Alternative perspective, easy to understand, good arguements and conclusions on some points
Disadvantages:
Stereotyping, doesn't fully argue some points
Recommend to potential buyers:
no
Full review
Anne Boleyn is one of the most-maligned women in history, her reputation as a ‘witch’ and a ‘whore’ still prevalent over 470 years after her death. Even now, rumours created by her enemies to slander her are still averred as truth – as recently as around 13 years ago, I was taught in primary school that Anne Boleyn had a sixth finger on one hand, despite there being no evidence of this other than hearsay and much evidence to the contrary, such as the fact that no woman with a disfigurement would be allowed to marry a king because Tudors saw disfigurements as signs of witchcraft. Suffice to say that the popular impression of Anne Boleyn is mostly fabrication and plain lies.
In her attempt to portray Anne Boleyn as someone other than the whore who bewitched Henry VIII, Joanna Denny veers off wildly in the other direction: she presents Anne Boleyn as the perfect evangelist, a portrait that seems as unrealistic and stereotypical as the one described above. Whilst there’s no doubt that Anne Boleyn was devoted to the protestant cause, being a high-profile supporter of translating the gospel into English when it was outlawed by the catholic church and thus illegal in England, this demure depiction clashes somewhat with the independent, free-willed side of Anne’s personality. There’s no doubt that religion was a priority for Anne Boleyn, but I believe she was too intelligent and spirited to conform to the whiter-than-white character that Denny presents.
However, Denny does acknowledge the advances Anne Boleyn made in the fields of theology and education (she set up scholarships and was a great supporter of grammar schools, which allowed poorer students access to an education). She herself was well-educated and made arrangements (which were followed after her death) for Elizabeth I to have an education that was phenomenal for a female child in the 16th century, and her ability to debate issues such as theology – as opposed to sitting serenely without participating, as women of the court were generally expected to do – was one of the things that attracted Henry, leading to her becoming his companion as well as a wife.
Likewise, Denny’s portrayals of Catherine of Aragon and Mary are stereotypical and fail to consider both sides of the argument. Whilst these portrayals do have their roots in truth (Mary, for instance, was regarded as being dour and noted for her tantrums), they’re just as unfair as the caricature of Anne as a witch/whore and so Denny conforms to the very thing that she’s trying to invalidate: the stereotyping of an historical figure. History isn’t black and white, no matter what the catholic versus protestant mentality of the time claims, and so I think it’s inappropriate to depict it as such.
Joanna Denny argues extremely well on some points, presenting a clear case and giving good reasons for her conclusions. One such point is Anne’s date of birth, which is unknown but has been traditionally given as 1504 or 1507. However, there is little evidence for this, with the notion of Anne Boleyn being around 29 when she was executed originating with Jane Dormer, who wasn’t even born until 1538 – 2 years after Anne’s execution. Denny argues that it is most likely that Anne was born in the early summer of 1501 – an idea supported by the date of Anne’s being sent away to France in 1513, as 12 was the youngest age at which children of the nobility were ‘fostered out’. On this and the question of which portraits may and may not have been of Anne, Denny excels. She applies both knowledge of the Tudor world (her interest was apparently sparked upon reading about an ancestor, Sir Anthony Denny, a courtier of Henry VIII) and common sense to reach her conclusions, achieving answers that are likely to be the truth.
Unfortunately, however, Denny does not argue so fully on other points. Like a lot of historians, she uses the old standby claim that Henry VIII suffered from syphilis, giving nearly a full page of weak reasons (such as the fact that Syphilis was common across Europe at the time) followed by the sentence “But Henry’s apothecaries’ records do not tally with those of a sufferer using the typical mercury cure”. Strange, given that the mercury cure was considered the best at the time – was not the king of England important enough to deserve the best?
This concept also ignores the fact that not all Henry’s symptoms were analogous with syphilis, that his ‘madness’ (i.e. his erratic behaviour and short temper) existed all his life although it undoubtedly worsened as he aged and that recent reasoning (this book was only published 3 years ago, in 2004) suggests that diabetes provides a more probable explanation for Henry’s illness. This seems sloppy to me – for an historian to use such a cliché without backing it up with hard evidence is misleading and just plain lazy. The issue needs more discussion than Denny includes and she seems to include it simply because she wants to explain Henry’s impotence and portray him as the fat, syphilitic stereotype that countless historians have used before.
As you’d expect of any biography of an historical figure, this one spans Anne’s life from childhood (albeit briefly) to death, with the attention focused on her marriage to Henry VIII and her eventual downfall. The information is limited, due to the fact that Anne Boleyn was executed for treason (the main ‘reason’ given was that she ‘divined’ the king’s death by wondering what would happen if he were to die following a near-escape at a jousting tournament, alongside charges of adultery and incest with her brother), so much of her life was ‘wiped out’ by the shame this brought on her memory and remaining family. I would’ve liked more insight into what she was like as a person, but this would obviously have been very difficult for Denny to achieve!
It’s fair to assume that anyone reading this biography would have at least a mild interest in Tudors and so would know the basics, but Denny explains everything clearly and I don’t think many people would be confused by anything in the book. There are family trees of both the Boleyn and the Tudor family in the front of the book, but I felt that these could have been laid out a little more clearly and should’ve been more detailed, at least in the case of the Tudor family tree. I’d advise anyone reading the biography to have a clearer family tree to refer to, if they’re interested in seeing how the various characters are related (should be easy to find on the internet). Apart from that, Denny explains everything remarkably well and doesn’t use a lot of pretentious academic language, making it easy to understand and wonderfully accessible for the mainstream audience (crucial, as whilst Tudor enthusiasts know how Anne has been vilified, the general public seems to be in the dark).
Writing a biography of Anne Boleyn is not an easy task for one major reason: most of her letters, writings and portraits were destroyed following her execution. This means that one has to sift through secondary material coming from biased sources in order to attempt to build up a complete portrait of Anne. Denny’s biography offers a somewhat fresh perspective on Anne Boleyn, but despite areas of brilliance and a pleasant, enjoyable writing style, she slips into stereotyping too much and fails to deliver on what promised to be an alternative view of Henry VIII’s second wife and the mother of Elizabeth I. Borrow it from the library to use as an introduction or to supplement your reading on the subject, but don’t waste your money on it (especially not the £20 RRP hardback edition!): there must be far better biographies of Anne Boleyn than this one.
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