Anne Boleyn:500 Years Of Lies by Hayley Nolan

I don't know which annoyed me more the writing style or the way in which the research is presented as absolute and cannot be possibly argued with.  Even worse was the absolute denigration of Henry VIII, whilst he certainly became monstrous in his later years, particularly after the jousting accident, the assertions that he was a complete misogynistic monster do not tally with any other published research or even contemporaneous documents of the era.  He was a man of his time and place in the country and yes he would have been feted and his ego massaged shamelessly.  However the assertion that he treated his first Queen abominably from the outset does not jibe with anything else I have read, his treatment of her in later years speaks to the fact he was desperate for a son and she simply had not been able to provide a living heir and as King that was what he needed to do, secure the Tudor line.  According to this author though he was at the very least a power hungry sociopath who just discarded his first wife because it was convenient - nothing about the divorce or the separation from Rome was convenient but this is glossed over because unless Henry was a complete monster none of the rest book makes sense.

Even worse the portrayal of Anne Boleyn given makes her seem somewhere a weak, preyed upon female.  Apparently history tells us that she was a schemer, untrustworthy and more or less universally reviled.  This has never been my take on that Boleyn woman.  Yes she schemed, that's the nature of politics after all and as a potential, and actual, Queen she would have had to have a certain strength of character to succeed.  For an all to brief time she did succeed and then became Historically reviled because the victor writes the History books.  However, this decidedly feminist tract (for that is what it is) seeks to rewrite what is known and actually made Anne Boleyn seem like a thoroughly nasty piece of work who was also extremely gullible and allowed herself to be manipulated in to a position she could not get out of.  Why could she not have simply loved Henry and he her but by the very nature of all they had to go through to get wed driven them apart?  Why does the author seem to find that such a revolting prospect?

Maybe I am looking at the time period with too modern an eye.  After all, the grander the passion the more likely it is to burn bright and then simply fizzle out in a matter of weeks, months or after bitter acrimonious years.  Indeed, the very was Henry manipulated Anne in to the Tower and finally to death speaks, at least to me, of a great passion that died and then caused him much regret as he realised exactly the situation he was now in.  With all those voices whispering in the Kingly ear putting pressure on him to dispose of her in the most final of ways is his final action not understandable?

Beyond the skewing of History to fit a feminist brief there is the actual writing style.  I got so sick of having to read "As I will show later" only to find that no revelation of the sort was forthcoming.  Couple this with frequent dotting of hashtags through the book and a great deal of "junk language" this book is very hard to take seriously as having any historical worth.  I get that the author is trying to make the subject matter accessible and that historical texts can be rather dry to read but Seriously!

I managed to limp through to the end of this novel - and for me it did become a novel rather than a serious piece of research - primarily because of some of the accounts of daily life in Tudor times.

Honestly, one to be avoided as it is unashamedly agenda driven and this seems to be at the expense of Historical fact with the author's "interpretation" showing her biases.