I know I’ve been a bit quiet recently but what with the advent calendar, three book projects and writing an online history course things have been rather manic – phew!
Anyway, I just wanted to let you know that the 15-unit online course I have written and recorded for MedievalCourses.com is open for pre-orders right now. It is called “The Life of Anne Boleyn” and it launches properly on 30th January 2017, but you can save $40 by pre-ordering it at $35 (usual price $75). All participants receive an unabridged audio version of my book The Fall of Anne Boleyn: A Countdown (RRP $19.95). Gift certificates are also available at the pre-order price if you want to buy the course as a Christmas present.
Click here to go to the course page now. The discount code is ABPRE.
Here is the course blurb:
Anne Boleyn is the most popular and also the most divisive of Henry VIII’s six wives. Some view her as an ambitious, social climber and home-wrecker who played a game and ultimately lost, others see her as a tragic victim of an egotistical tyrant obsessed with having a son, and still others see her as a queen whose views and ideals led to her making enemies who moved against her and brought her down in a brutal manner.
Who was the real Anne Boleyn?
It’s impossible to know for sure, but this 15-unit course (plus introduction) will lead you through her life step-by-step, from her family background and beginnings to her tragic death in 1536 and her legacy. Each part of her life will be fleshed out in detail in video lessons by Claire Ridgway, founder of The Anne Boleyn Files website and author of The Fall of Anne Boleyn: A Countdown, The Anne Boleyn Collection and co-author of George Boleyn: Tudor Poet, Courtier and Diplomat, and several other Tudor history books. Claire also includes a unit on the myths surrounding this executed queen and one on how to research Anne Boleyn yourself using primary and secondary sources.
Course Units:
- Introduction
- Anne Boleyn’s background and roots
- Birth and Early Life
- Anne Boleyn’s family
- Early education and Margaret of Austria’s court
- Anne Boleyn’s time in France
- Return to England
- Debut at the English court and suitors
- Henry VIII’s pursuit of Anne Boleyn and the Great Matter
- 1533 – Anne Boleyn’s coronation and the birth of Elizabeth I
- Anne Boleyn Queen Consort
- 1536: The Fall of Anne Boleyn
- Anne Boleyn’s execution and the aftermath
- The myths surrounding Anne Boleyn
- The legacy of Anne Boleyn
- Researching Anne Boleyn and the reign of Henry VIII
The course includes 16 video lessons (streaming video plus downloadable audio mp3 files), downloadable PDF transcripts of each lesson, end of unit quizzes, resources – Where to find primary sources on Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII, a bibliography and further reading list, and an end of course certificate.
As with all of MedievalCourses.com’s history courses, the course is completely online so is open internationally. It has no set start or finish date, so you can complete the lessons in your own time and at your own pace. Participants have lifetime access to the course.
Click here to go to the course page now. The discount code is ABPRE.
Hi Claire, I just wanted to take this opportunity to make contact with you. I have been absorbing all of your posts and replies from other members of this site. You have brought this wonderful Queen to life for me and I am so glad I have discovered this forum.
I just wanted to make a personal observation ( after all it’s nearly Christmas). As I am not known to readers here I feel my little personal contribution may have some interest.
I had a passionate affair with a married man (. Albeit that he failed to tell me he was married when we met). Once I discovered he was, I went against everything I stood for and continued it. He like King Henry left his wife and children for me and we got married…. he then did the same to me five years later.
My point is that from my perspective I can easily see how things may have panned out for Anne. It’s so had to explain how doing this make enemies, and alienates you, but at the time you just don’t see it. I know what I did was wrong, and I too also was jealous of wife number one as well and hated him in contact with her. But that was all part of this passion that I couldn’t see past. I now know he was never going to settle for one woman and used us as pawns in a game.
I just seem to feel that this is what might have happened to Anne… one moment you are everything to fight for and then if things don’t go well immediately you are discarded.
I feel that if she had been able like me to escape and recover from this relationship, she may have turned into a truly softer and more understanding woman, and grateful to have been well rid of him!
I wish you all a merry Christmas, I just love everything you tell us about Anne and she is in my mind almost daily…
Thank you, Royal Marigold, for sharing your personal experience, something which must have been so hurtful and I suspect still hurts today. I think it’s very easy for people to make snap judgements about situations and people without realising what it’s really like and the feelings involved. I’m so sorry that you had this happen to you and thank you for taking the time to share your insight. I hope you’re doing ok now.
Have a lovely Christmas.
Hello Claire
Thank you for your comments. I agree with you, it’s easy for people to judge, but until you are in a similar position you cannot understand.
Have a lovely Christmas.
I do agree with you, Royal Marigold. And we must also remember the enormous pressure from her family. The benefits to them were great.
I think Anne was a combination of all three, she was a social climber who had her heart set on becoming queen, she was very interested in the new religion and ultimately was the cause of the reformation, which changed the whole structure of the Catholic Church in England and lastly she was the tragic victim of a brutal husband when she died on the scaffold, for ten years she had been the master to Henry’s puppet albeit he had been a willing puppet, but it just gos to show with the brutal manner of her death that he had been the master all along, he was the one with the supreme authority, Anne by her very looks charisma and tenacious nature had clawed herself right to the very top yet her power lay only with her husband and she knew that all along, yet she had tried and succeeded where no other woman had before, that of toppling a queen from her position and taking her place, it was to be her undoing and thus there is truth in the saying, ‘ the higher we climb the greater we fall ‘.