" section (from which Catherine is completely absent for about the first half). This makes the flow of the story very choppy.
Henry's last four wives get short changed to a great extent; apparently since none were married to Henry nearly as long as either Catherine of Aragon or Anne Boleyn, they don't count for as much. And the book ends abruptly when Henry dies, finishing up the tale of Catherine Parr in only one paragraph. If Starkey was set on the idea of ending the book right after Henry's death (which, by the way, is related in one off-hand sentence!), I think at least an epilogue detailing Catherine Parr's eventual fate would have been more appropriate; as written, the ending to her story is far too hastily done and neglects important events in her life as well as the advancement of the Protestant faith in England.
On a related note, Starkey's favorite is obviously Anne Boleyn, with the other wives suffering a bit by his comparisons; if you believe Starkey, Catherine of Aragon was a hysteric who lied about consummating her first marriage to Henry's brother Arthur, Jane Seymour was an "accessory after the fact" to Anne Boleyn's murder, and Anne of Cleves spent most of her life after her divorce either scheming to get Henry back, or whining about the raw deal she got. Starkey does have some sympathy for Catherine Howard, but it seems misguided at times; he claims she couldn't possibly have actually slept with Thomas Culpepper, they were just platonic friends from way back, an assertion that seems based on nothing more than Starkey's own personal beliefs on the subject.
Having now read all three of the major, modern biographies of Henry's Six Wives, I would recommend Antonia Fraser's book over this one. One review printed on the back of this book says that with "Starkey's wit and style, it doesn't seem a page too long." Oh, I quite definitely disagree.
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34 of 40 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
I wish I'd read these reviews before buying the book!, July 17, 2007
This review is from: Six Wives: The Queens of Henry VIII (Paperback)
I bought this book on a whim, without benefit of these reviews. I should have done my homework. The other reviews on this website are excellent and I won't repeat them here except to underscore two points.
First, as an academic myself I was stunned by the extent to which Starkey's scholarship is biased, subjective and speculative. He blithely makes racist comments about other cultures (the Spanish are "instutionalized sadists," for example). Evidence that is accepted by other writers he dismisses out of hand, while other, more dubious sources that are not normally consulted he accepts without question. Ideas that start out as speculation are facts a few chapters later. Starkey may be a respected historian, but this is not a good piece of scholarship.
Most significantly, he seems unable to put these women into an historic context. He doesn't appear to appreciate what it was like to be a woman, without legal powers, who attracted the attention of a ruthless and brutal king. For instance, he characterizes Ann Boleyn as manipulative. Maybe she was intelligent enough to realize that if she refused the King, she and her family would suffer the loss of their wealth and possibly their lives. The best she could do was to hold out for marriage which at least gave her some legitimacy. Starkey's failure to appreciate the brutal reality of women's lives at this point in history is a huge handicap in writing their biographies.
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