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It is impossible to imagine Henrician England except through the eyes of Hans Holbein

8 May 2021

9:00 AM

8 May 2021

9:00 AM

The King’s Painter: The Life and Times of Hans Holbein Franny Moyle

Apollo/Head of Zeus, pp.543, 35

King and Collector: Henry VIII and the Art of Kingship Linda Collins and Siobhan Clarke

The History Press, pp.207, 15.99

‘Holbein redeemed a whole era for us from oblivion,’ remarks the author of a trilogy of novels set at Henry VIII’s court. ‘He has forced us to believe that his vision of it was the only feasible one.’

This is a bit of a tease. It’s not written by Hilary Mantel, as you might be expecting, but by Ford Madox Ford, who, a century before Wolf Hall, published a sequence of novels about Henry’s fifth queen, Katharine Howard.

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