PublishedAllen Lane, November 2011 |
ISBN9781846142024 |
FormatHardcover, 480 pages |
Dimensions24cm × 16.2cm × 4.1cm |
It was 1501. England had been ravaged for decades by conspiracy, violence, murders, coups and counter-coups. Through luck, guile and ruthlessness, Henry VII had clambered to the top of the heap - a fugitive with a flimsy claim to England's crown. For many he remained a usurper, a false king.
But Henry had a crucial asset: his queen and their children, the living embodiment of his longed-for dynasty. Now his elder son would marry a great Spanish princess. On a cold November day this girl, the sixteen-year-old Catherine of Aragon, arrived in London for a wedding upon which the fate of England would hinge . . .
In his remarkable debut Thomas Penn re-creates the story of the tragic, magnetic figure of Henry VII – controlling, paranoid, avaricious, with a Machiavellian charm and will to power. Rich with incident and drama, Winter King is an unforgettable story of pageantry, treachery, realpolitik, the thirst for glory - and the fraught, unstable birth of Tudor England.
