THE BOLEYNS

On the morning of 19 May 1536, a woman mounted a scaffold that had been erected within the confines of the Tower of London: minutes later her head was struck from her body with a single blow from a French swordsman. This woman was no ordinary prisoner, but one who had until recently been revered as Queen of England: her name was Anne Boleyn. A decade earlier Anne had embarked on a courtship with the illustrious Tudor king, Henry VIII – a relationship that had altered not only the whole course of her own life, but also those of her family. The Boleyns had been raised to soaring heights before crashing to lows that were steeped in misery and despair – for Anne and her brother George, the result was death. The extraordinary rise and fall of Anne Boleyn and her family is one of the most controversial and intriguing stories of 16th century England; it is one that continues to enthral to this day.

“ALMOST EVERY ASPECT OF ANNE BOLEYN’S LIFE IS CONTROVERIAL, INCLUDING THE YEAR OF HER BIRTH”

Almost every aspect of Anne Boleyn’s life is controversial, including the year of her birth. Now widely accepted to have been in around 1501, Anne was one of three surviving children born to Sir Thomas Boleyn by his wife, Elizabeth Howard. Thomas was a man whose family roots lay in trade, though his grandfather, Sir Geoffrey Boleyn, had once been Lord Mayor of London. His father was a Norfolk landowner whose primary estate was Blickling, and Thomas himself, born in the mid 1470s, had risen to prominence steadily under the Tudors. He had attended the wedding of Prince Arthur and Catherine of Aragon in 1501, been among the escort of Princess Margaret to Scotland in 1503, and created a Knight of the Bath at