Peter Marshall
Dynasty
Winter King: The Dawn of Tudor England
By Thomas Penn
Allen Lane/The Penguin Press 480pp £20
It is hard to understand why the reign of Henry VII has for so long had the reputation of being one of the most boring periods of English history. Perhaps it is because successive generations of A-level students have been made to wrestle with the technical aspects of bonds and recognisances, and to memorise the contents of trade treaties called things like the Malus Intercursus. In fact, Henry’s story is truly remarkable and often engrossing. He was a king who, in the final stages of the Wars of the Roses, as Thomas Penn puts it, ‘appeared out of nowhere’ – an obscure exile who seized the throne from Richard III in 1485 with a single, desperate throw of the dice. His enjoyment of it might easily have been brief. He faced a succession of serious challenges, not merely from the pretenders Lambert Simnel and Perkin Warbeck (reduced, unfairly, to comic-opera status by 1066 and All That), but from Cornish rebels, hostile foreign powers, and bona fide Yorkist heavyweights such as the Earl of Suffolk. Treason, real and imagined, festered in the highest circles of the land throughout his reign. Henry’s response was to enmesh his leading subjects in layers of financial threat and obligation, employing the talents of a crew of ruthless cronies operating through the euphemistically titled Council Learned in the Law. Resentments quietly mushroomed. That Henry’s son succeeded him, unchallenged, in 1509 must be regarded as a triumph against the odds.
It is pushing things a bit to suggest, as Penn does in his introduction, that this story has hitherto been ‘largely untold’; his own endnotes and acknowledgements reveal a heavy debt to recent academic scholarship. Nor does the account here contain many startling new revelations or original insights
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
When @djbduncan notices the text for a literary jigsaw puzzle had been written by a former colleague, his head spins. A wild surmise. Are jigsaws REF-able?
Dennis Duncan - The W Factor
Dennis Duncan: The W Factor
literaryreview.co.uk
In an effort to scold drinkers, Victorian temperance societies furiously marked every drinking establishment with a red X on city maps. It was a spectacular case of propaganda backfiring.
@foxtosser explores the history of drink maps
Edward Brooke-Hitching - From Beer Street to Gin Lane
Edward Brooke-Hitching: From Beer Street to Gin Lane - Drink Maps in Victorian Britain by Kris Butler
literaryreview.co.uk
How did a workers’ insurance agent who died of tuberculosis at the age of forty become a global literary icon?
@MortenHoiJensen on Kafka's metamorphosis
Morten Høi Jensen - Paranoid Humanoid
Morten Høi Jensen: Paranoid Humanoid - Metamorphoses: In Search of Franz Kafka by Karolina Watroba; Kafka: Making o...
literaryreview.co.uk