Elizabethan industry

Alan Stewart's The Cradle King: a Life of James VI and I (Chatto, £20) is, in contrast, a concise, fluent and stylish biography of James VI and I. It paints the portrait of an intellectual in power - the most prolific author to sit upon the English throne, a bookish king who liked nothing better than a good argument with theologians or lawyers. James's tutor, George Buchanan, may not have turned his pupil into exactly what he wanted, but at least he gave him a mind of his own.

Stewart even sets James's notorious susceptibility to handsome young men in the context of his intellectual aspirations, seeing James as a schoolmaster-king, a "dominie" on the throne, endeavouring, like Buchanan, to shape his pupils in his own image.

If there was a "homosexual orientation" in James's character (and Stewart avoids idle speculation), then he came out, like so many men after him, not as a pederast but as a pedagogue.

James VI attained what begins to look like the objective of every Scottish politician: power in England ("England: a country ruled by Scotsmen." Discuss). His mother, Mary, Queen of Scots, who pursued the same ambition in vain, is the subject of two of the books in our heap.

Alison Weir's account, Mary, Queen of Scots and the Murder of Lord Darnley (Cape, £20), hinges on the assassination of Mary's second husband, Lord Darnley; Jane Dunn's book, Elizabeth and Mary: Cousins, Rivals, Queens (Harper-Collins, £20), on Mary's relationship with her cousin, Elizabeth I. Weir's effort shows her usual strengths and weaknesses. It is, as ever, a highly readable tour of familiar ground.

The problem lies in its academic pretensions. Sixty pages of footnotes which lack precise volume and page references are a waste of space: not so much scholarly scaffolding as scholarly veneer. They certainly don't fill me with confidence in her answer to the "whodunnit?" of Darnley's murder, namely almost everybody except Mary.

As in all the best whodunnits, there are means, motive, and opportunity on every side: Darnley was universally hated in Scotland, and not simply because he had been born in England. So the challenge is not so much to convict the others as to exonerate Mary. (Was she really the only Scottish politician of any importance not to be cut in on the deal?) Weir is no Hercule Poirot, and I feel no closer than I was before to the truth about Darnley's murder.

Jane Dunn's book is well researched by the standards of its genre. She has read her sources with a sharp eye, citing them copiously and to good effect. The story is strangely compelling, told at a leisurely pace in fluent and beguiling prose which won me over despite myself.

If Dunn tends to see the story through Tudor-rose-tinted spectacles, this does not detract from the analysis of character and motive which makes her book an excellent buy for anyone who wants a sensitive and reflective personal view of two of 16th century Britain's best known women.

David Loades has timed his assault on the market to perfection, his new biography, Elizabeth I (Hambledon, £25), having appeared on the very day (24 March) of the quatercentenary. Professional historians often stumble when they turn their hand to biography - as the textbook will keep breaking-through, but Loades has done a fine job. This is a well-paced, economical and efficient narrative, covering twice as much ground as Weir and Dunn, in half the time. Everything a scholarly biography should be, and a good read, too.

Frankly, "the six wives of Henry VIII" has always been a rather iffy genre, prone to degenerate into trivialising gossip and empathy. But David Starkey's Six Wives: the Queens of Henry VIII (Chatto, £25) manages more than a variant on the usual title. Relentlessly scholarly (professional rivals who sneered at the absence of footnotes in his best-seller Elizabeth have no cause for complaint this time), Starkey's is the best study of Henry's wives ever published.

There are no "nice ladies" here, just a series of women on the make: more politics than petticoats. Starkey does not ignore the gossip - gossip, too, can be history - but doesn't confine himself to it. The particular strength of his mammoth book lies in integrating the petty politics of family and personal advancement with the "high politics" of state.

This is based on an encyclopaedic knowledge of the events and personalities of Henry's reign. The result is a masterly and persuasive narrative which, despite its prodigious detail, never loses its grip over the story or the reader.
Perhaps his most important claim is that Henry fell in love with Anne Boleyn before he began to entertain doubts about the validity of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon (and not vice versa, as most recent historians have agreed).

This claim rests on a close reading of Henry's love-letters to Anne, a notoriously intractable cache of material, and, reluctant though I am to admit it (having myself dutifully set the cart before the horse in this matter), Starkey's case looks disturbingly convincing.

If there is anything more to the current vogue for history in general, and Tudor history in particular, than a concatenation of calendrical coincidences, then it is probably a matter of television exposure and brand awareness. The Tudor brand has always been strong, thanks to the powerful images of Henry VIII and Elizabeth.

Starkey has played a major part in giving the brand serious media exposure. So it is fitting that, while some of these six books will deserve success, and some will achieve it, his Six Wives will do both.

Richard Rex's short biography, Elizabeth I, will be published by Tempus in April. His book, The Tudors, will be published in September.