Chatto & Windus £25
The pattern for the life of Henrietta Maria, future queen of Charles I, was set before she was six months old – when her father, Henry IV of France, was assassinated in May 1610.
A Huguenot, Henry was a Catholic convert, thinking Paris ‘worth a mass’, and become Bourbon ruler. But his alliance with Protestant powers against the mighty Catholic Habsburgs, whose territories encircled his kingdom, raised enmity among religious zealots such as his Catholic