Young and Damned and Fair

The Life of Catherine Howard, Fifth Wife of King Henry VIII

Gareth Russell

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9781501108648
• eBook ISBN:
  9781501108655
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Historical Biographies
• Index: History

Written with an exciting combination of narrative flair and historical authority, this biography of Henry VIII’s fifth wife, Catherine Howard, is “a stunning achievement” (The Sunday Times, London), and “a masterly work of Tudor history that is engrossing, sympathetic, suspenseful, and illuminating” (Charlotte Gordon, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography).

On the morning of July 28, 1540, a teenager named Catherine Howard began her reign as queen of an England simmering with rebellion and terrifying uncertainty. Sixteen months later, she would follow her cousin Anne Boleyn to the scaffold, having been convicted of adultery and high treason.

The broad outlines of Catherine’s career might be familiar, but her story up until now has been incomplete. Unlike previous biographies, which portray her as a naïve victim of an ambitious family, Gareth Russell’s “excellent account puts the oft-ignored Catherine in her proper historical context” (Daily Mail, London) and sheds new light on her rise and downfall by showing her in her context, a milieu that includes the aristocrats and, most critically, the servants who surrounded her and who, in the end, conspired against her. By illuminating Catherine’s entwined upstairs/downstairs world as well as societal tensions beyond the palace walls, Russell offers a fascinating portrayal of court life in the sixteenth century and a fresh analysis of the forces beyond Catherine’s control that led to her execution.

Including a forgotten text of Catherine’s confession in her own words, color illustrations, family tree, map, and extensive notes, Young and Damned and Fair is “a gripping account of a young woman’s future destroyed by forces beyond her control…an important and timely book” (Amanda Foreman, author of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire and A World on Fire). This account changes our understanding of one of history’s most famous women while telling the compelling and very human story of complex individuals attempting to survive in a dangerous age.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• List of Illustrations
• Map
• Family Trees
• Introduction
• 1. The Hour of Our Death
• 2. “Our fathers in their generation”
• 3. Lord Edmund’s Daughter
• 4. The Howards of Horsham
• 5. “Mad wenches”
• 6. “The King’s highness did cast a fantasy”
• 7. “The charms of Catherine Howard”
• 8. “The Queen of Britain will not forget”
• 9. “All these ladies and my whole kingdom”
• 10. The Queen’s Brothers
• 11. The Return of Francis Dereham
• 12. Jewels
• 13. Lent
• 14. “For they will look upon you”
• 15. The Errands of Morris and Webb
• 16. The Girl in the Silver Dress
• 17. The Chase
• 18. Waiting for the King of Scots
• 19. “Being examined by my lord of Canterbury”
• 20. A Greater Abomination
• 21. The King Has Changed His Love into Hatred
• 22. Ars Moriendi
• 23. The Shade of Persephone
• Appendices
• Photographs
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Copyright