Overlord : The Life and Reign of Henry VIII

Henry VIII is one of history's best-known characters and England's most famous monarch. He is simultaneously the virtuous Renaissance prince gone wrong, the psychopathic, paranoid tyrant and the much-married glutton.

Yet Henry didn't see himself as simply King of England. Overlord tells Henry's story as he saw it: the tale of a titan whose dominions embraced Scotland, Ireland, Wales, England and, if he could achieve his grandiose ambitions, swathes of France. Drawing on archival sources from across the British Isles, Steven Veerapen shows how Henry created an image of himself as a law-abiding and benevolent emperor, and thereby a rival to his European counterparts. By fair means and foul murder plots, marriage negotiations and military ventures he did all he could to realize a hitherto overlooked British dream.

By busting myths about the king he was not particularly gluttonous, not particularly prudish, and not particularly messy in his religious changes the real Henry can emerge: a blustering, self-aggrandising actor who swaggered about the stage of the British Isles in search of an imperial fantasy.