Sylvia’s research is featured in in the Smithsonian magazine.
Sylvia’s new book, entitled Mary Boleyn: The Queen’s Slandered Sister, was published on 7 May 2026 with The History Press. Meilan Solly from the Smithsonian magazine wrote a feature about the new discoveries from Sylvia’s book in the article entitled “History Remembers Mary Boleyn as the Scandalous ‘Other Boleyn Girl.’ New Research Debunks the Myths Surrounding the Tudor Mistress”.
Mary Boleyn: The Queen’s Slandered Sister is available online and in bookshops in the UK.
The US release date is scheduled for 20 October 2026.
Sylvia Barbara Soberton’s research is featured in Hever Castle’s new exhibition, Capturing a Queen: The Image of Anne Boleyn.
In 2012, Soberton noticed a striking similarity between the National Portrait Gallery portrait of Anne Boleyn and the Compton Verney portrait of Elizabeth I, proposing that Elizabeth’s face may have served as a model for Anne’s. More recently, in her 2022 blog posts and her 2025 book Secrets of the Tudor Portraits, Soberton argued that “a closer look” at the paintings of Anne and Elizabeth revealed more than just “a natural likeness between the mother and daughter. … Compared side by side, it becomes evident that the unknown artist used almost identical face patterns in both paintings.”
Dr Owen Emmerson, a historian at Hever Castle—Anne Boleyn’s childhood home—credited Soberton’s work in a BBC Kent interview with Dominic King, saying: “This similarity between the two portraits has been recognised before by Sylvia Soberton, and I have built on this through the work of Lawrence Hendra who has located the artist behind these panels.”
Meilan Solly from the Smithsonian Magazine covered this subject in her article entitled “Why Do These Tudor-Era Portraits of Anne Boleyn and Elizabeth I Look So Strikingly Similar?”
Capturing a Queen: The Image of Anne Boleyn runs from 11 February 2026 to 2 January 2027.