DescriptionIt is 1539, and the court of Henry VIII is increasingly fearful at the moods of the ageing, sickly king. With only a baby in the cradle for an heir, Henry has to take another wife. The dangerous prize of the crown of England is won by Anne of Cleves, who has her own reasons for agreeing to marry a man old enough to be her father. Although fascinated by the glamour of her new surroundings, Anne senses a trap closing around her. Katherine Howard is confident that she can follow in the steps of Anne Boleyn and dazzle her way to the throne, but her kinswoman Jane Boleyn knows that Anne's path led to Tower Green - to an adulterer's death.
DescriptionDivorced, beheaded, died; divorced, beheaded, survived. So the six wives of Henry VIII (Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves, Katherine Howard, and Catherine Parr) have become defined in a popular sense - not so much by their…
DescriptionThe first of Henry VIII's wives was Catherine of Aragon, the pious Catholic princess who suffered years of miscarriages and still births and yet failed to produce a male heir. As Henry VIII's interest shifted from her powerful Hapsburg relations and drifted towards France, so began his obsession with the pretty Lutheran Anne Boleyn. Jane Seymour's submissiveness was in contrast to Anne's vampish style, and Henry married her on the day of Anne's execution. Jane died soon after giving birth to the longed-for son. There followed a farcical "beauty contest" which ended in the short marriage of the now grossly overweight Henry to "the mare of Flanders", Anne of Cleves. The final part of Six Wives contrasts the two Catherines; Catherine Howard, the flirty child whose adulteries made a fool of the ageing King, and Catherine Parr, the shrewd, religiously radical bluestocking.
DescriptionFrom the luxuries of court to the last gory years of the outsize King Henry, when heads rolled and England trembled, Catherine bestrode her destiny and survived to marry her true love. She was the least known of Henry VIII's six wives, but the cleverest of them all. Alluring, witty, and resourceful, she attracted the king's lust and, though in love with the handsome Thomas Seymour, was thrown into the snake pit of the royal court. While victims of the king's wrath suffered torture and execution, Catherine withstood the onslaught, even when Henry sought to replace her with a seventh wife. She survived her royal husband, and found happiness with Seymour, but it was shadowed by rivalry with the young Princess Elizabeth, whose affection Seymour coveted. Catherine won the contest, but at great cost.
DescriptionThree women share one fate... The Boleyn Inheritance is a novel drawn tight as a lute string about a court ruled by the gallows and three women whose positions brought them wealth, admiration, and power - as well as deceit, betrayal, and terror. Once again, Philippa Gregory has brought a vanished world to life: the whisper of a silk skirt on a stone stair, the yellow glow of candlelight illuminating a hastily written note, the murmurs of the crowd gathering on Tower Green below the newly built scaffold. In The Boleyn Inheritance, Gregory is at her intelligent and suspenseful best.
