Sexual intrigue, political skullduggery, madness, betrayal and death – the Tudor court under Henry VIII was a dangerous place, as this riveting novel shows. Far from being the affable womaniser of popular imagination, Henry emerges as a psychopathic bully, for whom women were merely expendable objects.

This sequel to Gregory’s bestselling The Other Boleyn Girl takes up the story with the arrival in England of Anne of Cleves, the monstrous monarch's fourth wife. By this time, 1539, the king is no longer a glamorous golden boy, but an ailing, obese old man, desperate to prove that he has not lost his sexual potency. With his new wife unequal to the task of bolstering Henry’s flagging ego, another candidate for the role of royal helpmeet catches his eye, in the person of Katherine Howard. From then on, events hurtle towards their inevitable, shocking, conclusion.

Told from the point of view of Anne, Katherine and Jane Boleyn, sister-in-law of the more famous Anne, The Boleyn Inheritance offers a mesmerising account of a dark period in English history, conveying the atmosphere of fear and suspicion that overshadowed court life. Particularly good is the reinvention of Anne of Cleves as an intelligent, tough-minded survivor, not the “fat Flanders mare” of tradition. No less compelling are the passages narrated by the Machiavellian Jane, caught in a deadly web of her own making.

The Boleyn Inheritance by Philippa Gregory

HarperCollins, £6.99

Buy the book here for the offer price of £6.64 (free p&p)

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