Mary Boleyn

By: Alison Weir

Narrated by: Maggie Mash

Mary Boleyn was the mistress of two kings, Francois I of France and Henry VIII of England, and sister to Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII’s second wife. In this astonishing and riveting biography, Alison Weir’s extensive research gives a new and detailed portrayal, in which she recounts that, contrary to popular belief, Mary was entirely undeserving of her posthumous notoriety as a great whore.

©2011 Alison Weir (P)2011 W F Howes Ltd

Enjoyable look at the Boleyn family

Any additional comments?

Though Alison Weir is always a little extreme in her views, I enjoyed the book thoroughly. It is easy to delineate between fact and the author's opinions. It was good to learn about Mary, as she has become a popular figure without really being better understood. The narrator was fine, though halfway through her voice changes so much that for a couple of minutes I thought they had replaced her.

Academic Study Filled With Intelligent Speculation

I must admit that although I am a fan of Alison Weir and have enjoyed everything that has flowed from her pen, this book in my humble opinion was not her best. It is heavy with speculation that is definitely 'out of the box'. It delves into the period 1522 until around 1536. There is a lot of background information regarding Henry's ever evolving personality plus we read much about the Boleyn family dynamic. Alison Weir discusses the possibility that Anne may well have been the elder daughter which based on my studies was quite an eyebrow raiser!

Normally I cannot put down one of Alison Weir's books as to date I have found that they are real page turners. I may well give this a second listen in the future as it was interesting but not engrossing.

Disappointed.

I am a huge fan of Alison Weir. Having said that, this book is a real disappointment to me. There are simply too many "maybe's." For instance, "Maybe Mary never saw Anne again." There is simply too much supposition in this book for me to take it seriously as an historical work. While Mary Boleyn was in many ways a minor character in the Tudor saga, she still had a life unto herself which, if one is endeavoring to chronicle, deserves more fact and less supposition.

great info

lots of detail on Mary's life and info on all her family, including her children

Little facts and many maybes

About 14 chapters of what could have been two. I admire the research; however, something's just need more information.

Real History of a Complex and Hidden Character

It takes a historian to do the necessary research to find facts about a little-known historical character, about whom much has been said but little actually known. When you do the work (and here Weir has done it for us), the truth is always much more interesting than contemporaneous accounts. Mary escaped the agony of Anne's life and lived long enough to bring up her children and grandchildren and influence the future Queen Elizabeth I. Very interesting book for Tudor addicts like myself.

This is a BIOGRAPHY, not a novel.

If you could sum up Mary Boleyn in three words, what would they be?

Phenomenal, riveting, and accurate

Any additional comments?

I adore Alison Weir's biographies. She does painstaking first hand research from primary sources and is unfailingly accurate in her representations of historical figures. This biography exposes a lot of fallacies passed along as fact for generations by less committed biographers. Weir tackles the problems of incomplete, damaged, and decayed records with aplomb and should be commended for refusing to pass along the information far easier to find in secondary and tertiary sources and instead doing her own research to obtain new and more accurate conclusions. Weir is a phenomenal biographer and a talented writer. The narrator, Maggie Mash, does a lovely job of making the figures come alive and I will be looking at more of her books in the future. I sincerely enjoyed this book and look forward to more of Alison Weir's fiction and nonfiction.

Interesting

The thing I liked the most about this book is that it didn’t just repeat stories with little to no fact basis. I didn’t even realize how little is known about her life. I very much enjoyed this one.

Informative

You learn a lot. I had no idea Dudley's wife was kin to Elizabeth. I don't understand why movies mess everything up when the real life stories are often dramatic enough!

What I learned from these comments

Alison Weir is a respected Public Historian. Look her up: n'uff said.

Historical fiction is not history; historical fiction is entertainment. Historical novels either dramatize violence or romance. Often, these novels play fast and loose with historical fact "proven" in centuries past by sources that had political axes to grind.

Alison Weir joins the ranks of women historians that look at the evidence in a way that males do not. She has produced an evidence-based analysis of biography of a woman that was labeled as an "infamous Whore" who was no such thing, according to evidence.

This is not prurient historical entertainment.