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Ford Madox Ford is well known for his novels set around the time of the First World War (The Good Soldier and the Parade’s End tetralogy), but you may not have come across his neglected masterpiece The Fifth Queen, which fictionalises the life of Katharine Howard, Anne Boleyn’s younger cousin, who was married to Henry VIII while still a teenager. He was 49 years old. We’ve viewed the Duke of Norfolk’s machinations to make this match through Thomas Cromwell’s eyes in The Mirror and the Light; now see those same events from a different perspective. Like Wolf Hall, Ford Madox Ford’s book is a vivid evocation of the Tudor court, and a brilliant study of political manoeuvring and how power corrupts.
From our article Books like Wolf Hall
