I got this e-book from the library during the current lockdown (bloody pandemic!) and it's been a fantastic read. It developed from the author's postgraduate research, but thankfully the language has presumably been changed somewhat, as it reads like it's directed to a popular audience instead of an examining committee. Which is not to say that it's not scholarly - it clearly is. But it's also entertaining, which is a lesson some other historians could stand to learn.

Admittedly I'm not hugely familiar with English history, but Catherine Howard was one of Henry's wives that I knew very little about. When I thought of her, which was seldom, it was to consider her young and blindingly stupid. I mean, when you see what happened with Anne Boleyn (your relative no less, Catherine) why, for heaven's sake, did you think adultery was a good idea? You knew your husband was a monster. Well, this sympathetic biography makes it all a little more clear. She was very young and poorly educated, and clearly kind of panicked. Her early adolescent dalliance with Dereham didn't seem so serious, until she came to court and caught the eye of Horrible Henry, and that started an avalanche that was very hard to escape. I mean, what could she say? "Sorry, but you don't want me, I've been fucking someone else?" Bang goes her reputation, her future, her use to her family, and from what Russell argues, she was never at court to seduce Henry in the first place. It all just went wrong and wrong and wrong, and the poor girl - well-meaning, but never all that bright - did the best she could and her best wasn't that much. Certainly not enough.

I just felt deeply sorry for her.