What a cracking great read this was! Enormously enjoyable retelling of What a cracking great read this was! Enormously enjoyable retelling of the real life story of Henry VIII and his six wives in a modern day setting. Yes, it is very contrived, and of course you know the general layout of what is going to happen - divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived. But how is this going to translate to how marriages and their ends happen today? The author must have had huge fun coming up with the various means of wife disposal, and as bizarre as a couple of them are, it does all work.
Harry Rose is Henry. It is the hedonistic days of the 1980s in London. Harry has inherited a magazine publishing empire from his father, he is married to Katie Paragon. Life is great, truly fabulous. He has a roving eye - how surprising, but when the story opens, life is peachy. But not for long. His marriages and other dalliances all take place against the backdrop of 1980s-1990s (mostly) London and his growing publishing business. He is doomed of course to suffer much, mostly brought on by his own silly male hand. His pride and self esteem is dazzling to behold, his lack of empathy with absolutely everybody legend. His treatment of women is appalling, nowadays he would be well and truly called out on his behaviour and attitudes, but 30-40 years ago not so much.
All the characters are based on the real life characters, made very modern in name, profession/occupation and what they get up to. I loved making the comparisons, doing the odd Wikipedia for fact checking. It is clever, fun, and hugely entertaining. Now there is a sequel - Sister After Sister - all about Harry's daughter Eliza and her running of the publishing empire with her cousin MacKenzie- based of course on Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots. Oh let me get my mitts on this one!
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