He is admirably frank about how far the sources do and do not take us. If Anne is not to be a Jezebel, the witch with the sixth finger, then what on earth was she, and why did she marry Henry? Was she the white hope of the Protestant religion, sacrificing herself for the cause, or a romantic heroine embittered by Cardinal Wolsey's crushing of her love match with Henry Percy? This last theory is just the kind of canard Ives dismisses most effectively. But it has proved curiously hard to replace that biblically colourful image with another that entirely convinces. We realised a while ago that Anne was not the villainess of earlier legend, just as we know how unsubstantiated were the charges of adultery that prefaced her death.

By comparison with these two titans the other four wives, as David Starkey pointed out, were 'creatures of the moment' Starkey being the latest of the high street big hitters - Antonia Fraser, Alison Weir - to tackle all six.

Anne has always been the star of the Six Wives show a fit match for Katherine of Aragon not in length of stay (Katherine was officially queen for more than two decades, Anne for only the famous thousand days), but in influence in the neat counterpoise of old religion and new in seeming to reflect different models not just of queenship but of wifeliness and femininity.

The life and death of anne boleyn