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.

Helene Harrison, The Many Faces of Anne Boleyn Interpreting Image and Perception, Pen & Sword | Pen & Sword History, July 2025.

Thank you, NetGalley and Pen & Sword for providing me with this uncorrected proof for review.

Helene Harrison’s forensic approach to discovering Anne Boleyn is a remarkable enterprise, and one that provides a welcome addition to the myriads of interpretations that have already been written. Harrison’s perceptiveness is an asset in considering the immense range of sources she investigates. These are primary and secondary sources, all of which she appraises with almost a gimlet eye. Her understanding of other writers’ and film/television makers’ interpretations is acute, critical at times, but recognising the importance of others’ contribution to creating an understanding of this elusive woman. That Anne Boleyn is elusive can, of course, be questioned. After all, she has been the subject of so many books, films, and television series. However, where so much has been partisan, it is useful to try to stand back, look at the material and, as Harrison has done, investigate.

These investigations are detailed and cover the following topics: portraiture and image; Anne as mistress, queen, mother, reformer, tragic heroine, and traitor; Anne through foreign eyes; and Anne on stage, in film and television series, and in books. The historiography, where Harrison considers the material available and acknowledges that new research is always likely to occur and will enhance what is known, is an excellent read. She refers to widely divergent accounts; exhibitions; and a summary of various interpretations of Anne: her impact, life, and legacy. Harrison’s introduction to the Epilogue refers to the fun she had in writing about Anne Boleyn. This permeates the work, making it fun to read while not undermining the value as an important and serious text.

There are notes for each at the end of the book, an index and the graphics are well presented and described. Readers of historical fiction will be pleased to see Alison Weir, Hilary Mantel and Phillipa Gregory in the index, under the subheading ‘in literature’, but there is more – letters and older texts such as Foxe’s Book of Martyrs and Bacon’s Tragedy of Anne Boleyn; headings such as the chronology, personal aspects and relationships are helpful; and topics such as feminism appear.

While studying Tudor History at university in the 1970s the lecturer referred to Anne of A Thousand Days being a useful addition to the advised academic sources. Helene Harrison’s reference to this film, among other non-academic sources resonated with me. To capture the way in which Anne Boleyn’s image has been perceived requires a though investigation, one that is open to the wide variety of sources available, and one that is generous in acknowledging the validity of such sources. Helene Harrison’s, The Many Faces of Anne Boleyn Interpreting Image and Perception, has achieved this.

I read it in one day.!
This digital review copy was my wish request through NetGalley and Pen and Sword Publishing, UK. Thank you so much. Author, Helene Harrison researches every aspect of Anne Boleyn’s life through the lens and representation of drawings, medals and portraiture. Fresh perspective on a woman we think we know. Published July 2025 in the UK Pen and Sword Publishing and in the USA September 2025.

The Tudors and Anne Boleyn in particular continue to have an enduring hold on people, and I am no different, so when I saw this book promised a different look at her, I was so excited to be able to get an ARC.

I really enjoyed the look at Anne Boleyn post her death - so many books on her tend to either stop following her death or at the latest, in the reign of Elizabeth. Instead, we have chapters that focus on how Anne is perceived on screen, stage, and in books - both in novels and non-fiction. Its a fascinating dive into how even today she can be such a polarising figure.

The author holds off sharing her own views too much, instead discussing what other people think, and I would have been interested to read more about where her research has lead her in regards to topics such as if any of the paintings are actually of her for example. It was still brilliant to see all the different views and the author has done an incredible job of drawing all these sources together into one readable book.

A skilful, engaging look at this most notorious of Queens.

Helene Harrison’s latest book is a fascinating examination of how Anne Boleyn has been viewed over the last 500 years. It discusses Anne’s portrayal in art, literature and popular culture in her own time all the way to the 21st Century and shows how previous opinions about Anne are being reframed. The author’s wide ranging and extensive research shines through, making this an excellent addition to the collection of anyone interested in Tudor history and the enigmatic Anne.
Thanks to Netgalley and Pen and Sword books for the chance to read and review this wonderful book.

This was such as interesting read. It was intriguing to see Anne in many different lights throughout history. If you are interested in history, this is a good read!

I pretty much annihilated this book in two days flat as I couldn’t put it down. I think Anne Boleyn has captured the imagination of many (especially those with an interest in history and the Tudor era in general) so to read a book that analysed her many perceptions and faces through literature, letters and media was a super interesting take on it all.

I loved the whole make up of this book and how it was structured. It flowed easily and I had no problem consuming hours at a time of this book. My attention was utterly held and I learnt a lot from it too. It felt thorough yet also clear in what was going to be discussed and introduced this topic well. So it’s great for the history buff and casual reader alike.

I got a really good picture of Anne Boleyn’s character as what presented through the written letters and communications of the time but also really enjoyed an analysis of her presentation in media and the present day.

I could feel the authors extensive research and passion for the subject through the pages too. I absolutely love reading about this topic and it certainly fed my interest and curiosity. Enjoyable read!

A well-researched in-depth analysis of the various facets related to Anne Boleyn’s life. This narrative addresses the royal biases around Anne and the way media has rewritten pivotal facts. This is a deep dive into the truest accounts to this date that we know of related to Anne. A narrative that demystifies centuries of rumors and a King’s attempt to write Anne out of history. Genuinely interesting read for those interested in the Tudors.
Each essay focuses on a central aspect related to Annes life or the way Anne’s life has been portrayed through various medias. Considerations are made for missing information, cultural context, and the current artifacts that remain from Anne’s reign as Queen. This is a great example of a non-fiction narrative that pulls the passion from their fingertips in riveting essays. Thank you Netgalley and Pen & Sword for this advanced digital copy!

Now normally I don't read ARC copies of nonfiction but since I have a deep love for Tudor History I would give this a try. What makes this this unique is that it isn't a biography of Anne Boleyn's life but more of an account of how she is viewed whether it be a portrait or even how she is portrayed in cinema. We also hear of accounts of people who knew her and had a good high opinion and then there were those who hated her. Now that is something that everyone will almost encounter in everyday life. Now in my opinion I think Anne Boleyn was a very refined person what with her time spent in the Netherlands with Margaret of Austria and her time in the French Court. Overall this was a very interesting take on the life of Anne Boleyn.
I received an arc copy from Netgalley and all opinions are of my own