Early modern scholars have long shown interest in the royal image, whether constructed by the monarchs themselves or by contemporary interested parties. More recently, academics have also been drawn to the subject of monarchs’ historical, cultural, and literary afterlives. Elizabeth I has been the focus of several books on this theme, and now it is the turn of Henry VIII. The editors of this collection of essays explain that the volume has two goals: first to “grapple with the dichotomy of how Henry saw himself versus how others saw him” not only in his lifetime but after his death (1), and second “to seek to determine exactly how the king acquired iconic status” in a range of academic disciplines, including literature, art history, and modern cultural studies (2).

Divided into four parts, the theme of part 1 is the contemporary response to Henry. The pieces here are rather disparate and generally cover familiar territory. John King returns to the subject of Henry’s representation as David, Solomon, and Moses in the years after the break with Rome, and Dale Hoak discusses the king’s self-created image as a Renaissance and sacral monarch, before he then goes on to critique the king’s “‘crimes’ against the English people” (64), savage cruelty toward opponents, and tyrannical behavior. Taking a more limited range, Peter Happé examines closely four interludes in which the dramatists—John Skelton, John Heywood, and John Bale—fashion Henry for their own personal and political purposes.

Part 2’s theme is Henry’s literary and political afterlives, and the three thoughtful essays here hang together better. Alec Ryrie looks at the nature and potency of the king’s memory and authority among both religious conservatives and evangelicals between 1547 and 1563. Mark Rankin argues for the importance of the period 1558–1625 in the creation of Henry’s image and maintains that by 1625 Henry had become reimagined as “a universal symbol of English identity within the national imagination” (94). Moving on to the long eighteenth century, Ronald Paulson shows how Holbein’s full-length portrait became “part of the English visual vocabulary” (117) and how the king was presented in historical texts as “cruel, capricious, and despotic” but whose acts in the long run “were justified by the triumph of English Protestantism” (128).

The theme of the third section is Henry VIII’s importance in art and popular culture, but again the essays are disparate. Tatiana String’s essay shows how Henry’s characteristic stance in Holbein’s full-size portrait reflected contemporary notions of masculinity in its depiction of Henry’s legs, shoulders, beard, and codpiece. Christopher Highley’s fascinating, if idiosyncratic, essay traces the posthumous process of myth making surrounding Henry’s suits of armor. He explains that Henry’s armor in Greenwich and the Tower initially formed a sort of monument for the martial prince but that all changed in the late seventeenth century when visitors to the Tower (where all the royal armor had recently been collected) centered their attention on Henry’s codpiece. This new focus, claims Highley, transformed Henry from a martial hero into “a larger-than-life, mythical persona of serio-comic dimensions” (175). Matthew Spring examines Henry’s contemporary reputation as a musician and his beneficial impact on later musical activities in England. Finally, Tom Betteridge deconstructs three versions of Anne Boleyn’s fall in popular culture: the film, The Six Wives of Henry VIII, which presents a traditional view of Henry as a domineering man; the TV series; The Tudors, where Henry is similarly a strong man but one who succumbs to a fantasy of female promiscuity; and the popular novel, The Other Boleyn Girl, which depicts the king as a bully and misogynist and “is a radical work of historical redirection” (216).

The last section returns to Henry’s literary and historical reputation over time. Andrew Fleck takes two texts, Thomas Nashe’s The Unfortunate Traveller and Thomas Deloney’s Jacke of Newbury, both of which look back nostalgically to a fantasy of Henry’s reign as a Golden Age “of a socially cohesive England led by a man with the common touch” (227). Fleck’s central argument is that these two texts transform the material in mid-Tudor and Elizabethan chronicles and thereby “trouble the limits of truth and fact” (227). Peter Marshall’s wide-ranging essay starts with the emergence of Henry VIII as a hero king during the late Victorian period and ends with David Starkey’s 2008 biography. These modern historians—even Froude and Pollard—argues Marshall, have not ducked from exposing Henry’s character defects or discussing his moral culpability, but their conclusions differ, as the king’s historical reputation reflects “the changing political and cultural contexts in which history is read and of the need for scholarship to sustain itself by emphasizing the inadequacy of what has been written before” (262).

Although many of the individual essays are an interesting read, the volume as a whole is flawed. First of all, the organizational structure of the volume does not really work. To take just two examples, String’s essay would be better placed within the section on contemporary responses since it has little to say on Henry’s posthumous reputation, while Fleck and Marshall’s contributions would have fitted well in part 2 and should not be stranded on their own at the end. Furthermore, not all the essays follow the editors’ stated remit: a few engage solely or primarily with Henry’s contemporary image; others are more interested in Henry’s legacy than his “afterlife” as an iconic figure. Finally, some of the essays that are innovative and cover a lot of ground deserve more space to develop their ideas. In sum, a stronger editorial hand would have greatly improved the collection.