Edward VI (Penguin Monarchs) : The Last Boy King

Author: Alford, Stephen

England

Published on 4 December 2014 by Penguin Books Ltd (Allen Lane) in the United Kingdom as part of 'the Penguin Monarchs' series.

Hardback | 112 pages, Integrated black & white images from hb inset
186 x 129 | 195g

Edward VI, the only son of Henry VIII, became king at the age of nine and died wholly unexpectedly at the age of fifteen. All around him loomed powerful men who hoped to use the child to further their own ends, but who were also playing a long game - assuming that Edward would long outlive them and become as commanding a figure as his father had been. Stephen Alford's wonderful book gives full play to the murky, sinister nature of Edward's reign, but is also a poignant account of a boy learning to rule, learning to enjoy his growing power and to come out of the shadows of the great aristocrats around him. England's last child monarch, Edward would have led his country in a quite different direction to the catastrophic one caused by his death.