Martin Rubin reviews Thomas Penn's new biography of the founder of the Tudor Dynasty: Everyone knows about Henry VIII, the English king who broke with the Roman Catholic Church so that he could divorce his pious wife and who ended up having five more wives, two of whom he beheaded. A popular ruler and hero to his people, he has become something of a hero onscreen as well, from Alexander Korda's "The Private Life of Henry VIII" (1933) to the Showtime series "The Tudors." In the series, the lusty but deadly king is naturally the center of attention, but the dynasty's founding father—Henry's own—is nowhere to be seen. As Thomas Penn shows us so vividly in "Winter King," the first Tudor monarch is as fascinating as his son and his life story nearly as full of drama and incident. . . .
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