I wasn’t at ease. I’d always thought of happiness as something calm and reassuring, like a warm coat on a winter’s day – the absence, for a while, of fear; a little pleasure, a new plant or a pasty; something interesting to chew on in my work. This was different. This was more like finding that a...
The game of queens was played for high stakes, and could carry a deadly penalty. The first half of 1536 saw the death of not one but two English queens. Before the corn was ripe in the fields, Katherine of Aragon’s painful battle was ended and her rival Anne Boleyn had knelt in the straw of the s...
As Henry Tudor assumed the throne, any adult alive then would have remembered not only Richard III’s overthrow of the expected order, and Edward IV’s coup, but Henry VI’s brief resumption of the throne. There was not necessarily any reason to think Henry VII’s dynasty would be more durable.Henry ...