You know, I just realized I got the title of that book wrong   It's Katherine Howard: A Tudor Conspiracy, not tragedy   I don't know WHY because there wasn't any element of conspiracy IN the thing, unless you count Norfolk's incessant plotting to sidle up closer to Henry

My husband gave me this book for my birthday and I had already read the AB book. No, I have never been convinced either Carey child was anything other than a Carey. Their birthdates/birth order are argued. No one has ever pinned down exactly when or how long Mary Boleyn was Henry's mistress. I guess I still have Agnes Strickland's and David Starkey's view that Katheryn and Thomas Culpepper may not have actually done the deed. It would have been hard to manage and somebody probably would have fessed up. Just admitting you lusted after the Queen and she after you was enough. I guess I will always have a soft spot for Katheryn Howard. I wish I could go back and give her a mother who would tell that Mannox creep to go away, keep Francis Derham and company out of the girls' rooms at night and go ahead and marry our distant cousin Thomas Culpepper and have ten children and stay away from the King's roving eye. I did enjoy the book as there was some good background  information and I love those Tudors. There is a website about Bessie Blount and Henry Fitzroy that suggests HVIII was a little afraid of him. 

There was a book about Catherine Howard called A Tudor Tragedy, it was by Lacey Baldwin Smith, published in 1961.

 

In 'Henry VIII: King and court' Alison Weir says that she thinks it unlikely that the Carey children were Henry's, because he never acknowledged them and, as she says, he was sensitive about his lack of children, so it seems unlikely that he would have failed to acknowledge them if they had been his.

 

Louise

I have read the Smith book. He refers to Katheryn Howard as a juvenile delinquent. Bit harsh, no? I have read reasons why Henry would not have claimed either or both Carey children, but the fact is he didn't. Mary Boleyn has descendants walking around - DNA testing anyone?

Last night I watched the second part of the series "Henry VIII" starring Ray Winston. Katherine was depicted as a blond air head who was manipulated by her relatives and whose infidelity was eventually betrayed to the impotent Henry, who sent her to the block where she died begging for mercy. I've always found Katherine quite a sympathetic character, doing her best for her family, who let us remember, had fought and died for Richard III at Bosworth Field within living memory. She always seems to get glossed over in favour of Anne Boleyn and Katherine of Aragon and it'd be nice to see more about her when Henry's life is dramatised.

 

By the way, from what I saw of it, the series didn't look very good and I'm sure Katherine was a brunette, not a blond. The actress who played her looked familiar but her name escapes me.

I too stayed up to watch part2 of Henry8th, I think that Ray Winston is a good actor, but really NOT good as Henry he was portraying him as a cockney bully, it didn't finish here until 3am, and I have to say that I wish i'd had the sleep instead, and I must have blinked because I missed Anne of Cleves altogether.

I was really disappointed, Jane Seymour was also not as timid as she has always been  portrayed before!!!!

 No Bueno.

Denny describes Katheryn Howard as a "dark blond" and Angela Pleasance was blond in the PBS series also.

The Holbein watercolor of Katheryn probably done when she was a lady in waiting to AofC which is on the cover of Denny's book shows her as a dark blond also. I just read an article (March 2008?) where a second contemporary copy of the Holbein portrait identified and unindentified as Katheryn has been identified once more as Katheryn by David Starkey and is on display at Hever with her cousins. I found it on the Showtime Tudors Wiki.