Paperback Publisher: Faber and Faber
ISBN 978-0-571-23953-5

Mavis Cheek, photo © L. Ferrante '08

Amenable Women    (2008)

'This was such a pleasure to write.  I had long admired Anna of Cleves, Henry VIII’s fourth wife – latterly known as The Flanders Mare – and wanted her own voice to tell the story of her disastrous marriage to the English King and how she survived it – with a settlement that would not disgrace Ivana Trump.  She was a canny lass, Anna, remarkably good at appearing docile, not very bright and, well, Amenable.  I set the story within a contemporary framework of a woman, Flora, newly widowed from a dashing, infuriating, star of a husband – one who overshadowed her throughout her married life – and who, in her newfound widowhood, sets out to discover the history of her village.   Flora finds that Anna of Cleves held property there, part of her divorce settlement, and travels to Paris, to the Louvre, to see for herself the portrait of Anna by Hans Holbein that Henry fell in love with.  With some rather interesting developments…
Alison Weir was kind enough to say that if you wanted to know the true story of Anne of Cleves, you should read this book. 

'Flora Chapman is in her fifties when her dashing and infuriating husband, Edward, dies in a bizarre ballooning accident. Ever pragmatic, Flora seizes upo her new freedom and decides to finish Edward's history of Hurcott Ducis, the village where they've spent their married life. A reference to Anna of Cleves, Henry VIII's fourth wife, unkindly called the 'Flanders Mare', captures Flora's attention and later her affection as she sets about her own research in the hope of elevating Anna's place in history.

Meanwhile in the Louvre, Holbein's portrait of Anna senses the tug of a connection and she begins to tell the real story of how she survived her disastrous Tudor marriage.

This novel about two intelligent women who lived in the shadow of the men they married interweaves a fascinating and little-known part of history with a broader modern tale of love, marriage, self-preservation and motherhood.

Reviews:

''If you're married your husband bosses you and if you aren't married people call you an old maid. Oh! to be a widow...'
Lucy M. Montgomery, Anne of the Island, 1915