Henry VIII was almost never alone. He was surrounded twenty four hours a day by the small group of intimates & personal attendants who made up the staff of his Privy Chamber. They organised his daily life kept him amused & acted as the landline between the king & the formal machinery of government. These men intermarried interbred & close knit even in their mutual feuding were supremely well placed to rig politics & patronage for their own benefit. Their influence was important & sometimes decisive: factions in the Privy Chamber destroyed Anne Boleyn they frustrated the Catholic reaction of the 1540s & by doctoring Henrys will prepared the way for the full blooded Protestantism of his sons reign. The Reign of Henry VIII" is not so much a book about Henry VIII. It is about the great game of politics over which he presided."