This includes using first- and third-party cookies, which store or access standard device information such as a unique identifier. If you agree, we’ll also use cookies to complement your shopping experience across the Amazon stores as described in our Cookie Notice. We also use these cookies to understand how customers use our services (for example, by measuring site visits) so we can make improvements. Another excellent book is Brief Gaudy Hour by Margaret Campbell Barnes.We use cookies and similar tools that are necessary to enable you to make purchases, to enhance your shopping experiences and to provide our services, as detailed in our Cookie Notice. Well worth reading and pondering for anyone interested in the period. Anne's possible reactions to her sister Mary are also very well done. One of the most interesting angles is that Lofts has Anne argue that she has been perfectly virtuous: she never even kissed Henry until he claimed that he wasn't married. The story is not entirely historically accurate, but I have rarely seen Anne Boleyn so plausibly brought to life. She accompanies Anne back home from court after her courtship with Henry Percy is abruptly broken off, and remains with her throughout her life. This novel is told from the point of view of a servant of Anne Boleyn. This can do as much for us in imagining the past as history does.

The best that such a novel can do is to imagine the person as he / she might have been, filling in the lacunae that history leaves us. To my mind, a really good historical, biographical novel deserves to take its place with serious nonfiction. While she isn't made into a hero, she is definitely likable and admirable. Anne is portrayed in a very human manner. I've read many books regarding the Tudor period of history. The facts also show that after Anne's capitulation to Henry, and her inability to produce a male heir, he lost interest and like a spoiled brat, he cast her aside like a toy he grew weary of playing with and promptly broke to move along to a brighter, newer package. The facts bear that Henry was initially so enthralled and enchanted that he remained celibate for nine years, divorced Catherine of Aragon, a woman he loved, sent loyal friends and powerful people to their death, and placed his soul in peril by the huge rent in the fabric of the Catholic domination of England by breaking with the Pope and claiming himself supreme head. Was she a scheming, cantankerous shrew who brought about England's break with the Catholic church? Or, was she a misguided victim of Henry VIII who used her and cruelly discarded her, then ordered her death by the French sword, after which her body was hastily packed in an arrow box. Since the early years of the 1500's, she has remained a historical figure portrayed in many different ways.

I've long been fascinated by the impetuous, strong willed, stubborn, intelligent Anne Boleyn.

The Concubine by Norah Lofts