THE SIX WIVES OF HENRY VIII

Simon Prebble musters the perfect haughty English voice for this astonishing catalogue of lust and intrigue. He announces grandly, for instance, that the King celebrated his sixth marriage--to a Protestant--by "having three Protestant heretics burned to death in the great park." What Henry wanted, Henry got. England broke with Rome. Two wives were beheaded, and one, Anne of Cleves, rejected, because he didn't like the way she looked, or smelled. The man who tried so desperately to produce a male heir ended by fathering one of England's great queens. Elizabeth would never marry. Perhaps she remembered the price her mother, Anne Boleyn, had paid for giving herself to a man. B.H.C. (c) AudioFile 2003, Portland, Maine [Published: AUG/SEP 03]