Young Henry
The Rise of Henry VIII
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Set during the same years of Henry VIII's life as The Tudors, this book charts his rise as a magnificent and ruthless monarch
Immortalized as a domineering king, notorious philanderer, and the unlikely benefactor of a new church, Henry VIII became a legend during his own reign. Who, though, was the young royal who would grow up to become England's most infamous ruler? Robert Hutchinson's Young Henry examines Henry Tudor's childhood beginnings and subsequent rise to power in the most intimate retelling of his early life to date.
While Henry's elder brother Arthur was scrupulously groomed for the crown by their autocratic father, the ten-year-old "spare heir" enjoyed a more carefree childhood, given prestige and power without the looming pressures of the throne. Everything changed for the young prince, though, when his brother died. Henry was nine weeks shy of his eighteenth birthday when he inherited both his brother's widow and the crown.
As King, Henry preferred magnificence and merriment to his royal responsibilities, sweeping away the musty cobwebs of his father's court with feasting, dancing, and sport. Frustrated, too, by the seeming inability of his wife, Katherine of Aragon, to produce an heir, Henry turned his attention to a prospective second queen whose name would endure as long as his: Anne Boleyn. With the king still lacking a successor by the age of 35, however, the time for youthful frolic had come to an end.
Divorcing his wife and the Catholic Church, executing his lover and his violent will, Henry charged forward on a scandalous path of terrifying self-indulgence from which there was no turning back. Young Henry is an illuminating portrait of this tyrannical yet groundbreaking king—before he transformed his country, and the face of the monarchy, irrevocably.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Although Hutchinson, a British journalist and former publishing director, points out that Henry VIII was not the "great libertine with an insatiable debauched appetite that some fiction writers would have us believe," his fifth book on Tudor England (Elizabeth's Spy Master) should still please those fans of the salacious television series The Tudors who would like to set Henry's early reign in its proper factual context. Hutchinson delves into the forces that shaped Henry VIII from his birth in 1491 to the birth in 1533 of his daughter Elizabeth. Hutchinson is admirable at pulling out amusing tidbits from the primary sources he obviously plumbed to write this breezy account of how Henry's cloistered youth influenced his public role as monarch. Hutchinson points out that the early Tudors realized their hold upon the English throne would always be precarious, and thus ruthlessly eliminated rival claimants and were obsessed about producing enough male heirs to ensure the succession. While often enlivened by Hutchinson's irreverent commentary, the book bogs down in detail at times, and skips over pertinent information at others. 16 pages of color photos.
