Winter King

'HE WERE A DARK PRINCE, AND INFINITELY SUSPICIOUS, AND HIS TIMES FULL OF SECRET CONSPIRACIES AND TROUBLES' FRANCIS BACON It was 1501. England had been ravaged for decades by conspiracy, violence, murders, coups and counter-coups. Through luck, guile and ruthlessness, Henry VII had clambered to the top of the heap - a fugitive with a flimsy claim to England's crown. For many he remained a usurper, a false king. But Henry had a crucial asset: his queen and their children, the living embodiment of his longed-for dynasty. Now his elder son would marry a great Spanish princess. On a cold November day this girl, the sixteen-year-old Catherine of Aragon, arrived in London for a wedding upon which the fate of England would hinge . . . In his remarkable debut Thomas Penn re-creates the story of the tragic, magnetic figure of Henry VII - controlling, paranoid, avaricious, with a Machiavellian charm and will to power. Rich with incident and drama, Winter King is an unforgettable story of pageantry, treachery, realpolitik, the thirst for glory - and the fraught, unstable birth of Tudor England.