The Secret Diary of Anne Boleyn

Starred review from April 21, 1997
This is a wonderfully juicy historical novel so convincing that it's difficult to believe it is the author's first. Just as the newly crowned Elizabeth I is about to become amorously involved with a power-hungry nobleman, an old friend of her mother's appears, shriveled and decrepit, bearing a tome written in the hand of the new queen's mother, Anne Boleyn. The friend had promised Anne that she would deliver the diary to Elizabeth when she reached maturity. Orphaned at age three, Elizabeth grew up knowing almost nothing of her notorious mother but what official history put forth: that she was an adulterer and traitor and deserved to die. From her mother's diary, she learns the truth, the inside scoop on the lusty, unstable King Henry, the good and pious Queen Katherine, scheming Cardinal Wolsey, high-minded Thomas More, King Francis I of France, Emperor Charles of Spain and others. Elizabeth learns, too, of her mother's life-from her youth, through her tempestuous courtship and marriage to Henry VIII, which ended with her being beheaded. Elizabeth thus becomes acquainted with the mother she had never really known at precisely the moment when she most needs a mother's advice. She picks up valuable survival skills along the way-two of which, concerning the treachery of men and the unreliability of courtiers, deeply impress the young queen and help explain the mystery of why she never wed. Painting vicious court intrigue, national and international politics and the role of the Reformation, Maxwell brings not only the two queens but all of bloody Tudor England vividly to life.