Notorious
Anne Boleyn and the Great Tudor Hoax
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Notorious
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Narrated by:
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By:
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Hayley Nolan
'The enthralling tale of Elizabeth Barton, the most dangerous woman in Henry VIII's England' Amanda Matta
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A daring young nun forces her way into the centre of Henry VIII’s divorce scandal, going head-to-head with Anne Boleyn and becoming one of the Tudors’ most influential power players.
But how did this former housemaid manage to hold such sway? And why was she trying to stop Boleyn achieving ultimate power as queen?
Elizabeth Barton’s shocking rise from poverty to celebrity caught Anne Boleyn and the King off guard. As the dazzling new star of the sixteenth century ‘miracle industry’, this small-town girl became the most notorious influencer of her day. Adored by the public, Barton soon had every Tudor power player under her spell, from Cardinal Wolsey to the pope – until she was silenced by the man she tried to con, Henry VIII.
But was the girl a deluded fantasist, a cold-hearted hoaxer, or was she the victim of her corrupt celebrity managers? Anne Boleyn certainly thought so, which is why, despite Barton’s smear campaign against her quest to save the people of England from a cruel system, Boleyn set out to rescue the girl intent on ruining her.
In this page-turning tale of prophecy, ambition and deceit, historian Hayley Nolan breathes life into the strategic manoeuvres between the housemaid, the king and his mistress – with the Tudor court never recovering from the fallout of this almighty hoax.
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Critic reviews
In Notorious, Nolan brings her trademark ability to reframe the tangled, often tragic lives of Tudor women to a lesser-known but pivotal subject. Her account of Elizabeth Barton—prophet, prisoner, and a largely uncredited voice of the English Reformation—shines new light on the inner world of a woman history has long side-lined. Nolan doesn't shy away from presenting competing motives and contradictory theories; as she rightly insists, when it comes to Henry VIII's court, the ambiguity is the history. Notorious is a timely reminder that the machinery for discrediting women has a very long paper trail, and another essential piece in the long, unfinished puzzle of Henry and Anne Boleyn (Amanda Matta, US television and social media commentator)
An imaginatively compelling investigation of a remarkable Tudor life, shedding sympathetic light on a world where prophecy and divine revelation unleashed dangerous political power (Malcolm Gaskill, Emeritus Professor of Early Modern History at the University of East Anglia and author of The Ruin of All Witches)
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