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HISTORY:The Lady in the Tower - The Fall of Anne BoleynBy Alison Weir Jonathan Cape, 416pp. £20
IT IS difficult to avoid the Tudors these days. They pop up on cinema screens, television channels, in this year’s Man Booker-winning novel, in booksellers’ catalogues and now in this account of Anne Boleyn’s trial and execution by Alison Weir. Anne was only Henry VIII’s second wife but she had the unenviable double distinction of being the first woman to become Queen of England through an annulment and also the first to be executed. In April 1536, she was convicted of plotting with five men to murder the king and create a new dynasty. The men were decapitated by axe and, although she was initially condemned to be burned at the stake, Henry commuted the sentence to decapitation by sword. In an early example of free movement of labour within Europe the executioner of St Omer was brought over for the occasion because his English counterparts lacked the necessary experience. It was an ignominious end to a meteoric rise to fame and Anne’s failure to provide her husband with a male heir was at the root of the problem.
