ROYALTY

L UCY W OODING God’s Lieutenant on the Road to Reform

T HE K ING ’ S R EFORMATION : H ENRY VIII ANDTHE R EMAKINGOFTHE E NGLISH C HURCH

★By G W Bernard (Yale University Press 736pp £29.95)

T HEMOSTDECISIVE developments of Henry VIII’s turbulent reign came in the 1530s, when the king denied the authority of the Pope, asserted his own supposedly God-given right to control the Church, and set about redesigning English religion, a process which he was to continue until the end of his reign. These actions were to have momentous consequences. Henry effectively reconfigured English kingship by adding to the crown the enormous wealth and authority of the Church, yet at the same time endangered it by creating a basis for principled religious opposition to royal authority. He left a legacy of conflict to English Protestants and Catholics alike, who ever since have been fighting over quite what the religious ambiguities of his reign should mean for their separate traditions. He also created a thorny historical problem. What exactly had the king intended to achieve with this religious and political revolution? Was he merely trying to replace his obstinate wife, whose sons had all died, with a more likely child-bearing contender, and getting carried away? Was this the beginning of Protestantism in England, as the institution of an English Bible and the dissolution of the monasteries seem to suggest? Or was it ‘Catholicism without the Pope’, as many others have argued, since Henry always upheld the importance of the Latin Mass, and refused the central doctrines of Protestantism? Had Henry been tempted by the possibilities of Continental reform, only to lose his nerve? Many historians have taken refuge in the argument that Henry’s apparent inconsistencies can best be explained by the workings of faction: the picture emerges of a king who was forceful but wayward, impulsive and vindictive, swayed by his councillors, courtiers and wives. In short, we have been led to believe, the Henrician Reformation was an exercise in incoherence; the alarming vacillations of a king desperately anxious about the future of his dynasty, and prepared to countenance any possible way of producing a legitimate male heir and securing his authority. George Bernard has set out to prove that the many

Kent State University Press

Blood and Ink

Albert Borowitz

The interplay between crime fact and fiction has been detected back to literature's earliest beginnings. Blood and Ink is a truly comprehensive encyclopedic resource of notable true crimes (including murders, fraud, piracy, imposture, historical mysteries, treason, conspiracy, and a wide variety of crimes against property, such as theft, burglary, and arson) and their appearance in many plots of memorable literature, plays, songs, and poetry. It is an invaluable resource for true-crime afficionados as well as for students and scholars of literature, cultural studies, and social history.

”This is an enjoyable and remarkable book. The variety of literary genres and languages is unique and should both instruct and entertain the large contingent of criminous minds.” -Jacques Barzun

”Blood and Ink once again demonstrates Albert Borowitz's sophisticated mastery of crime fiction and its relation to actual murders and other criminal misadventures. With his unsurpassed knowledge of the subject, Borowitz offers fascinating, delightful, and comprehensive entries of the relevant literature. Set in accessible and charmingly witty prose, the author's brilliant and wide-sweeping introduction is itself worth the price of this encyclopedic volume.” -Bertram Wyatt-Brown

490pps 19 illustrations 0-87338-693-0 hardback $65.00US/£42.95

Available from The Kent State University Press c/o Eurospan, 3 Heenrietta Street, Covent Garden, London WC2E 8LU, UK Tel: +44(0)20 7240 0856 FAX: +44 (0)20 7379 0609 Email: orders@edspubs.co.uk www.eurospanonline.com

LITERARY REVIEW Dec 2005 / Jan 2006