Hayley Nolan is a historian, TEDx Speaker, United Nations Delegate and Anne Boleyn biographer. In 2024 she will become an Associate of King’s College London. Her non-fiction book, Anne Boleyn: 500 Years of Lies was an Amazon History No1 bestseller. She has 200,000+ followers on Tiktok and 25 million views on her history videos to date.

Hayley trained in the archives of the British Library specialising in the research of historical manuscripts and rare books as part of a joint Master’s degree at King’s College London in Early Modern Text and Transmission. Her history TEDx talk was filmed at King’s College London in 2023 titled Anne Boleyn and the Art of Making Unpopular Decisions and can be viewed at Ted.com here.

In 2019 she worked with Houses of Parliament to launch the #BeMoreBoleyn campaign, which provided tangible steps for women to take to use their voice and get involved in politics.

She is a contributor to All About History magazine and has written history articles for The Telegraph, Readers Digest and Big Issue North, as well as leading a campaign against the romanticisation of Anne Boleyn’s death for Women's Aid. She has partnered with some of the country’s most respected historical organisations including Historic Royal Palaces (Tower of London, Hampton Court Palace), Anne Boleyn’s childhood home of Hever Castle, the English Heritage site of Eltham Palace, Henry VIII’s childhood home and Houses of Parliament for the 2017 General Election. Hayley was also invited to work with the official French organisation Atout France, travelling abroad to research Boleyn’s early life at the Chateau Royal de Blois, France.

In 2023, Hayley was appointed as a United Nation delegate for the UN’s Commission on the Status of Women (CSW67). During the two week conference, Hayley volunteered at various events. She spoke at the ‘Future of Education’ meeting as a historian discussing her work highlighting Anne Boleyn’s little known political work, and the idea that if we erase the positive impact of women in history it gives women today a distorted view of what they can achieve. She also proposed action plans to ensure the accurate depiction of women in history in all forms of media.

Anne Boleyn: 500 Years of Lies was selected as The Independent’s ‘Book of the Month’ and was highly received in TIME magazine, Wall Street International and BBC News amongst other global press coverage. Nolan’s thrilling new study was the culmination of extensive independent research into archival source material and secondary source analysis of the Reformation and 16th century politics.

During the research process, Nolan collaborated with a variety of academics building on their scholarship and forming new ideas and analysis. One such collaborator was former Oxford and Cambridge professor, Dr Kevin Dutton with whom Hayley developed a psychological analysis of both Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn in order to achieve a wider understanding of the reasoning behind certain actions which cannot be explained by archival evidence alone. 

In her mission to disseminate academic research to the general public in an accessible and digestible way, Nolan became the historical researcher, writer and presenter of hit vlogumentary mini-series The History Review, which reached 3 million viewers in its first year. She has also written, produced and hosted the spin-off iTunes podcast of the same name. Nolan recently collaborated with social media app Tiktok creating official history videos for their #LearnOnTiktok hashtag. Here she has built an audience of over 200,000 followers, gaining over 25 million views on her historical content to date.