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

The Introduction had me wondering the direction that the author would take when on the first page was written “There are accepted few facts about Anne's life. Virtually everything is still in dispute, from her date of birth to her appearance.” The Introduction ends with the line “It is time for a fresh look at the facts” A fresh look at the “few accepted facts”? This reader had his concerns. They were heightened when discussion took place in the first chapter as to Anne's appearance via known writings and portraiture. I agree with the author that Henry VIII was not going to marry a lady with an extra finger and a goitre, and that those that reported this were propagandists for their cause. But Joanna Denny writes that no contemporary portraiture survived but then says that the National Gallery portrait, said to be a copy of a lost original “...is no doubt the most authentic...” based on “... certain similarities with portraits of her daughter”. My italics.

Research by the author is seemingly good initially, but with further reading, not all statements had end notes. For example, when discussing the witch hunts in Europe we are quoted figures of 160,000 to 250,000 without end note referral. It is easy to check this out via internet search. Via Mathew White via his Necrometrics site, sadly no longer updated, he states the following......

• Witch Hunts (1400-1800)
• Wertham: 20,000
• Jenny Gibbons “Recent Developments in the Study of The Great European Witch Hunt”, Pomegranate, no.5, Lammas 1998 [http://www.interchg.ubc.ca/fmuntean/POM5a1.html] cites:
o Levack: 60,000
o Hutton: 40,000
o Barstow: 100,000, “but her reasoning was flawed” (i.e. too high.)
• Davies, Norman, Europe A History: 50,000
• Rummel: 100,000
• Bethancourt: The Killings of Witches, lists 628 named and 268,331 unnamed witches killed as of Dec. 2000, and estimates that between 20,000 and 500,000 people were killed as witches. [http://www.illusions.com/burning/burnwitc.htm?]
• M. D. Aletheia, The Rationalist's Manual (1897): 9,000,000 burned for witchcraft.
• 5 Jan. 1999 Deutsche Presse-Agentur: review of Wolfgang Behringer's Hexen: Glaube - Verfolgung - Vermarktung:
o estimates cited favorably
 Thomas Brady: 40-50,000
 Merry Wiesner: 50-100,000
 Behringer, at lowest: 30,000
o estimates cited unfavorably
 Gottfried Christian Voigt (1740-1791) extrapolated from his section of Germany to calculate 9,442,994 witches killed throughout Europe. From this came the common estimate of 9M.
 Mathilde Ludendorff (1877-1966): 9M
 Friederike Mueller-Reimerdes (1935): 9-10M
 Erika Wisselinck: 6-13 Million
• MEDIAN: Of the 15 estimate listed here, the median is 100,000. If we limit it to just the ten estimates that are cited favorably, the median falls between 50,000 and 60,000.
________Historians have an obligation to their reader to explain their research, and certainly to end note. “This realm of England is an Empire” the author states Henry VIII saying at one point but with no end note. This happens so often; there are just too many references lacking sources. ________

This read is astonishingly flawed propaganda on behalf of Anne Boleyn and some of her family, just via the poor referencing of sources alone. When sources are used, they are done to support the author in writing hagiography that is really just an advocacy of an historical position, a position of Anne Boleyn and her family as being on the correct path to some kind of future enlightenment of the Anglican England. Several times throughout the narrative the author quotes Protestant interpretation of the biblical passages from Exodus through to Revelations to support the Boleyn faction's beliefs that the Roman Catholic Church was the anti-Christ and is written in such a way as to make this at times proselytising as appose to a narrative history.

This reader has an acceptance that historians are sometimes unable to keep their own interpretations of events out of the narrative. Be that as it may, to be credible, they should not be supportive of one side of history over the other based on their own religious beliefs and certainly not on events half a century ago when to quote the author's own words there are “...accepted few facts...”.

The author quoted Anthony Denny (16 January 1501 – 10 September 1549) on pages 14 and 89 and after writing on page 180 that Anne Boleyn favoured Cambridge University men such as “...Cranmer, Dr Butts and Anthony Denny...” I researched if the author Joanna Denny could be a descendant. Wiki and other links say yes, though sources are rather tenuous. Anthony Denny was one of Henry VIII closest confidants being Groom of the Stool and was an influence in the English Reformation. Joanna Denny, 500 years later, may have been too close to the subject due to possible family ancestry to be objective.

This is a staggeringly poor history book.