An Unchaste Life: Memoir of a Tudor Queen

Anne Cato
Lyon-Rampart Publishing (2005)
ISBN 0978114604
Reviewed by RJoanne Benham for Reader Views (8/06)

When most people outside of the United Kingdom hear the name Henry VIII, they immediately think of the English monarch with all the wives, most of whom met untimely ends.  But few of us know much about those wives beyond their names. 

This is the story of Henry’s fifth wife, Catherine Howard, cousin of his second wife Anne Boleyn.  When Anne is beheaded, Catherine figured that any influence her family may have held at court is gone, but her family has other ideas and plots to marry her off to Henry.  Remembering the fate of Henry’s other brides and determined not to marry him, Catherine wastes no time in ridding herself of her virginity, knowing the king will not take an unchaste woman as his bride. When her family learns Henry is to marry Anne of Cleves, Catherine soon finds herself in a battle of wills with her powerful uncle, Thomas Howard, Third Duke of Norfolk, as he attempts to establish her as the King’s mistress. Blessed, or cursed, with a deeply sensual nature as well as great beauty, Catherine manages to catch the King’s eye when she moves into his court as a maid of honour to Anne of Cleves. 

The book follows the remainder of Catherine’s life, from her marriage to the king until she too takes the long walk to the chopping block.

A fascinating look at medieval times when livestock received better treatment than people and one man held the lives of millions of people in his disease-ridden hands. 

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