"You have to clear your mind, when you do something like this, of all previous conceptions about it," she says. But Weir says she was emphatically not trying to clear her subject. "I think I've made a better case than ever before for Thomas Cromwell - Henry VIII's principal secretary - being the prime mover in the case against Anne Boleyn," Weir says.Īt times, The Lady in the Tower reads almost like it was written by a private investigator or a lawyer trying to build a case on Boleyn's behalf. And I've come to a pretty definite conclusion as to whether or not she was innocent or guilty."Īlison Weir has written acclaimed popular biographies of Henry VIII, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Elizabeth I and more. was sent for before her trial, thus preempting the verdict.
"She wasn't executed where people think she was, she wasn't imprisoned where people think she was, she's not buried where people think she was," Weir says. "All these revelations came toward the end of my research, and it was one excitement after another, basically - as far as an historian is concerned."
"I was quite astonished," she tells NPR's Guy Raz. A history book written with all the intrigue and tension of a novel, Weir's just-published The Lady in the Tower is what the author calls "a forensic investigation" of the queen's last four monthsĪnd what the investigation turned up surprised Weir. It was in part the inexorability of that judgment that made historian Alison Weir want to take a closer look at Anne Boleyn's story. She was executed nonetheless, on and 11 days later the king married Jane Seymour, the third of his six wives. A few days before she was beheaded for plotting to kill her husband, King Henry VIII of England, the fallen queen stood before her accusers and essentially accused them of railroading her. Right up until the very end, Anne Boleyn professed her innocence. The Lady in the Tower: The Fall of Anne Boleyn
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