Mark Bostridge

‘Struck with the dart of love’: portrait of a marriage

Such was the emotion Anne Boleyn inspired in Henry VIII. But before long that scalding love had turned to a brutalising hatred of his second wife, culminating in her bloody beheading

Portrait of Anne Boleyn. [Getty Images] 
issue 09 September 2023

‘These bloody days have broken my heart.’ Thomas Wyatt’s words are an expression of his personal distress at the fall of Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII’s second wife and the woman for whom the king had defied the pope and proclaimed himself supreme head of the English Church.

But they are also indicative of the shockwaves resonating around England in May 1536.

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