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By
Victoria Roddam
Irreverent,
bawdy, witty and erudite聟 I'm not referring to Henry or his
wives, but the popular historian, writer and commentator David Starkey,
whose recent performance at the Oxford Literary Festival kept the
audience hanging on his every word, and eager for more. A regular
panelist on 成人快手 Radio 4's The Moral Maze, Starkey is no abstract,
dry-as-dust historian, but a delighted and delightful re-creator
of the pageantry of the past, and an expert on the intricacies of
Tudor life.
Based
on his recent book, The Six Wives of Henry VIII, Starkey's whistle-stop
tour of the fated spouses embraces everything from comparisons with
Beckham and Posh to shocking revelations from the Tudor bedchamber.
Starting
with the ill-fated Catherine of Aragon, he provides a tantalizing
snapshot of the domestic life of a medieval queen, punctuated as
it was by yearly pregnancies and agonizing miscarriages. From here
he moves to his 'favourite' wife, Anne Boleyn, described in memorable
terms as 'a bit of a goer'. More seriously, Starkey reminds us,
Anne was not only something of free spirit, her grasp of 'boudoir
power', as he calls it, changed the course of history forever聟
Comparing
Henry rather unfavourably with the airport drunk who lines one drink
up after another, Starkey then proceeds to Jane Seymour, reminding
us that 'the perfect wife is a dead wife', before skipping rather
too quickly over the final three queens and taking some spirited
questions and answers.
His
methods may be unorthdox, but Starkey's research is grounded in
scholarly sources. Like him or hate him - and critics generally
fall into one of these camps - there is no doubting his ability
to bring history to life, or to capture the manner in which, nearly
half-a-century later, our preoccupations and daily lives remain
uncannily similar to those of Tudor England.
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