Although I have always enjoyed history and love learning about the past, a lot of non-fiction tends to be very dry and tedious. It is informative and the information itself is interesting, but the delivery often leaves much to be desired. It is always a treat to find an author who can write history and keep it interesting.
The Six Wives of Henry VIII by Alison Weir is a wonderful example of that. Ms. Weir delivers a very informative, yet highly entertaining account of Henry the VIII; one of England's most notorious monarchs. Henry's desperation to father a son led to one of the greatest scandals in English history. Before reading this book, I knew the basics about Henry's reign. I knew that he married 6 women and had a reputation for beheading those women who displeased him, his desire to marry Anne Boleyn initiated the break between England and the Catholic church, because the Pope wouldn't grant him a divorce and his two living daughters were both rather famous monarchs in their own right.
Because I knew very little actual information about this period of English history, but have always been fascinated by what I heard, I decided to pick up this book and learn a little more about King Henry and his outrageous court. I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed reading this book. The book was very well written and flowed from one sequence of events to another very smoothly. Although this was non-fiction, it read more like a novel than the typical dry recitation of historical facts.
The first half of the 600+ page book was dedicated to Catherine of Aragon, Henry's first wife and Anne Boleyn, his second. Catherine was married to Henry for 24 years and is the only wife to have been married to Henry for longer than 4 years. During the later years of his marriage to Catherine, Henry's attentions began shifting toward Anne Boleyn, one of the ladies of the court. While it makes sense to devote so much of the book to these two women, the history here did get a little repetitious. I was also a little disappointed because none of the other wives were given as much detail as the first two. Although I did wish for a little more detailed information to be given on the remaining 4 wives, I understand why there was less to say of the others. I mean, Katherine Howard was only 19 when she was married to King Henry, and she was executed after only 2 years of marriage, and Anne of Cleves was married to Henry for less than a year. I did love that interspersed throughout the story of each of these women was the connections to the other women in Henry's life, as well as information about what had happened or what was happening to each of the previous queens. That is something that would have been missing from individual biographies on these six women that I was grateful was included.
Overall, this was a book well worth reading. The facts were well researched, the history informative, and the writing engaging. I will definitely be picking up other books by this author in the future.