Katheryn Howard by Alison Weir

This review was written a week ago - we are now up and running at 41 Church Street, while we look forward to the restoration of The Beatty Building.

It seems like a very long time ago that I read the most recent novel by Alison Weir, but it was not. It has been less than a week since a fire in the Beatty Building destroyed the stock in Parry Sound Books, but it has been a very long, stressful and confusing few days. We moved to our cottage, as we do each summer, on the last Friday in May and it has been my sanctuary now as it always has been. I can leave the smell of smoke damage and end the day in place that is peaceful and clean.

We will “re-open” in our home, at 41 Church Street, on Monday 8 June and I will be there Monday & Wednesday & Friday from 10 am – 4 pm doing as much business as possible and serving customers. There are boxes of new books already piling up, and some special orders will have arrived. The books customers had not yet picked up will be re-ordered, and new orders will be placed for all customers – and to begin to replace some stock. What comes next we do not yet know. In the meantime, please keep supporting Parry Sound Books, and I hope that the new Alison Weir will provide you will a welcome respite from the modern world. 

Alison Weir has been writing about King Henry VIII for most of her career, and her most recent novel is Katheryn Howard – The Scandalous Queen, published this spring. This novel could just as easily have been sub-titled the Foolish Queen.

Though the term “teenager” may not have existed in the 1500s, that is exactly what Katheryn Howard was when she was presented to the King – and it is how she behaved. Hormones raging, Katheryn Howard discovered that she liked boys – men – and she liked sex. She had no idea that she might later regret her promiscuity, never imagining that her future held marriage to a King. Perhaps she cannot be blamed for not ensuring she’d be suitable for the role.

We read of a young woman who is out for what she can get for her own advancement, and pleasure. Which, as it turns out is the man who is King. A man who often made me think he was an earlier version of the current President of the United States, in personality and behaviour. Henry’s many Queens were expected to be by his side, provide an heir, and to never, never step out of line or criticize. And in exchange they got beautiful clothes and fabulous jewels.

We also read of the political unrest in England, and changes in influence after the death of Thomas Cromwell, and the declining health of the King. We know the fate of this young Queen but the story that gets us to that point is informative and interesting, and a complete escape from life in Parry Sound in 2020!

I often learn something while reading a novel that I’m surprised I did not know until now. This time it was at a dinner to which Henry and Katheryn invited the former Queen, Anna of Kleve. “Anna was placed below the salt” which I discovered is a phrase dating back to medieval table customs. If someone is below the salt they are common or of low standing. During those times salt, which was a valuable seasoning, was placed in the middle of a dining table and the lord and his family were seated "above the salt" and other guests or servants "below the salt". I will forever think of this, and of Katheryn Howard, when setting the table and make sure I have salt at both ends.