Anne Of Thousand Days

THE STORY: This beautiful presentation of the story of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn is played against the well-known historical background of the court of Henry. A grand drama of love, deceit and murder, ANNE OF THE THOUSAND DAYS brings these most fa

This illuminating history examines the life and many legends of the 16th century Queen who was executed by her husband, King Henry VIII. Part biography, part cultural history, The Creation of Anne Boleyn is a fascinating reconstruction of Anne’s life and a revealing look at her afterlife in the popular imagination. Why is her story so compelling? Why has she inspired such extreme reactions? Was she the flaxen-haired martyr of Romantic paintings or the raven-haired seductress of twenty-first-century portrayals? (Answer: neither.) But the most provocative question of all concerns Anne’s death: How could Henry order the execution of a once beloved wife? Drawing on scholarship and critical analysis, Bordo probes the complexities of one of history’s most infamous relationships. She then demonstrates how generations of polemicists, biographers, novelists, and filmmakers have imagined and re-imagined Anne: whore, martyr, cautionary tale, proto “mean girl,” feminist icon, and everything in between. In The Creation of Anne Boleyn, Bordo steps off the well-trodden paths of Tudoriana to tease out the human being behind the competing mythologies, paintings, and on-screen portrayals.

Iconic actors, jealousy, tantrums, and a legendary producer's struggle to transform the tempestuous, ill-fated union of Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII to the big screen all factor into this dramatic, behind-the-scenes story of how the popular Broadway play Anne of the Thousand Days became the quintessential Anne Boleyn movie. Richard Burton and Geneviève Bujold lit up the screen in this tragic romance, but some of the most exciting scenes were those not caught on film and which centered on a real or imagined love triangle that threatened Burton's celebrated but notoriously stormy marriage to screen goddess Elizabeth Taylor. In addition to the classic film and Maxwell Anderson's play, the book explores the lives of those involved in both productions and the history that inspired Anne of the Thousand Days, as well as the evolution of Anne Boleyn as a pop culture phenomenon.

Now available again, the first book in Robin Maxwell's acclaimed Elizabethan Quartet: "Wonderfully juicy . . . Maxwell brings all of bloody Tudor England vividly to life” (Publishers Weekly, starred review). One was queen for a thousand days; one for over forty years. Both were passionate, headstrong women, loved and hated by Henry VIII. Yet until the discovery of the secret diary, Anne Boleyn and her daughter, Elizabeth I, had never really met. Anne was the second of Henry's six wives, doomed to be beloved, betrayed, and beheaded. When Henry fell madly in love with her upon her return from an education at the lascivious French court, he was already a married man. While his passion for Anne was great enough to rock the foundation of England and of all Christendom, in the end he forsook her for another love, schemed against her, and ultimately had her sentenced to death. But unbeknownst to the king, Anne had kept a diary. At the beginning of Elizabeth 's reign, it is pressed into her hands. In reading it, the young queen discovers a great deal about her much-maligned mother: Anne's fierce determination, her hard-won knowledge about being a woman in a world ruled by despotic men, and her deep-seated love for the infant daughter taken from her shortly after her birth. In the journal's pages, Elizabeth finds an echo of her own dramatic life as a passionate young woman at the center of England's powerful male establishment, and with the knowledge gained from them, makes a resolution that will change the course of history.

He was the King, and he wanted her. He vowed she would be Queen of England. She swore she would give him a son. It was a contract of passion, written in blood-an arrangement of love that shook England and changed the world.

They had met and married on perilously short acquaintance, she an American chef and food writer, he a Venetian banker. Now they were taking another audacious leap, unstitching their ties with exquisite Venice to live in a roughly renovated stable in Tuscany. Once again, it was love at first sight. Love for the timeless countryside and the ancient village of San Casciano dei Bagni, for the local vintage and the magnificent cooking, for the Tuscan sky and the friendly church bells. Love especially for old Barlozzo, the village mago, who escorts the newcomers to Tuscany’s seasonal festivals; gives them roasted country bread drizzled with just-pressed olive oil; invites them to gather chestnuts, harvest grapes, hunt truffles; and teaches them to caress the simple pleasures of each precious day. It’s Barlozzo who guides them across the minefields of village history and into the warm and fiercely beating heart of love itself. A Thousand Days in Tuscany is set in one of the most beautiful places on earth–and tucked into its fragrant corners are luscious recipes (including one for the only true bruschetta) directly from the author’s private collection.