The Lady In The Tower
The Fall of Anne Boleyn (Queen of England Series)
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4.6 • 13 Ratings
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- £4.99
Publisher Description
Never before has there been a book devoted entirely to Anne Boleyn's fall. Now, Alison Weir's richly researched and impressively detailed portrait gives us the compelling story of the last days of history's most charismatic, controversial and tragic heroines.
On 2 May, 1536, in an act unprecedented in English history, Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII's second wife, was imprisoned in the Tower of London. On 15 May, she was tried and found guilty of high treason and executed just four days later.
Mystery surrounds the circumstances leading up to her arrest - did Henry VIII instruct Thomas Cromwell to fabricate evidence to get rid of her so that he could marry Jane Seymour? Did Cromwell, for reasons of his own, construct a case against Anne and her faction, and then present compelling evidence before the King? Or was Anne, in fact, as guilty as charged?
In The Lady in the Tower, Weir has constructed a gripping tale of betrayal and treason, wrought with her trademark forensic research and penchant for an enthralling narrative.
'The perfect examination of Anne's downfall' Independent
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Rejecting as myth that Henry VIII, desirous of a son and a new queen, asked his principal adviser Thomas Cromwell to find criminal grounds for executing Anne Boleyn, the prolific British historian Weir (The Six Wives of Henry VIII) concludes that Cromwell himself, seeing Anne as a political rival, instigated "one of the most astonishing and brutal coups in English history," skillfully framing her and destroying her faction. Ably weighing the reliability of contemporary sources and theories of other historians, Weir also claims that though perhaps sexually experienced, Anne was technically a virgin before sleeping with Henry. Anne was also, Weir posits, a passionate radical evangelical, with considerable influence over Henry regarding Church reform. Weir wonders if Anne's childbearing history points to her being Rh negative and thus incapable of bearing a second living child. Dissecting four of the most momentous months in world history and providing an eminently judicious, thorough and absorbing popular history, Weir nimbly sifts through a mountain of historical research, allowing readers to come to their own conclusions about Henry's doomed second queen. 15 pages of color photos.
Customer Reviews
Outstanding
Beautifully written and meticulously researched, this book is an indispensable historical manuscript.