Governor's Lecture Series - "The Boleyn Secret"

Date: Wednesday 24th June 2026

The Boleyn Secret

Boleyn women. Passionate. Legendary. Full of secrets. This is the spellbinding new novel from Sunday Times bestselling novelist Alison Weir.

Join bestselling author Alison Weir in the Royal Hospital Chelsea’s State Apartments as she discusses her new book, The Boleyn Secret.

At twelve years old, Kate Carey attends her aunt, Queen Anne Boleyn, to the scaffold. Horrified by what she witnesses, Kate is convinced that King Henry VIII has sent an innocent woman to a terrible death. As the Boleyn’s fall from favour, Kate serves her now motherless cousin, the young Lady Elizabeth. Bound by Boleyn blood, the two girls grow as close as sisters, until Kate marries for love - and leaves a jealous Elizabeth behind. At court, Kate cannot ignore the sly looks thrown her way, nor the whispers behind her back. Only when her mother, Mary, lies dying, does she learn the life-shattering truth that the Boleyn’s have been hiding for years. It is a secret that will follow Kate throughout her life, as she flees religious persecution with her husband and lives abroad in fear, only returning home when Elizabeth becomes queen. But the bond between the Boleyn cousins will never be the same again...
 

For more than a century, a tale has circulated that Katherine Carey, Anne Boleyn’s niece, was one of the four distressed but unnamed young ladies who attended Anne in the Tower over the four days after her conviction for treason and adultery – and accompanied her to the scaffold. The story appears to have originated in the late nineteenth century, but there is no record to back it up. And one would hope that Katherine, at twelve, would have been considered too young for such a terrible ordeal and duty.

The tale is, however, a powerful and intriguing starting point for a novel, and I have made dramatic use of the legend in The Boleyn Secret. Even if young Kate – as I call her in the novel– did not bear witness to her aunt’s execution, it would surely have had a lasting impact on her.

The Boleyn Secret explores in fiction the likelihood that Katherine Carey was Henry VIII’s child – and that Henry had fathered the daughters of both Anne and her sister, Mary Boleyn. On this basis, Kate and Elizabeth I were not only Boleyn cousins through blood, but also secret Tudor half-sisters. As I discovered when I was researching my biography of Mary Boleyn, the circumstantial evidence is strong, and I wanted to imagine how clues and rumours could have shaped Katherine’s life. How would she have discovered the truth? Would she have wanted it to be known? Was it an open secret at court? And how would this have changed Kate’s relationship with Elizabeth, who loved her ‘above all other women in the world. ’ I hope you enjoy Kate’s story, as I have reimagined it

Join Alison for this insightful talk, followed by a book signing where she will personally sign copies of The Boleyn Secret.

The Boleyn Secret by Alison Weir — on sale 21 May 2026 | £25.00. Published by Headline Review in Hardback, Ebook & Audio