Joanna Denny (–2006)

This was an extremely biased view of the life of Henry VIII's second wife, Anne Boleyn. The author states that her purpose with the book is to basically rehabilitate Anne in the eyes of history. She wants to put to rest certain myths and legends that have followed Anne through time. While I applaud the effort, Joanna Denny goes to great lengths to make Anne appear saintly and any others opposing her as villains. Catherine of Aragon is presented as a scheming woman who had set her sights on show more England's throne long before her marriage to Henry VIII, and she is basically castigated for wanting to hold onto her position. Jane Seymour, Anne's successor, is also given harsh treatment. Meanwhile, Anne is held up as the religious and moral standard of the day, who did everything she did in order that she might bring about Protestantism in England.

And Joanna Denny doesn't stop the scurrilous stories with Anne's detractors. She also presents other fictions as facts. Among these she maintains that Jeanne d'Albret, Queen of Navarre, was murdered by Catherine de Medici, Queen of France, with a pair of poisoned gloves. In fact, a postmortem carried out at the time confirmed that the Queen of Navarre had died of natural causes.

I definitely don't believe that Anne Boleyn deserved the treatment that her husband and history gave to her. But I definitely don't believe that we have a true portrait of the woman contained in this book. Look elsewhere if you want the facts, not pure hagiography. show less

For much of its duration, this is not really a biography, as not enough details of the subject's earliest life are known. It is really an account of the Howards' relationship with Henry VIII and is interesting for that, but the author's style is a bit journalistic and sometimes repetitive, for example the constant reiteration of the point that Katherine's uncle the Duke of Norfolk was simply using her as a pawn to pursue his dynastic ambitions. The author makes a good point that one's show more attitude towards Katherine depends in part on her assumed age at the time of her liaisons, about which there is disagreement, but she makes a good case for her birth as being in 1525, making her only 15 at her marriage to the King and probably less than 17 at her execution, thus making her less of the knowing late teenage flirt as which she has often been depicted and more of an abused victim. On the other hand, the author seems to be rather overly uncritical of Ann Boleyn and I feel no desire on this basis to read her biography of that earlier queen. Finally, the referencing is poor - there is a list of sources for each chapter, but no link given between these sources and quotes in the chapter itself; there are also random footnote references in the chapter that relate to nothing. Overall, somewhat disappointing. show less

Anne Boleyn is one of the most famous Queens of England. Typically in literature she is described as the manipulative schemer who lured Henry VIII from his devoted wife Katharine of Aragon and later met her death on (probably trumped up) charges of Adultery, Incest and Treason.

In this book, Denny presents a different view of Anne, as a victim of Henry's cold blooded-ness. She asserts that Henry relentlessly pursued Anne, who resisted because of his marriage to Katharine. Anne finally show more succumbed to Henry's advances and was then cast aside when it no longer suited him to be married to her.

The book is written in a very 'readable' way. I often find non-fiction to be somewhat dry; however this book flowed easily and held my interest throughout.

It has obviously been very well researched, and Denny is clearly a Boleyn enthusiast, with a lot of passion for her subject. However, this is a double edged sword. While I firmly believe that it is important for any biographer to really care about their subject, Denny's own view means that this book is extremely biased. Katharine of Aragon is described as a vicious, manipulative and unreasonable woman, who lied to fulfill her ambition to become Queen of England. Anne is painted almost as a saint, who could do no wrong and was blameless in every respect.

Joanna Denny wrote this book to bring balance to the general view of Anne; however, she has not created balance but has merely tipped the scales all the way to the other side. She claims that the critics of Anne are biased - and this may well be true - but unfortunately, Denny shows herself to be equally as biased. The women in Anne's world are portrayed as evil and two faced, with the exception of Elizabeth I, Anne's daughter.

I would recommend this book to anyone with an interest in Anne or the Tudor period, but I do not think that this book is 'the truth' about Anne Boleyn, as the author claims. show less

I do not know where to even start with this book - Denny starts from a very strange presumption that everyone believes that Anne Boleyn had been the whore the Catholics had always thought her to be. This would not have bothered me as much if the she would not continued by making the argument that Anne had done everything she had done so that she can promote the Reformation and the Protestant beliefs - and in order to achieve it, she was simply disregarding historical sources and painting show more some of the other characters in a quite strange way - in some places even crossing the line between history talk and yellow press. The truth as always is somewhere in the middle but it sounded like getting from one extreme to the other. The biggest problem - the historians (at least lately) do not really believe the Catholics authors for what Anne had been.

Unfortunately the book have another big problem - the repetitions. It it normal for history books to contain some repetitions but at the same time there are two types of such books - the reference ones (where you can read any chapter at any time without the need to read the previous ones) and the narrative ones (where you need to read the book in order). This biography is from the second type - the story is flowing continuously and logically (and that's one of the good things which save the book to some extent). But at the same time the repetitions are at the level of a reference book, especially for the small almost irrelevant details. Adding to this the printing of some details that simply do not matter (like the names of the people Anne gives grants for studying or some similar details) and the book becomes tedious at times.

But despite these troubles, Denny's account of Anne Boleyn and her times is interesting. She is trying to look at the facts from a new perspective and as biased as it is, it still adds a lot to the facts. It is not a good choice for introduction to the Tudors history - the reader needs to know the history in order to be able to judge what is written -- even if you choose to believe everything that Denny is writing, some of the facts do not make sense without prior knowledge of the era.

2 and a half stars out of 5 for this book and I would probably give Denny another chance - she seems to be doing her research even if she prefers to ignore parts of it. show less