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Whistle Stopper - The Six Wives of Henry VIII
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List Price: $16.95
Our Price: $10.45
Your Save: $ 6.50 ( 38% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Grove Press
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Average Customer Rating: 
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 942.0520922
EAN: 9780802136831
ISBN: 0802136834
Label: Grove Press
Manufacturer: Grove Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 656
Publication Date: 1991-01-10
Publisher: Grove Press
Studio: Grove Press
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Henry the World-class Glutton
Comment:
Alison Weir's well-written, easy to read book about the Six Wives of Henry the VIII is an outstanding work of history about England in the 1500s, Henry's six wives, and the role they play in English politics and international relations with Spain, France and Germany. It is definitely a five star work of scholarship and entertainment.
Customer Rating:
Summary: I'm Henry the Eighth I Am
Comment: Henry VIII is a fascinating man of history. He took six wives, arranged to exchange one wife for another, murdered two, lost one to childbirth, rejected another and died before he could find a way to get rid of wife six. A man of wit, intelligence, excess and greed. He had an enormous appetite for pleasure, riches and love. You'll feel as if you're reading exceptional fiction but it really happened.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Henry was a bad boy
Comment: This is an excellent account of Henry and his many wives. Well researched, very well written - there's hardly a boring passage.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Excellent - A historical page turner
Comment: Watching the Tudors on Showtime got me interested in Henry VIII. I purchased this book because of the depth of its research and historical accuracy. It was excellent. I could not put it down. I tend to be more of a fiction reader, when I read for enjoyment. This was as engrossing as any novel.
Customer Rating:
Summary: One of the best
Comment: If you want to read about Henry VIII's six wives, there are more titles out there that you can ever read. A lot of the material is a combination of guesses and conjecture, with a slant toward the prurient. This book, however, is very different. Alison Weir spent a lot of time looking at primary sources from the Tudor period. She obviously did her homework, and her fictionalized historical accounts are likely the closest to the truth that we will ever find.
Unlike most accounts that paint Henry as a man driven by lust, Ms. Weir paints him as a deeply religious man driven by a combination of duty and fear. He truly believes that the fate of the Tudor dynasty depends entirely on the appearance of a legitimate son. Henry had at least one illegitimate son, Henry FitzRoy, whose last name is a sly poke at his bastard status. (FitzRoy = Son of the King, get it?) As time passed, Henry's sense of duty became magnified and overwhelmed by fear that he would die before a legitimate Tudor prince was born. His son Edward was sick and weak from the beginning, and it was apparent to Henry that he needed a healthy, strong son to take on the mantle of leadership should Edward die. He himself only became king because of the untimely death of his sickly brother, Arthur. His treatment of his wives was based on these twin factors.
Alison Weir takes the dry facts and weaves them into a compelling and interesting narrative, and the tragedy of Henry's relationships with all of the women he encountered becomes stunningly clear. I found the book impossible to put down, and although I knew the bare bones of what happened from history books, I had to keep reading to see what might happen next. This is a wonderful introduction to Ms. Weir's books, and if you read this one, be sure to have the others in your shopping cart. You won't want to waste any time getting your hands on them.
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Editorial Reviews:
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The tempestuous, bloody, and splendid reign of Henry VIII of England (1509-1547) is one of the most fascinating in all history, not least for his marriage to six extraordinary women. In this accessible work of brilliant scholarship, Alison Weir draws on early biographies, letters, memoirs, account books, and diplomatic reports to bring these women to life. Catherine of Aragon emerges as a staunch though misguided woman of principle; Anne Boleyn, an ambitious adventuress with a penchant for vengeance; Jane Seymour, a strong-minded matriarch in the making; Anne of Cleves, a good-natured and innocent woman naively unaware of the court intrigues that determined her fate; Catherine Howard, an empty-headed wanton; and Catherine Parr, a warm-blooded bluestocking who survived King Henry to marry a fourth time.
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