Anne Boleyn & Elizabeth I : Tracy Borman At The Ilkley Literature Festival

A full house at Ilkley Grammar School gave the clearest indication of our ongoing fascination with the Tudors. Bombarded by books (both fiction and non-fiction), enfiladed with films, dramas and television docu-histories, we are left to wonder at the efficacy of shedding new light through old windows.

But to be critical would be to do Tracy Borman a serious disservice, for her fascinating potted history of the late Tudor dynasty threw up striking insights as to the, in many ways, unassailable connection binding Henry VIII’s second wife with their daughter. A synoptic version of her new book, Anne Boleyn & Elizabeth I, Professor Borman’s talk was delivered with the effortless wit and bonhomie of a practiced television presenter, which in fact she is, when not being the Chief Executive of the Higher Education Trust.

That she also includes Joint Curator (alongside Lucy Worsley) of Historic Royal Palaces on a fulsome CV, gives evidence of a mind preoccupied by research, and with a predilection for the disinterring of skeletons in the closets of, amongst several others palaces of sixteenth century interest, Hampton Court. And it is to there that she frequently repaired, in a lengthy avowal of a relationship that endured for the whole of Elizabeth’s life in spite, or possibly because, of her mother having died when the former was just two and a half.

Anne’s valedictory speech prior to execution was counter-intuitive: given the opportunity to rail gloriously against her antagonists, she chose, instead, to praise her husband, and for Borman, her words were intended to protect her daughter’s future. It is somehow unsurprising to find the teenage Elizabeth wearing a pendant emblazoned with the letter ‘A’ on a contemporary portrait, in an act of defiance that bespeaks temperamental inheritance; there is a natural simpatico that is reflected in intelligence, intellectual curiosity and charisma. Finding a consonance between Anne’s brilliant and robust defence of her own position at her trial, and Elizabeth’s seminal speech at Tilbury, Borman traced the outline of a sense of purpose that unites two generations of strong women.

Elizabeth filled her Court with Boleyns and their kinsmen, the Careys, for the entirety of her reign, whilst conspicuously retaining Anne’s great armorial signature, the falcon. And we are unlikely to forget the most telling example of Elizabeth’s debt of love and gratitude to Anne - a locket bearing the images of mother and daughter which, when closed, obliges them to face each other in perpetuity. If the benefits, for research, of her palace curatorial position are incalculable, we are indebted to Tracy Borman for helping us, by their use, to re-imagine a relationship of equals.