This is a reliable enough biography, but it really doesn't add much to the literature. I am ordinarily a fan of Hester Chapman: she brings a slight cynicism, a brisk no-nonsense attitude and detailed thinking to her work that often avoids the common run and produces new insight. Unfortunately, in this case, I think it has led her astray.

It appears to me that Chapman has a horror of being thought a "romantical lady historian", and given some of the works she's quoted that's understandable. The problem is that her determination not to view the world in a romantic or dramatic light makes her unable to understand that other people, the people she is writing about, might. When George Boleyn defies that court and reads his wife's accusatory statement, presumably knowing that this will eliminate what little chance he has of survival, Chapman dismisses it as juvenile nonsense. Maybe he was the type to who preferred to go down fighting, or make a dramatic gesture. Boleyn was probably in his thirties, not an adolescent, and I don't know of any other reason to suppose that he was a perpetual child.

Chapman dismisses the seriousness of Anne's religious convictions, at least until the very end of her life, for no particular reason. She simply announces that Anne was not mature enough and that's that. How does she know? Although Chapman describes Henry in a rather negative manner, I get the feeling that she has a sneaking admiration for him, and that in her mind, it is everyone's duty to accomodate him, even in if it means going to their death. This is just a bit too brisk for me.

This is a reasonably reliable biography if one wants the basic facts, but better books are available. Eric Ives The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn is presently the most definitive, and I also preferred Marie Louise Bruce's biography. ( )

This biographer seems to have a better grasp of Henry, Anne and Catherine of Aragon's characters than any other biographer I know of. The book also gives a good portrait of the character of the times, when justice meant an entirely different thing than it does now. I'd never heard of this book until I chanced to see it on the library shelf. I thought it was excellent; it's a pity it's not better-known. ( )