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First Interview: Brian Wainwright

© Wendy J. Dunn

WJD:Sorry, Brian!! My WIP distracted me from starting this interview, but let's start now! I understand you are,like me, a "notorious Anne Boleyn fan." Well - I know why I am one of her devotees, but how about you? What attracted you to Queen Anne?

I'm glad you have been making progress. I'm doing very little writing at present, in part because I am chewing over whether to do something that (for me) is quite radical and difficult.

I think the interest in Anne Boleyn probably started with the famous Keith Michell series back in the 70s. I was still at school and (hard though it is to believe now) it was the subject of a great deal of discussion between classes. The girls tended to like Jane Seymour best of the wives and (typically of me) I liked to be awkward. I suppose all six stories were interesting in their own way, but Anne was simply the one I found most interesting of the lot. Maybe it was partly that she was the first woman of rank to be executed in England since Lord knows when - I suppose it's a question of whether Maude de Braose counts as being "executed."

Moreover, it seemed to me then, and it does still to this day, that she was executed on no evidence whatever, just because Henry wanted shut of her, and that, I thought, was a shocking injustice. Whatever Anne's faults (and I should be the last to suppose her a saint) she did not deserve to be murdered. I also liked and admired her spirit and courage - she was an amazing woman in that sense, she was willing to stand up to anyone for what she wanted. She might have been wiser to hold her tongue a bit more, in terms of survival, but then that wouldn't have been Anne, would it?

(As for Jane Seymour, I used to say that considering she was such a perfect creature it was odd that she was willing to marry a man just a matter of days after he had publicly murdered his previous wife!)

One of my first dates, I took a girl to see Anne of the Thousand Days, which was a new film then, and although it was a different "take" on things, it still intrigued me and made me want to read the factual books about the reign. So I did. You know, if fiction does nothing else it must persuade at least some people to look into serious history.

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