Dan Snow's History Hit - Anne Boleyn Special Part 1: Life and Afterlives

Episode Date: May 19, 2021

In the first of two special podcasts, from our sibling podcast Not Just the Tudors, to mark the 485th anniversary of Anne Boleyn's death, Suzannah Lipscomb is joined by a panel of experts to discuss the enduring fascination with Anne's life and demise.Exploring the different perceptions of Anne and her re-creation through her many afterlives are authors Claire Ridgway and Natalie Grueninger, historian Dr. Stephanie Russo and art historian Roland Hui.The second part of this Anne Boleyn special will be available wherever you get your podcasts on Thursday, May 20.

Hello everyone, welcome to the pod. You'll have seen at the top of the charts where we are at the moment Professor Susanna Lipscomb with her new podcast called Not Just the Tudors. Well today on this feed I'm going to share with you an episode of that pod. It's gone crazy, lots of people listening to it. It marks the 485th anniversary of the execution of Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII's second wife. Well, actually either his second wife, his first wife, or not his wife, depending on the mood and perspective of Henry VIII at various points in his life. Anne Boleyn has fascinated people for five centuries, and on this pod, Susie Lipscomb has brought together an absolute A-team of Anne Boleyn experts.

This pod is like that scene from The Matrix when he wants to learn Kung Fu. If you want to know Anne Boleyn, just plug yourself into this pod. It's got everything you need. You can go from zero to 60 in just seconds. It's been awesome having Susanna join the team, and I'm thrilled that we get to share her wonderful content on this feed. So enjoy. If you want to watch our documentary

about Henry VIII or any other historical documentaries, please go to historyhit.tv. It's the world's best history channel, as you all know by now. Historyhit.tv. Head across there. My big show on Bismarck is coming up soon, the 80th anniversary of the story of what was one of the greatest threats to Britain's maritime supremacy in the Second World War. Hitler's super battleship Bismarck unleashed on the North Atlantic. So please get ready, prepare yourselves for that exciting release. But in the meantime, everyone, here is Professor Susanna Lipscomb and her team talking about Anne Boleyn. Enjoy. Enjoy.

Anne Boleyn has long featured in historical fiction, in films, and in popular TV depictions of the Tudors. Many of these repeat long-held myths about Anne, that she was a witch, that she had a sixth finger, that she gave birth to a deformed fetus, or they reiterate tired tropes of Anne as a femme fatale, a seductress, a schemer, an ambitious woman who reached too high and deserved to fall. So to discuss our perceptions of Anne Boleyn, how these have changed over the centuries, how perhaps misogyny has played a role, and how she's had many afterlives, I'm delighted to be joined by a panel of experts. Claire Ridgway, since 2009, has run the Anne Boleyn Files.com, which is a go-to site for everything about the Tudor period. She's also a founder of the Tudor Society and has

published several books, including The Fall of Anne Boleyn in 2012. She describes herself as on a crusade to debunk the myths surrounding Anne Boleyn and educate the world about the real Anne. Also in 2009, Natalie Gruninger created On the Tudor Trail, a website that focuses on the historic sites and buildings associated with Anne. And with Sarah Morris, she co-authored In the Footsteps of Anne Boleyn. She's also the host of the wonderful Talking Tudors podcast. So both Natalie and Claire know a lot about why people are interested in Anne. Then there's Dr. Stephanie Russo, who's Discipline Chair of Literature at Macquarie University, Australia. And she's the author of The Afterlife of Anne Boleyn,

Representations of Anne Boleyn in Fiction and on the Screen, published in 2020. And last but not least, Roland Hoy is an art historian whose blog Tudor Faces especially focuses on Anne, and he has written an academic article on Anne of the Wicked Ways, Perceptions of Anne Boleyn as a Witch in History and in Popular Culture. So this is a wonderful panel, and it's also an international panel because I'm joined by Natalie and Stephanie from Australia, Roland from the US, and both Claire and I are in the UK. So this has taken some careful timing to figure out when we could do this. I suppose I'd like to start with you, Nat and Claire.

Let's have a think about why people come to your wonderful websites. Why do you think people are still fascinated with Anne? Claire, do you want to kick us off? Okay. I think it's the drama of her story, the dramatic rise, the way that Henry VIII singled her out and moved heaven and earth to possess her, really, the whole great matter, the break with Rome, it was all so much, he really turned England upside down to have her. And then, of course, her dramatic fall and the tragedy of that. I mean, it is really like a modern day soap opera. So I think it's that.

And also, I think I've had comments that Anne is this really strong female. She's not your typical 16th century woman either. Someone said that they really related to her because she was a kick-ass female. So yeah, a very different kind of 16th century figure. Natalie, is that what you think as well, is what you found? Absolutely. I do agree with Claire. I think the story is just extraordinary and that does attract us very much so. But I also think there's a sort of air of mystery about Anne and Anne's story. There's so much that's unknown. There's so much that's disputed, all those fundamental questions, you know, when was she born? What does she look like? They're all things

that we still debate and passionately discuss today. So I think that mystery brings a lot of people to the story because they do want to know the facts as much as possible. brings a lot of people to the story because they do want to know the facts as much as possible. I think that point also about her being seen as a kind of role model was very interesting as well. Does anyone have any thoughts on why she's come to be seen as this kind of proto-feminist? Well, in my research, I found a lot of novels that position her as a proto-feminist that actually start quite early. So even Jean Plady in the 1940s is writing novels in which Anne expresses an interest, not in feminism per se, doesn't use that, but expresses an interest in women's rights. I think it's become a mainstay really of historical fiction, this idea that she was ahead of her time, that she was interested in

women's education, that she was not like other 16th century girls, and that she had a kind of more intellectual engagement with the world. Whether that's true or not, we don't know, but it's become a mainstay really of historical fiction that you see repeated over and over again. Alison Weir comments in the notes to her novel, A King's Obsession, which is the second of her Henry VIII's Six Wives series, she actually comments that she felt compelled to represent Anne Boleyn as a kind of proto-feminist figure because that is the currently accepted view of her. So it's interesting to see fiction feeding into history, feeding back into fiction, because she is a historian, but she's taking up this image of Anne that really

has become, as I said, a mainstay of historical fictions, just accepted as a truism now, repeated endlessly and endlessly. Thank you, Stephanie. I think that's right. And Roland, you've thought quite a lot about some of the most persistent myths and legends about Anne, and particularly thinking about her as a witch. How has she built up a reputation as that? There is the misconception that Anne Boleyn was charged as a witch when she was arrested in May 1536. But the truth is, the witch aspect never existed at the time. And in my research until the 20th century, actually. So when she was charged was actually as a whore, as an adulteress with her brother, amazingly enough. And the negative talk about Anne Boleyn after her death

was mostly as a whore, again, as a person who was sexually active and promiscuous, and as a heretic. But it wasn't until the 20th century that she was perceived as a witch, amazingly enough. So let's come back and think about her reputation over the centuries since in a second. But Natalie, this idea about myths, is this something that you encounter? Does it frustrate you? It's something that I think Claire and I are running websites as well for the time that we have encountered so much of this. And it's not a criticism about people that write to us and ask questions. It's simply something that we've observed. And I think in terms of the witch people that write to us and ask questions. It's simply something that we've observed.

And I think in terms of the witch myth that you just discussed and that Roland mentioned, we always have to look at where these stories are coming from. And I think we'll find that in terms of this particular story, it is the work, of course, of someone we'll all know, and that's Nicholas Sander of the Catholic exile living during the reign of Elizabeth I. He was, in fact, only around six years old, five or six at the time of Anne's execution. He is, of course, responsible for many of these myths, including the deformed feeder story that I'm sure lots of people have heard of, and the witch. He describes her as having a wen, a protruding tooth. So many

of these sorts of ideas about Anne and witchcraft did originate with him. And he was, of course, only trying to discredit her daughter. So it's really interesting, I think, to keep that in mind. And the origin of these stories is really fascinating to how they've been perpetuated throughout the centuries. One thing that you and Claire have done so remarkably on your websites is unpack so many things like that. They're just amazing resources for people investigating this period because you take something and then you look at all the sources and how you've got to this conclusion and the amount of work that has gone into these things. And of course, both of you have published authors as well, but I think that the websites are a

testament to this kind of historical detective work. Claire, has it been something that you've found particularly in your experiences of doing this sort of detective work that you've discovered or found satisfying along the way to encounter and to debunk? Looking at what people thought of Anne after her execution, her execution. The fact that you had Eustace Chapuis, who was no Anne Boleyn fan, being sceptical about everything that had happened. You'd got Mary of Hungary as well, being very sceptical. And so there was this scepticism, there were rumours about Jane Seymour. Too many people think that everyone believed that Anne Boleyn and the men were guilty. And it's just not true.

There was lots of scepticism, lots of rumours about the king and Jane Seymour gossip about that. So that was kind of satisfying for me to be able to sort of debunk the idea that in the 16th century, everyone thought that Anne Boleyn had done this, that she was this woman that had slept with all these courtiers, even the king's groom of the stool and her brother, and that everyone just fed into that, everyone believed the king and Cromwell. So that was satisfying when I did that research and found what the rest of Europe was saying. So in case anybody listening is thinking, so what was Anne Boleyn convicted of now do you want to take us through the evidence that is used against her yeah so the charges of adultery incest and

treason are the charges that she was charged with so no witchcraft you'll notice the way the language has evolved over the centuries also causes quite a bit of confusion because of course there is mention and apologies for my French accent that doesn't really exist, but sortilege is a word that was used as chapuis, suggested that Henry had told somebody that his marriage had been made using sortilege like charms and spells. But of course, as Professor Ives brought up in his great biography, this could just have been referring to the fact that Henry was talking about his heirs and in terms of divinity and what had been suggested was going to happen in his marriage. So the language is really interesting as well and how it's being used and adapted over time. So yeah, those are the three primary charges. Of course, even the

records of the trials, they are incomplete, unfortunately, and they are, of course, trials they are incomplete unfortunately and they are of course also in very legal latin so a lot of people have relied on transcriptions which has also sort of muddied the waters as well roland adultery actually was not a treasonable offense it was actually a religious crime so anne would have been tried in a religious court and punished accordingly. So to build up the case, the charges of adultery was to back up the charge of regicide, where Anne was supposedly plotting to kill the king with Henry Norris when she said that, oh, if the king were dead, you would look to have me. So the charge of adultery was really to, again, back up the regicide charge. Yes, it's very much trying to blacken her character on the basis of what appears to be

fairly flimsy evidence that Anne is conspiring the king's death, which is treason. And that is fascinating, but it has effectively worked, I think it would be fair to say. Let's talk about how Anne's reputation has been established over time. Stephanie, you spent some time thinking about this, her reputation over the centuries. What were people saying about her later in the 16th century, 17th century, 18th century? It's funny, the 16th century, you sort of map her reputation to who was sitting on the throne at the time. So obviously, when Mary is sitting on the throne, the literature at the time is not going to take a particularly kindly view of Anne.

That shifts when Elizabeth is on the throne and people are trying to curry favour through Anne. So they're basically saying a lot of nice things about Anne in order to get Elizabeth's favour. What's also interesting is in the 17th century, representations of Anne start to fall away. So there's this huge gap of time in which we don't really see her represented much in the literature, or if she's there,

she's sort of not there at the same time. So a lot of people have made the argument that you can see echoes of Anne's story in Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale. And anyone who will know The Winter's Tale will know that there is a woman who is accused of adultery in that play. Now obviously the play ends happily, things did not end happily for Anne but people have seen it as containing an echo of Anne and that's quite a strategy in the 17th century actually that's also used in The Tragedy of Mariam which is not really about Anne Boleyn, it is about Mariam, a biblical character but there are again echoes of Anne Boleyn's story that are there in, a biblical character, but there are again echoes of Anne Boleyn's story that are there in that play. So there's a sense that even though Elizabeth was

on the throne or Elizabeth had just died when these plays were being written, Anne was still problematic. People hadn't quite figured out a way to represent her. They hadn't quite figured out a way to marry, for want of a better term, the sex parts of her story with the religion parts of her story. That was a problem. So then you get to the end of the 17th century and you start to get things like John Banks's play, Virtue Betrayed, and Henry is a problem and he is sort of preying on Anne and she is represented as this sort of icon of Protestantism and Anne is seen as this victim. Going into the 18th century we start to see women take up her story for the first

time which I think is particularly interesting because she had been inscribed in literature prior to that point predominantly by men who had their own set ideas of what women should be. So in the 18th century you start getting her written by women. And the piece that I particularly love and I always love to talk about is Sarah Fielding's representation of her life. Oddly, this appears in a book that was actually written by her brother. So Sarah Fielding is the sister of the famous English novelist Henry Fielding. But she actually writes a chapter of one of his books called Journey from This World to the Next. And this is a book in which the main character goes down to the afterlife, speaks to Anne Boleyn about her life, which, you know, is a sort of fantasy people have had,

if you could meet Anne, what would she say? She actually doesn't say all that much about Henry, interestingly enough. She talks mostly about her experiences in the French court. And what she says is that she's learnt that men will always let you down and that you should use your sexuality and your power as a woman to get what you need to get in order to move through a world that's hostile to you. And that's basically what she's done with Henry. Because she realises that she lives in this patriarchal world, she has to use the resources that she has, which is her beauty, her charm, all of these things that have become kind of legendary part of Anne Boleyn's appeal, in order to enable her to build herself

some kind of life. And I think that's a really interesting way of Anne being used as a tool through which to think about the contemporary world. So Sarah Fielding is obviously writing with knowledge of Anne Boleyn's story, but she's also writing for a contemporary audience. And she knows that women are reading this story and are seeing aspects of their own experiences through Anne's story. And I think going back to what we were saying before about Anne being seen as a feminist, and I talked about in the 40s, I think you can actually trace it even further back than that to this kind of writing. And that becomes a kind of dominant theme of 18th century writing, that she is this icon, I think, of women's experiences, right, that she talks to women across centuries. Yeah, that's a very interesting point. But I also think that it's true that she has

become a kind of cipher over the centuries and used in different ways. And perhaps that's a very interesting point. But I also think that it's true that she has become a kind of cipher over the centuries and used in different ways. And perhaps that's never more true than when we get to the 19th century, and we suddenly get this flourishing of historical works, including works by women that are thinking about merry old England and the Tudor past, and it's become this exciting period to focus on. How much do you think the 19th century has influenced our ideas about Anne? In the 19th century, we get a space of writings in which she is again a Protestant martyr. She is the woman that sits at the pivot point between the medieval and the early modern. But what we also get is very strange texts that read her in all sorts of other ways. So I'm thinking here

of something right at the end of the 19th century. There's this novel called Steel, and that's written by a guy called M.P. Scheel. And that is the worst Anne I have ever read in the sense that she's absolutely and utterly evil. So within the same century, you both get Protestant victim Anne, and you also get evil Anne. This is an Anne that stalks women across England. Basically she's trying to stalk this woman across England so she can set up this woman's sexual assault by Henry because her reasoning is if Henry sexually assaults this woman, quenches his lust, he will return to her. It's a very different image of Anne. She's got blonde hair in this novel. She's got frizzy blonde hair. Again that's completely different vision to Anne than we usually have. I mean we can say yes that's incorrect. We know she didn't have blonde hair in this novel she's got frizzy blonde hair again that's completely different vision to Anne than we usually have I mean we can say yes that's incorrect we know

she didn't have blonde hair but that was still a image of Anne that's circulating so I think in the 19th century you do get a lot of the roots of the mythology of Anne but you also get the ability of Anne to mean whatever you wanted her to mean There's so much malleability in her story because there's so many unanswered questions that she could be both a Protestant saint and she could also be a femme fatale. Yes, I think that's right. We see that really interesting binary that people have when it comes to Anne.

You know, she is both this kind of sexually alluring woman and also this Protestant saint, that she's both somehow a whore and a seductress and entirely chaste. The sort of mental gymnastics we do when we're characterising Anne Boleyn always seem to me quite extraordinary. Natalie, do you find that you're wrestling with these different ways of how people have seen Anne? Absolutely, but I don't necessarily think that it is a negative thing because i think it's exactly why so many people can make an emotional connection with her i know that there's people from all walks of life all over the world attracted to anne's story because they see something of themselves in her partly because of all these representations over the centuries the temptress the seductress,

the Victorians painted her as the damsel in distress, the romanticised version that we get. So people see her and see something of themselves. I also think the fact that she wasn't perfect. She wasn't a saint. Sometimes perhaps Catherine of Aragon may seem a little more distant because she was such a successful queen and raised to be a queen, but Anne is somebody, I think, that people can relate to and for all different reasons as well. You're listening to Dan Snow's History here. We've got an episode of Not Just the Tudors about Anne Boleyn. More after this.

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I guess we're all very familiar with the depictions on film, on TV, in fiction in the 20th century. Claire, of those many depictions of Anne in fiction and film, are the ones that you find particularly compelling or ones that you find commit an act of calumny about Anne? The other Berlin Girl, Natalie Portman's version, is just to me a total travesty. I can't stand the novel. To me, it's been so responsible for a lot of damage to Amberlynn's reputation. So many people come to my site quoting that novel as if it was a biography, because they believe that it's a novel that's based on history, therefore it's true. And so they believe that Anne Boleyn committed incest, they believe that she had a deformed foetus. And to me, that's done so much damage. Whereas the Tudors, which is really interesting, because I mean, that's not at all accurate either. Natalie Dormer's acting and the storyline of that

seems to have made people very sympathetic to Anne. I found that very emotional. I mean, the most emotional scene for me, I think, was her sobbing in her cell in the tower while the men were being executed, her brother was being executed. And that really caused sympathy. But at the same time, it was a very sexual And that really caused sympathy.

But at the same time, it was a very sexual depiction of Anne as well. And going back to the sexuality aspect, just overnight, last night, I published a video on my YouTube channel about Anne and Cardinal Wolsey. And someone just commented there that Anne wasn't a typical English beauty and yet Henry VIII loved her, Henry Percy, Thomas Wyatt and so she must have learned something in France that she was able to use to entice these men and I just thought oh wow are we going back so far in time that a woman is only seen as attractive by men if she has some skills in the bedroom or uses her sexuality? To me, I know so many women that have got something about them. They may not be seen as pretty or beautiful to our standards today, but they have something about them that makes you do a double take as they go past their confidence. Something that oozes from them.

And it's not them trying to entice a man, trying to prey on a man. And there is the idea that Amberlynn, like Natalie Dormer in the Tudors, is flirting with Henry. And then she has him in some kind of sexual stranglehold. She is holding out on him on purpose because she wants to be queen. And that idea is so prevalent and so damaging and really hard to overcome. You can say to people, well, how would she ever know that she was going to be queen? How could a lady in waiting, a maid of honour, know that she could ever say no to a man, to the king, and that he would keep going and that he'd go through all of the great matter,

he'd wait for years for her. I find that a real struggle on a daily basis. I absolutely understand why. And it's interesting how that concept that whilst in France, she learned some mysterious sexual practice that made her utterly compelling to the king. I mean, look, we're talking about oral sex. That's all we're talking about. There's a limited range of things you can do sexually. I think humans found them out a few centuries before us. They probably knew about them in the 16th century.

But the way it's talked about as if like this extra thing that she could do, no one has since known. Anyway, so that bothers me too Natalie I just wanted to pick up on what Claire was saying about Anne's appearance I find that quite revealing actually because obviously we know there's only one likeness contemporary likeness of Anne and that's the portrait medal but the public just doesn't seem to like that image because of course there's this myth that Anne was this ravishing beauty popularized by all those beautiful actresses that have played Anne, like Natalie Dormer and Genevieve Bujold and all the others. So there's

this idea that she had to have been a ravishing beauty for Henry to have discarded his wife for more than two decades and moved heaven and earth, as Claire said earlier. But we know from the scant contemporary evidence that she was in fact not the English Rose. She was quite different looking, kind of olive skin, fairly dark hair. We're not sure exactly what shade, but fairly dark, probably dark eyes as well, quite thin probably. But, you know, whenever you present a portrait, of course, some portraits are acceptable. The Hever Rose portrait, it's a lovely portrait, the National Portrait Gallery portrait. But something contemporary like Anne's portrait medal is not as appealing and people get quite cranky if you want to tell them that that is the only contemporary likeness of Anne because they are expecting quite a lovely

representation. And many of the portraits that we do have are later and we think have probably been made to look somewhat more beautiful than they may have been originally. But I suppose the heart of what you're saying is people find it difficult to accept, and this shows continuing misogyny, that actually it was just the fact that she's charismatic, just really intelligent, educated, sophisticated, witty, you know, just that stuff. And actually, that's what Henry VIII tends to look for in women. Stephanie? Well, it's interesting how Anne's blend or her variety of attractiveness really becomes a trope in historical fiction and film I think as well because a lot of the novels,

say from the 1960s onwards, you get a lot of contrast drawn out between Mary Boleyn who is blonde, English rose and therefore good and also domestic. She's much more interested in the domestic sphere. And you get that contrasted negatively to Anne's dark, a little bit mysterious and ambitious character, right? And that is rendered bad. So the domestic English Rose, Mary, is good and successful.

And the ambitious, sexy, dark-haired Anne is bad and she falls because she is too ambitious and that of course is taken up by Philippa Gregory in The Other Boleyn Girl. People think of The Other Boleyn Girl as you know the first time people have remembered that Mary Boleyn existed but there's actually about four or five novels that are virtually the same in their kind of presentation of the two sisters that predate-date Philippa Gregory, that do pick up on looks as indicating something about her character because she isn't this blonde, perfect princess with very light skin and peaches and cream complexion, this kind of English rose. That exoticness about her looks makes her almost a racial other in a way. She's got this French

background. She doesn't seem to look like a good English girl. There's something off about her that is reflected in her appearance. So even though it's very sexually exciting to men and particularly to Henry, it indicates that there's something not quite right about Anne. And that is manifested in these 60s, 70s and 80s quite negative representations of Anne that often turn on that idea that she has illegitimately moved out of the domestic sphere into the world of work, and she's just sort of gone too far. Roland, have you come across that affective sexism or misogyny in your readings of how Anne has been depicted, particularly in the 20th century, I suppose? It's interesting how by the 20th century, especially by the 1960s, 1970s,

perceptions of Anne became very negative. This was expressed in books about her, popular novels, and even television and film where you have Anne, for instance, in the Henry VIII and His Six Wives with Keith Mitchell and Charlotte Rappling, where she does come across as this very strong-willed evil woman and that is expressed by bringing back the so-called wen on her neck which is shown in the film the misshapen finger and then this builds up in the 1980s with the margaret george autobiography of henry the eighth for instance and then retha warnick who brings up the theory about and was perceived as a witch by henry the eighth because of a supposed deformed fetus.

And then you have Philippa Gregory building up on this theory too. So it's interesting that how she went through this nadir of being so negative, but by the 2000s or so, she became very popular. She became a feminist icon, the it girl. And if you read Susan Bordeaux's book, I mean, this expresses it very nicely, how her progression to a heroine has happened in the last 10 years or so. But that's just crazy. I mean, that's just totally writing all sorts of tropes onto it that has nothing to do with 16th century realities. I guess that's something we do a lot with Anne, though. Let's think about this way that her character is depicted as well, because she is depicted as being manipulative

a lot. And why do you think that we see her in this way? Natalie? Yeah, I just wanted to comment on Anne, the schema and the plot and the manipulative woman idea for a moment and just sort of begin by saying that there's this really widespread belief or widespread idea that we need to read this story backwards. And this is the story of all the Tudors really, but Anne's in particular, I find that she became queen, so they begin there and they go back from there. Of course, if we think back to Anne as, well, this is disputed as well, but I think as around a 12-year-old at the court of Margaret of Austria, writing home to her father, Thomas Boleyn, she in fact comments on the fact that

she's so excited because she can't wait to come and converse with the queen that she might get to talk to the queen. Now, she may have been talking about the French queen, Anne of Brittany, at the time, if this was around the summer of 1513, or more likely, I think, Catherine of Aragon. So this is a young Anne not looking to plot, not looking to overthrow Queen Catherine. She's looking to serve her and to be a loyal subject. And I think it goes back to this idea of reading the story backwards. Anne lived without the benefit of hindsight, like all of us do, making decisions on the spot, not knowing what the next day would bring. And I think this is forgotten at times. So I think Anne did the best with the situation that was placed in front of her. And of course, she made mistakes.

She had no idea what was coming and how the story was going to end front of her. And of course, she made mistakes. She had no idea what was coming and how the story was going to end. But I like to remind people, I suppose, that young Anne had no thought of manipulating anybody or becoming anyone's concubine. She just wanted to serve and to be at court and serve her queen. Claire? I think it also tells us a lot about people's perceptions of Henry VIII as well. If you've got Anne being this predator, this star manipulator, then Henry VIII is a very weak character. And a lot of people do think that, that Henry VIII was easily led, easily manipulated by

those around him, such as Thomas Cromwell as well. You know, the whole idea that Cromwell brings about Anne's fall by his constant whispering in the king's ears. And so I think the weakness of Henry VIII is also used to back up this idea that Anne knew how to use him. She knew how to bring down Cardinal Wolsey to get her revenge, that idea of revenge for the whole Henry Percy affair, that she knew what to do to become queen, to banish Catherine of Aragon, to have that ill treatment of Mary, and that she's just the one in control. And it just takes away everything from Henry, his kingship. He's the monarch, he's God's anointed sovereign, and yet suddenly he's just easily led, easily manipulated. So it tells us a lot about people's perceptions of Henry VIII as well.

That's right. Famously, the granddaddy of Tudor history, Geoffrey Elton, called Henry VIII a bit of a booby and a bit of a baby. And I think for a long time, there was that idea about Henry VIII as being completely weak-willed. And of course, Geoffrey Elton was saying it was Thomas Cromwell who was doing it all. And so the pendulum has swung all the time. Either Henry's all-powerful or he's completely not powerful at all, in which case you've got room for people who are seeking to force him to do what they want him to do. Roland, you wanted to come in also thinking about this. So in her portraiture, there recently has been proposed that the bee type portrait of Anne with the bee necklace is actually a negative representation of Anne intentionally.

That it was meant to show her as a witch-like figure because she had black hair. She had very pale skin and she wore black, which was supposedly a very witchy color. But, you know, black is worn because it was a very luxurious fabric, actually. And black hair, I mean, I don't think that necessarily denotes evil. And she was actually brown haired in the portraits. So this was brought up in the Lost Faces exhibition about 10 years ago. So I thought that was very interesting how people have used her portrait to back up the negativity about Anne. I'd also like to put to you all the question that I put to Claire about which fictional depictions, either on the page or on film, which one do you love and which one do you hate?

Stephanie? I have to admit, I really do like Natalie Dormer's Anne in The Cheaters. But my left field pick is actually a novel that reimagines Lynn if she were a high school girl, a contemporary high school girl. And this is a novel called The Dead Queens Club by Hannah Capon. I talk about this novel all the time because I just love it. It basically imagines Henry as a high school jock and as, again, the slightly kind of sexy outside on. and what it does so brilliantly is that it turns the story of Henry and his six wives into a feminist revenge tale so minus the two that are

dead all of the other wives plus a character based on Lady Rochford and sister-in-law George Boleyn's wife she teams up with the four remaining wives who are here girlfriends and they take Henry down with this little feminist girl gang that they call Operation Desdemona. It sounds ridiculous when I say it out loud, but it's so funny and playful. It's playing with the images of all the wives. And what Hannah Capon does so well is that she understands this reputation of all the wives and she flips the script.

So it's narrated by a character that's based on Anne of Cleves. And Anne of Cleves talked about how when she first met Anne, she saw her as like the woman in a James Bond movie, which is actually quite a good analogue to how Anne has been represented by some. And then she realises as the novel proceeds that that's actually not true. And she says the story of Anne Boleyn can be whatever

the teller wants it to be and when I read that line I was like yes that is what my entire book is about so I really like the Dead Queens Club it is a really fast really fun really clever read my least favorite yeah I'm gonna have to echo what everyone else has said the other Boleyn girl not my favorite interestingly um the historical inaccuracies don't actually bother me, but I think the book is tremendously sexist because it does represent Anne, I think, as undone by her ambition. You know, women shouldn't get involved in politics. If they do, then bad things will happen. They might get their heads chopped off. Whereas if you stay home and be content in the home and with your husband and, you know, you don't make waves, then you'll have a successful life. So that is my problem with

the other Berlin girl. Oh dear, poor Philippa Gregory. She's not coming off well. And I'm very fond of her work, even though I do take your points. Natalie, what's your travesty? My favorite. It's a tricky one, but I think I'm going to go with Anne of the Thousand Days, Genevieve Bourgeaud. I think she captured something of Anne's spirit, her charisma. Of course, again, there are inaccuracies with everything. I'm, again, not too bothered by that, but I do love how spirited Anne is. And I also love that she gets to confront Henry in the tower. I think we all want that to have actually happened. Some people believe she did get to write that famous letter. So I'm going to go with that one

as my favourite. Unfortunately, sorry, this sounds like a Philippa Gregory bashing, but it has to be The Other Berlin Girl. And that's not because I do love some of Philippa's other novels. They're wonderful. They're fantastic. And I think the fact that she's such a great novelist has caused a lot of confusion because the better the writing, the more people believe that it's fact. Yeah, sorry, Philippa, that's got to be my one too. Roland, what's your perspective here? I absolutely love Maria Louise Bruce's biography of Anne Boleyn published in the 70s. I thought it was a very balanced biography. She looked at

primary sources. I did not like the Tudors as in the television show. I thought try to sell the Tudors as all sex and scandal. But I think the plus from that TV show is that it brought an audience to the history. And Natalie Dormer in an interview, she did say that she did try to improve the script and she had talks with Michael Hurst, the script writer, about bringing in other aspects of Anne, I think particularly her religious commitments and her religious views. So she wanted to make the character stronger than just a scheming woman. I think it's very interesting that what these films and novels are wrestling with again and again is this idea about how do we deal with a woman who rises, right? How do we deal with a woman who's obviously attractive, possibly ambitious, possibly not. There's lots of penalties here for this woman

having this success. And then the satisfaction, of course, of her being cut down. And that feels to me like it comes out as a theme again and again. And one thing that none of you have mentioned, but I find particularly galling, is in the series that came out in 2003, Ray Winstone playing Henry VIII, there's a rape scene. Henry VIII rapes Anne, completely gratuitous, completely unhistorical or ahistorical. It's not in the sources. And that one really bothered me because it's another way of making Anne pay the price. Does that ring true with you? Do you think that's right? That scene stands out for me too, because I think there's an element of wanting to punish the

ambitious woman or the powerful woman or the woman who seems to have some kind of power over other people and that I think plays out in that film where Henry VIII is sort of like a mob boss and I think that we do still take this sort of pleasure in you know chopping a woman down to size here in Australia we talk about the tall poppy syndrome all the time and I think that we see an element of discomfort with this woman who seems to be moving beyond her station that is manifested in this kind of almost glee that she doesn't retain her power usually most of these things they present Anne's death as you know this tragic moment which it is right is, I think, still a kind of only barely repressed satisfaction that she couldn't hang on. You know, she got this power, but it was tenuous. It was intangible.

It couldn't last. And so we're set up to kind of say, well, you know, she shouldn't have looked so high. She shouldn't have wanted all of these other things. If only she was content. If only she sort of let herself be the mistress for a while and then faded into obscurity there's that sense of delight or joy that these series like the one you mentioned ask us to take in this idea of her being cut down to size which is very troubling I think you're spot on Susanna that all of these representations are saying is we haven't quite figured out how to represent women in power. Claire? I think it's very human and we're treating their story, even though they're historical people, real people, there's this temptation to treat them as fictional characters and to have very two-dimensional views of them. And when we're reading a novel, for example, we really like the

novel to come round full circle and for that person that's risen too high and done what we view as immoral things to kind of get there, we like them to get their comeuppance. We like this idea of karma. And so Anne is presented as this person that has risen at the cost of others, at the cost of Catherine of Aragon, at the cost of Mary. And look at all these people because of the Reformation that have lost their lives all because of Anne. And there's this need to see a character like her get her comeuppance. We're treating them as fictional characters, as very two-dimensional, I think.

That's a really interesting thought. Natalie? Land a Viking longship on island shores, scramble over the dunes of ancient Egypt and avoid the Poisoner's Cup in Renaissance Florence. Each week on Echoes of History, we uncover the epic stories that inspire Assassin's Creed. We're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive,

but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits. There are new episodes every week. Yeah, I just wanted to pick up on that idea that Claire was talking about, about people getting what they deserve almost. And this isn't a new thing by any means, because it was the same in the 16th century, I'm thinking about. Anne's final miscarriage, which of course most people would probably know

is said to have happened on the day of Catherine of Aragon's funeral. But from the research I've done, I don't think it was actually on that day. I actually think it was within a couple of days, but that it was conveyed or portrayed or popularised on that day exactly for the reasons we've been talking about, to in fact punish Anne, to show that her end was just, that she was being punished for bringing down

the very pious and very loved Catherine of Aragon. So this is actually something that's been happening for a long time and still happening now. And there's that story about when Anne miscarried, actually the day before execution apparently, the candles around Catherine of Aragon's tomb went on and off mysteriously. So there is this aspect of revenge and getting her karma being addressed because Catherine's ghost will haunt her. Yeah, definitely a story there. I'm not sure where we put his story there. But yeah,

Stephanie. To go back to Natalie's point about how we treat them as fictional, I completely agree. But I think that's because it's such a weird story. I mean, when you think about the story of Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon, you could turn into a soap opera quite easily, right? This is a soap opera. This is the other woman, right? This is the marriage brought down by a younger, sexier woman who provides a little bit of excitement, right? This is a soap opera. This is the other woman, right? This is the marriage brought down by a younger, sexier woman who provides a little bit of excitement, right? So you can see this through the lens of the soap opera, which I think is why people have been so keen

to see all of these elements of the story kind of slot into place like a fiction. So, you know, instead of talking about Anne's miscarriage just as a tragic misfortune in her life, we see it as some kind of event of cosmic significance, like it's bigger forces working through her to bring her down. We see this idea that every part of her story acts as like it would in a drama.

So nothing is ever just coincidental or mundane or tragic or just something that happens in everyday life to people. Everybody's got vested with this kind of drama because there is a kind of elemental wheel fortune shape to her story, which is exactly what Claire was saying. We love when people rise that they fall. And so everything is always viewed through the lens of like fiction, because I think we see a shaped Anne story in hindsight. We always read her story backwards.

in hindsight we always read her story backwards so even in these fictions you can see her being set up to fall we see her as having this grand plot that gets undone we don't see her as a real person who might have been complicated and contradictory in the same ways that we are complicated and contradictory that's really helpful way of putting it i think you're right i think when we say amberlynn people know the ending in the same way as when you say Titanic. Immediately, you read in that ending of the story. And what we need to do is move through it beat by beat with her and feel it. And I think also, Natalie, your point about the fact that evidence has been used to argue certain things about her. I always think that about the letters. So Henry VIII's love letters, of course, survive amazingly in the Vatican to Anne.

And we know that she's writing letters to him because he mentions them repeatedly in those letters, but we don't have those back. We argue so much from absence there in terms of denoting the character of that relationship, that he's chasing after her, he's in pursuit, he's the hunter, and she is withdrawing. And that is entirely argued from what we do not have.

That's the discourse of courtly love, this idea of the hunter and the hunted, the eternally kind of elusive woman. So you see there, fiction shapes the story, even while it's happening. So he's using the discourse of courtly love and chivalry in order to court her. And then this becomes an element of her story, a fictional element of her story that is continually read back into her story. So fiction is shaping her life even while she's still alive. You can see that in Thomas Wyatt's poetry as well. In something like Whoselister Hunt, she is the chivalric lady, she is elusive,

she is desirable, but the love is always going to be unconsummated, because that's the point of quarterly love. So fiction shapes her. And then, you know, there's no surprise, really, that she's been sort of so fictionalized, because she was constructed as a fictional character always. Yeah, that's really interesting. And also reflects on Natalie's point earlier about sortilege, that actually the use of language in those letters, he refers to her as ma maîtresse, my mistress, which is not what it doesn't mean my mistress in modern language, but it gets used like that. Natalie, you have some thoughts on this? I just wanted to pick up on something you said earlier, just about the evidence or the letters. And I suppose the question is, is an

absence of evidence, evidence? And how do we deal with that? And how do we use that as historians? And when we're trying to recreate people's lives and reconstruct this, I'd be interested to hear what you think. I think it's one of the great challenges. I'm often going on about this. There's some really great scholars who are working on, for example, the history of enslaved women taken across the Middle Passage from Africa, about whom we have only absolute scraps of evidence. How do you write the lives of women who don't feature in the archives really at all? Anne features lots, we've got lots that we have from her, about her, said by her, but there are still these spaces where there are gaps, and what do we do with those? What's the responsible approach, but also the empathetic approach to handling these histories where there are gaps?

It's a big question for historians at the moment, I think. But let's have a think, finally, about the fact that each one of you has given hours, weeks, months, years of your life to Anne Boleyn. has given hours, weeks, months, years of your life to Anne Boleyn. And I think that what we study, what we work on in some way represents something about ourselves, that we must be driven by something. So why have you spent so much time with Anne? For me, it was the fiction, actually. So I had always been interested in Anne from when I was a young girl. I don't recall why. I don't remember what the first text that I read was. I just knew

I was always interested in her. And so I just became fascinated by that question of why? What is it about this woman that is so endlessly representable, is so endlessly fascinating? Why is it that we never get rid of Anne Boleyn's story? Claire, what do you think? Well, for me, it was Anne that drew me in initially, but actually it's her whole family that have kept me interested. I mean, George is just as fascinating to me as is Thomas Boleyn, and then you get Jane Boleyn and Elizabeth Boleyn, who is a complete mystery.

It's the fact that her whole family has been blackened. You know, all the ideas about George Boleyn and did he really have homosexual relationships at court? Did he really beat his wife and have an unhappy marriage? Was Jane Boleyn really the person that brought the Boleyns down out of revenge and jealousy? Was Mary Boleyn really this angel? There were just so many myths around them and Thomas Boleyn pimping out his daughters to rise at court when actually he was already rising in Henry VII's reign. It's the whole family, the way that they've been blackened. And for me, I just like to be able to put things right. and for me, I just like to be able to put things right.

That's really interesting. I love that sense that you're doing justice. You're the lawyer for the dead and you're protecting their interests. Roland? My interest is in Anne's portraiture. Imagine we know Anne, but let's pretend we have no portraits of her. And when we read about famous people,

we want to know what they look like. We to know what joan of arc really looked like and cleopatra for instance who really have no faces but just modern perceptions of who they are and with anne we have that problem too because of her lack of portraiture there are just very few images of her. So I like that aspect of her where, you know, she is mysterious. And I like the detective work that goes behind tracking down what she looks like through contemporary sources and the pictures that we do have of her, the images. One of the images of her that I find very fascinating is the checkers locket ring. For those who have seen it, I mean, what a treasure, what a beautiful little treasure that is. Yes, it's an amazing picture. We've got in the ring a tiny little portrait of Elizabeth I. And then above it, what looks like it could be Anne Boleyn,

could perhaps be a young Elizabeth I. It's someone wearing a French hood and looking like Anne does in many of the later portraits. So it's a bit of a mystery. Natalie, what drives you? I think my answer is, I was going to say twofold, but it might be threefold. There is, of course, the extraordinary story. I think stories are absolutely critical to my life and I know to many people's lives. It's how we understand our world. It's how we talk about our lives. So there's that aspect of the extraordinary story. I could, of course, rattle off her many talents and attributes, many of which really that I can relate to, for example, her charitable endeavors and her promotion of education, how important she saw that. But there's also a part that's kind of

mysterious, Susie, that I find really hard to explain. And I suppose, you know, even now when you meet people today and some people you connect with immediately, others you don't. And even over the internet, I've made great friendships with some people, not with others. So there's this sort of mysterious aspect as well that has drawn me to her story ever since I first came across her in my early 20s. I can't really explain that, but I just feel quite drawn to her. I can admire all other women and queens and Henry's consorts. I think Catherine of Aragon was extraordinary as well. I'm not just team Malin, although I am team Malin, but I'm not just team

Malin. But yeah, so I think part of it is a kind of mysterious, just emotional connection that I've made with her. I love the idea that Anne's charisma has stretched down the centuries, and that we're still just drawn to her as moths to a flame. Thank you all very much indeed for helping us think a bit about our perceptions of Anne Boleyn. I feel the hand of history upon our shoulders. All this tradition of ours, our school history, our songs, this part of the history of our country, all were gone and finished.

Thank you for listening to that, everybody. That was an episode of Not Just the Tudors. The wonderful new chart-topping pod from Professor Susanna Lipscomb. There are plenty more episodes where that came from, so go to wherever you get your pods and subscribe, rate, and leave a little review

for Professor Lipscomb so her pod gets the audience it deserves. Thank you. you