One of the earlier books in the 'Adventures in Time' series, this book is written for a younger audience to introduce them to the Court of Henry VIII and his chequered marital history. The book is split into sections covering each wife, while also making sure that the reader gets a thorough overview of the major events and other important people of the period.

Having read the books on WW1 and WW2, I wondered how the author was going to tackle this subject, as clearly his method of telling the story through using eyewitnesses own words was going to be far more difficult here. Ultimately, this is more of a 'traditional' introduction to history - an overview with all of the quotes from written  sources you'd expect. This does mean that it feels tonally different to the others in the series.

The biggest problem this book faces is that there are so many other children's history books out there that serve to introduce the Tudors in a far more engaging way - Horrible Histories and Dead Famous being chief amongst them. There is no escaping being lumped in with those juggernauts, and sadly I'd say this is found wanting. In particular, the Dead Famous book about Henry VIII is very, very similar in content terms, but has so much extra in the way of comedy, engagement and fun. As a result, this book comes across as actually quite dry.

Of course the content has been written to be appropriate for the age group, but that does mean some elements are perhaps illustrated as 'fact' when there is an element of dispute there. For example, it states that on their wedding night, Catherine of Aragon and Prince Arthur went to bed and fell asleep. Clearly there is an element here of sanitisation,but equally I would say this is misleading. Similarly, well known quotes are truncated or altered to spare blushes and awkward questions. I found this an odd choice; why use the quote if you have to beat around the bush? In my opinion, it would have been more productive to use your own words to explain in a  child-friendly way.

It seems very clear to me that the author is a huge Catherine of Aragon fan, which is totally understandable. However, where she gets quite a detailed explanation of her childhood and earlier life, the other wives don't get the same treatment. Poor old Anne of Cleves only gets one very brief chapter and, while she does appear in Catherine Howard's narrative, it really does feel like she's been short changed here. 

I do get that his marriages are useful landmarks to hang a narrative of Henry's reign on, but in this case it does feel like the wives are secondary to Henry's story. This is not unusual I know, but when the book title indicates you're getting the story of the wives, again it's a bit of a let down.

I'd argue that the best reader for this book would be an young teen who has had the history of the Tudors pass them by - someone who is perhaps too old for Horrible Histories (which I know isn't technically possible!), but not old enough for all the gory details. Where I'm a seasoned Tudor fan and definitely not a young teen any more, I can appreciate the generally well-written nature of the book while recognising that I am far from its target audience.