I've been looking for this book for a good while now, ever since I heard Natalie Gruenunger speak about it on the 'Not Just The Tudors' podcast. So I was delighted to find that it's now available on KU! I have a long-standing fascination with Anne (as my reading history will attest), and I had high hopes this would be a book that would approach her last year with a fresh perspective. However, I felt that it falls into the age old trap of talking around the subject, rather than about it.

I will concede that it does what it says on the tin - it follows the last year of Anne's life. If you wanted to recreate Anne's final progress as Queen, this would be a great guide to creating your road trip and, when you arrive at each destination, it serves as a fabulous visualisation of what the properties would have been like in Anne's day. However, there is a large section where it feels like that is all the book is - a brief detail of the date she arrived at a particular place, followed by a list of the rooms that the property had and their likely decor. Wash, rinse, repeat. There is very little detail as to what her visit might have actually entailed, or any real examination of Henry and Anne's relationship or even her wider relationships with friends and enemies alike, save for a cursory sweep every now and then of her clash of ideals with Thomas Cromwell.

Likewise, the narrative does go off on tangents fairly frequently. For example, at one point the author mentions that it's unclear what Anne may have worn for a particular event. But then we get another list, this time of an order she made from a clothier. And then we get told who else that clothier might have supplied. And a list of their clothes. For what was seemingly a throwaway line in the first place, we end up with a good few pages (it seemed) of filler. We also encounter the issue that there are various segments that feel like they drift away from Anne altogether, with the huge presence of Henry VIII taking over. 

The most interesting section for me was about Anne's downfall and imprisonment. I will say that I did learn something new here - somehow I've never known that Anne actually wrote to Henry during her stay in the Tower. So to read that letter heightened the emotion of the moment and made the horror and devastation of her circumstances all the more real for me. While I can't say that this section felt like a particularly deep examination of her imprisonment, trial and execution - it really does only scratch the surface, skimming over the events with seemingly minimal critical analysis; even the trial charges and the fact that they are clearly fabricated only receive one brief line in the main text and a cursory mention in the appendix - the inclusion of that letter alone made it worth the read. 

I can appreciate that historians are always working from an incomplete record, and it is impossible to recreate a person's precise movements, thoughts, feelings and motivations at a distance of 500 years, but for such a well trodden topic I do question the point of publishing another book on the topic if you don't really have anything new to add to the discourse. 

I don't regret reading this, but after waiting so long to get my hands on it I do feel a little disappointed.