August's book club read was Boleyn Traitor by Philippa Gregory. I have read a lot of Gregory's book, although after her awful portrayal of Henry VII in The White Princess I have avoided her, but alas our bookclub is a democracy and so Boleyn Traitor was the choice of the month and actually I was throughly impressed with it. Read my review below.
She rose as a favourite. Will she fall as a traitor?
In the dazzling, dangerous world of the Tudor Court, nothing is more powerful than a secret – or more deadly.
Jane Boleyn has mastered many masks: loving wife, devoted sister, and obedient spy.
But as the king's rule advances into tyranny, Jane must decide: keep playing her part, or use the only power she really has – her voice.
Philippa Gregory brings the Boleyn traitor into the light in an explosive story of one woman’s survival in the treacherous heart of the Tudor court.
At this point, I have read so many books about the Tudors that I really ought to be entitled to some sort of loyalty card. Read ten books about Henry VIII, get a free trip to the Tower. Collect all six wives and receive a complimentary execution.
So when I picked up Philippa Gregory’s Boleyn Traitor, I thought I knew exactly what I was getting. Henry would marry someone. Henry would become disappointed with someone. Thomas Cromwell would know absolutely everything despite apparently never leaving his desk. Someone would say something they really shouldn't, and before long the Tower would be preparing another room.
And yet, Gregory still managed to have me completely hooked.
This time, the woman standing in the middle of all the Tudor madness is Jane Boleyn, Lady Rochford, and quite frankly, this woman deserved danger money.
Jane has not exactly enjoyed the best press over the last five hundred years. Wife of George Boleyn, sister-in-law to Anne Boleyn and eventually executed alongside Catherine Howard, she has frequently been portrayed as the spiteful wife whose evidence helped send George and Anne to their deaths.
Gregory takes that version of Jane, picks it up, gives it a good shake and asks whether we might have got her completely wrong.
Her Jane loves George. She is close to Anne. She is also intelligent, educated, ambitious and fascinated by the workings of the court. Unfortunately, she discovers fairly early on that being clever does not necessarily prevent you from doing something spectacularly stupid, and an attempt to help Anne rid herself of one of Henry’s mistresses ends with Jane being banished from court.
Not ideal when your entire life revolves around being at court.
Fortunately — although with hindsight perhaps “fortunately” is doing quite a lot of work here — Thomas Cromwell helps her return.
And this is where the book became particularly interesting for me.
Cromwell recognises that Jane is extremely useful. She is inside the queen’s rooms, people talk in front of her and she notices things. Jane therefore becomes one of his informants, passing information to him and gradually becoming very good at playing a game in which getting something wrong can have considerably worse consequences than being unfollowed on Instagram.
Their relationship was one of my favourite parts of the novel. There is a real meeting of minds between them. Jane admires Cromwell, learns from him and becomes increasingly confident in her own political abilities.
Which is useful, because Henry VIII is becoming steadily more terrifying.
We all know what happens to Anne and George Boleyn, so there should be absolutely no tension whatsoever.
There is loads.
I knew Anne wasn't suddenly going to climb over the palace wall, grab George and disappear to France.
I still wanted her to.
Gregory’s portrayal of the downfall of the Boleyns is particularly effective because Jane is trapped right beside it. She knows how the court works, but even she cannot stop the machinery once it begins moving. Accusations become facts because Henry needs them to be facts, and people who were bowing to Anne yesterday are suddenly behaving as though they have never heard of her.
Tudor court politics really was the ultimate unfriending.
Somehow Jane survives.
Then comes Jane Seymour.
Jane survives her too.
Then Anne of Cleves arrives, and this was one of my favourite sections of the book because by now Jane is no longer merely watching history happen. She has become extremely good at navigating it.
Henry doesn't want Anne.
This is a problem.
Mostly for Anne.
Jane helps her understand that when Henry VIII offers you an annulment, several houses and the opportunity to remain in possession of your head, this is probably not the moment to insist upon your marital rights.
Anne takes the deal.
Excellent decision, Anne.
Frankly, she may be the only person in the entire Tudor court who looks at the situation sensibly and thinks, Do you know what? I'll take the property.
Cromwell isn't so lucky, and his downfall changes everything for Jane. She has lost the man who understood how useful she was and, more importantly, the man who understood the rules of the increasingly dangerous game they were playing.
And then along comes Catherine Howard.
Or Kitty.
Young, pretty, hopelessly inexperienced Kitty.
Oh, Kitty.
No.
Just no.
By this stage Henry is older, increasingly unpredictable and still apparently operating under the assumption that being King of England means reality itself should rearrange itself according to his wishes.
Kitty, meanwhile, falls for Thomas Culpeper.
Jane helps them.
JANE.
YOU HAVE SURVIVED ANNE BOLEYN.
YOU HAVE SURVIVED GEORGE.
YOU HAVE SURVIVED CROMWELL.
YOU HAVE WATCHED HENRY DISPOSE OF WIFE AFTER WIFE.
WHAT ARE YOU DOING?
I think this is where Gregory’s version of Jane becomes particularly interesting, because she doesn't suddenly turn stupid. Jane knows the danger. She has spent years understanding the court and surviving it. But she has also become confident in her ability to manage situations, keep secrets and make things happen behind the scenes.
Perhaps a little too confident.
And watching someone who has been so extraordinarily good at surviving make the decision that will eventually destroy her is painful.
I still wanted to confiscate Kitty.
Possibly put her in Anne of Cleves's house.
Anne would sort her out.
One of the things I enjoyed most about Boleyn Traitor is that Gregory doesn't simply make Jane a misunderstood saint. She is ambitious. She likes being close to power. She enjoys being useful. She spies, lies and manoeuvres when she needs to, and sometimes she makes decisions that had me staring at the page wondering how a woman this clever could possibly think this was going to end well.
But that makes her far more believable.
The Tudor court itself feels almost like another character. It is magnificent, glamorous and completely ridiculous. There are clothes, ceremonies, flirting, dancing, elaborate rules of courtly love and endless performances, while underneath it all everyone is watching everyone else and desperately trying not to become tomorrow’s treason charge.
Imagine spending your working day wondering whether the king's expression at breakfast means you're getting a promotion or being executed.
Suddenly my inbox doesn't seem so bad.
What Gregory does particularly well is show how Jane changes as the years pass. The woman who initially gets herself banished from court is not quite the same woman who later helps negotiate the extraordinarily delicate situation surrounding Anne of Cleves. She has learned how power works.
The tragedy is that she eventually starts to believe she can control it.
Of course, Boleyn Traitor is historical fiction rather than biography, and Gregory is very deliberately offering her own interpretation of a woman whose reputation has been argued over for centuries. I don't have to believe that this is exactly who Jane Boleyn was to find the possibility fascinating.
And I did.
I absolutely raced through this book. I knew who was going to die. I knew when they were going to die. I knew Henry wasn't suddenly going to discover emotional maturity and suggest everyone sit down and talk through their differences.
None of that mattered.
Gregory made me care anyway.
By the end, I wasn't convinced Jane Boleyn was innocent of every questionable decision she ever made.
I was convinced she deserved to be remembered as considerably more than the woman who supposedly betrayed her husband.
And I am also more convinced than ever that if I ever acquire a time machine, Tudor England is staying firmly off the itinerary.
I bought my copy from Tesco, but you can find your over on Amazon.
Philippa Gregory
Philippa Gregory is an internationally renowned historian and novelist. She holds a PhD in eighteenth-century literature at the University of Edinburgh and is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society and the Universities of Sussex and Cardiff, an honorary research fellow at Birkbeck University of London and she was awarded a CBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours for her services to literature and to charity. Her novels have been adapted for stage and screen and in 2023 she published her groundbreaking history book, Normal Women - 900 Years of Making History, which was also released as a podcast, a teen edition and a series for young children.
