Graven with diamonds - Nicola Shulman

In this thrillingly entertaining book, Nicola Shulman interweaves the bloody events of Henry VIII's reign with the story ofEnglish love poetry and the life of its first master, Henry VIII's most glamorous and enigmatic subject: Sir Thomas Wyatt.

Poet, statesman, spy, lover of Anne Boleyn and favorite both of Henry VIII and his sinister minister Thomas Cromwell, thebrilliant Wyatt was admired and envied in equal measure. His love poetry began as risqu entertainment for ambitious menand women at the slippery top of the court. But when the axe began to fall and Henry VIII's laws made his subjects fallsilent in terror, Wyatt's poetic skills became a way to survive. He saw that a love poem was a place where secrets couldhide.