Everyone knows the story of Anne Boleyn. Henry VIII divorced his longstanding, long-suffering, older, Spanish wife for a young, black-eyed English beauty, and, in doing so, severed England from Rome and indeed from the rest of the western world. Then, when Henry had what he wanted, he managed a mere three years of marriage before beheading his wife for alleged adultery with several men, among them his own best friend and her own brother.

In its barest form, the story is archetypal in that a man leaves his kindly, ageing wife for a brash, sexy, younger woman, to widespread condemnation. Add to it that the wife is largely deprived of means of support, and that the child is mistreated by the new stepmother, and the story still conforms to type. Which is also true of And It All Went Horribly Wrong. Perhaps the archetype accounts partly for the story's fascination. But the situation also has a very contemporary feel to it: I'm thinking in particular of Anne's well-documented outburst at Henry when he slacked in his efforts to secure a divorce. She yelled at him that she'd been waiting for him for years, wasting her best childbearing years. Any number of women can sympathise, here, with Anne: waiting, with the biological clock ticking away, for the married man to extricate himself.

The real story of Henry, Katherine and Anne is, of course, rather more interesting than the archetype. Among the aspects that interest me, in particular, are that Anne wasn't in fact beautiful: she was the antithesis of the Tudor ideal of the blue-eyed blonde; it seems that the attraction was what nowadays we would call sex appeal (which is always interesting, not least because it's so hard to define). Nor was she young. She was younger than Katherine, yes, but she was twenty-six or -seven when Henry fell in love with her, which was already well past the ideal marriageable age, and they didn't marry until she was thirty-two or -three: approaching middle-age for a Tudor woman. She was no bimbo: she was a highly-educated, very sharp woman, at the forefront of 'the new learning'. Just as fascinating, in many ways, is the story of Katherine, the wronged wife, the ex-Queen, who wasn't the archetypal lady-who-lunched, but a very clever – indeed scholarly – woman: a woman who had always judged it prudent to be acquiescent to Henry, but now developed a dignified resolve.

This story, which forms the backdrop for my novel, still arouses strong feelings. Women, in particular, tend to let out a little shriek when I mention what I'm planning: "Oh, I've always been fascinated by Anne Boleyn!" To this day, a candle burns on Katherine's tomb in Peterborough Cathedral. And an elderly gentleman wrote to me care of my local radio slot to say, "I'm no papist, believe me – but Anne Boleyn – a woman who danced in a yellow dress on the death of her predecessor!".

The source of my fascination with the story of Anne Boleyn is, I think, her downfall: the breathtaking swiftness of it. Every time I read about her, I'm struck by this: the ferocity of her down-bringing, coming out of the blue. The marriage hadn't been going well – but this? ...and from a man who, until recently, had been deeply in love with her, had courted her for seven years, to the extent of turning the western world upside down for her. I always wonder what she felt, when the preposterous charges were made known to her. No one believed the charges, except for her husband, who, for various reasons, was in a vulnerable frame of mind. But, then, no one else had to believe them. He and Anne were at a social event when, unbeknownst to Anne, Cromwell told him the alleged charges. Henry rose without a word, and left; and he never saw his wife again. She was arrested, taken to the tower, and he didn't attend her 'trial' or execution. He married his third wife the day after Anne's execution.

Anne's dramatic downfall has, it seems to me, several ironies. One is that she was destroyed by a monster of her own making: Henry, whom she'd persuaded to regard himself as a rule unto himself, the ultimate authority in all matters.

Another irony is that this most notorious woman was suddenly consigned to obscurity. It seems that all portraits of her were destroyed. (Her own daughter, Elizabeth I, is recorded as having only mentioned Anne twice in her life – Anne was, understandably, a tricky subject for Elizabeth and for everyone around Elizabeth). A woman who had had a profound effect on British (and European) history was, with a single stroke, wiped from it.

The bitter irony, though, for me, and the pertinent one, is that here was a woman whom can be regarded as the first modern woman in political life – intensely ambitious, politically astute, a considerable achiever; she was a woman in a man's world – who was brought down by her biology, her womanhood, just as if none of that success had ever happened. Henry wanted rid of her because it had become clear to him that he would get no sons from her: it was as simple as that. Anne's worth was reduced to her childbearing capacity, something about which – for all the wealth and power she'd been amassing – she could do nothing. She died because she had produced a daughter rather than a son, and then two or three miscarriages. Even her alleged crimes were sexual.

Her character has always interested me. It seems that no one liked her. Even her apparent allies didn't want her to be Queen; they wanted her to destroy the all-powerful Wolsey, the King's right-hand man, the man who ran England, and she obliged because she had her own bone to pick with him, but no one wanted her then to be Queen. Anne knew that people didn't like her. For a brief time, her livery was embroidered with the motto, Ainsi sera, groigne qui groigne, which translates basically as, It's going to happen, whether people like it or not (and even more basically, I like to think, as, Tough). To say that no one liked Anne isn't to give the whole picture, though; and it would be rather a well-worn and uninteresting picture, too (i.e. Anne as witchy baddy). Henry was definitely very much in love with her: his letters to her are evidence of that. This wasn't, by the way, the corpulent, beardy Henry of history lessons: he was in his early thirties, clean-shaven, long-haired, and intensely beautiful; he was a magnificent, accomplished, adored, forward-thinking young man. He and Anne probably felt that they were made for each other; no doubt they felt that, together, they could change the world. She was probably the first (and last?) woman with whom he ever fell in love.

There's a colourful cast of characters in the story of Anne Boleyn's rise and fall e.g. the wily Dukes of Suffolk and Norfolk, and Suffolk's perpetually furious wife; Henry's illegitimate teenage son, sweet Harry Richmond, and his bosom pal, Surrey (the poet); and Anne's sister-in-law, Jane Parker, who fell out with her and later became a key witness in her prosecution. Central to the story, though – and to my story – are the Gentlemen of the Privy Chamber, the bevy of young men appointed by the king to be his daily companions. Court was changing, quickly, radically. Going or gone was the power of the nobility; the monarch was beginning to rein supreme. Via favour with Henry (and/or his wife), everything was suddenly up for grabs: riches and power. The Boleyns were social climbers, perhaps the original social climbers, and, until Anne's fall, were extraordinarily successful. George Boleyn – Anne's gregarious, good-looking brother, with a significantly less than snow-white reputation in sexual matters – was a Gentleman of the Privy Chamber. As were his friends e.g. William Brereton, Francis Weston, both of whom later died in the Anne debacle. They were all-powerful at court because they controlled access to the king, and had influence over his favours. This made for a particularly heady atmosphere. An ambassador described Henry as, "a wonderful man surrounded by wonderful people". These were the beautiful people, and they lived the high life. For the Tudors, whose claim to the throne was shaky, show – conspicuous consumption – was everything: clothes and jewellery, buildings, food. For Henry and Anne, who were on even shakier ground, this was taken to an extreme.

All I know – and anyone knows? – about Lucy Cornwallis is that she was a confectioner, the only woman in a staff of two hundred in Henry's kitchens, rewarded in time with a grand house in Aldgate. And so here is another woman in a man's world, and a highly successful woman. The art of confectionery was highly-skilled and high-status; sugar was an extremely valuable commodity (served only to the highest courtiers), and, before the invention of thermometers, very difficult to work with. The centrepieces of each of Henry's feasts were 'subtleties', ever more elaborate sculptures made of marzipan and sugar paste, and coloured (food-colouring was an art in itself, at this time), often painted with gold leaf. It was almost certainly these that Lucy designed and made.

I've thought many times of writing a novel based on the story of Anne Boleyn. I've often said that her story – her rise, her fall, the terrible toll on so many innocents – is the only story that has ever interested me. But until now I've stopped short, because I haven't wanted to write a historical novel. The answer, I've come to realise, is to write a novel that isn't 'historical'. Isn't picaresque or bawdy. Isn't formal in its dialogue. This is because I don't want these people to seem... well, quaint. They weren't quaint, and that's an understatement.