Ha ha! By God! She’ll be grateful for you taking her out of that place! Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light V, Norfolk to Henry
I am greatly altered these ten years. You not so much. ibid. Henry to Cromwell
I am bested by the Cardinal’s ghost. ibid. Cromwell
The King needs to make this marriage. The country needs it. ibid.
But everyone I wanted to tell is dead. ibid.
You are no more than God made you. ibid.
10th June 1540: A man made Earl in the morning and kicked out by the afternoon. Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light VI ***** Cromwell
The doublet is just a single example of your insensate and ungodly pride. It’s not just your attire that offends. ibid. Norfolk
It was my purple doublet. She couldn’t resist it. ibid. Cromwell
None of you – none of you – can manage matters like I can. ibid.
London at the dawn of the 16th century. By a twist of fate, a teenage prince inherits the throne. In a battle with the Pope, the notorious Henry VIII obliterates hundreds of monasteries and persecutes any who oppose him, plunging his country into chaos. Killer Kings s1e1: Henry VIII, History 2025
And in his maniacal pursuit for a male heir, no-one is immune from losing their heads. ibid.
Can medical science shed new light on Henry’s rabid behaviour? ibid.
‘It’s estimated he may have killed upward of about 70,000 people.’ ibid. comment
Henry VIII is virtually an industry in his own right. Dominic Sandbrook: Let Us Entertain You II: In With the Old, BBC 2015
Her whole world collapsed in just three weeks. Anne knew she was innocent. But at last she chose to accept her fate with dignity. Suzannah Lipscomb & Dan Jones, Henry VIII and His Six Wives II, Channnel 5 2016
Royal history is at the heart of our national identity. We think of it as the definitive truth about our past. Kings and Queens. Dates and facts. All consigned to a past that’s unchanged and fixed. But it’s not like that at all. History is a chorus of voices, each of them shouting out its own version of the story. And very often it’s the loudest voices that get heard most clearly. Royal History’s Biggest Fibs With Lucy Worsley I: The Reformation, BBC 2020
The Reformation almost seems like a side product of Henry’s love life. ibid.
A political earthquake that shapes the nation to this day. ibid.
Martin Luther: Like all the best stories it’s probably hammed up a bit. ibid.
Henry said that Luther was ‘a venomous serpent’. ibid.
Cromwell said the Church was richer than the king, and this was true too. But Cromwell claimed that the clergy were syphoning off these huge sums of money to Rome, where the Pope was spending them on all kinds of excesses – and this was less true. ibid.
Cromwell’s legacy as a progressive Protestant hero has taken quite a battering over the years. ibid.
[John] Foxe’s graphic account of Bloody Mary helped strengthen support for the Reformation in England. ibid.
Now that’s what you call Henry VIII: look at the way he [Henry VII] stands – like a Tudor gunslinger at Ye OK Corral. The mighty torso. The sheer width of the man. This is a king who could change history. That’s the Henry who lives up here in our thoughts. Henry the Terrible. The widest king in Christendom. Waldemar Januszczak, Holbein: Eye of the Tudors – A Culture Show Special, BBC 2015
An artist who I would argue didn’t just record British history, he changed it. He was a funny little man. A Bavarian from Germany. ibid.
What he was really good at was religious painting. ibid.
Thomas More: One of the most resolute presences in British art. ibid.
This time he would be working not just in royal circles but for the King himself. ibid.
Henry needed portraits of himself to hand out to passing dignitaries, people he was trying to impress. ibid.
Holbein was no longer in the business of telling the truth. ibid.
Cromwell, who’d sent Holbein to Europe to paint Anne, was blamed for the mistake. And a few weeks after the wedding he was accused of treason and beheaded. ibid.
Holbein’s most famous painting in the National Gallery in London is usually called The Ambassadors. ibid.
He left behind some of the greatest portraiture of the Renaissance. ibid.