An unexpected gem!

I often have need of referencing biographies of elite and royal women from the early modern period, and I usually do so with a hefty sigh. Most of them rely heavily on primary sources, and I get frustrated at the tendency of the authors to simply take them at face value; they also usually focus on dates and "facts", and only differ from common interpretations if the writer has found a new primary source to incorporate.

Katherine Howard: A New History, on the contrary, refreshingly rests on appropriate secondary sources and contextualizes historical events with scholarship. I did not expect to find this kind of academic approach in a biography of Katherine Howard, particularly one from this kind of small press, but here we are! (And then I found out that the author is still a student?! Incredible.)

For instance, Katherine's relationships to Henry Manox and Francis Dereham. Traditionally, writers put a heavy emphasis on the known facts, mainly that a number of people testified to appearances of active love on Katherine's part for both men. Byrne, on the other hand, points out that those who testified against her had every reason to lie (citing historian Lacey Baldwin Smith to show that it is not unreasonable to be doubtful) and discusses "sixteenth-century beliefs about female sexuality, honour codes, and the nature of the institution of marriage" through, again, the research of other historians. I found this interpretation compelling and well-argued in the manner of a professional historian.

I particularly appreciated Byrne's analysis of Katherine's apparent maturity in fulfilling the role of queen. Queenship studies is a new subfield of history, but is so important to take this scholarship on board when evaluating the life of a queen. The popular conception of the queen consort's role is that it consisted of bearing children and being obedient, but there was a great deal more diplomatic, ceremonial, and administrative work to be done - which you will not pick up from analyzing the primary sources about one specific person. Doing this work requires resting on the shoulders of scholars like Elena Woodacre and Theresa Earenfight, who have laid the groundwork. Again, I want to stress that this is a fabulous good point of the book, not "lazy research".