Thomas Penn

This is the book for those interested in the nitty-gritty of history. The story carries itself, intrigue and mental fears, romance, life and death in intimate detail with excellent research. However, if you are not familiar with this time and these people...oh boy. The parade of characters will keep you on your toes, trying to remember who is who and what they did to whom is mental exercise for sure. The author recreates this story in a compelling manner making this non-fiction read like a novel.… (plus d'informations)

Thomas Penn has written a very good book about the last half of Henry VII's reign. Henry was a man consumed with his finances, and gradually retreated from public life into a rather paranoid shell. But, the legacy of his predeceasing monarch, Edward IV had been renewed civil war when he demonstrated more lenient behaviour. The work includes some information on the early life of Henry VIII, and, is a detailed study of the protracted diplomacy regarding the marriage between Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon. The reader will get insights into the relationship between the emperor Maximilian and Henry, as well as stuff on Ferdinand of Aragon. It is much more informative than the more flattering biography written by Francis Bacon for James I, about that Scots king's great grandfather. Sadly, the first half of Henry's life is not very well covered, and perhaps, the information just does not exist.… (plus d'informations)

Skimmed. I found that I didn't have the patience for what often seemed like a laundry list recitation of people and events. But there is plenty of good stuff in the book. It kept surprising me with scenes and actions that I never imagined before. When Henry VII died his armor was put on a young warrior who rode an armored horse into the cathedral. The armor was then offered to God on the altar as part of the funeral service. Dramatic (Ladyhawke anyone?) and pagan and Christian all together. Henry VIII was a fiend for jousting which was a sport to train him for battle. I can't imagine risking the heir's neck in anything as likely to cause death as a joust. But as my husband pointed out there were was plenty of death lurking around every corner in 1504, a little jousting was just one risk of many.… (plus d'informations)

Henry VII hasn't had the greatest biographers over the years. Shakespeare snubbed him almost entirely. That treasured almanac of our nation's monarchs, [b:Horrible Histories: Cruel Kings and Mean Queens|120971|Cruel Kings and Mean Queens (Horrible Histories)|Terry Deary|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1305220020s/120971.jpg|116486], gives him a couple of pages and calls him “tight-fisted” and “poorly”. With Thomas Penn's rather excellent Winter King, Henry does at least now have a good biography. But by jove was he tight-fisted and poorly.

The reason for Henry VII's relative obscurity is fairly obvious. Compared to his son and granddaughter his interest isn't so immediately clear. He was the puppet-master, sitting in dark corners and pulling strings; and fascinating as that role is, it doesn't really stir up the imagination like Henry “marry-anything-with-a-pulse” VIII, or Elizabeth “take-that-Spaniards” I. Or, as one of my friends put it: “he's the least interesting Tudor king called Henry.” You almost start to feel sorry for the man.

Except it's not easy to feel sorry for Henry VII. He may have been the progenitor of the famous House of Tudor, but as Thomas Penn doesn't put it: the man was a manipulative bastard. The opening and closing chapters of Winter King deal briefly with Henry's early life and the aftermath of his death; his unlikely return from exile in Europe to beat Richard III at Bosworth and take the crown, and twenty five years later how the key characters who had surrounded him during his reign fit into Henry VIII's new rule. The brunt of the work concerns the reign itself, especially Henry's final decade at the start of the sixteenth century.

The picture painted is of a man who knows his claim to the throne is tentative at best, a trait he shared with numerous men scattered across Europe. We see a man who deals with this not with military might, but with careful manipulation of his European peers, and with a system of financial bonds taken out against his own people that – together with his dabbling in the illegal alum trade – made him perhaps the wealthiest monarch England has ever had. But also one of the least popular by the time of his death. Maybe obscurity is a blessing after all.… (plus d'informations)