Edward VI was lucky enough to live at a time when keeping documents was a matter of course. A lot got lost - but a lot managed to survive and his diary was one of those that managed to make it in tact to the late 1600s when it was first reprinted and though to our days (the complete manuscript is kept at the British Library). It had been reprinted often - sometimes in its full length, sometimes just as excerpts and had become of the best known primary documents both for the reign of Edward VI and for the history of the Reformation in England.

Knowing all that, one would expect a long diary - despite its writer's short life. And one would be surprised to learn that the whole manuscript is just 68 pages. It is more of a chronicle than a diary (at least in the way we use the word now) - its format is closer to the chronicles of the past than anything else. The (almost) daily records start in March 1550 and end in November 1553; before them are a summary of his life before that and of important events since he became king, split per year. Early in the diary, Edward refers to him as "the king" but as time progresses, he switches to "I" (although there are a few entries later on that revert to the third person).

The first part (before the daily entries start) reads like a story - and that's what it is - there is no glimpse of the boy behind the throne - Edward is just a chronicler. What he includes is as important as what he skips although it is unclear how much should be read into it - he writes these later after all and time changes anyone's perspective.

The daily records on the other hand are a lot more useful for that. Some are one-liners about domestic affairs and his movements. Some are long descriptions of battles and occurrences in court (and in Europe). As time progresses, we get more and more entries about wars in Europe and less about court games (although these never disappear completely). And the diary is not linear - Edwards backtracks to add a back-dated entry now and then. Most of these are about Europe or an action outside of the court so it is possible that he just wrote of them when he learned about them from the letters/ambassadors. But there are exceptions. Some may be things he did not think important but changed his mind later. Some may be just a tired boy forgetting to add something. And some are just unexplainable - the final fall of Somerset is in the diary but it is one of those back-dated entries. One would think that this would have been important enough to add on the day it happened but for one reason or another, it is added days later, after entries for later events.

This edition reprints the complete diary but not in its original form. North modernized the spelling, the punctuation and in some places the language. It made for a much easier read than this would have been - I was reading Skidmore's biography of Edward VI at the same time and comparing the cited passages there with the ones in this edition shows a lot of differences. North also adds notes when a weird name is used or when Edward made a mistake in a date or a name. Other from that, the reader is left to their own devices (Except for a short list of names and titles at the end of the book). If one does not know the history of these years, they won't learn it from this chronicle; if they do, it will add some color and some amusing anecdotes to the story. Edward's notes about his quarrel with Mary over religion and mass doctrines had been used by anyone studying the Reformation but here, seen in the context of his life, they shine in a way which is just not there when you pull them out on their own.

The book also contains quite a lot of images and a few letters written by Edward - none of them are really necessary but they take enough space for the book not to be too slim.

If you are interested in the period, it is a curiosity you may want to want to read. It is not critical though - historians had mined it for data for centuries so the important passages had been cited over and over. Although important and amusing are different things - there are things that may not matter much but they show the boy behind the king. Had some of that diary/chronicle been written under dictation? Possibly. Had there been influences over a young and inexperienced king? Sure. But the diary is still his own. And even if it is not a modern style diary, there is some personality in there.

PS: This book is almost impossible to find (unless you want to pay a lot). Libraries may be a good source (I got it via an ILL from my library). The diary had been reprinted lately as "Edward VI's Chronicle" with a different editor - the modernization (if any) will be different but the body of the diary is the same regardless of the edition. And of course a version of it is in the internet archive - its earlier publications are public domain after all - https://archive.org/details/cu31924091758312/page/n15/mode/2up?view=theater for example (and that version has a lot of notes) ( )