Katherine Howard: Henry VIII’s Slandered Queen

Over the years, Katherine Howard, Henry VIII’s fifth wife, has been slandered as a ‘juvenile delinquent’, ‘empty-headed wanton’ and ‘natural-born tart’ who engaged in promiscuous liaisons prior to her marriage and committed adultery after her marriage to Henry VIII. This biography challenges these assumptions by drawing on seven years of research, demonstrating that Katherine’s reputation is unfairly deserved. It offers new insights into her activities as queen as well as the nature of her relationships with Manox, Dereham and Culpeper. Katherine was bright, charming and beautiful, but it was her tragedy that her premarital liaisons
in a climate of distrust and fear of female sexuality
led to her ruin in 1542. Conor Byrne challenges Katherine’s negative reputation and redeems her as Henry VIII’s slandered queen. AUTHOR: Conor Byrne is the author of Katherine Howard: A New History (an Amazon bestseller) and Queenship in England. He studied History at the University of Exeter and studied for an MA at the University of York. He is a former editor of Tudor Life Magazine and was a regular contributor from August 2016 to May 2018.