Our appetite for the Tudors seems insatiable. Year after year, a steady stream of novels, plays, films, historical soaps, popular histories and not-so-popular histories recycles the fact and the gossip of the English courts of the 16th century. Hilary Mantel’s magnificent Wolf Hall trilogy and its excellent television and stage adaptations have provided many with an accelerated education in early 16th-century history. Faced with a new book on Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, it is hard not to wonder whether yet another contribution to this cottage industry is really necessary. But – apart from the very high quality of the archival research represented here – this book justifies its existence by showing how the over-abundant anecdotal material that fuels popular recreations of Henry VIII’s reign can divert our attention from the background realities of European politics – the multi-dimensional dynastic game of snakes and ladders that shaped inter-state relations in the 16th century.
Most readers will know that Henry’s obsessive campaign for an annulment of his marriage to Katherine of Aragon was driven by Katherine’s failure to bear a son. Most will also remember that this campaign met its most serious setback when Katherine’s nephew, the Emperor Charles V, found himself from 1527 in a position to block any positive response from the Pope to Henry’s pleadings.
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