Book review - Six Wives: The Queens of Henry VIII by David Starkey

 It took me awhile(even longer to write a review) but I finally completed Six Wives: The Queens of Henry VIII by David Starkey on audio. I really enjoyed listening to it and I think it is fair to say that I have learned a lot. Henry VIII was for me a mad king who got rid of his wives in the most evil of manners. I didn't have any in-depth knowledge of him or his wives. Of course I've known about Henry and his wifes, but most of my information came from movies or tv-series.

This book had(obviously) focus on Henry's wifes and one gets to know them quite well, especially Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn. But through the wives stories we get to know abit about Henry VIII as well. Starky actually points out that as long as Henry was in love he was a good husband, to bad for his wives that his infatuation seemed to be short lived.

When we got to Henry's last wife Katherine Parr, who survived Henry, I though finally one of them will have a happy ending. She got to marry the man she loved and everything seemed to be perfect alas, it ended in tragedy.

I have some issues with Starkey's way of writing about other historians and the way he presents the facts. It feels as if he's saying "I'm right and all of the other historians were wrong". I don't believe that it is that simple, a source can be interpreted in different ways by different researchers.

David Starkey managed to rekindle my love for history and I'll be on the lookout for other historical audiobooks.

My rating of this book:
3,8 stars out of 5 stars.

Perhaps this review wasn't so short after all, I felt like I just wrote a couple of lines.