Notorious Anne Boleyn and the Great Tudor Hoax

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