The Kingfisher (Shire Natural History)

Rating:
Summary: More of a minnow than a carp
Review: For me, there are only two Davids in the heady world of the Kingfishers - Boag and Watmough - and although I'm more a fan of the latter (I find his work more thorough) this book is a pleasant trawl through the life of one of England's greatest Kingfishers, the larger-than-life Henry VII. Whilst his prose may not be as descriptive as Watmough's, Boag still unearths some gems about the roly-poly Tudor womaniser which one might not have seen elsewhere. I was most impressed at Boag having unearthed the fact that Henry fashioned himself some wading gaters out of pigskin, and laced them with the hair of Anne of Cleeves. The usual stories are in there as well, including the famous "pulling a 19lb pike out of the Thames" (although I notice the weight of the fish differs somewhat from that mentioned in Watmough's version of events) - and the whimsical tale of fishing for sticklebacks in Barrowbrook Stream when Henry was a small child. I'd say this was a good read for those without the time to delve deeper into this facinating subject.