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Article: Who was Henry VIII and when did it all go wrong? Suzannah Lipscomb looks beyond the stereotypes that surround our most infamous monarch to ask.
- Article from:
- History Today
- Article date:
- April 1, 2009
- Author:
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We all think we know Henry VIII (r. 1509-47) and all there is to know about him. The Holbein portraits, the profusion of television dramas and films, the novels and histories set in his world make him ubiquitous. A whole set of cliches, truisms and fallacies accompany that famous silhouette. As a character, the king both repulses and fascinates us. His vast girth, larger than life persona, grandeur, pomp, arrogance and appetites make us strangely proud of this hyper-masculine, fabled monarch.
Yet much of what we think we know about Henry VIII is just that--fable. We think of him in stereotypes. In 2007, in her column in The ...