Six Wives

"I started reading this book with an open mind as I do all books. That being said it was made abundently clear in the first page of the introduction that it was written by a sexist and narrcissistic man. He begins by attempting to discredit the well renowned women who wrote similar books before implying that nothing they wrote can be trusted because they were females and as such probably lied to get said information. <br/>Moving on to the history of these woman we see that he uses information that he has gathered that the reader is frequently told that Starkey is one of the first historians to use or even find. I did learn new information while reading this book but I can honestly say that at least a third of it is unnecessary. I don't need to know how many times this one courtier who is somehow relevent traveled from place A to place B. For that matter I also don't need to know how person A (who is mentioned one time) impacted person B, leading person B to convince person C to take a different course of action. Just say that person B changed person C's mind.<br/>Throughout the book he contradicts himself within sentences of a previous statement. The man's side is always taken and little or no insight is given to what the current queen is thinking, I understand that this could be due to lack of information but whenever insight to what the queen is thinking is given it always is a thaught that imediately makes the reader think of her as a cold-hearted, manipulative bitch. The constant miscarriges of his wives Starkey blames entirely on the women even though in today's day and age we have learned that failure to concive is often due to an issue on the man's side. That being said it is normal for women to miscarry and it happens more than we realize. <br/>Although Starkey is great at finding the information I do believe that he should work on how he presents it as often times his opinions came across as facts.<br/>The thing that stood out to me the most as unfair was that Starkey entirely blames Catherine Howard for the relationshps she had as a tween. He blames it on her easy-going nature and natural charm but what he seems to forget is that she was a child- barely a teenager and two men who were supposed to be her protectors were most likely using her for sexual favours. She may have seduced them but I find that highly unlikely and it is awful to put the blame entirely on her. We don't know what happened but it is highly likely that she was abused and one of the worst thingsanyone can do in my mind is to blame the victim."