My review of Anne Boleyn: A New Life of England's Tragic Queen, by Joanna Denny

Anne Boleyn: A New Life of England's Tragic Queen

by Joanna Denny

My rating: 3 out of 5 stars

I was drawn to this by the rumble of differing user reviews it generated. I was intrigued as to what had elicited such a polarised response. What I found was a well written, if sympathetically biased, take on this infamous consort.

Few would read only one biography of such a queen and consider it gospel. History was so changed over this one marriage that readers must strike their own balance of knowledge, expect to encounter differing biographical positions and respect the entire consensus spectrum. We must then make up our own minds given all the available facts.

I concur that Katherine of Aragon is done an injustice and that the author sounds anti-Catholic in certain passages. That is her prerogative. This is not journalism, which demands greater impartiality. All history is recounted with some subjectivity. Consider the vehement anti-Anne Boleyn bias that dominated such material for centuries with her apologists out on the fringes. It is no crime for contemporaries to seek rebalance to such entrenched propaganda. 

I allowed that it may not be so much Denny's pro-Protestant stance per se that is so glaring, but the sensitivity of her pro-Catholic detractors in their reviews? With neither Catholic nor Protestant leanings, I remained fairly indifferent to all this, an observer rather than a participant in the debacle, as I read Denny's fine work. 

It is well documented that, despite her partly self-serving zeal for religious reform, Boleyn died as devout as Henry did in their old, if preliminarily Anglicanised, faith. Henry balked at taking the Reformation all the way, leaving his son to oversee this. Even Henry and Anne's daughter, Elizabeth I, who so famously saw in the first shining light of the new faith in her Golden Age, took a more compromising, halfway position on Church of England ways than future monarchs would. So much so that the notoriously indecisive Gloriana was criticised for being neither one thing nor another. Neither Anne Boleyn nor Henry VIII called themselves 'Protestant' in their lifetimes.

I've perhaps elaborated disproportionately here on that debate, but that was the catalyst for my reading of this book which, religiosity and pro versus anti Katherine of Aragon aside, I found highly readable.

I would not rate this in the same important reference category as, say Eric Ives, whose masterpiece on Anne suffers such bookish dryness, despite its academic brilliance, that it perhaps falls outside the parameters of leisure study. I maybe even prefer Antonia Fraser's or Alison Weir's sumptuous stylistics (the latter published specifically on this queen, while both wrote books on Henry's six wives). I do feel, nonetheless, that Denny has earned her place with this book, in this seemingly infinite reading line. I have read far worse Anne Boleyn coverage than this. The quality is indisputably high.

For those seeking diversity of views on a contentious historical figure, I consider this to be as important and valid a take as other quality biography. Every angle is worth exploring and this one, in my opinion, is expressed stylishly and eruditely.

I enjoyed this passionate, courageously one-sided account of a woman we'll possibly never know certain vital adjudicating factors on. There were many fine Anne Boleyn biographies before this and will be others to follow, some not so good. This one definitely belongs on my 'good' shelf.