Catherine Howard: Henry VIII's Doomed Queen: Youth, Desire and Death at the Tudor Court

Henry VIII's fifth queen has been remembered as a foolish girl, a reckless adulteress and a doomed romantic heroine. The surviving evidence tells a far more complicated story.Catherine Howard entered the Tudor court young, attractive and connected to one of England's most powerful noble families. Within months she had caught the attention of Henry VIII. Within two years she was dead.Her spectacular rise concealed a dangerous past. Relationships formed in the loosely supervised household of the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk would later return to threaten Catherine's marriage, while her secret meetings with Thomas Culpeper created evidence that Henry's government transformed into a case of treason.Catherine Howard: Henry VIII's Doomed Queen reconstructs her life without relying upon the legends that later came to define her. Drawing upon surviving depositions, state papers, contemporary accounts and modern scholarship, it examines Catherine's uncertain childhood, her relationships with Henry Manox and Francis Dereham, her brief queenship, the northern progress, the investigation that destroyed her and the extraordinary legislation used to secure her execution.The result is the story of a young woman caught between desire, dynastic politics, family ambition and the terrifying power of the Tudor monarchy.