Catalina Howard ha sido considerada a menudo como una moneda de cambio, como una pieza en el enfrentamiento entre Cromwell y el tío de Catalina, Thomas Howard, y su boda con Enrique VIII se ha visto como un triunfo del segundo. Ford Madox Ford reconstruye el ambiente psicológico y de intrigas en el que se movió el personaje desde su llegada a la corte hasta su muert

Historical novels are stories first and factual renderings last. Most historians regard Katherine Howard, the fifth of Henry VIII's wives as a barely-educated flibbertigibbet who may have been a good-time girl. Ford Madox Ford sees her as a ponderous woman of prodigious education whose greatest interest was restoring England to the Catholic faith. He does, however, never answer the question of Katherine's possible sexual misconduct (and thereby leaves himself an out.) More interesting are the depictions of Thomas Cromwell, Henry's Privy Seal (i.e., chief henchman) and his gang of intelligent rogues. Interesting story; fanciful history. ( )

Catalina Howard ha sido considerada a menudo como una moneda de cambio, como una pieza en el enfrentamiento entre Cromwell y el tío de Catalina, Thomas Howard, y su boda con Enrique VIII se ha visto como un triunfo del segundo. Ford Madox Ford reconstruye el ambiente psicológico y de intrigas en el que se movió el personaje desde su llegada a la corte hasta su muerte. La quinta reina está considerada (junto con Yo, Claudio de Robert Graves) como la mejor novela histórica británica de todos los tiempos.

This novel, aptly described by William Gass as "slow, intense, pictorial, and operatic," is a seriously literary historical novel of a sort not much seen anymore (indeed Joseph Conrad, writing of it in 1908, called it "the swan song of Historical Romance"). In it Ford gives us an intriguingly idiosyncratic portrait of Katharine Howard, the ill-fated fifth wife Of Henry VIII (and I use the word "portrait" deliberately, as Ford's prose style is very painterly). Certainly this is not the woman we may think we know from BBC costume dramas or "The Tudors!" It may not be the woman known to historians or her contemporaries either, as Ford I think is less interested in historically accurate depictions of his characters than in fleshing out philosophical and moral arguments about the nature of history itself. Nevertheless, the narrative is dense with period detail, the Tudor language and Latin references are authentically daunting, and the whole enterprise is carried off with masterly skill.

The other novels this most puts me in mind of are Sigrid Undset's Kristin Lavransdatter trilogy and Jane Smiley's Greenlanders .... if you enjoyed those, you might well find The Fifth Queen a rewarding reading experience. ( )