Suzanne Dunn - The Sixth Wife

Reviewed live on bookshow by Maggie Perkovich .
I always enjoy books about the Tudor period and this one concerning Katherine Parr, the sixth and last
wife of Henry V111was very readable, if not historically correct. It starts when Henry has died and
his wife is in a period of mourning. However her previous romance Thomas Seymour re enters
her life and they get married before the year is out which breaks all the rules!!!
Not only that she later becomes pregnant something that she and her new husband are
thrilled about, as her three previous marriages to older men had not produced an offf spring.
Of course things get complicated when the young Princess Elizabeth and Lady Jane Grey
come to live with them at Sudely House, and Thomas is suspected of becoming too
familiar with the former. From then on life goes downhill ending with her death shortly
after child birth, the baby also is believed to have died when very young.
Seymour is later executed for treason.
Into this basic story as reported in history literature the author throws a mythical
romance between Thomas Seymour and Catherine Duchess of Suffolk (she admits it is
not historically based) and there is quite a frisky description of their love making which
suprised me, before the eventual tragedy concludes.
Katherine Parr was by all historians a clever and learned woman, whose love
and compassion for her step children was much admired.
This book seems more to dwell on her problems with Thomas seymour and her
friendship with Duchess of Suffolk, ward then widow of Charles Brandon.
Also she did seem to lapse into modern speak as in calling a Catherine Cathy.
Not very likely in the 16th century. Maggie Perkovic.