Having read plenty of traditional biographies, I was looking for something different—and this book delivered. The author takes a unique approach by working with contemporary sources, including those written by people who actually knew Anne Boleyn. As the narrative progresses, it moves through centuries of evolving interpretations, ending with fictional portrayals in works many readers will already be familiar with.

While the content is quite scholarly, the book remains very accessible and engaging for general readers. I discovered many fascinating details—for example, the relationship Queen Victoria and Prince Albert had with the legacy of the Tudors. I also appreciated the summaries of various historians' views, especially since I was already familiar with some of their works.

Overall, this book offers an insightful and well-structured exploration of how Anne Boleyn has been remembered over time. It's a refreshing take for anyone who feels they've read it all when it comes to Tudor biographies.

As someone who is being introduced to Anne Boleyn (beyond the surface knowledge that I believe everyone knows of her by now), "The Many Faces of Anne Boleyn" by Helene Harrison was a great introduction to her legacy. This well-researched book is written by an author that did her master's on Anne Boleyn's image and perception throughout history.

In an academic, detail-oriented manner, we observe Anne Boleyn through the eyes of her contemporaries all the way to modern historians and pop culture. Each chapter holds a magnifying glass to one facet of her life: her education, her childhood, her love life, her marriage life, her religious beliefs, etc. Through contemporary accounts and historical research, the reader is introduced to all information shared about her as well as why or why not a certain source or anecdote is plausible or was disproven. The book is very good at sharing all viewpoints, be it by those with a high opinion of her or otherwise.

After her death, the book turns our attention to her legacy leading up to the present day. Works that feature or depict Anne Boleyn are explored one by one sharing what they delivered accurately and wasn't. Works like SIX the musical, the Tudors (2007) as well as movies and books are all introduced to the reader. I've added several of the books especially to my ever-growing TBR.

The author's passion is clear on every page, while still providing an unbiased and comprehensive read for the reader. I learned a lot. If you're interested in Anne Boleyn and her life, this is a great book to add to your list.

She’s been regarded as a witch, a concubine and a pious great Queen who changed England into a Protestant nation. This book is a comprehensive and interesting look at how Anne Boleyn has been written about through the ages, from Chapuys, the Spanish Ambassador, to the present day. There are many wildly contrasting views here. Even recently, there was a big discussion between the historians G.W. Bernard and Eric Ives on whether Anne was guilty of adultery or not.

Helene Harrison also discusses novels, films and TV series which include Anne as a character, such as The Tudors. This is probably the most accessable part of the book for many readers. Anne Boleyn is always fascinating and this book is a fine addition to reference works about her.

I received this free ebook from NetGalley in return for an honest review.

I appreciate the opportunity to read this book. I typically enjoy reading about the Tudors, however I couldn’t finish this book. I got to 22% before I stopped. It was hard to follow for me. Going from one theory to the other.

I enjoyed this read! I was just in mood for some kind of biography about her since I was always curious but knew so little

It is well researched and well written. Definitely a good introduction to Anne Boleyn

An interesting take and extremely well researched. I went into this book only knowing the barest bones of Anne Boleyn’s story, mostly attributed to pop culture. The most surprising part of this book to me was actually how much we DON’T know. Nearly all surviving sources are biased, were written years after the fact, or have been lost to time itself. The portrait that most of us picture when we think of Anne isn’t even definitively her, most of her portraits were destroyed after her execution. Anne’s life was sensationalized from the start, continuing all the way into pop culture today, after reading this book I find it comforting to know that the truth likely lies somewhere in between fact and fiction.

Thank you NetGalley for sending me this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

This was such a fascinating deep dive into not just Anne Boleyn’s life- but how she's been portrayed, and reinterpreted, over the centuries. The Many Faces of Anne Boleyn goes beyond the familiar “six wives” narrative and looks at how Anne’s image has been shaped by politics, religion, pop culture, and even fan obsession.

If you’ve ever found yourself wondering who the real Anne Boleyn was, this is a thoughtful, well-researched read.

Definitely recommended for history lovers, Tudor fans, and anyone interested in how myths are made (and remade)!!

Fantastic read!!!! Highly recommend!!! Not what I expected , but a smart thought out page turner!! Well done! I will look for other. books from this author!

4.5 ⭐️

Thank you so much to NetGalley , Pen and Sword Books and Helene Harrison for this eARC in exchange for an honest review!

I’m thrilled that I had the opportunity to read this unique take on Anne Boleyn’s life and legacy.
Harrison not only uses primary sources from the Tudor period to analyse Anne’s personality and reputation, but also pulls from modern portrayals that unveil her from many different angles. These include adaptations like Six the Musical, art, films and television series that all analyse her impact on British history.

This was unlike any biography that you would usually read. Rather than being a chronological record of her life, Harrison uses sources from 500 years ago up until the present day to speak about the composer’s relation to Anne or how they were attempting to spin the narrative of this Queen’s abrupt rise and fall. I particularly enjoyed reading about the letters that foreign ambassadors sent abroad and how they contained information about ‘The Great Matter’ and the perceived relationship between Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn.

As a strong supporter of Anne myself, and a believer of her innocence, it was striking to me to read a book that was very balanced in opinion. The author is biased at moments, but ensures to include a balance of sources that are either for Anne or against her. This book was very cleverly composed into chapters that take us from sources of the time into the last few centuries and the adaptations that have come from this history. Whilst it was written in this way, Harrison ensures to bring primary evidence into the discussion of secondary adaptations in an effort to expand the debate. It flows seamlessly, and is easy to read (with very few sections that are dense in material).

At its heart, this book is a discussion of Anne’s ‘true’ personality - the values and thoughts behind her actions and the ongoing question of whether she was guilty of the crimes that led to her demise. As much of Anne has been destroyed from this World, we are left to analyse her from the works of others (such as letters or the small messages that she has left behind in prayer books).

I don’t often read non-fiction, but requested this as I have a long-term obsession with Tudor history (particularly with Henry VIII’s wives). This book was so well researched and I would highly recommend it to anyone that enjoys reading about this period of time. I learnt so much and came away with books and films that I definitely want to read. The title of the book is apt - we see many different faces of Anne throughout history and Harrison reflects this well. It is up to the reader to decide from Harrison‘s evidence and well written arguments as to whether she was indeed guilty, or an innocent pawn of volatile men with too much power.

‘She moved from a gentlewoman to the daughter of an earl, a marquess in her own right, then a queen.’

Helene has done a marvellous job with this book, with over a decade of research!

I loved every second of it. Anne Boleyn is one of my favourites and after reading this, I just love her even more!

A must read for history readers.

‘He expected a more demure and less demanding woman as a wife. Anne bridled against this expectation, not changing as the king expected from the role of mistress to that of wife.’

Anne Boleyn, a queen whose story has lived on for centuries. She was the woman who stood between Catherine of Aragon and King Henry VIII. Her daughter, Queen Elizabeth I, was her greatest legacy and her pride and joy. It was her untimely death due to charges that many believe were unfounded. We all have our image of the infamous queen, but how does that change when we switch the type of media we consume? Helen Harrison explores how our idea of Anne Boleyn changed over time in her latest book, “The Many Faces of Anne Boleyn: Interpreting Image and Perception.”

I would like to thank Pen & Sword Books and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book. I have enjoyed Helen Harrison’s previous books on Tudor Executions and Elizabethan Rebellions. When I heard that she was writing a book about Anne Boleyn, I was curious to see what new information she would add to Tudor studies, specifically Anne Boleyn.

So, how do you approach a book like this that is not a biography but tells how Anne Boleyn has been perceived throughout the centuries? Harrison has decided that the best way to show her readers how Anne has been portrayed throughout history is by breaking this book into sections, focusing on one source of media. We get to see Anne through portraiture/images, letters/poems, through foreign dignitaries, her views on religion, on stage and screen, both the movie and television screen, as well as historical fiction.

Harrison also includes a brief biography of Anne’s life so that we can refamiliarize ourselves with her tragic tale before taking the deep dive, which is important when it comes to understanding her legacy. My favorite part of this book is seeing the different takes historians and authors have taken towards it, including everyone’s favorite, the Victorians. It gives an overview of how different historians and authors interpret a single figure and gives us a unique take on the historiography of Anne Boleyn, including G.W. Bernard, who believed that Anne was guilty of some of the charges. The fact that Harrison decided to keep her feelings towards Anne relatively neutral allows the recent research about Anne to shine.

This book is unlike any other book about Anne Boleyn that I have read. It is a comprehensive deep dive into the research around the life of Anne Boleyn that any Tudor nerd will find a fascinating resource. If you are a Tudor nerd or a fan of Anne Boleyn, “The Many Faces of Anne Boleyn: Interpreting Image and Perception” by Helen Harrison is a must-read.

I really enjoyed the book! I felt that Harrison writes in a way that is easy to digest for people who do not know a lot about Anne Boleyn or the period during the Tudors whilst Anne Boleyn was queen.

Also, I really liked how Harrison used her own research alongside other historians, from more well known Tudor historians like Alison Weir and Elizabeth Norton, to lesser known Tudor historians like G. W. Bernard and Sylvia Barbara Soberton. Adding onto this, I really like how Harrison uses actual examples and goes into depth into the examples she uses. In chapter 9 (Anne on film) for example, she includes examples of how Anne Boleyn is showcased in films and talks about not only how Anne Boleyn is portrayed but also tries to link historical context to each film

But this is a refreshing perspective on Anne Boleyn as opposed to the other biographies out there on her. Overall, I think this is a really good starting point if you are interested in learning about Anne Boleyn and how she was presented in Tudor England

A evidently well researched and well considered book about Anne Boleyn. I read it in stages as there was so much information and referencing. I would have liked to seen the images described inserted in the book, but I do not know if this was a formatting issue on the kindle. If you are interested in Anne Boleyn and her somewhat tragic story, this is the book for you. You can feel the passion of the author for her subject in every word.

I have read lots of books on The Tudors and specifically on Anne Boleyn but this was different to anything I have read about her before and I really enjoyed it. It was really interesting to see how perceptions of and about her have changed over time and it was so thought provoking to think that she is one of the most famous women in English history and yet no one really knows her at all.
I LOVED IT

Anne Boleyn - the second Queen of Henry VIII, who, to this day, continues to divide opinion. People seem to either love her or despise her. Anne has become one of the most written-about queens in English history. In the latest book about Anne, The Many Faces of Anne Boleyn: Interpreting Image and Perception, author Helene Harrison takes readers on a deep dive into the contemporary evidence for Anne's character and appearance. Harrison also explores portrayals of her in the 500 years after her execution. Thank you to Pen and Sword Books and NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book.

The Many Faces of Anne Boleyn arose out of Harrison's work on her Master's dissertation. As such, the research and passion driving Harrison’s project is evident throughout. Harrison’s The Many Faces of Anne Boleyn takes a fresh approach when compared to many of the books published about Anne. This approach includes meticulous details about contemporary accounts of Anne. It discusses perceptions of Anne during her lifetime, as well as her posthumous representation in books, television, film, and on stage. It explores why Anne's legacy has endured.

The Many Faces of Anne Boleyn: Interpreting Image and Perception by Helene Harrison is a well-written, accessible, and fascinating study of the intelligent, sophisticated, and intriguing Queen Anne Boleyn. This book is for those with a love of Tudor history, queenship, or an interest in analysing contemporary depictions of historical figures.

Helene Harrison has been interviewed about her latest book on the podcasts British History: Royals, Rebels and Romantics with Carol Ann Lloyd, and The Tudor Chest with Adam Pennington. I highly recommend listening to hear more about Harrison's work.

In "The Many Faces of Anne Boleyn," Helene Harrison sets aside the conventions of traditional biography to ask a more revealing question: not simply who Anne Boleyn was, but who she has been made to be. Harrison reconstructs the evolution of Anne's image through thematic and interdisciplinary examination, tracing her transformation from early propaganda and foreign dispatches to television scripts and feminist reappraisals. The result traces Anne Boleyn's transformation from Tudor queen to cultural phenomenon, revealing how each generation has conscripted her story for its own purposes.

Rather than retelling Anne's rise and fall chronologically, Harrison organizes her work around the interpretive scaffolding that has grown around this figure across time. Each chapter examines a distinct facet of Anne's legacy—reformer, adulteress, tragic heroine, cultural icon—while portraits are analyzed alongside propaganda and scaffold speeches placed in dialogue with pop musicals. The book demonstrates that every version of Anne, from Shakespeare's cipher to Natalie Dormer's seductive tactician, reveals less about Anne herself than about the society doing the imagining.

Harrison proves especially effective at tracing how successive generations have retooled Anne's story to suit their ideological needs. Victorian writers cast her as a cautionary tale about unbridled ambition. Mid-century filmmakers transformed her into a romantic victim. More recently, feminist scholars have elevated Anne as a woman who briefly mastered a hostile court culture through sheer determination. Through all these interpretations, Harrison remains grounded in archival evidence while never losing sight of how those very records have been filtered through bias and agenda.

The book's scholarly rigor is evident, yet so too is its accessibility. Harrison presents competing interpretations side by side—Eric Ives' principled heroine against G.W. Bernard's culpable flirt—and invites readers to weigh the evidence and reach their own conclusions. She incorporates recent discoveries with care, including Kate McCaffrey's research revealing hidden inscriptions in Anne's Book of Hours, which exposes a network of women who preserved Anne's memory at considerable personal risk. Similarly, Lucy Churchill's reconstruction of the 1534 portrait medal offers the clearest glimpse we have of Anne's actual appearance.

What distinguishes "The Many Faces of Anne Boleyn" is not merely its scope but its refusal to reduce Anne to a single meaning. Harrison recognizes that historical figures, particularly women who challenge orthodoxy, are rarely remembered cleanly. This is not a book attempting to rescue Anne from misrepresentation so much as one that maps the terrain of those misrepresentations and examines why they persist. When she explores how Anne has been portrayed in everything from "SIX The Musical" to "The Tudors," Harrison is not simply cataloging popular culture but demonstrating how these portrayals shape public understanding in ways that historians must reckon with.

The strength of Harrison's approach lies in her recognition that perception itself has a history worth studying. Her analysis of how Anne's religious beliefs have been interpreted—from Catholic provocateur to Protestant martyr to pragmatic reformer—reveals as much about changing attitudes toward faith and power as it does about Anne herself. When she examines foreign ambassadors' accounts, particularly those of Eustace Chapuys, she carefully weighs their value while acknowledging their clear partisan bias.

Ultimately, Harrison reminds us that history is not merely what happened but what we continue to say about it and that these ongoing conversations shape how we understand both past and present. Her careful mapping of Anne Boleyn's cultural afterlife offers a template for approaching any historical figure whose story has been claimed by causes they never knew existed.

Enjoyable, if a bit in the dry side. I think it would have helped if the book had been formatted a bit differently - perhaps chronologically through her life, and then discussing all the media accounts of her childhood, young women hood, and do forth. There was a good deal of redundancy as it was.

The author did her master's dissertation on depictions of Anne Boleyn throughout history. Each chapter of this book explores a topic focusing on Anne Boleyn where she offers up available documentation from various sources to hash out what is really the truth. Often times one can only speculate. One interesting aspect that was bandied around at the beginning was what she really looked like. There are a small handful of surviving paintings and drawings as well as a coin (as shown on the bookcover), and even a ring that her daughter Queen Elizabeth I used to wear that contained her picture. As I read these passages I found myself performing internet searches for these photos, wanting to scrutinize them as I was reading about it. Eventually I happened upon all the photos at the end of the book, rather than being inserted where referenced throughout the chapters. To my dismay, they were all in black and white. They would have looked so much nicer in color. The book proper ends around the 80% mark leading into an Epilogue, References/Sources/Index. Hats off to the author who obviously did a ton of research for this book. It's a good reference for accessing other authors of Tudor History (such as Eric Ives who wrote an excellent biography of Anne Boleyn).

Thank you to the publisher Pen & Sword for providing an advance reader copy via NetGalley.

I will read any book on Anne Boleyn so it’s hard to teach me something new. What is exciting about this book is not necessarily new information but the presentation of new ways of thinking. How do we interpret and think about the written, visual and contemporary sources around Anne’s life and how that creates the image we all have of Anne now. The book presents a real treasure trove of icon items and lesser known items alongside the possible meanings behind them. Fantastic book.

This book was an unexpected surprise. I am a big fan Tudor era and devoured this impartial account of Anne Boleyn’s life and legacy through historical and artistic depictions. The author is eloquent and the narrative flows very smoothly. This tome is very well researched and the glimpse it affords of Queen Anne is unprecedented. So often she is depicted just a victim of circumstance, which she was, but so much more complexity is revealed in this book.

Big thank you to Net Galley and publisher for the ARC.