Hooray, Henry?

"Henry is good box office and everybody wants a piece of the action, because that's how funding works nowadays. Everything depends on throughput of visitors," says David Starkey, historian, author of Henry - Virtuous Prince and guest curator of the British Library's exhibition, Henry VIII: Man and Monarch, which opens on 22 April.

The show is a chronological journey through the personal, political, intellectual, religious and linguistic transformations that took place during Henry's reign. It represents more than two years' exhaustive work by Starkey and the British Library staff, particularly Andrea Clarke, the curator of early modern historical manuscripts.

"It's one of our most ambitious exhibitions, with loans from around 35 institutions," says Clarke. Starkey says he wanted it to be a genuinely multidisciplinary and multimedia show. "Although the British Library has wonderful manuscripts, books and illuminations, I wanted paintings, weapons, sculpture and textiles. There's a terrible problem if you mount a historical exhibition with only one kind of material," he says.

Historical and biographical

Among the highlights are Henry's devotional aid: a "bede" or prayer roll, which has never been exhibited before. "It shows that as a young man, Henry's religion was one of the most conventional," says Starkey.

"He believed in saying a certain number of Ave Marias and Our Fathers. He believed in the magical properties of images of the suffering Christ and the saints to protect him. Yet this is the man who is going to obliterate so many of these things from English worship. It's absolutely unanswerable evidence of the extent to which he changed his mind."

Then there is the love letter that Henry VIII wrote to Anne Boleyn, locked away in the Vatican since the 16th century. "It's the letter that shows Henry was lying at every stage of his divorce from Katherine," says Starkey.

For Starkey, it is not only a historical exhibition, but also biographical. "What makes it so appropriate to put this exhibition on at the British Library is that its foundation collection is Henry's library," says Starkey.

"You actually have Henry's own books with his own annotations. In the royal manuscripts, you have what amounts to Henry's bedside papers - the things he was working on in the last years and months of his life."

But it's another matter to bring Henry VIII's writings to life for people who might not be able to read them straightaway, says Clarke.

"We're using lots of different treatments, but there's one that is very exciting," says Clarke. "We've selected 10 key documents, including Henry's coronation oath and the Act of Six Articles. Using clever ink techniques, we can take the documents back to the draft that Henry would have had and make his annotations appear and disappear."

Beyond the British Library, a slimmed-down Henry VIII: Man and Monarch exhibition will tour the UK, stopping at eight venues including Portsmouth Historic Dockyard and Hatfield House. There will also be a web presence.

But there is little formal coordination evident in this year's Henry VIII programming between organisations such as the British Library, Historic Royal Palaces (HRP) and Windsor Castle.

Clarke says she has been impressed by the support shown by other institutions. "That's been one of the delightful parts of working on the exhibition," she says.

"People have been very generous in terms of curatorial time and opening up collections, including the Bodleian, the National Archives, the British Museum, the National Maritime Museum, the Mary Rose, and particularly Hampton Court and the Royal Library, who are putting on their own exhibitions."

Starkey takes a somewhat different view: "I'm not saying that relations have been bad. The Royal Armouries are lending to this exhibition and the National Portrait Gallery has been outstandingly helpful and so on, but I do think there has been a higher degree of dog-in-the-mangering protectiveness than would exist in an ideal world. Virtually everybody with important Henry VIII artefacts has wanted to have their own show."

Arms and armour

At HRP, plans are underway for an extensive programme of events. As part of its academic research programme it is hosting an international conference on Henry VIII and the Tudor court at Hampton Court Palace in July along with Kingston University and Oxford Brookes University. HRP will also be engaging with the public in a number of ways.

The Dressed To Kill show at the Tower of London, a joint venture with the Royal Armouries, runs from 3 April to January 2010. It brings together for the first time since Elizabeth I's reign, the largest number of weapons, armour and military equipment associated with Henry VIII.

"Henry is really our patron, because he started to show off arms and armour to the other monarchs of Europe," says Peter Armstrong, development director at the Royal Armouries.

He hopes visitors will take away three themes from the exhibition: "One is that Henry was not just the bloated, tyrannical king that people see on television and films. As a young man, he was fit and he loved sports. Also, we'd like them to understand that arms and armour can be art objects; the makers were some of the finest craftsmen in Europe. Thirdly, arms and armour were made for fashion, as well as for practicality."

The size of a king

Dressed To Kill is an opportunity to see "Henry VIII in 3D," explains Armstrong. "The armour is made for the shape of the king, so you can see how he progresses from a young, six-foot tall man to the person the public perceives him to be."

Visitors will be able to get close to Henry's arms and armour in a way that has not been possible for 500 years. "We've used modern techniques, such as high-definition film, so that people can appreciate that this is what Henry really wore and fought 500 years ago," he says. Scanning techniques will detail the construction and decoration of the artefacts on display.

The exhibition, which features international loans, will be displayed across three floors of the White Tower. The re-presentation of objects such as Henry's horse armour, together with new lights and cases, means that, even after the show ends, "the White Tower will look very different for the next 20 years," Armstrong says.

The project has not been without its detractors, notably Starkey's letter to the Times (4 February), in which he challenged the newness of the Armouries' evidence establishing Henry's measurements from his armour.

"The measurements inside the armour have been done before, but by various people all over the world at different times," says Armstrong. "Because we are able to view and measure the armour in one place at one time, we have been able to make a decision that has academic rigour."

As for Starkey's assertion that Henry was progressively disabled by his injured leg and consequent growing girth, Armstrong says: "Although Henry was not particularly well, his arms and armour were adapted in later life, and he was still active enough to be able to wear them."

Starkey's response is: "It's what happens when you just use one medium, armour, which is very important but can't answer questions by itself. To assess the state of Henry's health you need to look at the whole multitude of other sources. In other words, be multimedia."

Hampton Court is offering Henry VIII: Heads and Hearts, a year-long programme of exhibitions and events, including a permanent representation of the Tudor palace and Henry VIII's state apartments with new furnishings and artefacts.

The king's council chamber will be opened to the public for the first time. It houses a new temporary exhibition, Henry's Women, exploring the monarch's relationships with the women who influenced his reign.

"He'd love it"

At Windsor Castle, the only one of Henry's palaces still used as a royal residence, a new two-year exhibition opens on 8 April. Visitors to the Drawings Gallery can expect to see Holbein works and books from the Royal Collection displayed alongside treasures from St George's Chapel, which lies within the castle grounds.

The chapel is where Henry is buried and it remains the seat of the Order of the Garter. One of the highlights is the richly illuminated register of the order: the Black Book.

As for what Henry would make of the anniversary: "He'd love it," says Starkey. "The one thing that Henry wanted was to be famous. The thought that, 500 years later, we're all fighting over his bits and pieces, mounting exhibitions about him, writing books about him and making television shows would - as he's toasting slowly in the deepest circle of hell - put a satisfied smile on his face."

Juliana Gilling is a freelance journalist