The Making of Henry VIII, Marie Louise Bruce (ex.lib)

Title: The Making of Henry VIII 

Condition:  WELL READ – Ex Library  

Author/s:  Marie Louise Bruce 

Edition/Year:  1977 

Publisher:  William Collins Sons 

Pages: 254 

Format:  Hardback 

Category:  Nonfiction / History / Royal Biography 

About the Book: 

Most biographies of Henry VIII begin, to all intents and purposes, with the start of his reign.  The story really begins earlier. What transformed the handsome, sweet-tempered lover of learning and peace, ‘our divine prince’, as a courtier called him, into a king who, after a reign which altered the course of English history, left behind him a record of selfishness, greed and brutality unrivalled by any other English monarch? 

Marie Louise Bruce believes that it is during the last seventeen years of Henry VII’s reign that the hidden springs of his son’s actions will be found.  She has therefore gone back to the contemporary sources, and against a detailed background of the boy’s daily life, what he ate and wore, the palaces he lived in, the toys he played with, she now re-evaluates the events of those formative years as they affected Henry VII’s son.  Those events included Perkin Warbeck’s rebellion, the marriage of Henry’s elder brother Arthur to Catherine of Aragon, Arthur’s death, and the death of Henry’s mother.  She also evaluates the characters and influence of the people surrounding the youthful prince: his father; his pious and formidable grandmother Margaret Beaufort; his tutor, the poet John Skelton; the young king and archduke Philip the Fair whom Henry so greatly admired; Princess Catherine, with whom he fell in love in the courtly manner of the day. 

The result is a full and fascinating study of the intellectual, moral and emotional development of a king whose personality has become a legend and who has left his mark on English life down to the present time.