Winter King
The Dawn of Tudor England
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3 Months Free + £10 Audible voucher
Winter King
Buy Now for £5.99
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Narrated by:
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Simon Vance
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By:
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Thomas Penn
A fresh look at the endlessly fascinating Tudors - the dramatic and overlooked story of Henry VII and his founding of the Tudor Dynasty - filled with spies, plots, counter-plots, and an uneasy royal succession to Henry VIII.
Near the turn of the sixteenth century, England had been ravaged for decades by conspiracy and civil war. Henry Tudor clambered to the top of the heap, a fugitive with a flimsy claim to England’s crown who managed to win the throne and stay on it for 24 years. Although he built palaces, hosted magnificent jousts, and sent ambassadors across Europe, for many Henry VII remained a false king. But he had a crucial asset: his family - the queen and their children, the living embodiment of his hoped-for dynasty. Now, in what would be the crowning glory of his reign, his elder son would marry a great Spanish princess.
Thomas Penn re-creates an England that is both familiar and very strange - a country medieval yet modern, in which honor and chivalry mingle with espionage, realpolitik, high finance, and corruption. It is the story of the transformation of a young, vulnerable boy, Prince Henry, into the aggressive teenager who would become Henry VIII, and of Catherine of Aragon, his future queen, as well as of Henry VII - controlling, avaricious, paranoid, with Machiavellian charm and will to power.
Rich with incident and drama, filled with wonderfully drawn characters, Winter King is an unforgettable account of pageantry, intrigue, the thirst for glory, and the fraught, unstable birth of Tudor England.
Thomas Penn has a PhD in early Tudor history from Clare College, Cambridge. Winter King is his first book.
©2011 Thomas Penn (P)2012 Blackstone Audio, Inc.Critic reviews
Fascinating but selective. A very enjoyable history of Henry VII and how he managed to size the English throne, and keep it, in very unsure times. The Battle of Bosworth is skated over very quickly, as is how Henry secured the throne. But longer passages are devoted to more obscure persons such as the poet Skelton who became Henry VIII tutor. It gives a good back ground to the early lives of Henry VIII and Catherine, and all the machinations around their eventually marriage. The final passages on the the death of Henry VII are some of the best, in showing what it was like to be around a dying king. In the end Henry VII still remains an elusive character. A knowledge of the ins and outs of the period is useful, Wikipedia was very helpful.
Classy reconstruction of the period
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Winter King
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What did you like most about Winter King?
Following on from the recent TV series on Elizabeth Woodville, the book filled a gap in my knowledge of the period between the Wars of the Roses and the mass of books written about Henry VIII and later Tudors. The author gives a convincing story of how Henry VII's complex personality, and obsession with hoarding money, was formed during his childhood exile. I really liked the way that meticulous research and contemporary quotes were woven into the story so that one could envisage the colour and spectacle of great Court occasions as well as feel the terror of loyal subjects who were baffled by the King's secretiveness. I found the most interesting elements concerned what was going on in England at the high point of the Renaissance in Italy. I knew that Henry VII was deeply engaged in European trade, but the book gives insights into his machinations, as well as to the squandering of huge sums to try to 'buy' security from Plantagenet rivals for the English throne.Would you be willing to try another book from Thomas Penn? Why or why not?
I like the way solid research and contemporary quotes that were woven seamlessly into the storyline. If this author has written anything else about a little-known period of history, I would enjoy reading it.Which scene did you most enjoy?
Philip of Burgundy was shipwrecked on the English south coast when he was trying to get to Spain to claim the crown of Castile from Ferdinand (of Aragon) after Isabella's death. The book illustrates how the usually sombre Henry VII created a series of extravagant Court pageants to lock Philip into a 'gilded cage' until he agreed to give up the main Plantagenet 'pretender' to the English throne that he had protected for years. Henry was an incredibly astute politician.If you made a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?
Our first Renaissance KingFascinating link between Plantagenets and Tudors
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Comprehensive
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This seems to be regarded as one of the better books on Henry VII and his reign, and I can see why. It does a great job of bringing to life the broader geopolitical context - putting England firmly within the wider European sphere, with lots of machinations around alliances with the Habsburgs and/or France in pursuit of creating combined kingdoms that would have radically altered European and world history - as well as domestic courtly intrigued and resentments.
As a prequel to the much better-knowm reign of Henry VIII, this is particularly useful, as Penn frequently has an eye on what's to come, with the young Prince Henry a constant presence, along with others - like More and Wolsey - who would later come to dominate the country.
But if I'm honest, Henry VII himself remains a bit of an enigma - a kind of shadowy, slightly menacing background presence whose motivations are unclear, and whose actions often make little sense. Why, for instance, as a man who'd won the throne by conquest - based on a split-second battlefield decision by someone else, rather than his own actions - did he act so seemingly unfairly to so many of his subjects, appropriating land and forcing people into debt? Did he feel force and threats were the only way to rule? Did he want to be feared rather than loved? If so, why?
I guess asking for more on the psychology of a man who apparently wrote little and seems to have kept his thoughts close is unfair of me, but this is what I was hoping for, and I was left somewhat disappointed. Not the author's fault - it's the fault of the sources.
Still, despite the gaps - and more on Henry's early life and initial motivation to pursue the crown is another big gap, for me - this was interesting. Makes me wonder why this reign so often seems to be skipped over - there's a lot here that lays the foundations for what was to come far more than simply in the seizing of the crown for the Tudors.
interesting and well done
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