Linda Porter

The Forgotten Queen of Tudor England

Katherine Parr: Complete Works and Correspondence

By

University of Chicago Press 636pp £42 order from our bookshop

Henry VIII’s six wives still have a strong hold on the English popular imagination. In the rhyme learned by generations of schoolchildren, Katherine Parr is the one who ‘survived’, though she was not the only one who outlasted the much-married king: Anne of Cleves lived on until 1557 and was buried by her stepdaughter, Mary I, in Westminster Abbey. Parr was not accorded such an illustrious resting place. She lies in the chapel of Sudeley Castle in Gloucestershire, where she died in 1548 after giving birth to her only child, the product of her fourth and final marriage to Sir Thomas Seymour. It was a tragic end to an eventful life, steeped in the drama and intrigue of Tudor England.

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