Hilary Mantel writes:

She was beheaded in 1542, with Henry VIII’s fifth queen, Catherine Howard. She was one of Catherine’s ladies, and for reasons which remain inaccessible to us, she had helped the dizzy little person carry on a love affair with a courtier, Thomas Culpepper. She passed on letters and misled and misdirected Catherine’s other attendants; while the lovers got down to business, she snoozed in a chair. Whatever emotion she felt when she found herself sentenced to death, it can’t have been surprise. Why did she do it? Stupidity? Perversity? For some voyeuristic thrill? Historians and novelists have enjoyed speculating. Her black reputation dates from an earlier episode. When George Boleyn was executed in 1536 with his sister the queen, the allegations against him included incest with Anne, and his own wife is suspected of laying the accusation against him. Fox has set out to find the traces of Jane, and to see if her role can be reworked.

(LRB 24 April 2008)

Vintage | paperback |ISBN: 9780753823866