In the words of David Starkey,
“The best full-length life of Anne Boleyn and a monument to investigative scholarship.”
Cover of Eric Ives' definitive biography on Anne Boleyn
This is undoubtedly the best Anne Boleyn biography that has ever been written. It is meticulously researched, detailed and accurate. Ives not only introduces the reader to Anne, he breathes life back into her. She emerges from the pages as a woman of great intellect, ambition and passion. A woman who took her life into her own hands when other women of the time were only pawns in a man’s world.
Her education, strength and personality made her influential and powerful in the faction-ridden court of Henry VIII. So powerful in fact that it took a full-fledged coup and a great deal of lies to bring Anne and the entire Boleyn faction crashing down. Anne was not simply a victim of Henry VIII’s disaffection, she took on Cromwell and her enemies and lost.
This book is lively, engaging and informative. It provides us with a lot of detail about Anne and the time in which she lived and in the end leaves you with a person, a portrait of Anne Boleyn the woman, the mother, the Queen.
If you are serious about learning more about Anne’s life then you must read this book. I call it my ‘Anne bible.’
Sir Thomas Wyatt, the elder, b.~1503, is my 12th great-grand uncle. It is reported in some genealogies that one of his sisters, Margaret or Ann, attended Anne Boleyn on the scaffold and received from the Queen her prayerbook. I’ve been trying to validate this story and to learn which sister is correct. Can anyone help, please?
margaret lee was the most likely person to have received the prayer book of anne boleyn. she was also the chief mourner at the funeral.
Anne captivates us all, and her intellectual views, her passion for life, and then faced with her death, she held her head high showed no fear…i know for the life of her daughter, Elizabeth but she TRULEY paves a way for ALL women that we can full of strength, virtue, and modest but as well we can show to others yes we are NOT push overs when faced with a great situation in any light…certainly her death is a huge undertaking…her last stand you could say…and yet so pushed off…the way she was cast off…put in a damn elms chedt …indended for. Arrows for the army!! No rewl casket of any kind…just like trash..wow…Rest in peace lovely courageous Anne….and i also have great respect for the wife and queen Katherine of Arragon…
This is excellent news. I have that particular book on my shelf and there are so many biographies of Anne Boleyn that it is hard to know which are the dud ones in advance. I’m glad this one is recommended here.