Reign Of Henry VIII: The Personalities and Politics

The Reign of Henry VIII is not a tale of Henry VIII. It is about the great game of politics over which he presided.

Henry VIII was almost never alone. He was surrounded, twenty-four hours a day, by the small group of intimates and personal attendants who made up the staff of his Privy Chamber. They:

• Organised his daily life
• Kept him amused
• Acted as the landline between the King and the formal machinery of government

These men—intermarried, interbred, and close-knit even in their mutual feuding—were supremely well-placed to rig politics and patronage for their own benefit. Their influence was important and sometimes decisive:

• Factions in the Privy Chamber destroyed Anne Boleyn
• They frustrated the 'Catholic' reaction of the 1540s
• By doctoring Henry's will, they prepared the way for the full-blooded Protestantism of his son's reign

Bursting with sleaze and scandal, David Starkey's account of the machinations of the court of Henry VIII is worthy of a modern-day political saga.