Great book

a fascinating insight into Mary boleyn, not the person I had been led to believe, another great book by Alison weir, well worth a listen.

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4 people found this helpful

Great as always

Alison books are always good. We'll written and researched. I guess my only issue, the same issue with many historical books is that much is supposition. Well narrated.

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Good considering the lack of available information

I had hoped for some more certain insist into the life of Mary. This book has a little bit too much speculation for me. But it is a good book read very well.

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Love it

Meticulously researched, Weir has gone to great lengths to describe the “real” Mary and debunked the myth of her notoriety as a “great and notorious whore” with great success.Will definitely try her other books. Narrator was good, I found the accents she put on when reading out quotes a bit tedious though. Overall though, very enjoyable :)

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If you interested in Tudor history this is the book for you

This book is so interesting, well read and full of great information about Mary Boleyn, Least heard of out of the sisters, I really enjoyed learning about Mary’s life and the hardships the Boleyn family went through under Henry’s rule. Excellent book, and must read.

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A gentle listen

I knew I needed to listen to this book, another from Alison Weir, I particularly enjoyed Maggie Mash, I could listen to her for hours! We often hear about Anne, but rarely about Mary. I enjoyed listening to this book a great deal!

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Worth reading if you love the Tudor period.

Any additional comments?

Alison Weir has the gift of being able to pack out a book about someone whom actually pretty little information actually exists. She confirms and dispels the assumptions that have been made in historical fiction and explores the Boleyn family and Mary's offspring in detail. It's a book worth listening to.

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6 people found this helpful

Too much irrelevant detail

Too much detail about irrelevant people and not enough real substance. There’s as much information on Wikipedia.
Narrator is annoying using deeper tones for men, but it does not work.

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Very interesting

Considering how little information there is on Mary, Alison has done a pretty good job indeed. It was very nice to get to know more about Mary herself as well as new information on her contemporaries as descendants that I hadn't known before. Maggie, as usual, was excellent

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5 people found this helpful

A biography ‘of our time’

Alison Weir seems to have invested more of her ‘self’ in this book. She writes in the introduction that she had been researching this subject for decades and in places it feels as though she simply needed to unload.
There is far more speculation in this work than in most of her other purely historical writings: I get the impression that she must have tossed a coin this time to decide whether or not to produce her work as a historical novel, and it seems to me that it was an unlucky spin for both author and reader.
There is simply not enough bald fact to bring off her argument, which is, as ever, not quite that her subject may have been a saint or an innocent victim, but that she played a characteristically difficult hand like the independently-minded proto-feminist the author usually finds her subjects to have been.
This rather thin factual gruel is thickened - solidified at times - with screeds of genealogical stuff unlikely to endear the author to a generally admiring and appreciative reader.
Mary Boleyn may not have been a whore, but honestly after staggering through to the bitter end - who cares?

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