History is not distant.
It is the foundation we stand upon – shaped by decisions, beliefs and struggles that did not begin with us.
We inherit a world already in motion.
“THE TIME WILL COME”: Anne Boleyn, Judgement, and the Tower Letter
March 13, 2026Blog, History, Writing
In Anne Boleyn’s Book of Hours, still held at Hever Castle, she wrote the phrase Le Temps Viendra, “the time will come,” beneath an image of the Last Judgement. The moment when every soul is called to stand before God. The author of...
Anne Boleyn’s Tower Letter. Some historians say it is a forgery. Let us look at that claim carefully. Two manuscript copies survive. The Cotton MS Otho C X is held within the collection of Sir Robert Cotton, a respected antiquarian...
Some historians say it is a forgery. But there is something hiding in plain sight that nobody has noticed. Something so subtle that even scholars with strong biblical knowledge have missed it for nearly five centuries. On Passion...
ANNE BOLEYN – Dead Men’s Shoes: The Evidence We Should Have Questioned
March 13, 2026Blog, History, Writing
We all know the story. We have heard it a hundred times. Anne Boleyn, 29th April 1536, allegedly turning to Henry Norris and saying “You look for dead men’s shoes, for if aught came to the King but good, you would look to have me.”...
A LOST PALETTE… or Just Bartolozzi’s Eye? ? Letting the Engraving Speak for Itself
December 1, 2025Blog, History, Writing
When the Windsor sketch has been discussed as a possible likeness of Anne Boleyn, it has been suggested that Francesco Bartolozzi’s 1797 colour stipple engraving offers visual evidence that the sitter’s hair was originally darker....
In 1535, a grim prophecy circulated through England’s uneasy court: “When the Tower is white and another place green, then shall be burned three bishops and a queen.” — attributed to the Abbot of Garadon Many believed...
Did Henry VIII Try to Erase Anne Boleyn From History? The Primary Sources Say Yes — And the Usual Excuses Don’t Hold Up. A popular new argument insists Henry VIII didn’t try to erase Anne Boleyn, that dismantling her...
“It is neither safe nor right to go against conscience. Here I stand; I can do no other. God help me. Amen.” — Martin Luther, Diet of Worms (1521) The word occult comes from the Latin occultus – meaning hidden. It...
“The Law of God is eternal and cannot be changed, though heaven and earth pass away.” — Martin Luther, Lectures on Galatians (1535) The oldest heresy was obedience. When witch hunters spoke of the “witches’...
And thus I take my leave of the world and of you all.
Tracy Borman recently claimed in her 2025 book “The Stolen Crown”: “It’s a big statement, but it’s a statement I stand by because technically, legally, he [James I] did steal it. Elizabeth didn’t...
A TALE OF TWO PORTRAITS: How Preservation Patterns Reveal True Identity
July 4, 2025Blog, History, Writing
The Case of the Mislabelled Blonde and the Anonymous Brunette In British history, how a portrait survived often tells us more about who it depicts. The preservation stories of two Holbein drawings – the famous “Windsor...
ANNE BOLEYN AND SIR THOMAS WYATT: A Love That Lingered in Silence
April 23, 2025Blog, History, Writing
Sir Thomas Wyatt – courtier, diplomat, and the man who brought the sonnet to English shores – was no stranger to danger or desire. But behind the politics and poetry lies a question that still lingers:Did he love Anne...
ANNE BOLEYN’S LAST LETTER TO KING HENRY VIII – But did Anne write the letter?
July 9, 2024Blog, History, Writing
On 6th May 1536, Anne Boleyn wrote a letter to her husband King Henry VIII from the Tower of London where she was awaiting trial, accused of adultery, incest with her brother, diabolical witchcraft and imagining the King’s death. But...
Anne Boleyn might be most famous for having her head cut off by Henry VIII, but Henry’s second wife was also a committed religious reformer. Just how radical her views were for the time is revealed by her favourite sayings, which she...
Remember, remember 5th November, gunpowder, treason and plot. In modern times, Guy Fawkes Night has become known as Bonfire Night. However, the bonfire has a place of its own in our history, one that predates the Catholic conspirators’...
Loves rules without rules
It’s that time of year again when stories of ghosts and witches take hold of the imagination. This year my research has taken me into Tudor palaces, castles, churches, and abbeys to examine witch marks to better understand the witch...
When this giant spider crawled across the floor in front of me, I looked online and found it took its name, the Cardinal Spider, after Henry VIII’s chief minister Cardinal Wolsey. Legend says Wolsey was terrified of these giant...
The mind of man is as hard to try as that of the Devil
‘More wine,’ Henry shouted to his cupbearer. ‘We are having a Camelot-themed joust. Anne would make a good Guinevere, would she not, Tom?’ ‘No,’ Wyatt said, softly, his eyes narrowing. ‘I think Anne would make a much better...
Becoming Anne: New 2022 exhibition at her childhood home Christmas 1526 Hever Castle Anne Boleyn gives in to King Henry VIII and sends him a love token – a pendant depicting a solitary maiden riding a storm-tossed sea inside a...
HENRY VIII AND HIS QUEEN OF SHEBA: – the Holbein miniature that gives us a rare glimpse of the dynamics of Henry and Anne’s relationship
February 11, 2022Blog, Gallery, History
In 1534, Hans Holbein, the King’s court painter, painted a miniature of the biblical King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba thought to refer to Henry’s establishment of the Church of England and the difficulties he had faced...
Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey, became 3rd Duke of Norfolk upon his father’s death on 21st May 1524. He was the brother of Elizabeth Boleyn and uncle to Queen Anne Boleyn, on whom he famously passed a sentence of death’....
COURAGE IS MAGIC: Before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish into air…
November 29, 2021Blog, Writing
It had rained for three days. The River Eden was close to bursting its banks, and the roads were thick with mud. Given his age and the horrendous weather, Anne wondered whether Archbishop Warham would make the journey from Maidstone...
Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII’s relationship has intrigued historians for centuries. Theirs was a relationship that changed the course of English history, but what do we know of Anne and Henry, the people? Little survives of Anne as...
On 15th May 1536, Anne Boleyn, the second wife of King Henry VIII, was found guilty of high treason. The final writ of 18th May 1536, reads: Anne, late queen of England, lately our wife, recently attainted and convicted of high treason...
Anne quickly approached the great hall, where the babble of voices grew louder. One voice stood out, energetic and mischievous. She tiptoed closer. The voice belonged to a middle-aged chaplain clad in long wool robes trimmed with fur,...
SPEAK OF THE DEVIL: – and he’s sure to appear, speak in a whisper, he’s got a big ear.
October 31, 2021Blog, History, Writing
The subject of the Devil is a fascinating one – of an eternal rival to God. The Bible refers to the Devil as the ‘Master of Reversal’ and Satan, Lucifer, and Eve’s tempting serpent. Pagans called the Devil...
Henry VIII’s Reformation Parliament, which sat from 1529 to 1536, fundamentally changed the nature of Parliament and of English government. The King summoned it in order to settle what was called his ‘great matter’,...
THE INSPIRATION BEHIND CASTELL BONHOMME – Dunnottar Castle, Scotland
August 29, 2021Blog, History, Writing
The path that led to the donjon wound along a narrow ridge edged by a low wall. As they got closer, Anne realised Jean’s home was a formidable fortress. Its white tuffeau stone shimmered in the fading sun. She imagined what it would...
On Monday 15th May 1536 at nine o’clock in the morning, Queen Anne Boleyn was bought into the King’s Hall at the Tower of London to be tried. Anne had feasted in this hall three years ago on the eve of her coronation. Now judges sat...
In the sixteenth century dolls were used as way of promoting new styles of dress in different countries. Mrs Orchard lifted the lid on the great walnut coffer and took out a doll dressed in the German style. ‘Greta!’ Anne...
On the night of 28th January 1547, at the age of 55, Henry VIII died at Whitehall Palace in London. Contemporary accounts describe a king whose health had severely declined, though specific medical diagnoses remain matters of...
Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.
Anne watched Lady Boleyn coo and fuss over her granddaughter lying naked on a fleece by the fire. At the King’s command, Mary had called her baby Catherine. The nursemaid handed Lady Boleyn fresh swaddling, and she wrapped her...
Her (That Brunette) that did set our country in a roar.
The timing of Christmas has its roots in paganism. Pagans celebrated the winter solstice, believing that in the darkness of winter, the sun would return to the earth, bringing warmth and light so a new cycle of life could begin. Over...
In Tudor times, Westminster was a sprawling cluster of buildings that stretched over 23 acres from Holborn in the east – the city’s legal quarter – to open fields beyond the abbey in the west. Within the complex of...
GUNPOWDER TREASON AND PLOT – What if the plotters had succeeded?
November 4, 2019Blog, History, Writing
Every 5 November, we light bonfires and retell the story of Guy Fawkes, who plotted to blow up the Houses of Parliament. Guy Fawkes and his twelve co-conspirators hoped to kill the Protestant King James I of England and VI of Scotland,...
Today, nothing remains of the Tudor manor house at Greenwich, otherwise known as the Palace of Placentia. During the English Civil War, Oliver Cromwell turned it into a biscuit factory and then a prisoner of war camp. By 1660 it...
People ask me all the time why I am so concerned with looking back at the past. They say it like it is a criticism, and usually proceed to tell me that it is the here and now that matters, not what people did or thought 500 years ago....
THE BURNING QUESTION – Why were so many women burnt as witches?
October 17, 2019Blog, History, Writing
Believe it or not, witches were once celebrated. Halloween or All Hallows’ Evening, as the early Christians called it, was a feast day. It originates in the Pagan belief that the Grim Reaper or the Leveller brings forth ancestral...
From the wicked who assail me, from my mortal enemies who surround me.
Mention Henry VIII and everyone can picture the King. His wide foot pose, elaborate silhouette, and jewel-encrusted clothes. Forget the 1980s, the Tudors were the first power dressers. They used clothes to convey their majesty and...
In the winter of 1521, Anne Boleyn arrived in London. It was probably her first time in the city and is likely that she came by ship. Whenever possible, the gentry avoided London’s plague-ridden streets. The bells of Saint Paul’s would...
Henry VIII is famous for executing two of his six wives. Was he also capable of taking a woman without her consent? William Webb, the Keeper of Westminster Sanctuary, accused the king of just that in 1535. The State Papers of 1537...
In his lifetime Thomas Cromwell was called the most hated man in England. He was born a commoner, became an earl, and died a traitor. His dissolution of the monasteries was the largest single act of privatisation the country has ever...
Henry VIII began his reign in 1509 as a charismatic, vibrant young man. He ended it in 1547, a bloated, blood-stained monster. He had put two of his wives to death, sacked the monasteries and plundered their wealth. But Henry VIII’s...
Westminster Abbey and Palace once stood on a small island known as Thorney Island, where the river Tyburn and the river Fleet meet the Thames. The maps of 1593 show the entry points, north and south of Westminster Abbey, where the...
On this day in 1536, Passion Sunday, Anne Boleyn had her chaplain, John Skip, preach an audacious sermon in the Royal Chapel at Greenwich Palace. It was a strike against her enemies at court, and it caused something of a sensation....
Anne Boleyn has arguably had more impact on the nation than any other queen of England, and yet she is remembered mainly for her death that she met on the scaffold on 19th May 1536, for treason and adultery. Nearly everything we know...
Le temps viendra. [The time will come]
I began researching martyrdom for my book because I wanted to understand why people were prepared to die for their beliefs. In total 288 people were estimated to have burned for heresy in the reign of Bloody Mary. Several thousand died...
Hever Castle in Kent was the childhood home of Anne Boleyn, King Henry VIII’s ill-fated second wife of 1000 days who was executed for treason on 19 May 1536. Anne spent much of her childhood here before her father sent her to the...
Circa Regna tonat. [Thunder rolls around the throne]
Sometime in 1521, Anne Boleyn, learned that her father had arranged a marriage for her with her cousin James Butler, her father’s rival for the title of Earl of Ormonde, in order to settle their land dispute. At the time she learnt of...
Almost 500 years ago England broke from Europe and dispensed with Papal authority. There was as much opposition then as there is today. So why, nearly five hundred years later, is history repeating itself? Until recently, the story of...