sophronisba 's review for:

Six Wives: The Queens of Henry VIII by David Starkey

3.25

informative slow-paced

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Starkey has done a formidable amount of research and it shows. Having said that, I did not care for his tone and thought he came across as both arrogant and misogynistic throughout the book. Early on, for example, he describes Agnes Strickland's methodology thusly: "She charmed (she was very pretty, especially for a scholar) her way into the national archives of both Britain and France." Another example: his complaint that Catherine of Aragon became "uglier and duller" as she approached middle age (not for nothing, but have you ever compared young Henry VIII to older Henry VIII?). I also didn't care for his entire treatment of Catherine Howard's life, in which he holds a young teenage girl more responsible for her actions than countless adult men. Bleh. His research may be useful to historians, but I don't recommend the book as a whole to the average reader.