ROYAL ROMANCE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 540, 28 October 1949, Page 14

ROYAL ROMANCE

THE LOVE LETTERS OF HENRY’ VIII, edited with an introduction and comments by Henry Savage; Allan Wingate, through the British Council. English price, 9/-. NYBODY who is attracted to buy this book primarily because it proclaims itself as a volume of love letters and, more than that, the love letters of such a notorious amorist as Henry VIII, is likely to be wanting his money back. For though there is a suspicion of spice on a few pages there is, to maintain the metaphor, very much more dough: solid substantial fare considerably more likely to appeal to the historical scholar than to the mere seeker after sensational disclosures of scandals in exalted quarters. The collection includes a few letters between Henry and Katherine of Aragon, Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves, Kathryn Howard, and Katherine Parr, but the main part of the book, and its chief source of interest, is the 17 letters between Henry and Anne Boleyn-known as the Vatican Letters from the fact that they are housed in the Vatican-which, it. is claimed, are here correctly and authentically reproduced, with one exception, for the first time. Considering the general coarseness of the times, the frankness of Tudor speech, and perhaps the reputation of the correspondents, these intimate letters are remarkably restrained; and whatever they did to Anne Boleyn on receiving them, are not likely to bring a blush to any modern reader’s cheek. The academic nature of the book is emphasised by

the fact that in most cases the original French text accompanies the. English translation, and by the inclusion at the end of facsimile reproductions of the letters. On the other hand, the editor’s comments, his biographical notes on the six Queens, and his analysis of their characters and their relationships with Henry lack nothing in liveliness; they are at least as rich in "human interest"

as the letters themselves.

G.

M.