Henry VIII and his times Book

I have to rate Alison Weir's 'Henry VIII-King and Court' a five star read. You get exactly what it says on the tin. A vast and fully comprehensive work, covering over five hundred pages, along with the obligatory sixty pages of notes.
As the author states in her introduction, this is not a political history of the reign, her brief here is to record the events that help to build up a picture of the life and ethos of the King and the court. The reader of Tudor history may well have to go elsewhere for greater depth and detail of Henry's six wives, or of the many monumental events that effected the cultural, social or political climate of the age. Instead the olde worn caricature of Henry VIII is dusted off and given a more realistic treatment illuminated with the light of modern research. Therefore this book is filled with a myriad of detail of court life from the Privy Chamber to the culinary creations of the royal kitchens down to the names of the pet dogs.
Other Tudor writers like Hutchinson or Starkey do disagree with Weir on various points, but in the main that does not detract from my enjoyment of this fascinating book. We have certainly come a long way from the portrait created by Charles Laughton.