Harold Evans
May 19th 1981

Harry,

Ever thought what fun it would be to pay the Queen to write something sensational for you? The enclosed is the nearest one could probably get. I think it works quite well.

yours Miles

THE QUEEN WRITES FOR YE TIMES

The King I married was a Mad Axeman Murderer

An exclusif tale by Catherine Parr 

Astonished. Dumbfound. This is the onlie word to describe my feelings, when I did learn the true nature of my late husband, King Henry V111. So meeke an gentle a soul he has seemed before our marriage, devoted to his hobbies of falconry, minstrelsy and making war throughout Europe. Nothing in my life had prepared me for the monster I found on my wedding night.

"Look ye, here wife," he roared at me. "I am sent by God as a holy mission to destroy those that are unfaithful and adulterous! Already I have slain two wives and thou shalt be the third, at the slightest sign of extra-marital nook on thy part."

Having said the which, he did draw aside a curtain in our bedchamber to reveal an execution–block, a chaplain with head bowed and an executioner in a black mask. This did so chill my blood that I swooned, yet when I came to myself the King had gone; for the purpose, the executioner did inform me, of having an evening with ye laddes.

So began my life of terror with ye Tudor Ripper, the which I can at last tell to the gentle readers of Ye Times. Of those nights when he would come back from an escapade, half-crazed with sack and breathing threats, not to mention ye garlicke.

“My wives have all been separated,” he would leer at me, “sometimes by my Lord Cranmer with a piece of paper, sometimes by my axe, Thou canst truly say I have chopped and changed!”

And he would roar with laughter at his jest. But I, to whom could I turn? To the constabulary, perchance? Do not make me to laugh. I was truly a tragic prisoner in a royal love-nest terror situatione.

(Next weeke: The King tellst me – a male heir , or else! My night of passion with ye Tudor Ripper. I find an axe beneath his pillow!

Only in Ye Times! Copywrighte Catherine Parr 1548