Peter K Andersson's Fool attempts a recovery of the shadowy, elusive figure of William Somer. There he is, staring out at us in a series of portraits of Henry VIII and his family, and yet little is known about him.
Andersson's book is written as a detective story, peeling back the layers of legend and theory, to help us get at the man standing beside the most powerful monarchs of the age. For Somer was not just close to the mighty Henry VIII, he was also prominent in the courts of his three children: perhaps the only man so close to the throne to serve successfully in all four reigns. Andersson suggests that Somer functions as a sort of Tudor mascot, a sign of dynastic stability as recognisable as the Tudor rose itself.
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The Long Road Back - The Election Was Tough for the Conservatives but the Past Holds Clues on How Parties Can Return From the Brink
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A Pole apart
ROGER MOORHOUSE is absorbed by a little-known but politically significant Polish princess whose life encompassed the major events of the later 18th and 19th centuries
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From Magna Carta to parliament, taxation to the law courts, the 13th and 14th centuries laid the foundations for the modern British state
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