The reports and despatches of Eustace Chapuys, Spanish Ambassador to Henry VIII's court from 1529 to 1545, have been instrumental in shaping our modern interpretations of Henry VIII and his wives.
Through his personal relationships with several of Henry's queens, and Henry himself, his writings were filled with colourful anecdotes, salacious gossip, and personal and insightful observations of the key players at court, thus offering the single most continuous portrait of the central decades of Henry's reign.
The book is divided into the episodic reigns of Henry's queens, beginning with Chapuys' arrival in England, in the middle of Henry's divorce from Katherine of Aragon. Chapuys tirelessly defended Katherine and later her daughter, Mary Tudor, the future Mary I.
He remained as ambassador through the rise and fall of Anne Boleyn, whom he would only refer to as the concubine or whore, and reported on each and every one of Henry's subsequent wives - Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves, Katherine Howard, and Katherine Parr - as well as the goings-on at the Tudor court.
He retired in 1545, close to the end of Henry VIII's reign. In approaching the period through Chapuys' letters, Lauren Mackay presents a fresh perspective on Henry, his court and the Tudor period as a whole.
