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Henry VIII and the Court: Art, Politics and Performance . Edited by Thomas Betteridge and Suzannah Lipscomb. Farnham: Ashgate, 2013. xviii + 327 pp. $119.95 cloth.

This valuable and varied interdisciplinary collection is one of a number of volumes generated by events held in 2009 to mark the quincentenary of Henry VIII’s accession. In this case, the papers are revised versions of a conference held in the splendid surroundings of Hampton Court Palace, and, appropriately, the principal focus is on the politics and culture of Henry’s court. The recent “material turn” in Tudor studies is well represented here, with chapters on architecture, portraiture, gift-exchange, and enhancement of the royal collections through confiscation. The theme, increasingly familiar to historians of pre-modern monarchy, that the representation of power was also the substance of power, is further explored in a series of essays on performance, from the strictly dramatic to the performative aspects of diplomacy (a fine contribution by Catherine Fletcher on English representation at Rome), and of royal progress and visitation (an insightful piece by Susan Wabuda on Henry’s appearances at the university of Cambridge). Yet the most substantial contributions are also the most “traditional” in subject matter and methodology, addressing central questions of politics and religion. Susan Brigden supplies a characteristically elegant and perceptive analysis of the threat to Henry from Catholic powers in the late 1530s; Thomas Freeman demonstrates John Foxe’s account of Katherine Parr’s narrow escape from heresy charges in 1546 to be “substantially correct” (252); Eamon Duffy presents a rounded portrait of Cardinal Pole as Henry’s most formidable opponent; and George Bernard gives an intriguingly autobiographical explanation of the interpretations in his blockbuster, The King’s Reformation.