Any compassion for the King threatens to destroy these fragile proceedings. ibid.
He sees a huge crowd held back by troops. He sees the block. ibid.
I have been gripped by the seventeenth century. It was Britain’s most revolutionary century when all the forces of modernity began to stir under the old order slugging it out on the great battlegrounds of religion and politics. Adam Nicholson, The Century that Wrote Itself I: The Written Self, BBC 2013
Two Civil Wars, one King almost blown up, another with his head cut off, a third simply got rid of. ibid.
This first truly modern century. Writing: writing was everywhere. ibid.
This was the beginning of the age we now live in, the moment we left the Middle Ages behind and set out on the track to modernity. ibid.
Words became public weapons promoting revolutionary ideas. ibid.
A literacy revolution. ibid.
In the seventeenth century status was still everything to the gentry. ibid.
The giant shift from the pre-modern to the scientific frame of mind. Adam Nicholson, The Century that Wrote Itself II: The Rewritten Universe
Lives lived in consistent danger. ibid.
Death was more present in seventeenth century England than anywhere on Earth today. ibid.
Reading and writing allowed people to question what they’d been told, to engage in fierce debate, and to re-write the rules of politics and self-expression. Adam Nicholson, The Century that Wrote Itself III: A World Re-Shaped by Writing
This is the birth of privacy. The private letter was a new kind of vehicle for private emotion. ibid.
Slavery: this business built on human blood and human suffering became one of the most important of the seventeenth century. ibid.
This was an empire founded on ink and paper. ibid.
Restoration society is a very much more open society ... Coffee houses where men go to drink coffee and talk politics. Professor Justin Champion, University of London
Divorced, beheaded died, divorced beheaded survived: the story of Henry VIII and six wives is one of the best known in history. Six Wives with Lucy Worsley I, BBC 2016
Ambition is something Catherine had instilled in her from a very early age. ibid.
Catherine enters confinement in spring 1510. Ahead now lies the ordeal of childbirth … Catherine’s bump had simply disappeared. ibid.
She’d done everything right; she had given him a son. This really was the high point of their marriage. ibid.
Henry and Anne hadn’t had sex yet … She wanted to be Queen of England. ibid.
Into the private worlds of Henry’s six wives … Six complex women who lived in a dangerous day, they struggled to survive being married to Henry VIII. Six wives whose names were tarnished by Henry’s propaganda machine. Six Wives with Lucy Worsley II
This is the ultimate story of love, lust and betrayal. ibid.
Anne Bolyne – she’s been accused of being a seductress, and adulteress, even a witch. ibid.
She was set upon by a mob of angry women. ibid.
Catherine … would never see her daughter again. ibid.
He could be the head of his own church. ibid.
After three tempestuous years of marriage Anne was arrested. ibid.
In this end she was the victim of her own strength, and the victim of the pitiless king. ibid.
Jane’s obedience to the King would be tested. ibid.
The religion tension playing out across the country was also felt within the palace walls. ibid.
Jane gave birth. It was a boy … It had taken him three wives to get to this point. ibid.
A visitor has arrived from Germany. They’ve never met … This time he was slightly pushed into it … Henry’s advisers had other ideas: they thought it was time for another Queen … Henry’s fourth wife would be a noblewoman called Anne … ‘The Flanders Mare’. Six Wives with Lucy Worsley III
History’s most awkward blind date. ibid.
She sent back her wedding ring with a request that it be broken into pieces. The King paid Anne off handsomely. ibid.
Teenage lady-in-waiting Catherine Howard – she would be the King’s fifth wife. Henry married Catherine just two weeks after the ending of his marriage to Anne of Cleves. ibid.
When Henry’s eye fell on her [Katherine], she couldn’t refuse. ibid.
The story of our past is open to interpretation and much of British history is a carefully edited and even deceitful version of events. British History’s Biggest Fibs with Lucy Worsley I: The Wars of the Roses, BBC 2017
I’ll found out how the Wars of the Roses was invented by the Tudors to justify their power. ibid.
This family tree reveals Henry’s dirty secret: the fact that his claim to the throne was decidedly dodgy. ibid.
Tudor historians onwards went to town: Richard III was said to be malicious, wrathful and envious as a King; he was also a lump of foul deformity. ibid.
In the 17th century British MPs joined forces with a Dutch prince to spin a foreign invasion into a story of liberation. British History’s Biggest Fibs with Lucy Worsley II
James II is the villain in this carefully constructed tale. ibid.
William was James II’s nephew; but more importantly his wife really was a Stuart. ibid.
Who was really controlling the narrative here? ibid.
William was carpet-bombing England with his manifesto. ibid.
She and William were offered a joint monarchy. ibid.
How in the nineteenth century a British government coup in India created the British Raj. And was heralded by the Victorians as the civilising triumph of the empire. British History’s Biggest Fibs with Lucy Worsley III
They called themselves the Honourable East India Company and they went to great lengths to engineer a facade of British respectability. ibid.
The reality is very different – we’ve had mad monarchs and bad ones. Dr Lucy Worsley, Fit to Rule: How Royal Illness Changed History I, BBC 2013
Edward was but a boy ... The first test of the new king’s reign would be his faith. (England & Edward VI) ibid.
She [Mary] prosecuted protestants with such vigour that it’s tainted her reputation ever since. ibid.
Mary is one of history’s losers. ibid.
James was convinced of his God-given right to rule. ibid.
James was making little effort to be discreet about his affair with Buckingham. ibid.
There would be no more gods, only men. ibid.
The problem for James II was that he converted to Catholicism. Dr Lucy Worsley, Fit to Rule: How Royal Illness Changed History II: Bad Blood: Stuarts to Hanoverians
William arrived with an army ... The Glorious Revolution. ibid.
Anne: all of her children had died ... The last in her line. ibid.
The Act of Settlement: ‘a papist should be excluded’. ibid.
George III: he did rule for sixty years. ibid.
George IV: obituary in The Times newspaper had this to say: ‘There never was an individual regretted less by his fellow creatures than this diseased king. What eye has wept for him?’ ibid.
This was to be the first royal birth in twenty-one years since Charlotte's own. The whole future of the Hanoverian dynasty rested on this baby. Dr Lucy Worsley, Fit to Rule: How Royal Illness Changes History: Happy Familes III
Charlotte’s death was a national catastrophe. ibid.
Victoria was kept under constant surveillance. ibid.