Exclusive interview with novelist Linda Porter and a review of her new book on the last wife of Henry VIII.
By Gabrielle Pantera
Rating: 4 stars
“When I did the first of many talks on Katherine, when the book was published here in England in March of this year, I must say I did find it quite strange to be talking about her in the chapel at Sudeley Castle where she is buried, with her tomb right behind me,” says Katherine The Queen author Linda Porter. She also found it moving to be in Katherine’s bedroom at Stowe Manor in Northamptonshire, where she lived in 1537 and 1538. Her second husband, Lord Latimer, left her the manor in his will.
Katherine The Queen sheds light on Katherine Parr, the sixth wife of Henry VIII. Little had been written about Parr and she was not well known in history. Porter paints vivid picture of Parr before she became Queen and the rest of Parr’s life following Henry’s death. A must read for anyone who loves all things British.
Kathrine Parr grew up in London around the English court. Porter’s book depicts Katherine as a well-educated, intelligent and cultured woman. Her family was a prominent northern family with Yorkist sympathies. Widowed twice before her marriage to Henry VIII, Katherine becomes a step-mother to Mary, Edward and Elizabeth. Katherine shapes the education and religious beliefs of Elizabeth I and influences her love of fashion.
Porter came up with the idea for a book about Katherine while writing a book about Katherine’s step-daughter Mary Tudor. Porter extensively researched the Parr family. “I used the National Archives and British Library in London and the small but interesting collection of documents at Sudeley Castle in Gloucestershire, as well as the regional archives in Warwickshire for information on Katherine’s cousins, the Throckmortons,” says Porter.
Porter says she looks to printed sources initially, then searches the catalogs of the major research institutions. “It is rather like being a detective and perhaps not easy to explain to the layman,” says Porter. “It is partly experience and partly a gift, I think. But I always go into the archives, normally towards the end of my research, as you need to have a good grasp of the context before you look at documents. You’d be surprised by how many writers calling themselves historians never set foot in the archives.”
Porter is currently working on a book on the rivalry between the English Tudors and the Scottish Stewarts in the first half of the sixteenth century and the downfall of Mary Queen of Scots. It’s called Crown of Thistles: the Fatal Inheritance of Mary Queen of Scots.
Porter was born in in Exeter and currently lives outside of London in Kent. She has a doctorate in History from the University of York. She was the winner of the 2004 Biographers Club/Daily Mail prize in England.
Katherine The Queen, The Remarkable Life of Katherine Parr, the Last Wife of Henry VII by Linda Porter. Hardcover, 400 pages, Publisher: St. Martin’s Press; First Edition (November 23, 2010), Language: English, ISBN: 9780312384388 $27.99
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