but also a lot of research has been done, minute research — i have done it myself — on anne boleyn'sand on her sister, mary boleyn... who set her up...that sort of thing. yes, that kind of thing. but also in the detail, you can tell a different story now because we know so much more. so back to jane seymour. number three. how much did we know before and how much have you had to create from your own imagination the character that you believe is accurate? as i said, i inferred her character from what i could, from the sources but i had to create a lot for her early life. i used the skeleton framework of fact we have — we have a fragment here and a fragment there — and sort of looking retrospectively from what came later, to create her early life, because these books are about whole lives, they're not just about their periods of queenship and they are all written each from each queen's point of view, solely from that point of view. it's a fairly obvious question but an important one, i think — how do you go about trying to create the conversation that somebody like jane seymour would ha

for clues as to her character and there is no evidence, apart from her saying she would denigrate anne boleynat she was, largely she comes across, she was a woman of principles. she had moral courage. she was devout, she was gentle, she was kind, she was also submissive. indeed, and she put up with so much and died giving henry his only male child. she did, indeed. and though the marriage seems to have been happy. i am in no doubt that henry genuinely loved her. it‘s interesting that you talk about the sources because you are a historian of distinction, you are also writing fiction here. the third of your novels on the wives, obviously three more to come. do you go back to original sources for the fiction as well as for the history? yes, i do. in fact this series of novels was born out of new research i was doing. in 1991 i published a book, six wives of henry viii, and i have been updating and revising, basically re—researching and rewriting that. it is a long project. how would you describe the changes in scholarship that have come about, the new things that we know from recent scholarship?

for clues as to her character and there is no evidence, apart from her saying she would denigrate anne boleynn of principles. she had moral courage. she was devout, she was gentle, she was kind, she was also submissive. indeed, and she put up with so much and died giving henry his only male child. she did, indeed. and though the marriage seems to have been happy. i am in no doubt that henry genuinely loved her. it's interesting that you talk about the sources because you are an historian of distinction, you are also writing fiction here. the third of your novels on the wives, obviously three more to come. do you go back to original sources for the fiction as well as for the history? yes, i do. in fact this series of novels was born out of new research i was doing. in 1991 i published a book, six wives of henry viii, and i have been updating and revising, basically re—researching and rewriting that. it is a long project. how would you describe the changes in scholarship that have come about, the new things that we know from recent scholarship? i mean, a lot of work has been done on henry viii'