Katherine the Queen: The Remarkable Life of Katherine Parr

by Linda Porter (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2011

  $3.31

  `Linda Porter has done a marvellous job in bringing Katherine Parr to life. In so doing, she evokes the whole terrifying and exciting world of the Tudor courts, packed with intrigue and danger' A.N. Wilson, Reader's Digest

  In this, the first full-scale biography of Katherine Parr, Linda Porter illuminates the life of the queen history has largely forgotten - or at least misremembered. Twice widowed before her marriage to the king, she was not as well versed in the ways of monarchs and her fervent political and religious views made waves in the treacherous waters of the Tudor court. The queen who 'survived' did so only by the skin of her teeth. And though the story of her life has been curiously neglected, she left an enduring impression on English history.

  'Colourful and well paced . . . Katherine's was indeed a remarkable life' Matthew Dennison, Mail on Sunday

  `[A] nuanced picture of family allegiances and intellectual background' Jenny Uglow, Financial Times

• Used

  Paperback
  2010

  $3.31

  Acclaimed historical biographer Linda Porter provides a vivid life of Katherine Parr revealing Henry VIII's last queen to have been a more human, complex and modern figure than has hitherto been realized. The general perception of Katherine Parr, the sixth and last wife of Henry VIII, is that she was a provincial nobody with intellectual pretensions who became queen of England because the king needed a matronly consort to nurse him as his health declined. In the various studies of the six wives of Henry VIII she receives much less attention than Katherine of Aragon or Anne Boleyn. Her main achievement, in the famous rhyme about Henry's six wives, is that she 'survived'. Yet the real Katherine Parr was attractive, passionate (she had a mighty temper when aroused) ambitious and highly intelligent. She was thirty years old (younger than Anne Boleyn had been) when she married the king. Twice widowed, held hostage by the northern rebels during the great uprising of 1536-37 known as the Pilgrimage of Grace, her life had been dramatic even before she became queen. It would remain so after Henry's death, when she hastily and secretly married her old flame, the rakish Sir Thomas Seymour. Katherine died shortly after giving birth to her only child in September 1548, her brief happiness undermined by the very public flirtation of her husband and step-daughter, Princess Elizabeth. Despite the vivid interest of her life, this is the first fullscale, accessible biography of this fascinating woman who was, in reality, one of the most influential and active queen consorts in English history.