The very room in which Catherine of Aragon, who to her last day called herself Queen of England, the first wife of Henry VIII, died on 7 January 1536 is now the office of the headmaster of the prestigious Kimbolton boarding school

The very room in which Catherine of Aragon, who to her last day called herself Queen of England, the first wife of Henry VIII, died on 7 January 1536 is now the office of the headmaster of the prestigious Kimbolton boarding school. So if the queen's ghost does appear, 484 years on, it frightens only deputy heads, secretaries and registrars, and not innocent schoolchildren. In principle, then, one need not fear sending one's children here. All the more so as the school is considered one of the 100 best independent co-educational schools in Great Britain. Here, in the ancient Kimbolton Castle, Catherine lived only briefly and held the status of a prisoner, unable to see her daughter or her friends, shut up in the south-west wing. She was buried as Dowager Princess of Wales, not as queen, with reference to her first marriage to Henry's elder brother Arthur, which was the very dodge the frenzied king had devised for his divorce.