Overlord

by Steven Veerapen

First published 2026

Amazon

2.5(5)

Overlord is Steven Veerapen’s biography of Henry VIII, tracing the king from a comparatively secure dynastic inheritance through war, court magnificence, marital crisis and the break with Rome. The book treats Henry’s personality alongside the institutions and advisers that enabled royal power, including Cardinal Wolsey and Thomas More.

Veerapen follows the succession struggles, religious changes and political violence that came to define the reign while reassessing the familiar image of Henry as an all-powerful tyrant acting without constraint. Anne Boleyn and other members of the royal family and court appear within a nonfiction account of how personal rule, patronage and government interacted.