Nice costumes, says Linda Porter, can’t rescue this bizarre adaptation of Elizabeth Fremantle’s historical novel about Katherine Parr, first published as Queen’s Gambit in 2013.
I should perhaps begin this review by confessing that I’m a great admirer of Liz Fremantle’s historical novels. She has covered major figures and events of the 16th and 17th centuries with consistent fluency and verve. Hers is precisely the kind of writing that makes good historical fiction a worthy companion to biography and narrative history.
So I was naturally keen to go and see Firebrand, the film that is (very) loosely based on her take on Henry VIII’s sixth wife. I knew that reactions to the film had been mixed but I wanted to see it for myself and make my own judgement. Alas, I came away from my local cinema baffled and disappointed.
It begins well enough, with Henry VIII away on campaign in France and Katherine acting as regent in his absence, supported by a council which is, of course, entirely made up of men.
We see their political and religious differences and their unconcealed ambition clearly enough. This is an effective contrast with Katherine’s more balanced approach to government and her interest, though overstated in the film, in religious reform.
But there are already alarm bells. Where is Archbishop Cranmer, who may well have encouraged Katherine to explore new religious ideas during the period that she was regent? His complete absence from the film, in contrast to the insidious presence of the bishop of Winchester, Stephen Gardiner, a staunch religious conservative, is astonishing. Played with relish by Simon Russell Beale, Gardiner menaces Katherine with soft words but an ever-present threat.
Katherine’s religious views, so the film claims, are the product of contact with her ‘childhood friend’, Anne Askew, a woman born to martyrdom if there ever was one. In reality, Katherine Parr never met Anne Askew.
Anne is arrested, tortured and burned at the stake (all off screen) but not before Katherine has been unwise enough to give her a necklace that was a gift from the king to his wife. Not a clever move.
No wonder Katherine looks so scared and frustrated, and that’s even before the return of her ageing, diseased husband from France.
Yet when Henry, played with malign glee by Jude Law, does return to his distracted wife, he steals every scene he is in. Firebrand becomes a movie about Henry VIII’s last days, not about his sixth wife, and, at this point, the film goes as off the rails as (spoiler alert) Katherine herself.
She escapes imprisonment (which never happened) and death by throttling her husband before he can send her to the block. It is completely bonkers.
Fremantle’s book has Katherine complicit in hastening the old king’s death, but not in this violent and totally incredible way.
Some will argue that this doesn’t matter and that historians shouldn’t nitpick but, apart from the sets and the costumes, there is something profoundly wrong about this movie that goes way beyond nitpicking. What the writers and director were trying to do with it remains a mystery to me.
The end voiceover, from the future Elizabeth I, appears to make the claim that Katherine Parr single-handedly introduced Protestantism to England. But this Katherine is humourless, ineffective and permanently terrified. Some allusion is made to her writing but we learn precious little about what motivates her.
The real Katherine Parr seems to have been a charming, intelligent and vivacious woman, a clever political player with considerable social flair, admired by foreign diplomats who observed her at court.
There were undoubtedly strains in the royal marriage in the summer of 1546 and the conservatives tried, unsuccessfully, to associate the queen with heretical ideas, but our knowledge of this is based on Foxe’s Acts and Monuments, not published till the early 1560s, when all of the major players were dead.
I had two thoughts on leaving the cinema. The first was that the screen adaptation hadn’t done Liz Fremantle’s book justice. And the second was that it would do no good at all to the historical reputation of Katherine Parr herself. She has gone from being a Victorian matronly frump to a haunted murderess. As Katherine Parr’s biographer, I find that troubling.
Katherine the Queen: the remarkable life of Katherine Parr by Linda Porter was published in 2010.
Linda’s most recent biography is The Thistle and the Rose, which profiles Margaret, the first Tudor princess, who was Queen Consort and Queen Regent of Scotland. It was published on 20 June, 2024. Have a look at Linda’s Historia feature about Margaret Tudor.
See more about Firebrand.
You may enjoy these other pieces Linda has written:
Review: Later Stuart Queens, 1660–1735
Catherine of Braganza, the neglected Queen
Charles II’s last mistress
Escaping the Tudors
For more about Katherine Parr, see:
Queen Katharine’s restless bones by Alison Weir
The scandalous Seymours by Alexandra Walsh
Images: fair use
