Here Comes the King by Philip Lindsay

February 11, 201612 Comments

Philip Lindsay (1906-1958) was an Australian author of historical fiction. His books have been out of print in recent years but are now being made available to a modern audience in ebook form by one of my favourite independent publishers, Endeavour Press. Here Comes the King, a 1933 novel about Katherine Howard and Thomas Culpeper, is the first of his books that I’ve read.

Katherine (or Catherine, but I’m sticking to the spelling used in the novel) is a young woman of seventeen or eighteen when she marries Henry VIII at Oatlands Palace and becomes his fifth wife. Her predecessor, Anne of Cleves, has recently been set aside by the king, who believes he was misled as to her appearance. The new queen’s beauty and youthful spirit are much more pleasing to Henry, who calls her his ‘rose without a thorn’. Katherine, though, is less enamoured with her fat, gluttonous, fifty-year-old husband who is suffering from painful leg ulcers and whose moods are becoming increasingly volatile. Although Henry is not generally unkind to her, she is tempted into an affair with the handsome young courtier, Thomas Culpeper – an affair which will lead to both their downfalls.

Here Comes the King is written in the third person from the perspective of several different characters including Culpeper, Henry and Katherine herself, as well as Will Sommers, the king’s fool, Francis Dereham, another man once romantically involved with Katherine, and Jane Boleyn, Lady Rochford, who helps to arrange Katherine’s secret meetings with Culpeper. Jane and Sommers were both in a difficult position, knowing or suspecting what was going on and unsure of what to do with that knowledge, and this made them interesting characters to read about.

However, I felt that I didn’t get to know Katherine very well. She is portrayed as a pretty, flirtatious, immature young girl, and while this does seem to be a widely held view of what the real Katherine was like, I would still have preferred her character to be given a little more depth. Even when she was the viewpoint character, I never felt that I really knew what she was thinking. Culpeper’s character is better written; he is shown in a negative light, being irresponsible, impulsive and a heavy drinker (and allegedly guilty of both rape and murder, although these things are only briefly mentioned as they happen outside the scope of the novel), but his thoughts and feelings come through strongly.

I am far from being an expert on Katherine’s life and her time as Henry’s queen, so I can’t really comment on Lindsay’s accuracy, but the story did seem to follow quite faithfully the general outlines of Katherine’s and Culpeper’s lives. He incorporates things which are known to be historical fact, such as the text of Katherine’s incriminating letter to Culpeper (complete with grammatical mistakes; she is thought to be the least well educated of Henry’s wives) as well as things which may or may not be true but which have become part of the legends surrounding Katherine: practising laying her head on the block the night before her execution, for example, and declaring that “I die a Queen, but I would rather have died the wife of Culpeper”.

I had no problems with Lindsay’s writing (it’s slightly flowery and over-descriptive in places but otherwise feels surprisingly contemporary for a 1930s book) and I would read more of his work, but I didn’t find this particular novel very compelling, maybe because it’s so romance-centred. Admittedly, it would be difficult to write a book about Katherine Howard and not focus on her love affairs; as she spent such a short period as queen and died so young, she left less of a legacy than some of Henry’s other wives, and I think this is why her story has never appealed to me very much. Maybe one of Lindsay’s other novels would interest me more than this one did.

I received a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

The King’s Curse by Philippa Gregory

January 15, 2015January 15, 201510 Comments

This is the sixth and final volume in Philippa Gregory’s Cousins’ War series which explores the Wars of the Roses from a female perspective. The books can be read in any order, although I would recommend reading them in the order of publication. Previous novels in the series have introduced us to Elizabeth Woodville, Margaret Beaufort, Jacquetta of Luxembourg, Anne Neville and Elizabeth of York; this one, The King’s Curse, tells the story of Margaret Pole, another woman with an important part to play in the history of the period.

Margaret is the daughter of George, Duke of Clarence, brother of the last two Plantagenet kings, Edward IV and Richard III. With a new dynasty – the Tudors – now on the throne of England, Margaret’s Plantagenet blood means that she and her family are seen as a threat. At the point when the novel opens, her brother has already been executed on the order of Henry VII and Margaret herself has been married off to a minor knight, Richard Pole – a man she respects but does not love.

When the King and his wife, Margaret’s cousin Elizabeth of York, send their son and heir, Prince Arthur, into Margaret’s care at Ludlow Castle, she becomes a friend and confidante of the Prince’s Spanish bride, Katherine of Aragon. Arthur dies following a sudden illness and Katherine is left a widow – but not for long, as his younger brother, the newly crowned Henry VIII, decides to marry the Princess himself.

Margaret is by Katherine’s side as she tries and fails to give Henry a male heir, losing one baby after another. But when Henry finally tires of Katherine and turns his attention to Anne Boleyn, Margaret discovers that her loyalty to the Queen has cast suspicion on the Plantagenets once again. Can Margaret convince the King that she and her family can be trusted, while still continuing to offer friendship to Katherine and her only surviving child, Princess Mary?

After the disappointment of the previous novel, The White Princess, I was pleased to find that I enjoyed this one much more. I thought the writing was better, the story was more interesting and Margaret was a much stronger character than Elizabeth of York. I got the impression that Gregory herself had enjoyed writing this novel, perhaps more than some of the others in the series.

I’ve read the story of Henry VIII, his marriage to Katherine of Aragon and subsequent divorce many times before, but it was interesting to see familiar events retold from a different point of view. Margaret is perfectly placed to know what is going on, being a cousin to the King’s mother, friend to Katherine and governess to Princess Mary. Through Margaret’s eyes we watch Henry’s transformation into a cruel tyrant unable to tolerate anyone disagreeing with him, we see how the people of England respond to Thomas Cromwell’s dissolution of the monasteries, we witness the public reaction to Anne Boleyn, and we learn how Mary feels about being cast aside and disinherited.

As well as being an observer of the royal court, however, Margaret has her own problems to deal with away from court as she works to keep herself and her children safe. Two of her sons – Lord Montague and Arthur – have positions at court and another, Reginald, is sent to Padua to study and is given the job of researching the theological argument behind the King’s divorce. It’s difficult for Margaret and her children to regain the power and influence they believe is due to them as Plantagenets without making themselves appear a direct threat to the Tudor throne. But unlike her cousin Elizabeth in The White Princess, Margaret is portrayed here as a very capable woman with strength, dignity and spirit. I did sometimes find her annoying, though, especially every time she showed such blatant favouritism to her youngest son, Geoffrey, who did nothing to deserve it as far as I could tell.

I still had a few problems with the book – one of them being Gregory’s insistence on referring to every character by his or her full name, title and relationship to the narrator almost every time they appear in the text. Would a mother having a private conversation with her son really address him as “Son Montague”? Is this really necessary when Montague (Henry Pole) is one of the main characters in the story? We’re not likely to forget that he is Margaret’s son, after all. I also thought the book felt much longer than it really needed to be; some of the scenes started to feel quite repetitive.

I haven’t mentioned the ‘curse’ of the title yet, but I can tell you that it refers to the curse Elizabeth of York and her mother, Elizabeth Woodville, supposedly placed on the Tudor line in the previous novel. The subject of the curse is raised every time a child or heir to the throne dies, but I was pleased to see that it never becomes a major part of the plot. In her author’s note at the end of the book, Gregory offers a scientific alternative to the curse, which I found interesting.

On the whole, then, I found this to be one of the better Cousins’ War novels. It was also the perfect way to end the series, tying in with her previous series of Tudor novels. Now I’m wondering which period of history Philippa Gregory will turn to next.

Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel

September 6, 201322 Comments

This is the sequel to Wolf Hall and the second in a planned trilogy of novels telling the story of Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII’s chief minister.

While Wolf Hall was concerned with Cromwell’s rise to power, the fall of Cardinal Wolsey and the process that led to Henry’s divorce from Katherine of Aragon, in Bring up the Bodies the King has grown dissatisfied with his second wife, Anne Boleyn, who has failed to give him a male heir, and he is now turning his attentions to Jane Seymour. Beginning in 1535, just after Wolf Hall ends, this book follows Cromwell as he attempts to find a solution to Henry’s problem. It’s not an easy task but Cromwell has already proven himself to be an expert at negotiating complex political situations and getting what he wants, while also trying to do what he believes is best for the King and for England.

I think most of us probably know what happened to Anne Boleyn and what her eventual fate would be, so I won’t say much more about the plot of this book. But although I’ve read about Anne Boleyn’s downfall many times before, I have never read about it from this perspective or in so much detail. By allowing us to follow events through Cromwell’s eyes, Mantel makes what to many of us is a familiar story feel like a fresh and interesting one – and in a world already filled with Tudor novels this is a real accomplishment!

I was intrigued by the suggestion that Cromwell had his own motives for plotting the demise of Anne and the men who were brought down with her. I don’t suppose we can ever know what thoughts were really going through Cromwell’s mind or what made him act the way he did, but Mantel’s theory was interesting. As in the previous book, Cromwell is a fascinating character and portrayed as neither a hero nor a villain. He’s ruthless, clever, ambitious and (in this book, at least) vengeful, but away from the court and the world of politics, we are shown a more human side to him. Through his relationship with his son, Gregory, and through his frequent memories of his wife and two daughters and his mentor Thomas Wolsey, who are all now dead, we see that he is also a man who loves his family and is loyal to his friends.

You could probably read Bring up the Bodies without having read Wolf Hall first, especially if you already have a good knowledge of Tudor history, but I would still recommend reading Wolf Hall before starting this one. It’s not completely necessary but will help you to understand Cromwell’s personality and how his mind works. You will also be introduced to the members of Cromwell’s large household (made up of extended family, servants and employees) and the other secondary characters who appear in this book.

Mantel’s novels are not easy reads but I did find this book much easier to read than Wolf Hall, maybe because I knew what to expect from her writing style this time. One criticism that I and many other readers had of Wolf Hall was regarding Mantel’s use of the pronoun ‘he’ without making it obvious who ‘he’ refers to. It was usually safe to assume that ‘he’ was Cromwell but it could still be confusing, especially when there were a lot of male characters in the same scene. In this book, Mantel still uses ‘he’ but sometimes clarifies it by adding ‘he, Cromwell’ which makes things easier to follow. I also found this a much quicker read than Wolf Hall, as it’s not as long and is faster paced and more focused on one subject – the fall of Anne Boleyn.

Now that I’ve caught up with the first two books in the trilogy, I can join those of you who are patiently (or maybe impatiently) awaiting the third one!