And – I think you know, don’t you? – that I love you, Anne.’ I feel as if I have been living in a loveless world for too long. The last tender face I saw was my father’s when he sailed for England. ‘You do? Truly?’ ‘I do.’ He rises to his feet and pulls me up to stand beside him. My chin comes to his shoulder, we are both dainty, long-limbed, coltish: well-matched. I turn my face into his jacket. ‘Will you marry me?’ he whispers. ‘Yes,’ I say.

I am in the interesting position of being sometimes skimmed by the critics and called literature and sometimes called historical fiction.

Yes, but either way, shamed or not, I shall be Queen of England, and this is the last time you will sit in my presence.

En Ma Fin Est Ma Commencement - In my end is my beginning.

When a man wants a mystery, it is generally better to leave him mystified. Nobody loves a clever woman.

Just because one man calls him Allah and another calls him God is no reason for believers to be enemies.

I felt as if we were fighting something worse than Anne, some demon that possessed her, that possessed all of us Boleyns: ambition - the devil that had brought us to this little room and brought my sister to this insane distress and us to this savage battle.