Hever Forever

Claire Saul studies the newly refurbished Boleyn Apartment at Hever Castle & Gardens - a castle fit for a queen

- Claire Saul

Royal love affairs pepper the history books, with greatly varying degrees of personal and national consequence. One of the most seismic repercussions resulted from the tempestuous relationship of Anne Boleyn and King Henry VIII in the 16th century, which changed the course of English history. Their story remains much discussed to the present day and nowhere more so than at Hever Castle, the former Boleyn home.

Visitors to the idyllic Kent castle at Edenbridge can walk in the family's footsteps, learning of the childhood that shaped Anne's life and about Hever's key role in her relationship with the monarch. This has been given sharper focus with the recent unveiling of the newly refurbished Boleyn Apartment, the only surviving suite of rooms lived in by the family.

Recent research has revealed Anne spent much more time at Hever Castle than had previously been thought and that the castle played a major part in her romance with the Tudor king. It was to Hever that Anne retreated from Henry's excessive attentions, where she finally decided to accept them and where she received his letter effectively promising marriage "autillic, autullibi" ("either there" [marriage] "or nowhere"). Henry's actions to facilitate that marriage of annulling his marriage to Katharine of Aragon shook the world, leading Tudor historian Dr David Starkey to comment of the castle: "It's the place, literally, where the English Reformation began.