No king should be less of an enigma than Henry VIII, bestriding his world, articulate, an author, a man who recorded even his private life in the preambles to acts of Parliament. And yet, just because he so much succeeded in identifying his personality with his age, the problems of that age leave the king himself still the subject of debate. Quite apart from popular mythology, we have had Froude's hero of Protestantism, Pollard's embodiment of statecraft, Catholic historiography's destroyer of all that was valuable in England, and the skilful opportunist devoid of original ideas whom I described on an earlier occasion. Now, in a new biography, worthy of its subject in both size and weight, Dr Scarisbrick parades yet another Henry: great and formidable indeed, a man of plans and purposes, but also frivolous and whimsical, markedly eclectic in both ideas and action, and fundamentally not very competent. It should at once be said that the picture in great part seems true, and it is particularly chastening to have it shown so firmly, and with such a wealth of evidence, that of Henry's famous understanding of his time and his people there is much less evidence than of heedless wilfulness and rash selfishness. This is a badly flawed hero, but a hero none the less. For his vision of the man, Dr Scarisbrick commands the agreement which must follow upon such thoroughly documented learning illumined by subtle insight and genuine historical imagination.