Bloomsbury wins auction for 'landmark' work on Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn

Bloomsbury is to publish a work of non-fiction about Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, as a major lead title in 2023

Associate publisher Alexis Kirschbaum and Jasmine Horsey, editor for non-fiction, acquired UK and Commonwealth rights to Hunting the Falcon: King Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn by John Guy and Julia Fox, at auction from Natasha Fairweather at Rogers, Coleridge & White.

Kirschbaum and Horsey said: "From the moment of submission, we knew that Hunting the Falcon was a very special book indeed: a landmark work of non-fiction, told with the page-turning addictiveness of a novel. John Guy and Julia Fox animate this defining moment of English nationhood in a new way, through the portrait of a marriage.

"The result is an astonishing blend of the romantic and the political, told against an ambitious international canvas. It is storytelling and scholarship at their best, and we could not be more excited to publish it."

Hunting the Falcon will "reinterpret the story of Henry and Anne, their seven-year courtship, ther short marriage and its brutal end", in addition to exploring the European context of their relationship. The book will use archival research to interrogate international politics and "grant new prominence to Anne, so often typecast as a victim or vixen".

Guy is a historian and has sold 252,376 books for £2.07m via Nielsen BookScan, with his bestseller The Life of Mary Scots adapted into a film starring Saoirse Ronan and Margot Robbie. Fox is a history teacher and has sold 28 817 books for £287,817 via Nielsen BookScan. 

The authors, who are a married couple, said: "We are absolutely thrilled and delighted to be working with the wonderful team at Bloomsbury on a project we think is one of the most exciting either of us has ever undertaken."