There’s So Much More To Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII

The celebrated British historians behind the new book, ’Hunting the Falcon,’ dive into the renowned Tudor king and his most talked-about wife.

The first meeting of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. (From 1835 by Fine Art Images / Heritage Images via Getty Images)

On a trip to London last year, I bought tickets to see the Tony Award-winning musical SIX in the West End. A few of you recommended it as a perfect way to fight jet lag on my first night — and you were right! For 80 minutes, the six wives of Henry VIII staged a rollicking pop concert, singing their camped-up, trimmed-down biographies in a Hamilton-esque re-imagining of royal life five centuries ago. My favorite SIX wife was Anne Boleyn, who flits around the stage enchanting and delighting the roaring crowd with her song Don’t Lose Ur Head. It’s fantastic.

And yet! SIX does to Henry’s wives what so many retellings do, painting a very specific, almost caricatured portrait. It’s great fun but you know there is so much more to each of their stories. This feels particularly true for Anne, who is often depicted as the alluring temptress who dramatically seduces Henry away from Katherine of Aragon. I was eager to dive much deeper into the 1530s and Anne’s story, to better understand how she met the king, why their courtship lasted so long, and what went wrong in their short marriage that led to her brutal beheading. But I wasn’t sure where to start — there are so (very) many accounts of this period.

Enter John Guy and Julia Fox, the husband-and-wife pair and celebrated British historians who are out with a new book about Henry and his most-talked about wife. Hunting the Falcon: Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn, and the Marriage that Shook Europe is a forensic retelling of the couple’s time together, the result of extensive research in England and France. For all the information it imparts, Hunting the Falcon is written in an incredibly compelling way, packed with details that amaze and haunt.

Tina Brown (yes, that Tina Brown) called the book “thrilling.” A bit more from her rave review in the New York Times:

“It is also hard to believe there is scope for yet another doorstop biography of Anne of a thousand books, but ’Hunting the Falcon’ is a fierce, scholarly tour de force. The authors, a husband-and-wife historian team, are a dream pairing. There is an intensity to their research — the sleuthing through water-damaged documents hiding in musty collections; the reinterpreted ciphers and signatures in Tudor missives singed by fire; the telling marginalia in manuscripts and folios; the pithy asides from courtiers in disregarded journals…’Hunting the Falcon’ brilliantly shows how time, circumstance and politics combined to accelerate Anne’s triumph and tragedy.”

I Zoomed with Guy and Fox as they shared their encyclopedic knowledge of the Tudor period. These two writers know this time in history, and these pivotal people, so well that they finish each other’s sentences. (Guy’s previous books include studies of Mary Queen of Scots, which became the 2018 movie, as well as Elizabeth I and Thomas More; Fox has written on Jane Boleyn and Katherine of Aragon.)  

Below you will find excerpts of our admittedly Anne-focused conversation (that was my doing), explaining what prompted a re-think — and a less-harsh rewrite — of her between drafts, how Anne was crowned queen in her own right, the actual receipts they found for Anne’s French fashion (plus more on her trademark headpiece), and so much more. My sincere thanks to the authors for their time and insights.

You can find Hunting the Falcon at your local independent bookstore, Amazon, Bookshop.org or wherever you get your books.

So Many Thoughts on Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII

John Guy and Julia Fox (Courtesy photo)

Please note: This conversation has been edited and condensed. Our discussion touches briefly on sensitive topics, including Anne’s miscarriages and her execution.

Before we dive into the subject at hand, I want to understand what made you want to write this book together? I would think it would be challenging to co-author something with one’s spouse.

Julia Fox: We have always read each other’s work and occasionally we have written bits and pieces for each other’s books, which have just sort of slotted in, really, haven’t we? It was a natural progression, I suppose. 

John Guy: Julia’s absolutely right. She once wrote a chapter in one of my books when I was very pressed for my deadline. 

Fox: Nobody noticed! 

Guy: And I did the same for one of her books. Occasionally we do each other’s journalism. We read each other’s work and we edit each other’s work, it ends up as if it’s single authored. Our styles blend together.

It also helped that Julia started out knowing more about the Boleyns than I did and I probably knew more about Henry than she did. It was a natural synergy. When we offered this, the publishers thought it would be quite fun and different to have a book on Henry and Anne written by a husband and wife team. We were sort of quite surprised by that.

Fox: The story of a married couple by married couple. I remember being at a book festival and one of the questions from the audience was, “What are you going to do next?” And I said, “I’m going to write a book with my husband.” I could see the face of this lady sitting in the front row. She was shaking her head and mouthing, “No, no, don’t do it,” which was quite funny. 

“If you were going on a girl’s night out, you would go with Anne of all the wives.” — Julia Fox

Let’s talk about your research process and why you chose to focus on Anne, as opposed to Henry’s other wives. 

Fox: There’s always been more interest in Anne than in any of the others, actually. I suppose it’s the tragedy of the end and the fact that she was clearly — well, we think — not guilty of anything. She overstepped the mark sometimes; when she spoke to people, she was a bit over familiar. Catherine Howard had overstepped the mark far more than that. But with Anne, there is this fascination. And certainly, if you were going on a girl’s night out, you would go with Anne of all the wives. 

Guy: For me, it was also a research challenge because nothing before has ever been done on Anne in France in any serious or systematic way. And of course, because I had worked on Mary Queen of Scots, I knew the French archives — that was a key part of it and that paid absolute dividends. The whole new take on the book centers on the French angle and the discovery that almost every step forwards or backwards in this relationship — and in this marriage — map completely to the state of Anglo-French diplomacy at the time.

You wrote this book in the height of the pandemic. How did that affect your research?

Guy: In a perverse way, the pandemic came to our aid. Just as we signed up for this book, knowing that it would involve six months work in France, we were not able to go. We found the French archivists to be absolutely brilliant. We wrote to them, we explained the situation, they digitized what we needed for very relatively small amounts of money. 

In my research for Mary Queen of Scots, 20 years ago, I had to take notes with a pencil in a supervised reading room — the old-fashioned way. Anybody who does research knows [the disconnect between] what you note on the day and then what you actually think of many months later: Oh, I know there was something in that manuscript, but I didn’t write that bit down. We could have the whole caboodle up on the screen and look at it whenever we want. 

Can you share an example of something you found in your research?

Guy: The treaty of mutual aid with Francis I, a treaty no one in Britain had ever heard of because Henry’s copy was lost. We found Francis’s copy in the Archives Nationales in Paris. It is the most important treaty ever agreed between England and France so far in the whole of the history of the Norman Conquest. Francis is promised to offer Henry aid in terms of troops, money, ships, whatever, if he was attacked. And if Francis is attacked, Henry will come to his aid with ships, men, money and so on. 

It was on the strength of that that Anne and Henry then go to the summit with Francis in October of 1532. And it’s because of that summit, and the way that Francis treats Anne — as if she were already queen — and dances with her and gives her expensive gifts. It’s on the strength of that recognition from Francis that Anne then agrees to sleep with Henry. 

Fox: We’ll just throw in that one of the gifts from Francis was a massive bed, which is rather nice. [Laughs]

Guy: A sort of great, great hint. It was commissioned from a person who turns out to be the Prada or Dior or whatever it might be of beds, absolutely the top luxury provider in Paris.

“He’s going to kill her, but he’s going to kill her the easiest and least painful way” — John Guy

I want to rewind to the beginning of the book, which opens with Anne’s death. Why start there? 

Guy: Truth be told, I pulled the same stunt in my book on Mary Queen of Scots, which starts with the execution. From a creative point of view, it means you don’t have two mega climaxes at the end. The final climax is at the front of the book — dramatically, theatrically, creatively, that’s quite effective. You want to hook somebody.

Fox: It also shows the way in which this wonderful love story has had this terrible, chilling end — that Henry, who adored her, could do this. We wanted to bring that to people’s attention.

She knelt down, because of course if you are going to be beheaded with a sword, you don’t need a block. [The headsman] will slice through the air and slice off that head. But before that happened, Anne kept looking over her shoulder. We kept wondering, because it’s perfectly possible, whether she really did think: Okay, he’s done this. He doesn’t mean it. I’m going to get a last minute pardon. Which shows she didn’t really know quite as much about her husband as she thought.

I didn’t realize until I read your book that Henry paid a lot of money for a “specialist headsman” from France.

Guy: Although it’s often interpreted as being a benign final gesture — he’s going to kill her, but he’s going to kill her the easiest and least painful way — it could also be rather a nasty sardonic reference to the fact that her whole life has been dominated by France.

The details in your account are so frightfully vivid, all of which are cited. How did you weave the facts your research uncovered into such a compelling narrative?

Guy: John Spelman, the judge who was actually [at Anne’s execution], wrote in this notebook that Anne’s head fell to the ground with her eyes still moving. You couldn’t make that up! Or, if you put that in without a source reference, everybody would say you’d made it up.

The hard bit is always mingling the public and the private. What readers on the whole don’t want is a heavy duty chapter on politics followed by light relief on the family. And of course, it’s all related. In the 19th century, there were people who were really adroit at narrative history, even if their research wasn’t always a hundred percent by 21st century standards. And we have tried to do that in this book. It was a jigsaw with thousands and thousands of pieces and connections to piece together. But we made it, didn’t we?

Fox: I think a lot of that, too, is the fact that because we are married, we are together 24 hours a day and we discuss a lot. When you do these books, these people move in with you. They really do come into your house. They’re sitting on the back seat of your car. And I think that does make a difference.

“If she had had male children, happily in the nursery, then she could turn a blind eye to any infidelity that Henry might have. But because she couldn’t, anything is a threat.” — Julia Fox

Did you find yourself playing parts or taking sides?

Fox: No, I don’t think we ever did. We really did try to be completely impartial. You might say, “Well, I don’t think she would’ve done this” or “I think this actually would be wrong for Henry.” But we didn’t take sides.

Guy: If we’re totally candid, we had set up fairly early on in our thinking and writing and conversations, we pretty much think we got Henry. Between the first draft and the really big rewrite, we really refined our view of Anne. I think the first time round we were a little bit harsh. That’s become very fashionable, of course, to be harsh on Anne: Sharp tongue, quick temper, all of those things.

Fox: Which she had, but!

Guy: Once you understand the vulnerability of being a commoner in the situation in which she is in a relationship with a king. For the six-plus years of their courtship, she is the flavor of the month — or the day — for much of the time. Then Henry goes back to Katherine [of Aragon] and he can’t divest himself of Katherine. There’s the uncertainty. Anne says at one point how her youth and fertility are perhaps waning. There is all this wasted time, all this wasted youth, basically: Get on with it and make your mind up.

And then Anne was not popular at court. Katherine had been so popular. Even when Anne is married, even when she’s crowned, there are all these backbiters, and then of course it is all depending on the relations with France. Plus what’s happening on the gynecological front. Henry didn’t mind that the first child was a girl. Then she had essentially a stillbirth, it is often described miscarriage but it was the third trimester. Then she had another miscarriage and Henry starts to read the situation and looks at another woman, as he occasionally does. Anne then feels vulnerable because of the situation.

Fox: If she had had male children, happily in the nursery, then she could turn a blind eye to any infidelity that Henry might have. But because she couldn’t, anything is a threat.

Was there a moment in that first draft that prompted this Anne re-think?

Guy: It was a nagging worry because you could pick up so often where she lashes out. 

Fox: There are plenty of examples, particularly towards Henry’s illegitimate son or her own uncle, when you start to think: She doesn’t need to be quite this unpleasant. And then you think: Well, actually, hang on. She does. 

Guy: She’s so vulnerable. 

When you’re doing the first draft and you are on a particular run, you keep on with that until the end. When we came back, we thought, This is a little bit too harsh. It doesn’t change the facts, it doesn’t change the history, but it’s how you interpret the situation. 

Can we talk about how Anne was crowned queen? That was fascinating to learn more about.

Guy: Anne was not just crowned like any other queen consort. She was crowned as a sovereign, a queen.

Fox: If you saw the coronation of King Charles with Camilla, Charles sits on St. Edward’s chair, the coronation chair. That is for the monarch. So what does Anne sit on when she’s crowned? That chair. The Archbishop placed on her head King Edward’s crown, the state crown, the sovereign’s crown. Not the consort’s crown. She was crowned not as a consort but as queen regnant. We have no other example of this.

“Once he’s got her, once she’s his wife, suddenly he needs to assert control. Masculinity kicks in.” — John Guy

Having just seen a coronation, that feels particularly notable, doesn’t it? What was the thinking there?

Guy: There is reason to hypothesize or speculate, which we don’t do too much in the book because that’s not what we do. We are not selling gossip and speculation, we’re selling history. Henry knew a lot about Byzantine history and, in the Byzantine tradition, the emperor and the empress could be co-sovereigns and share different bits of sovereignty. Somebody could look after, say, foreign policy and international affairs. The other half could look after, say, religion and welfare and domestic policy. There are quite a lot of examples of that. 

There’s good reason to think that Henry might have been planning a joint coronation in which they were both crowned as co-sovereigns. But remember, Anne is very pregnant — and very visibly pregnant — by the time she’s crowned. And, of course, Henry’s Henry. What that means is that once he’s got her, once she’s his wife, suddenly he needs to assert control. Masculinity kicks in. The sort of indulgence that he had given to Anne beforehand contracts a bit. Anne does achieve an enormous amount, as we say. But there’s reason to think, and I think we came to the view, that in a way, her wings are being clipped a bit by Henry’s desire for control.

Fox: His control is absolutely intense. For example, when [their daughter] Elizabeth is born, Anne wants to choose her nurse and she actually chooses somebody. Henry overrules her and insists on somebody else. 

Guy: Anne actually wanted to bring Elizabeth up herself and she is told, no, this is for the king. This is because this child is in the succession.

Anne Boleyn in her trademark French hood (Image via Getty Images)

I write a lot about fashion and royal style. Anne has such a specific look etched into our minds. I’m wondering what fashion meant to her?

Fox: You had to reflect your royalty, your specialness through your clothing, through magnificence. The clothing Anne chose — other than for her execution, which is a slightly different thing — was basically French fashion. 

In particular, she had a special headdress: the French hood. It’s a bit like an Alice band, I don’t know if you call it that in the states? It could be jeweled, it could be decorated, and it was very flattering. English women tended to wear this horribly unflattering headdress known as the gable headdress, which was like the sort of slanted gables you could get on a roof.  But Anne sported this wonderful French hood, always. It was a trademark. 

I must mention the duck. Interestingly, if you go to Hever Castle, one of the things you can buy in the gift shop is, believe it or not, a little rubber duck to put in the bath. Our granddaughter adores it! The one for Anne has a French hood. 

But she opts for something different at her execution, doesn’t she?

Fox: She wants to emphasize her Englishness, and she chooses a gable headdress. But that wasn’t really Anne.

Guy: There’s another occasion also when she wears a gable headdress. In 1534, she has a proof copy made of a medal to celebrate the birth of the son she believe she was expecting. It’s cast in lead, which seems very odd because that’s not a metal that you would use for something that was going to be important and distributed. But it would be fine for a proof version. It’s also heavily sort of basically hammered across the face, again a possible sign that it was a proof copy for something never issued that was then destroyed. In this, she’s wearing a gable headdress because that reflected her Englishness at the time that she believed she was giving birth to a son, an heir for Henry. It’s quite important because it happens to be one of the genuine likenesses of Anne actually from the time when she was alive. 

This was hundreds of years ago, so aside from likenesses of her how can we know what she wore?

Guy: There are very, very boring financial accounts of things purchased for the royal household. When you plow through them, you can actually find all the clothes Anne ordered and the clothes she ordered for other people. Not all of them — the rats and the vermin and the dampness are very visible on these files. But you can find lots of stuff. In the Privy Purse accounts, which are not there for the whole reign but they are there for a lot of the period of the courtship, you can see what she’s having brought to her and made. She ordered loads of hunting stuff, dress, horse saddles, bridals, horse accouterments. Of course, they are all in the French style.

Fox: When Jane Seymour comes along, she switches everything. Now it’s back to good old English dress, English gable headdresses. Get rid of all your French hoods, ladies.

As we close, I’m wondering if there’s anything you would like us to know about Henry or Anne — a final sentiment, perhaps?

Guy: If you go to the website of the Vatican Library, you can see for yourself Henry’s love letters to Anne, 17 of them, and you can read them.

Fox: They are very revealing of Henry. Henry nearly always, all over the show, gets a bad press. But you read those letters and he really is bearing his soul. They are endearing. He’ll put “AB” in a heart his own handwriting 

Guy: As if he’s a love-sick school boy carving something into a tree.

Fox: Yes. I think people should see that. For both of those people, it was a journey that touched them. Henry doesn’t just execute Anne on a whim. He has been brought to believe wrongly that she had almost bewitched him, that she was evil. The idea that he just did it because he wanted to, for Jane Seymour, ’Let’s get rid of this one. I’ll have another please’ — it isn’t like that. There’s a lot more to it. There’s a lot more thought.

For Anne, don’t just think of her as a termagant. Don’t just think of her as somebody — alright, who likes pastime with good company, that was Henry’s song, of course. But in her chamber, she was a serious woman as well. She was a religious woman. She really did want to make a difference. She was interested in poor relief, she was interested in public works. She gave a load of money away in charity. She was not just flibbertigibbet who likes her beautiful diamonds, her wonderful dresses, all of those things. There’s more to her.

My thanks to John Guy and Julia Fox! I loved this conversation so much. You can find Hunting the Falcon at your local independent bookstore, Amazon, Bookshop.org or wherever you get your books.