He is most famous for his arguments for the strength of Henry VIII as a ruler not controlled by faction, and for his theory that Anne Boleyn was guilty of adultery in 1536, based on a poem by Lancelot de Carles.
[1][2] George Bernard was born in London and educated at Reading School, before moving to Oxford to take degrees at St. Catherine's College.
He was awarded his DPhil in 1978 with a thesis entitled "The Fourth and Fifth Earls of Shrewsbury: A Study in the Power of Early Tudor Nobility", which he later revised into monograph form.
[4] Bernard has also published a wide range of papers and reviews, about which more information can be found on his personal web page.
The themes of these include architecture, Henrician politics, Anne Boleyn, Thomas Cromwell and Geoffrey Elton's arguments, and also in-depth studies of the role and significance of nobles in the Early Modern period.