How will these resources help you?

Henry VIII’s reign has dominated scholarship on the first half of the sixteenth century for a long time. His wives are remembered through a catchy saying – Divorced, Beheaded, Died, Divorced, Beheaded, Survived – but in truth, there is more to say about these six very different women than the fact that they were Henry VIII’s wives. Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves, Catherine Howard and Catherine Parr all exercised some influence at court and beyond, and they even wielded some significant political power. Often pitted against one another, we tend to forget their own individual contributions to Tudor history. It is also hard to know which resources to choose as so many books exist on the queens – this list offers the must-read books and the most recent available scholarship.