As Starkey points out in his introduction, the story of Henry VIII and his wives has everything: love, violence, death, treachery, betrayal and hunger for power, in quantities that would put a modern soap opera to shame. Although the events in question took place more than 400 years ago, their ramifications have echoed down subsequent centuries of British history, to the extent that there are few Britons alive who are ignorant of at least some of the facets of this extraordinary story. Although the author might come under fire from ardent feminists for his jokey classification - again in the introduction - of the wives into stereotypes such as 'Dim Fat Girl' and 'Sexy Teenager', Starkey does a remarkable job of bringing the women vividly to life while almost rendering Henry himself invisible. Here, the focus is on the wives themselves, their motivation, their social circles and their political and religious leanings. Instead of treating them as toys, to be picked up or discarded according to the King's whims, we gain a very powerful sense of them as people in their own right. As one might expect, the major part - nearly the first 600 pages - of this doorstep of a tome is devoted to the first two marriages: the 20 years Henry spent with Catherine of Aragon, whose saintly demeanour was tempered only by the warrior-like tendencies she had inherited from her parents, Ferdinand and Isabella; and his comparatively brief marriage, after a long courtship, to Anne Boleyn. The implications of the latter, naturally, sent seismic shockwaves throughout not just England, but the whole of Europe and shaped Britain as it is today. Hence it is right that Starkey spends much of his time describing the key players in the religious and political manoeuvrings that took place around this time. He clearly has some admiration for Anne Boleyn's keen intelligence, and his deft penstrokes render her, as in his descriptions of all the other wives, a living, breathing entity. Indeed, although this exhaustive historical work is crammed with reference and detail, Starkey's very readable popular touch makes it a real page-turner. He spends comparatively less time on each of the subsequent four wives, although he manages to imbue Catherine Howard, the penultimate, with a more sympathetically rounded personality than many other historians have achieved, citing her warm-hearted attempts to reconcile his rival daughters, the half-sisters and future Queens, Mary and Elizabeth. A thoroughly enjoyable read: if you buy one history book this year, make it this one! (Kirkus UK)

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Catherine of Aragon, the pious Spanish Catholic who suffered years of miscarriages and failed to produce a male heir; Anne Boleyn, the pretty, clever, French-educated 'Protestant' whose marriage to Henry changed England forever; Jane Seymour, the demure and submissive contrast to Anne's radical and vampish style; Anne of Cleves, 'the Mare of Flanders' whose short marriage to the over-weight Henry followed a farcical 'beauty contest'; Catherine Howard, the flirtatious teenager whose adulteries made a fool of the ageing King; and Catherine Parr, the shrewd, religiously radical bluestocking who outlived him...In this dazzling study, David Starkey gives a richly textured picture of daily life at the Tudor Court from the woman's point of view. Above all, he establishes the interaction of the private and public, and demonstrates how the Queens of Henry VIII were central in determining political policy.

Catherine of Aragon, the pious Spanish Catholic who suffered years of miscarriages and failed to produce a male heir; Anne Boleyn, the pretty, clever, French-educated 'Protestant' whose marriage to Henry changed England forever; Jane Seymour, the demure and submissive contrast to Anne's radical and vampish style; Anne of Cleves, 'the Mare of Flanders' whose short marriage to the over-weight Henry followed a farcical 'beauty contest'; Catherine Howard, the flirtatious teenager whose adulteries made a fool of the ageing King; and Catherine Parr, the shrewd, religiously radical bluestocking who outlived him...In this dazzling study, David Starkey gives a richly textured picture of daily life at the Tudor Court from the woman's point of view. Above all, he establishes the interaction of the private and public, and demonstrates how the Queens of Henry VIII were central in determining political policy.

?A tribute to Starkey?s narrative drive, his puckish wit and sharp discrimination? Ferdinand Mount, Sunday Times

David Starkey has breathed new life into popular history. His new 'golden handcuffs' deal with Channel 4 makes him the best-paid historian ever on TV, and will ensure an exceedingly high profile for his books. He is contracted to write and present a minimum of 25 hours of TV over 3 years, plus constant repeats of his TV series. A constitutional historian and broadcaster, and Fellow of Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, he is the acknowledged expert on the Tudors.

Part One

Queen Catherine of Aragon

1. Parents: a power couple

Catherine of Aragon, the first wife of Henry VIII, was born on 16 December 1485. Her mother, the warrior-queen Isabella of Castile, had spent most of her pregnancy on campaign against the Moors (as the still-independent Islamic inhabitants of the southern part of Spain were known), rather than in ladylike retirement. Only after her capture of Ronda did she withdraw from the front, first to Cordoba and then to Alacala de Henares to the north-east of Madrid, where the child was born. The baby was named after Catherine, her mother's English grandmother, who was the daughter of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster. She took after the English royal house as well, with reddish golden hair, a fair skin and bright blue eyes.

The Englishness of her name and appearance proved prophetic. After a happy, secure childhood, Catherine's life was to become a series of struggles: to get married, to have a child and, above all, to protect her marriage and her child against her husband's determination to annul the one and bastardize the other. And the scene of these struggles was England.

Catherine's parents, Ferdinand and Isabella, were the most remarkable royal couple of the age. They were both sovereigns in their own right: Isabella of Castile, Ferdinand of Aragon.

Castile formed the larger, western part of what we now call Spain, stretching from the Bay of Biscay in the north to the marches of the Islamic kingdom of Granada to the south. It was a country of torrid, sunburned mountains and castles and high plains roamed by vast flocks of sheep. The territories of Aragon lay to the east. They were smaller, but richer and greener, encompassing the foothills of the Pyrenees, the fertile valleys of the Mediterranean coast and the great trading city of Barcelona. The traditions of the two kingdoms were as distinct as their landscapes. Castile was insular, aristocratic and obsessed with the crusade against the Moors in which lay its origin and continuing raison d'être. Aragon, in contrast, was an open, mercantile society: it looked north, across the Pyrenees towards France, and east, across the Mediterranean towards Italy.

To a striking extent, the two sovereigns embodied the different characteristics of their realms. Isabella was intense, single-minded and ardently Catholic, while Ferdinand was a devious and subtle schemer. But he was much more: a fine soldier, who won more battles, both in person and by his generals, than any other contemporary ruler; a strategist, with a vision that was European in scale and grandeur; and a realist, who had the wit not to let his numerous successes go to his head. Understandably, Machiavelli worshipped him as the most successful contemporary practitioner of the sort of power politics he himself recommended: 'From being a weak king he has become the most famous and glorious king in Christendom. And if his achievements are examined, they will all be found to be very remarkable, and some of them quite extraordinary.'

Catherine manifestly took after her mother. But, I shall also argue, there was more in her of her father's qualities, both for good and bad, than has been commonly realized.

Neither Castile nor Aragon had belonged to the front rank of medieval powers. And their standing was diminished further by a particularly bad case of the disputed successions and civil wars which afflicted most European monarchies in the fifteenth century. In both countries, undermighty kings had bred overmighty subjects and the two royal houses had fissured into a tragi-comedy of divisions: brother was pitted against brother and father against son. Only the royal women seemed strong, leading armies and dominating their feeble husbands. It was a Darwinian world, and none but the fittest, like Ferdinand and Isabella, survived.

They married in 1469, he aged seventeen, she a year or so older. Immediately Isabella was disinherited by her brother, Henry IV of Castile, in favour of his doubtfully legitimate daughter, Joanna. After the death of Henry IV in 1474, a civil war broke out between niece and aunt. This resulted in Isabella's victory and proclamation as Queen of Castile, and Joanna's retreat into a nunnery. Five years later, Ferdinand succeeded his father in Aragon. Ferdinand was the son of John II by his second marriage, and only after two deaths, both rumoured to be by poison, was he delivered the throne. Having fought everybody else to a standstill, Ferdinand and Isabella then threatened to come to blows themselves. He was determined to be King indeed in Castile; she was equally resolute to preserve her rights as Queen Regnant.

Finally their quarrel was submitted to formal arbitration. This established the principle of co-sovereignty between the two. Justice was executed jointly when they were together and independently if they were apart. Both their heads appeared on the coinage and both their signatures on royal charters, while the seals included the arms of both Castile and Aragon. And these were quartered, as a gesture of equality, rather than Ferdinand's arms of Aragon 'impaling' Isabella's arms of Castile, as was usual between husband and wife. Such power-couple equality was unusual enough in a medieval royal marriage. But, in fact, Isabella was the first among equals since, with the exception of the agreed areas of joint sovereignty, the administration of Castile was reserved to her in her own right.

Not surprisingly, Ferdinand jibbed. But he soon submitted and, united, the pair carried all before them. For, despite Ferdinand's four bastards by as many different mothers, he and his wife were genuinely, even passionately, in love. But even in this there was rivalry. 'My Lady,' one of Ferdinand's letters to the Queen begins, 'now it is clear which of us two loves best.' But they were in love with their growing power even more than with each other.

2007-08-19 An extremely interesting and refreshing approach to a well known story.

David Starkey's work on the six wives of Henry VIII is a unique biography on these six women. Starkey, unlike some other historians who have approached the same subject, has not reiterated an already well known story, but instead has set out to question the common conceptions of these women whilst also rejecting the need to become too revisionist. This mixture is best observed in the portrayal of the first wife, Catherine of Aragon. Catherine's virtuous position that has been rewarded to her by her devoted fans is questioned and Starkey reveals a more pragmatic and human perception of her. She was a woman of faults, capable of lying (as highlighted in her letter to her father Ferdinand after her first failed pregnancy), capable of immense pride and stubbornness and he accept the traditional idea that Catherine believed her position to be the rightful one.

Starkey goes on to challenge more misconceptions, for example the portrayal of Catherine Parr. Was she really this nurse figure that Victorian historian Agnes Strickland loved to promote? Oddly enough, she wasn't in the sense that Strickland meant. Parr was an intelligent woman, so intelligent that when she realised Henry's jealousy over her cleverness and the conservative's factions plot to overthrow her, she played the `submissive wife' card, declared that as a woman she didn't know better and submitted to Henry. Starkey manages to describe this change without making Katherine appear as a woman who compromised her intelligence, but as a woman who know how to survive.

The portrayal which I couldn't completely agree on was Starkey's view of Anne Boleyn. He certainly highlighted her intelligence, and unlike some other biographies in the six wives (like Weir's), he notes her level of knowledge about the divorce proceedings and her political achievements. However his views on Anne's relationship with the Princess Mary are questionable. Instead of showing how Anne and Mary equally despised each other, both made poor comments towards one another and how it was understandable why both disliked each other, he places more blame on Anne and relies far too much on Chapuy's accounts for her relationship with Mary. Chapuys, the Spanish ambassador, whose contemporary accounts are very valuable to us, was undoubtedly biased and hated Anne. His accusations have often proven to be false (like how he liked to declare that Anne and Henry's marriage had broken up long before it had and suspecting Anne of poisoning Catherine in Jan 1536), so relying on his claims of what Anne was doing to Mary is unfair and of course does not highlight what Mary was saying back at Anne.

Starkey does come up with several interesting and probable theories, one of which is the issue of Henry and Anne's first marriage. Starkey argues that Anne, who had denied Henry sexual intercourse throughout the duration of their courtship, would not have given in to his demands unless she and undergone some form of a binding ceremony with him. And Edward Hall, the councillor mentions that Anne and Henry were married in Dover on the 14th Nov 1532 and later again in the same month. This goes against the traditional idea that Henry and Anne married after she became pregnant sometime in Dec 1532. It's a very plausible argument and it makes sense that Anne would only give in to him once they had married.

Starkey's work on the downfall of Katherine Howard is excellent, especially his work on the testimony of Thomas Culpepper, who was accused of committing adultery with Katherine whilst she was Queen. Starkey's conclusion as to their relationship is brilliant and I completely agree that whilst Katherine led an indiscreet life before marriage, the possibility of her committing adultery with Culpepper were slim and even they were found guilty on intent to commit adultery rather than actual committing the act.
Anne of Cleves is dealt with briefly as is Jane Seymour, although in both cases their different personal faiths and their importance to the conservative or reformist factions in court is well examined.

Personally, I think that Starkey's work on the six wives of Henry VIII is the best I have read so far on these well documented and unfortunate women. Starkey like Alison Weir and Antonia Fraser wishes to tell us this important story, but unlike the other two, he is not attempting to merely reiterate the already known and is prepared to make excellent theories and back them up with careful researched evidence. Unlike Weir, he does not attempt to show an overwhelming bias towards one wife and attempts to show their respected faults and qualities. The main problem of the book is that it would have been nice to have had more on the last four wives, yet in fairness Starkey has identified that the beginning of the remarkable, dramatic changes within sixteenth century English society and in Henry VIII himself, occurred under his first two marriages and therefore much more observance needs to be paid to them. Henry also had longer relationships with Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn and as this book wishes to focus on the women at the time when they were in Henry VIII's life, then again it makes sense more time is allocated to the first two. Overall it's a superb piece of work that is accessible for all and if you are going to read one piece of work on the six wives, then I really recommend you pick this one!