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Continuing my read through the Tudor and Plantagenet series of Philippa Gregory books, this year’s read covers wives 4 and 5 of Henry VIII. It’s told by three narrators:

• Anne of Cleves (wife #4, chosen by Henry as his next wife from a drawing, but then he doesn’t like her when she arrives)
• Katherine Howard (wife #5, bratty, spoilt, stupid, fifteen year old girl – but Henry, while old enough to nearly be her grandfather, is besotted)
• Jane Boleyn (sister-in-law of Anne Boleyn, and lady-in-waiting to most of Henry’s wives over the years, also related in some way to Katherine Howard)

I really liked Anne, I felt sorry for her, she was just in an awful situation. Katherine, as you may have gathered from my description above, was just irritating. Jane, comes across as likeable, but is so tied up in the Boleyn/Howard world. And yes, of course, loads of people are related to each other.

That’s one thing this book really lacked, that others of hers have had, and that’s a family tree, to help understand how various families are related, and within the families too, I kept wanting to flick back to check things, but there was nowhere to flick back to. The end of the book says there’s one on the website, but it doesn’t seem to be there anymore sadly, plus what good is telling me at the end?!

By this stage Henry is around 50 years old and has a permanent infection in his leg leaving him in constant pain, but he is accruing more and more power to do whatever he wants, however he wants, to change laws at whim, etc. One thing that struck me was how Trumpian some of Henry’s rants sounded, for example: “No-one could beat me, Ever. Not one knight. I was the greatest jouster in England, perhaps in the world. I was unbeatable and I could ride all day and dance all night, and be up the next day at dawn to go hunting. […] There was none like me! I was the greatest knight since those of the round table! I was a legend.” Maybe it was true, maybe it wasn’t, but you could hear Trump saying it couldn’t you? That said, Katherine makes similarly arrogant comments about her looks throughout, and constantly lists how many dresses and jewels she has – maybe they weren’t that dissimilar in some ways.

While reading this, I heard that Philippa Gregory is publishing another book called the Boleyn Traitor, which I understand will be fully about Jane, but be set before this one, so I might have to jump backwards a step next year!