Customer Reviews

Henry VIII: The King and His Court

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

As Alison Weir is one of my favourite authors, I was very excited to run out and buy this book. However, I was a little disapointed when I actually read it. Weir seems to recycle much of her information from other books that she has written, mainly "The Six Wives" and "The Children" of Henry VIII.

Despite my disapointment, I gave this book 4 stars because if I had read neither of those books, I think I would have really enjoyed this one. As with all of Weir's books, it is chock full of information and extremely well written. Despite all the details, it is never boring. There is SOME new information in here, but I don't think that there is enough to merit a whole separate book.

If you have never read Weir, or are looking for a very good intro to life at a Tudor court, then this book is definately worth reading and I wholeheartedly recomend it. If you are already an old hand at Henry et. al., then you might want to skip this one and move on to another of Weir's books.

While not a biography of Henry VIII per se, this book is a fascinating glimpse into the machinations of his court over time. This lion king, fierce, ruthless, gifted and charming, presided over the first truly Renaissance court in England. Ms. Weir combed obscure sources for hitherto unknown insights and has written them into a cohesive social history. Who knew Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn both favoured cherries and strawberries above all other fruit? I had heard Henry VIII was fastidious in his personal hygiene, but here all is described at length: his daily routines, his eating and exercise habits, how he dined and with whom, the monumental progresses, plus his being the centre of a not very small courtly universe. What protocols his courtiers had to observe! And even Henry VIII does not appear the master of destiny, at least not in the minutae: he, too, was bound by conventional expectations of kingly behaviour.

Even as Henry was clean, his courtiers were hardly so: where else would find details such as crosses carved into palace walls to prevent men from urinating against them?

Here we see Henry's human side; I am familiar with Scarsbrick's intellectual view of Henry -- the man of policy and passion, the ecclesiastical and political dimensions. Here we see the business of being king; one sees 'Dieu et Mon Droit' in action, the pageantry, the spectacle, the dangers associated of rising too close to this brilliant sun. Much of it all must have been tedious, but Henry was born to the task (even if he were not destined to be king until his elder brother's premature death).

And Henry is not the only one addressed from an unconventional angle: Ms. Weir has unearthed details regarding Henry's wives and associates which normally escapes biographers. Occasionally, however, she does go out on an unsupported, unconventional limb, but overall, this is a wonderful companion piece to more difficult scholarly analyses of the period. Indeed, the book is easy to digest, although some unfamiliar with Henry VIII's reign might find the extraordinary amount of detail overwhelming. For the aficionado it is a welcome addition.

I really loved this book, and it gave me a unique perspective of Henry VIII and those around him.
The only real flaw in this book is that the chapters that talk only about architecture and fashion tend to be a bit boring. I'm sure that the book would have been just as good without all of those long parts about the castles, etc...

This is the most ambitious of Ms. Weir's books and will help those readers who like to think of history as a soap opera in costume. If you want history - real history - and good writing, then read G.R. Elton or Diarmaid MacCulloch or, for a lot of fun, Retha Warnicke. These are historians who dig in the archives, think for themselves and keep up with the latest research. In other words, professional scholars with engaging and accessible writing styles.
Alison Weir merely restates classic narratives in a dumbed-down form. Where she does attemp a deviation from the traditional narrative, her lack of professional training becomes too obvious such as her suggestion that Anne Boleyn was pregnant at the time she was executed. As Carl Sagan said, extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence. The evidence she cites - Henry VIII's formulaic hope that Anne would soon have children - does not prove that this king so obsessed with having a son would execute the love of his life whilst she might pregnant with the longed-for prince. If Weir had more experience working with primary sources rather than the paraphrases in Letters and Papers then she would have known that it was customary for the king to express hope that the (current) queen would soon give him children even when it was obvious, as when Catherine of Aragon had already entered menopause, that the queen was not going to be pregnant any time soon.
Read Alison Weir as one would read a potboiler on vacation - for mindless fun. Its a pastiche of history. Like cheap chocolate, it leaves you with a fuller appreciation for the real stuff and a slightly bitter aftertaste.

A compulsively readable account of Henry VIII's court. Weir begins by describing Henry's massive inheritance of "greater" and "lesser" houses. Then she proceeds to his palatial lifestyle, part of the attribute of "magnificence" pertaining to a Renaissance prince, fuelled by Henry's lifelong mania for acquiring and developing property. No detail, whether of texture or cost, is omitted. (Weir helpfully multiplies contemporary values by 300 to give us today's equivalent).

The layout of King Henry's dwellings spoke volumes about courtiers' status and the monarch's accessibility. Courtiers hovered in the impersonal Great Watching Chamber, unless they were lucky enough to have a formal meeting in the Presence Chamber. Only a select few attended the King in his Privy Chamber. Weir's mind-numbing account of Tudor Human Resources yields a smorgasbord of functions, various staff changes, promotions, demotions and, of course, executions.

Later in the book, a biographical framework imposes itself. Henry's infamous matrimonial career is freshly presented from his viewpoint, although that does not lessen his monstrousness. He loved tilting and tournaments; that leg injury was a sporting injury. Most of his best friends seem to have been chosen for their skill in breaking lances.

As in her other books, Weir provides astute mini-biographical "snapshots" of personalities familiar and obscure: the King's coterie of playmates and companions, mistresses and their families, advisors, chancellors and churchmen. So you are getting many biographies for the price of one, especially of people like Thomas More, or Henry's two sisters Margaret (who mothered the Stuart dynasty) and Mary (whose second marriage to Charles Brandon produced the unfortunate Lady Jane Grey, her granddaughter, subsequently the "Nine Days' Queen").

One interesting character is Henry Fitzroy, Henry VIII's illegitimate son by Bessie Blount. Fitzroy's existence proved that the King could father a male child, howbeit not a legitimate heir. (Henry Fitzoy was eventually created Earl of Richmond. The poet Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, was a childhood friend of Fitzroy.)

So if you want to know more about the Courtenays, the Boleyns, Norfolks and Suffolks, the Seymours, the Parrs, this is your book. In spades! Weir does it well.

I cannot recommend this book highly enough - Henry, his contemporaries, his wives, and the era in which he lived come alive like never before. I have read every book by Weir and have enjoyed the ones about Henry VIII the most. My one complaint is a number of very obvious typos - shame, SHAME on its editor and/or proofreader!

A book like this about the court of Henry 8th is long overdue. Instead of concentrating soley on Henry this book attempts to fill out the background of the court he lived in and the people he interacted with an a daily basis.

You get things like an explanation of the various court titles and functions and how they changed over the course of his reign. There are also sections on costume and painting and the interactions of the various noble families (and not so noble) during Henry's lifetime.

This is a 'widescreen' biography, not a narrow view. It's full of interesting, small details of daily life that are missed in the larger political biographies.

This book was a welcome and refreshing take on Tudor history. Reccomended if you want to fill in the background details of Henry's court.

As the published reviews have said, this book is what it is: A detailed (even exhaustive) narrative of life at the court of Henry VIII, but it leaves the reader wondering. Weir makes sense of Henry's successive marriages, and gives great detail into the social behavior of the time. She achieves some depth in discussing religion--Henry broke with Rome, but wasn't really much of a Protestant, it turns out. While the internal power struggles of the courtiers are interestingly narrated, the overall political picture remains a mystery. Henry invades France, Henry makes peace with France, he goes to war again--why? In sum, a rollicking beach book, but not for serious study.

This was my first exposure to Alison WEIR's writing and I enjoyed every minute of it. Her account of Henri VIII's reign is easy to read but far from superficial. Quite to the contrary: the author's erudition and mastery of the subject is obvious but never intrusive or pedantic. Conversely, there is no attempt to turn the great king's life into a romantic story just to attract readers. Highly recommended to anyone with an interest in that fascinating part of European history when the likes of Charles V of Spain (and a few other places !), Francois I of France and some others were struggling, sometimes to master Europe, sometimes to save their own kingdom or at times their skin.

This is the second book I've read by Allison Weir. I found it much more readable than Elizabeth I. I enjoy detail, as so many "traditional" texts leave this out; therefore, it was a delight to feast on the life and times of Henry VIII. If anything, I do wish Weir had discussed the foreign policy of Henry to some extent--other than the "Eighth Wonder of the World," you learned little. I kept reminding myself that this was primarily a book about court life, whereupon my enjoyment returned. Many reviews I've read criticize Weir for all the details in her books. Perhaps I am more "curious" than most. I actually got on the Internet and ran a conversion table on some of the court costs she included. I am confident that Weir is a consummate researcher. I believe what she says about the Tudors to be accurate and well thought out. I have just ordered her book on the Children of Henry VIII, and look forward to receiving it shortly. In my opinion, she is the primary researcher of the Tudor monarchy.