Latest / Beheaded / Special Episode: Interview with Dr. Owen Emmerson

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Special Episode: Interview with Dr. Owen Emmerson · Beheaded

• 0:04
  SPEAKER_01: Hello and welcome to Beheaded.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to a special edition episode with a man who needs no introduction, Dr.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: Owen Emerson.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Megan Moore, and I'm Elizabeth Black.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_04: And I'm Dr.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_04: Owen Emerson.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_04: Hello.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_01: Hello.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_01: We're so excited today.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_01: This is a big deal for us.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um, Dr.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_01: Emerson and I, we actually met by complete happenstance when I was visiting in London and went to Heaver Castle, and I recognized you right away.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I was trying not to be a fangirl.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, do I approach him?
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_01: Do I be cool?
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_01: But you were so pleasant and lovely, and you signed my book.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_01: And we've kind of been chatting ever since.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I've been a obnoxious pest.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_01: And every now I'm like, we, you know, and I just really appreciate you taking the time and being on the show today.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_01: So thank you.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_04: You are so, so welcome.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_04: It was gorgeous to meet you and such a pleasure to have gotten to know you since then and to be on your amazing podcast.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_04: Thank you.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: Well, thank you.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and just as a quick, you know, side note, as Megan's friend, like obviously I wasn't there for the initial introduction when you met, but she called me immediately after and she's like, you will never guess who I just spoke to.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: And then every time she had texted you to kind of, you know, figure out the logistics of this interview, she's like, okay, does this sound too silly?
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: Is this too desperate?
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: Like, am I coming off okay?
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: Am I scaring him away?
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: What should I say?
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: We went through so just revealing my confidence.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: People want to know how excited and slash nervous we were to do this.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: So we were so uh thrilled when we finally nailed down a date and everything, and it's the end of our season four.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so we're just so thrilled that you're here.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: And we have a slew of questions for you.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: So we're just gonna jump right in.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_01: So to start, um, so you are Castle historian and assistant curator for Heaver Castle.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_01: You're the author of four books, and you have been on a plethora of documentaries, including Netflix, History Hits, um, so BBC.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_01: So um, can you just share for us your background and your current role?
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_01: How did you get to where you are?
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I bless you.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_04: It's a really great question.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_04: And I was rather late actually in going to university.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_04: I didn't do particularly well in what we call college, um, so after school.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_04: Um, and I think that was because I'm a bit of a historiographical nerd.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_04: I really like different interpretations and I like examining them.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_04: And college history was very prescriptive.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_04: You basically just had to learn a narrative and regurgitate that narrative.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_04: And I'm I'm really bad at doing that.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_04: I like to think about narratives, why they contrast, how they relate to primary sources.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_04: Um, so I spent most of my time arguing um at college and didn't do very well at all.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_04: So, and I applied to a number of universities, but I really wanted to go to the University of Sussex, which is nearby to me.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_04: Um, I had just become an uncle and I wanted to be nearby.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_04: Um, so that was sort of my preferred uni.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_04: And I actually went um to Heaver, which where I've been going most of my life, um, because it sort of captivated me from a really young age.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_04: And I spent a day with the then curator Anna Spender, um, and she let me have a look at Anne's books and gave them really, really nice advice and helped me with that essay.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_04: So I got into uni, which was amazing, and I actually did all three degrees at uni at the University of Sussex.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_04: And um, when I was doing my PhD, which was on the history of the abolition of corporal punishment, um, I love that.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_01: We love corporal punishment.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_04: Absolutely, couldn't be more apt, and um yeah, I it was a fully funded PhD, but I I needed a little bit more extra time um to to finish, so I needed to get a few more funds under my belt.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_04: So I thought to myself, I'm just gonna phone Heaver up and see if they've got any vacancies.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_04: And I spoke to an amazing woman called Nicholas Smith who took me on, um, just doing like ticketing there and car parking and things like that.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_04: Stuff that I I didn't actually need to take anything home um, you know, from a day's work.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_04: Um and I didn't actually tell them that I was at uni and that I was almost a historian.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_04: Um so um, but they they I think they realized that I was quite good at selling guidebooks and things like that.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_04: Um, and within a few months I had taken over as the supervisor of the castle, just sort of running the operations of it.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_04: Um and then, yeah, and then I they created a new position, which was assistant curator.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_04: And then my friend Kate joined, she's been at HEVO a lot longer, and we've just been living it up there.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_04: It's been amazing, it's been really, really lovely.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_04: Um it's lovely, it's such a such a beautiful place, and it means a lot to me.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_04: You know, I've known it most of my life, and um, yeah, do you have to pinch yourself sometimes a lot of the time, yeah.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: Jinx, jinx.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's so true.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: Megan and I talk about this all the time.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: We're like, what if we just move over to England?
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: And like, what if we just took up a role at a ticket encounter or parking cars or something at one of these?
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: I would love houses.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_01: I've seriously considered.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: I have I'm a customer support manager, and I feel like those skills can very easily and swiftly be transferable.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_01: Transferable.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um London, I'm open to Hampton Court.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_01: See, I won't be picky, so wherever they'll pick me up.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: This is not an interview.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: This is actually just so Megan can pick yourself.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_01: You didn't know this was actually my interview for a role.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for I'll send you my resume after this.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: Here's my LinkedIn.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um yeah, and but you're right, Hebrew Castle is a magical place.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_01: When I first walked in, I didn't, I I knew I would be feeling overwhelmed, but I didn't realize the emotional like just every all the emotions that went over me.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_01: I instantly just started getting choked up when you realize you're walking the same floors, you're in the same rooms as the Boleyn family, and you get that every day.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_01: Does it ever wear off that sense of magic?
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_04: No, it really doesn't.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_04: It's um it's a very strange thing, but I mean, I I really have been going there since I was like four years old.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_04: Oh wow.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_04: Um I really fell in love with it then.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_04: Uh and I first saw it on screen in Anne of the Thousand Days and um was just like determined to go there.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_04: And my parents were very patient and took me many times.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_02: Um yeah, exactly.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_04: I think it drove my sister mad actually.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_04: Um but yeah, yeah, it it doesn't wear thin, it really doesn't.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_04: And my my wonderful friend Natalie Gruniger once said something really potent about the fact that when you're in a place where they lived and they experienced and where they lost, you are only separated from them by time and not space.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_04: And it's it's a really profound feeling most of the time.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_04: You know, you're thinking this is where this is where Thomas probably was when that first letter back from Mechlin was delivered, and he he read that letter, and where Anne read so many of the letters from from Henry, and where the their parents retreated after their horrific downfall.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_04: Um, it's a it's an amazingly evocative place and very, very special indeed, I think.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: And would you say, just you know, from your perspective of working there, is it is every day so varied because there's always so many different things going on, different guests, different events, or is there kind of a typical regular day, you know, in your day-to-day?
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: A day in the office, day in the life.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_04: So no two days are the same at Hiva.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_04: There are there are similar days, but the the thing that makes it so varied is that everyone comes with a different understanding, a different perspective, sometimes a different agenda.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_04: Um, and the kinds of questions you get really make you think.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_04: Um, I mean, I uh for for a good 10 years, I had an office at a university and I would sit and write alone and occasionally see my wonderful supervisor.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_04: But actually, when you're working in a place filled with invested people who are coming for very, very different reasons, and they ask questions, that can be really challenging.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_04: You know, it can really really broaden your perspective in a way that you can't control.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_04: So, um, you know, we always like to give an answer, um, but sometimes it's really challenging, you know.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_04: Um, some of the questions you get are really profound or really difficult or very annoying.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_04: Um so you do have a very varied sort of um pressure, I guess, to fulfil expectations.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_04: Um but it's also uh always changing in the in the fact that we we continually have amazing events put on by Nicholas Smith um that are just fantastic and they vary every year.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_04: And of course, we have things like weddings throughout the year, um, but also the gardens have been manicured in a way that it changes really rapidly.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_04: You know, you go right from the beginning in the winter to from snowdrops to daffodils to bluebells, um, and then roses, and then you know, all kinds of different plants, and it everything shifts and the smells change and the light changes, but then there are some things which are uh timeless.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_04: There are elements, especially when you're in the castle, where you realize that the the light play on the water, the moat outside, ripples at a certain time on the ceilings in certain rooms.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_04: And you have these moments, moments where you think that's what Anne definitely saw.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_04: You know, that the paneling might have changed, but nothing has changed about that experience.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_04: And it it is very moving actually when you see those natural sort of phenomena happening and know that they are the same beautiful reflections that were there 500 years ago.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_04: It's amazing.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_01: What a beautiful thought! Yeah, I I was incredibly impressed by the gardens, and I wasn't expecting that.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: I was so ready to see the book, to see the the in the interior, but the gardens blew me away.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it was a cloudy, rainy day, but I almost liked the rain more when I went.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_01: It was I felt like I was in the Shire or just someplace far away, someplace um place fictional.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_04: Totally.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_04: And they and in a way they are a fiction because they are chiefly the the creation of Aster.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_04: Um in in Anne Boleyn's time and in Anne of Cleve's time, it would have just been sort of densely wooded um Kentish wheel.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_04: But what I oh I think the magic of those gardens is, is that it it sort of gives you a very evocative setting for that beautiful little castle, which actually would have been quite hidden from public view.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_04: Um, these were very private places, and now you can really see it shine in a way that it wouldn't have before.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_04: And I I'm a big fan of everything that Astor did, um, and especially so because he chiefly left the layout of the castle intact.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_04: And we now know, we now know that it's pretty much the same layout that it would have been in um in Anne's time, which is amazing.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_04: Like it really is.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_01: And I might be incorrect on this, so please let me know otherwise.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_01: But did I read it right?
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_01: Where in the dining dining hall, I guess you would call it, um, that King Henry VIII left his lock in the door.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_01: That was my favorite part.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_01: Didn't know that was a thing.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, so we think it was created by his locksmith, Henry Romain.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_04: Um, and I think it's kind of like a physical manifestation of all of the anxiety that Anne has to inherit.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_04: Because the reason, the reason those locks were necessary, and and there are many examples, there would have been many examples of them, and one survives in the um Victorian Albert Museum.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_04: Um the reason they exist is because Henry doesn't have a son and he's terrified of assassination and then a coup, a return to the feuding of the wars of the roses.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_04: Um, so this beautiful lock, you know, is as impressive as it is, it really portrays how terrified Henry was.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and symbolic.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, totally, and all of the pressure that that sort of underpinned that paranoia is all passed onto Anne's shoulders very, very quickly.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_04: And so I I I do like to remind people that whilst it's really impressive, it's it's kind of like a metaphor in a way for the fact that Anne was now sort of locked into this position, put in this pressure cooker, and has to deliver the goods.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_04: And that that's kind of the part that happened away from Hiva, if you know what I mean.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_04: I do like to think of Hiva as her happy place.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_04: Um so we it's kind of nice that we're not burdened with um, you know, the the grimmer stuff.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_01: That's so true.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_01: We talk talk about.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um you are the author of four books.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_01: I definitely what we're most looking forward to is talking about your latest book and your latest piece of discovery.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_01: But before we get into that, um, can you share a little bit about your four books and what your writing process is like?
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_01: Is it are you more of a spontaneous writer?
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_01: Do you plan it out for years and years?
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_01: What does that look like?
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_04: That's a really, really good question.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_04: And so my first book um was with the wonderful Claire Ridgway, um, who um has written many, many more books than I have, and who um runs at Amberlynn Files and the Tudor Society, and um is quite the most impressive woman I've ever met, if I'm honest.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_01: And she's got the coolest tattoo of the book.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my god, so cool, so so cool.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_04: And actually, I've been really lucky.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_04: I'm I'm writing a book on my own at the moment.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_04: Um, but actually, I've only co-authored so far with um some amazing women.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_04: Um, so the Boleyns of Heaver Castle was actually initially going to be Ah bless you've got my books there.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_04: I've only got two.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_04: Sorry to interrupt.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_04: I only have two, but it's always it's always a thrill to see people with them, my God.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_04: Um but yes, so that was originally going to be a much longer book, um, but unfortunately COVID-19 happened, and um so we had done all of the research for the Baleins part.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_04: Um, you can tell that we're Berlinites because that's the first thing we did, even though the story began in 1383.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_04: We just jumped straight in and got all the Berlin research done.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_02: Into the good stuff.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_04: Oh yeah.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_04: And when it became fairly apparent that we um weren't going to be getting into any more archives anytime soon, we just decided actually let's let's do the bit that perhaps people will most want to read anyway.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_04: And instead of making it a very long, um densely written book, let's illustrate it in a way that um will help people really visualize how um they lived.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_04: Um, so that was actually a joy to do, it really, really was.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_04: And I'm very much uh I like to do all my primary research first.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_04: Um, I like to find as much as I can independently, and then I start doing secondary research and then kick myself a thousand times when uh someone else has spoken about what I want to talk about.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_04: Um but I I feel it's the only sort of like honest way to do it.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_04: Um I don't necessarily want to be led by what other people think, um, but I do want to respond to it if they've talked about it.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_04: Um so I tend to do primary first, secondary second.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_04: Um and then I'm quite a loose planner.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_04: Um, I like to put all my sources together in a chronology if I'm writing in a chronology.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_04: If I'm doing thematically, I tend to dump them all in separate documents.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_04: And I tend to then write around.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_04: I'm afraid I'm a bit of an owl.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_04: I really like the the quiet of dark to write.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_04: Um, so you can quite often find me at like 8 p.m.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_04: to like 4 a.m.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_04: like writing away.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_04: That doesn't coalesce very well with a full-time job, um, but um that's that's when I tend to like doing it.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_04: There's something really intoxicating for me about writing at night.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_04: It's just like it feels like everyone else else is like left, and like social media is a lot quieter, so there's no temptation, or there's little temptation, shall we say.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_04: Um so yeah, I'm I'm definitely a night writer, and I tend also to write far too much, um, and then like have a uh quite a radical sort of editing process.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_04: So yeah, that that was none more so evident than in my doctoral thesis, which was 80,000 words, and it came out at 130,000 words.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_01: Oh um better too much than not enough, I suppose.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_04: Not my finest hour, yeah.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_04: Um but yeah, since then I've worked collaboratively with um Kate McCaffrey on our our first book together, which was um Becoming Anne Connections Culture Court that looked at Anne's formative years.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_04: Um Blickling, Heaver, um, Mechlin and in France, and then it uh ended with the the Chateauvert pageant um because it was a 500-year anniversary.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_04: Um, so that was a real joy to do.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_04: Um, and then our second book together was co-authored as well by Alison Palmer, um, which was called Catherine and Anne, Queen's Rivals Mothers.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_04: Yes.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_04: And this was a bit of a heartfelt one.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_04: It was very much like based centrally in Kate's groundbreaking research into Anne and Catherine's books of hours.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_04: Um, but it was also quite a passion project for the three of us, um, in that obviously we work at Heaver Castle, we all adore Anne Berlin, but all three of us are also really passionate about Catherine of Aragon.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_04: Um, and I think we were just a bit tired, actually, of the just pitting these women against each other in a way that they had no control over in their own lifetime.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_04: And actually, both women were probably a bit more gracious than either side of um their fandom are today.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_04: Um, so it was kind of a a bit of a plea to um recognise that these women were remarkably similar and in an alternate universe they would have got on incredibly well.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_04: They were both like brilliantly educated, passionate, pious, um, witty women, and they had the misfortune to be married to a monster.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_04: Um, but I just I just think we should stop whipping either one of them for um for being who they were.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_04: Um, so hopefully that will um become part of a bigger conversation that's already going on about um about the wives, the six.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_04: Um so yeah, and then the latest one I think we're going to talk about next.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, we have a lot of questions about your latest one.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_01: So Holbein's Hidden Gem, Rediscovering Thomas Cromwell's Lost Book.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_01: Where do you want to start?
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_01: This is huge, huge.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_04: Oh my god.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_01: Congratulations, first of all.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_04: Congratulations, it's amazing.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_04: This was definitely a team effort, not just the Heaver team, Ali Palmer and uh Kate McCaffrey, but we've also been working um with Nicholas Bell at uh the Wren Library, uh, Michelle Bimbonet Privet at the Louvre, and Kirsten Kennedy at the Victorian Albert Museum.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_04: Uh it's been a massive collaborative effort.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_04: Um, but yes, we um went to the Wren Library exactly a year ago, really.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_04: Um To look at a third copy of the 1527 Haudwan um printings, which was the first time that Haudwan had printed for the English market.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_04: Kate had revealed that Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn had owned a copy, and her research uh uncovered that there was a third copy at the Wren.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_04: And of course, she was thinking, my goodness, if one's owned by Catherine of Aragon and one's owned by Anne Boleyn, who is the third one likely to have been owned by Hodwan, only printed for the English market during Anne's rise and queenship.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_04: So he started in 1527, and the last time he printed for England was in 1533.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_04: So we had a, you know, Kate had a really good reason to suspect that um this was once owned by someone important.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_04: And we went, and do you know it was kind of one of the best days of my life because uh not not necessarily because of the discovery, but because Nicholas Bell is Dr.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_04: Nicholas Bell, I should say, is one of the nicest people I've ever met.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_04: And the Wren Library is astonishingly beautiful.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_04: And before we actually saw um the book in question, he got out a remarkably beautiful copy of um the Book of Martyrs, which was beautifully coloured.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_04: I'd never really seen um a coloured version and one that was so beautifully bound and preserved.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_04: And I, you know, I was waxing lyrical about it.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_04: And he said, Oh, this was Matthew Parker's copy.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_04: And I was like, I was like, that what?
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_01: That that's so casual, so casual.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_04: I know.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_04: Um, and then he said, Oh, um, I must show you this.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_04: And he got out this tiny little book, and it was Edward VI's French textbook, essentially.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_04: It was all written to Thomas Seymour, and it was how he was learning French.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_04: Just remarkable.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_04: I'd never seen it referenced before.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_04: I was just like, oh my god, like, where are you getting this stuff from?
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_01: Pulling it off his shelf, literally, it just really humanizes them.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_04: Totally, it really, really does.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_04: And then he got the the book in question out.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_04: Um, and it literally has been on the same shelf since 1660.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_04: Um and mind-boggling.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, no quite.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_04: So donated by a woman called Anne Sadler.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_04: Um, and she was a really remarkable woman.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_04: She was a devoted um reformist, and she also donated other items, including a 13th-century book called Um The Apocalypse, which is probably one of the finest manuscripts in England.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_04: It's astonishingly beautiful.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_04: And I think the fact that this other book, this printed book, um, was donated alongside this remarkable manuscript has actually helped to sort of mask it from um uh uh academic attention.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_04: And I should say that more broadly, these printed books just haven't been treated the same as a handwritten one.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_04: And you know, I think Kate really is one of the first people to uh uh study them in their own right and to recognise that these were expensive uh coveted pieces in their own right.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_04: Um, you know, a handwritten book to us today might seem more valuable, but this was kind of like a Rolls-Royce of books at that time.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_04: Um so uh yes, we we looked at this beautiful um book.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_04: I'd never seen a book uh in uh quite fine as fine a binding before.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_04: It's got beautiful silver gilt um edges to it, uh it's set with stones, which at the time we thought were just synths, but we've since discovered our garnets.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_04: Um and I mean it's like a carbon copy of Anne and Catherine's book, but with slight variations.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_04: You know, these were obviously highly customizable books, and uh it wasn't until the next day I was at a lecture with Alison, and I was very much concentrating on a wonderful lecture, and uh Allie was looking at the PowerPoint of a portrait of Thomas Cromwell, and you know, uh she was sitting there thinking, My God, that's that's the book we just saw.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_04: Um so uh yes, that led then to a really long and pro protracted period where we, you know, first of all, visually compared the binding to the portrait.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_04: Um we had some misgivings because actually the the version that we had seen in that lecture was the National Portrait Gallery version, which is a 17th-century copy, and it didn't quite fit.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_04: There were some anomalies, and I was thinking, hmm, this is similar, but for example, the central boss, uh the central jewel on the cover had a square setting, um has a square setting rather, and a round disc under it.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_04: And on the 17th century version, it's a square setting with a square disc.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_04: That doesn't make sense, it's a square plate.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_01: I'm visualizing it though.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_01: We we you yeah, the book in itself is amazing to look at.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_04: So but the Oh my god, yeah, so so beautiful.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_01: But these small details.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_04: So it started with a really sort of forensic analysis of um comparing the book to the Polbein painting.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_04: Um, having spoken to the National Portrait Gallery, we realized through dendrochronology that the their painting was painted quite some time after the version held in the Frick.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_04: Um, so we used the Frick version as sort of the control going forward.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_04: Um, and then we had, after that sort of period of visual analysis, a very long protracted period where we tried to prove it.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_04: We tried to take the provenance trail back as far as we could.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_04: Um, we tried to identify how old the binding was.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_04: Um, because of course we couldn't rule out the possibility that someone had seen the book in the painting and thought, I'd love a book like that and had it replicated.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_04: Um, luckily for us, Anne Sadler was married to the grandson of Rafe Sadler, um, who is Cromwell's protege.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_04: And in Cromwell's will, he gifted the executor of his will, Rafe Sadler, all his books.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_04: All his books.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_04: Well, all of my books are which is really, really cool.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_04: And then we found an inventory of Standen when Rafe's son Thomas inherited Rafe's property, and in that inventory were listed things like 10 sorters, um this many Bibles, and then it picked out this one and it said a silver gilt psalm.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_04: We were just thinking, oh my god, like why have you singled that one out?
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_04: It's obviously much more highly decorated than than the others, it has more intrinsic value.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_04: Um and then after really actually quite late in the day, we realized there were hallmarks on the binding.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_04: The binding hadn't been cleaned for for decades, really, and really had sort of masked how visually similar it was to the painting in Holbein's uh the book in Holbein's portrait.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_04: And we found this crowned letter A with a fleur de Lee and uh an H also with a Fleur de Lee crowned, and uh my god, we looked through so many archives of Walmarts thinking, is it London, is it Frankfurt, is it um, you know, all over Europe, and finally we landed on Paris, and um we had to get all this all verified via the Louvre that we not only found the the date of production, which was December 1529 to December 1530, um, but it was made by Pierre Mongo, who was the the goldsmith to Louis I of France.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_04: Um, and just a few short months after creating this binding for Cromwell, he created a gold work chain for George Berlin, uh, which was another eureka moment.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_04: We think, oh my god, you're you're working in the same circles.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_04: Um, so yes, it it honestly, it's it's been such a journey and uh hell to keep to myself.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_04: Um like seriously, so I did let it slip a few times, not Lisa Tracy Borman, because you know, wrote a book on Cromwell, got a dog called Cromwell.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_04: Um so yeah, and we we launched it last week, and we had like all our friends there, and it was just magical.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_04: And now Cromwell's book is sitting a few meters away from Anne's book.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_04: Uh I'm sure they're fighting at night.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_04: But it's lovely to lovely to have them together.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_04: It really is.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_01: You again, I know.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_01: That is purely serendipitous, that entire story.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_00: It is.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I was going to ask too, you know, for our listeners, um, what was the timeline like between when you found the book and then just last week when you announced the the finding?
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_04: My God, yeah.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_04: So I mean, I have to be honest, we we went to the Ren because we knew we could only have Catherine of Aragon's copy from the Morgan for six months.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_04: Um we wanted to run the exhibition um for longer till the 10th of November.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_04: Um so we kind of needed something else to put in the case, which we just happened to put Catherine's book.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_04: Um, so we thought, you know, let's let's let's go and see what this other book can offer.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_04: So actually, we had a really small amount of time um in which to do all of the primary research.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_04: We then had to get it sort of peer-reviewed by not only all the biographers of Cromwell, but the specialists in book binding, of metalwork binding, uh of Pierre Mango.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_04: Um, so it took time.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_04: And then um, really stupidly, um, we we'd already we'd already published the book for the exhibition, you know, the Catherine and Anne book.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_04: Um, but of course it didn't have anything about Cromwell in it.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_04: So um we literally wrote that book in a week.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_03: Really?
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, we'd done all the research, but Kate and I um literally wrote that in a week.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_01: So my goodness, I had no idea.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_01: I can't wait to get my hands on it.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_01: What's the best way for our listeners to find the book?
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_04: Ah, so if you go to the Heaver online shop, it's available exclusively through there.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_01: So we're very familiar with the shop.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna buy a new duck while I'm at it while I get those shipping costs because Anne has now broken three times.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_01: She has just blue together.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_01: Oh bless it.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_01: Henry's fine.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_01: But her head has come off, and her hat has come off.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_01: I think that that means something, also symbolic, anyways.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I will I will keep a lookout for that.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_00: We also ordered a bunch of the the rose scented soap, the anvilin' soap from Beaver Castle.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_01: Bookmarks, bookmarks, wind coasters.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_01: I've I've got my eye on the umbrella.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_04: Oh yeah.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_04: The am one.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's so exciting.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, uh, we were just watching right before we were recording the um documentary with Susanna Liscombe, like detailing out the book.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, again, the question we just kept going back to was like, I just can't believe no one noticed this for centuries.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_00: Like such a famous, famous portrait, and it's such an iconic looking book.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's not a book that you would, you know, easily uh confuse with another.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_00: So we were but but we were so fascinated to learn more about it.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_00: So in the documentary, um, it was noted that he didn't have any uh specific handwritten notes or crossing out of the Pope's names.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think that is indicative at all of his beliefs, or is it more so because he just thought of this book more so as a work of art or a collector's item?
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, that's a really good question.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_04: Um, I'm really reminded of the fact that when um his inventory, which we used extensively, was studied by Nick Holder, he looked, um, and I'm talking about Austin Fryers here, his property in in London.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_04: Everything about it screamed traditional Catholic, and nothing about it revealed his beliefs, his reformist leanings.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_04: So, do you know that I think the only person in the kingdom, apart from Henry and Anne, who could have gotten away with not crossing out the very things that Cromwell is ordering people to do, is Cromwell, because who else is going to be looking?
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_04: Of course, they came looking later, but what they didn't find were reformist books.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_04: He had a network around him who would have concealed and would have taken those things away from his properties at the this the you know moment that they realized that they were going after him.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_04: So uh outwardly Cromwell would have looked particularly uh uh sort of conservative, I guess, in his um beliefs.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_04: But unlike Anne, you know, Anne is probably one of the first people to get away with uh owning these French books as um they are they are described, and which she openly puts on a lectern in her chambers and invites her women to read the Bible in their language for the first time.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_04: Um, with Cromwell, it's different.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_04: He has a different relationship with the king than Anne does.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_04: Um, and he he is certainly a bit more cautious, I think, about being depicted in any kind of way that would lead to any kind of difficulty.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_04: Um people know anyway, but he's not going to give them the ammunition that they need to strike.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_04: Um so yes, uh I think it tells us a lot about him actually.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_04: I also think it tells us that he's incredibly sentimental.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_04: I mean that that whole portrait is full of symbolism and sentiment.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_04: Um, there's that hint of Warsey in the background.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_04: Um there's, you know, sort of the the future in the in the foreground in the book that will be given to Rafe Sadler.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_04: Um, it's almost like this is about master and like um protege.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_04: It's all all about sort of self-made men and the the passing on of batons, I think.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_04: So um, yeah, it's kind of really touching, and it's of no coincidence that this portrait lens uh uh ends up with Ray Saddler 2.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_04: Um, it hangs in his long gallery and is still found there at Standen when uh Anne Sadler donates the book.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_04: So um they Cromwell meant a lot to Sadler and Wolsey meant a lot to Cromwell.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_04: So yes, this is this is quite a touching um book and quite a touching portrait, actually.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, I think it goes back to what you said earlier about how most people have surrounded their research around the handwritten books.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_01: But Kate has opened up this whole new world of discovering the printed books.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_01: And to exactly what you're saying, I think we're overlooking how symbolic the printed books could be to them and how there's so much in that story.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, it's a printed book, and even if there's no handwriting in it, that in itself can share so much about a person.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_04: Definitely so.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_04: It really gives you a window into their everyday lives.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_04: One of my favorite parts of Kate's research is looking at haptic wear, you know, how these books have been used, and therefore the remnants of that use are literally left behind on the pages.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_04: You know, you can see almost where people have rubbed the parts they enjoy, even kissing, kissing parts, and you can see where the paint has degraded because of the saliva.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_04: It's become part of that book's so much.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_04: Um so I I live in hope that one day we can do a little DNA swab and recreate Anne Boleyn.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_04: Um, don't let don't don't don't tell anyone.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um that's only our secret.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_01: Well, um, Elizabeth is a relative of Mary Boleyn.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_00: Distantly very distant.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_00: Uh yeah, my 15th grandmother was Mary Boleyn.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_00: And it's so funny because I always tell people because it's like we were the the part of the family that went off to America, that went off to Virginia and ended up somehow, you know, in the South of America.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but yeah, so it was um, you know, Catherine Carey, Latisse Snowy's, Penelope Devereaux.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then it's like we got less famous after that and came to Virginia where no one knew anything.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_04: Until now.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_00: Until now.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_04: Stop thinking.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_01: What do you think this discovery will do to shape history?
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_01: I know that's a big question.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_01: I just threw it out there, but overall, what does this mean to you?
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_04: It means a huge amount personally.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_04: It's probably the most exciting thing I've ever been involved in.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_04: Um, and I think it has serious implications.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_04: And part of realizing what those implications are is going to be over the next few years when Kate carries on this research, because quite honestly, she's one of the most impressive historians I've ever met.
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_04: And there is so, you know, when you when you make a discovery like this and you realize what it is, you all you begin answering questions, but the the questions that then result from that multiply um sort of infinitely.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_04: Um, so we now have a huge base of questions that need answering.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_04: And I can promise you it will be Kate McCaffrey that will answer all of those questions.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_04: But she's great.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_04: She's amazing, she's such a such a rare talent.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_04: Um, so yes, but what I what I think one of the obvious implications of it is, is how we need to pay far more attention to the synergies between people who are typically identified as adversaries, you know, people who are typically um pitted or or marked against each other, Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn, Catherine and Cromwell, Anne and Cromwell.
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_04: Actually, these people lived cheek by jowl, they were in each other's presence a lot of the time.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, for goodness sake, Anne was in Catherine's service um for at least four years before Henry turned his attention towards her.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_04: They had a relationship.
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_04: That relationship was strained, it was irrevocably broken, but they had a connection.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_04: And even when they had um parted ways in each other's affections, shall we say, they still had to live with each other.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_04: You know, Henry Henry literally made Catherine she he humil humiliated her by positioning Anne's apartments near hers.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_04: Um, but they had they had to live together and they had to get on in some kind of way.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_04: And and I think the fact that they are owning these three almost you know triplet-like books is a really sort of redolent reminder of that, that actually they did have things in common, and we must we must ask ourselves what those commonalities were, because otherwise we're just sort of rehashing the same old story, I think.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_01: I love that.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_00: I love that so much because um, well, I was just going to say, um I I love that specifically because uh again, I think in today's society, like you said, we're always about rivalry and the drama and the us versus them.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_00: And again, remembering that this is a different time and they did have to live together, they had to play cards together sometimes.
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, everything was on display, everything that you did could be construed one way or the other.
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_01: I know there's so many dramas, and of course, you know, we have the tutors and all these TV shows that have come out about it, but honestly, if that could have been a reality show, if they had gossip, you know, magazines or whatever, back then really housewives of tutor courts.
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_04: Absolutely, yeah.
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_04: I'd be a prime subscriber, I really would.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_01: Fascinating.
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_01: Well, a lot to unpack with this discovery.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_01: And again, congratulations.
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_00: I know that there's more to come on it, and we are gonna be keeping close on the story, and we'll let our listeners know every time there's new developments because obviously this is a very new finding.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_01: So um, it's it's a really big deal.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_01: We were when when it first shop popped up, I I think I just went, oh my gosh.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_01: And then you just see everyone is posting about it.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_01: Tracy Borman is posting about it, just everybody in the Not just in the tutor historian world, I think, but just beyond.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_01: It's um, I think it's really inspiring to show the detective work that goes into being a historian.
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and it's it's a huge success.
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_01: So bless you.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_04: I've always been a lover of Agatha Christie and always wanted to be Miss Marple.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_04: And now I feel I am Miss Marple.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_00: So absolutely.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_00: And to your point that you made earlier, I love that you, you know, forge your own path first before looking at everything that's been done before.
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_00: Because I feel like most people, it's so opposite where they want to absorb everything that's out there and then figure out which direction to go.
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_00: So it's so admirable that you take it a different way of no, like I want my own story and my own thoughts and my own research, you know, and then we'll entertain what others have said.
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_00: And even if you, you know, come to those moments where like, I reinvented the wheel a little, at least it's yours and it's not just everyone else's thoughts regurgitated.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_04: I just think I just think it's the most honest way of doing it.
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_04: And actually, like I want, I want to try and get into the minds of the people who wrote the documents I'm reading.
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_04: I don't want to necessarily be led by a 19th century idea or a you know, or a modern idea or a postmodern idea.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_04: I I want to try and inhabit their world first before I subject myself to sort of 400 years of historians making judgments and leaving bits out and relying on translations that were made by anonymous 19th century men.
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_04: Um, you know, they all have their agendas, they all uh summarized things in certain ways because they thought the bits they put in the summary were important.
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_04: You know, letters and papers is the most wonderful resource.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_04: Um, but I would urge people, don't rely on those summaries, go back to the document because this anonymous 19th-century man had a very different view of the world.
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_04: He had a very different view of women, he had a very different view of uh the politics and the class system.
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_04: So go back to that original document and uh listen to the voice of that person in its entirety because actually people make mistakes, people make judgments, people leave things out.
• 46:26
  SPEAKER_04: And actually, some of the best things that I've found have been in you know translating my own version of that document.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_04: So that would be my best advice to people.
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_04: Go back to the original source is so so important.
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_01: Well said, very well said.
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um well, I know we are kind of at time and we had all these questions about the Boleyns.
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_01: So I it was funny.
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_01: I think before um, you know, before the research came out, I was envisioning this interview to primarily be about all about the Boleyn family and tell us all of the people, and then I'm like, now we've got Thomas Cromwell in the mix, it just all kind of came together.
• 47:06
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 47:07
  SPEAKER_04: Um I am more than happy to take quickfire questions.
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna be too excited about the Boleyn piece of this to not address some of these questions.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, we'll we'll wrap it up with with uh the Boleyn part.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but if you could have dinner with one member of the Boleyn family, our profound point is profound.
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_01: Who are you who are you having a happy hour with, Owen?
• 47:33
  SPEAKER_04: So my obvious answer would be Anne.
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_04: My less obvious answer would be George, but I'm actually going to pick Jane Boleyn because like okay, she's she's a Boleyn by marriage, yeah.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_04: She, you know, there there are massive like discussions about did she do this, did she do that?
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_04: I don't know where to sit myself.
• 47:53
  SPEAKER_04: I've read, I've been in a documentary about her, and I'm still not sure.
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_04: I think she was an amazing woman.
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_04: Um, I think she did pretty pretty amazingly at court, but I want I've got so many questions I want to ask her.
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_04: So Jane.
• 48:07
  SPEAKER_01: I like that.
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_01: She's gonna spill the tea, I feel like.
• 48:10
  SPEAKER_01: But I also feel like her ending gets overlooked a lot.
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_01: Overlooked a lot.
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my god, overshadowed.
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, someone was George and Anne, and then we're like, hey, I know she was kind of portrayed as the rat in that story, but she karma came out for her in the end too.
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_01: Sad.
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um, what do you think the Boleyn siblings relationship was like between George, Mary, and Anne?
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_01: How do you imagine that?
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_04: Such a great question.
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_04: Uh the the one aspect that I'm not sure of is how either George or Anne related to Mary because we have so little, sadly, left in her own words.
• 48:47
  SPEAKER_04: The only the only document, the only letter that we have in Mary's name is just as she's been banished from court by Anne, which probably probably doesn't give us the best example of what their overall relationship was like.
• 49:01
  SPEAKER_04: Um, Mary was badass, like the fact that she got booted out of court for marrying for love, and then writes a letter saying, I'd rather beg bread than be the richest queen in England.
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah.
• 49:13
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, come on now, that's like pretty badass.
• 49:17
  SPEAKER_04: Um, but I think Anne and George were inseparable, they were as thick as thieves.
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_04: Um, I think they would have thoroughly annoyed a lot of people because they were ludicrously clever, ludicrously talented.
• 49:30
  SPEAKER_04: You know, they were eloquent poets, they could play instruments, they spoke several languages, they they would have made a lot of people sick.
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, and but a lot of people would have loved them too.
• 49:44
  SPEAKER_04: Um, yeah.
• 49:45
  SPEAKER_01: It's weird.
• 49:46
  SPEAKER_01: It sounds just like us, just talented and make people sick.
• 49:51
  SPEAKER_00: No, I love that.
• 49:52
  SPEAKER_00: But I I agree that each member brings something so different to the table.
• 49:55
  SPEAKER_00: But it, you know, they're all so, again, educated and so multi-talented.
• 50:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I can't imagine being around, you know, family members like that.
• 50:03
  SPEAKER_00: Just intimidating.
• 50:04
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah, very intimidating and so fiercely, you know, set in the things that they believe in and their relationship with each other, and that changes over time.
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I just can't imagine.
• 50:12
  SPEAKER_00: They're so fascinating.
• 50:13
  SPEAKER_00: And there's always new things and new ways to look at them as time evolves and new things come out about the family, but it's it's fascinating.
• 50:21
  SPEAKER_04: Absolutely so.
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_04: Absolutely so.
• 50:24
  SPEAKER_00: And we touched on this briefly, but what do you think happened to Ann's letters back to Henry?
• 50:29
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we know so well the letters he wrote to her, the ones she probably read at Heaver.
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_00: Where do you think hers are?
• 50:37
  SPEAKER_04: So um, I'm fairly certain, uh, and unless we find evidence otherwise, that her letters were stolen in around 1529.
• 50:48
  SPEAKER_04: They might even have gone back to Rome with Cardinal Campeggio.
• 50:52
  SPEAKER_03: Wow.
• 50:52
  SPEAKER_04: Um, because what what in essence they did for the Pope is prove that Henry's um conscience wasn't the main factor in his desire for a nominee for an Abarragon.
• 51:05
  SPEAKER_04: He wasn't just worried he'd found another wife.
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_04: Um, and those letters so explicitly proved that.
• 51:11
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, he's talking about her breasts, for goodness sake.
• 51:13
  SPEAKER_04: Um probably.
• 51:15
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, exactly.
• 51:16
  SPEAKER_01: That's why I can't look at the ducks the same, truly.
• 51:18
  SPEAKER_01: I know, I know.
• 51:21
  SPEAKER_04: Her letters, however, they were so personal.
• 51:25
  SPEAKER_04: Um, I don't think they went to Rome because they would have been at court, much harder to steal something from court than it is from Heaver.
• 51:34
  SPEAKER_04: Um I have a feeling they were probably burnt.
• 51:37
  SPEAKER_04: I I have a feeling that Henry put them to the flame just as he put her on a scaffold.
• 51:45
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 51:46
  SPEAKER_04: Um, I I would love to think they would turn up uh in a cache somewhere.
• 51:52
  SPEAKER_04: Um they're probably the thing I would most like to find.
• 51:55
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 51:56
  SPEAKER_04: Or for someone else to find.
• 51:57
  SPEAKER_00: We'll get you on that once this is done.
• 52:00
  SPEAKER_00: You should probably check all the shelves at Trinity College.
• 52:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it seems like they've got something else maybe hidden on their shelves.
• 52:08
  SPEAKER_04: Seriously.
• 52:08
  SPEAKER_04: So please check your cupboards everyone.
• 52:11
  SPEAKER_04: Um because like it I think they would help us, they probably wouldn't give us the answer, but they would help us to get closer to the question about whether Anne actually loved Henry.
• 52:24
  SPEAKER_04: And that's a really difficult one for me to answer because we don't have enough in her own hand, in her own words, I think, to come to that conclusion.
• 52:35
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's that's a fair sentiment.
• 52:37
  SPEAKER_01: I I like to believe that it was reciprocated in the same way.
• 52:42
  SPEAKER_01: I'd like to believe that she was charmed by this king, you know.
• 52:47
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 52:48
  SPEAKER_00: How can you not be flattered by something like that?
• 52:50
  SPEAKER_00: Especially, you know, she's only the second wife.
• 52:52
  SPEAKER_00: So at this point, he's only had one wife that he's been with for so long.
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_00: So how can you not be flattered of like, wow, he's looking towards me now?
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_00: What could this mean?
• 53:00
  SPEAKER_00: You know, is there a future there?
• 53:02
  SPEAKER_00: So it's it's hard not to imagine that she wasn't excited about it in the very least, even if she wasn't that infatuated.
• 53:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, his reputation wasn't damaged yet, right necessarily.
• 53:13
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 53:13
  SPEAKER_04: Certainly wasn't a wife killer yet.
• 53:16
  SPEAKER_01: Not yet.
• 53:16
  SPEAKER_01: Not quite.
• 53:17
  SPEAKER_01: See, Catherine Howard and Catherine Parr.
• 53:19
  SPEAKER_01: I'm a little bit I I know that you know there's obviously situations that led him to that, but Catherine Howard, I'm like, uh there was a history.
• 53:27
  SPEAKER_01: There was humor.
• 53:29
  SPEAKER_04: It was her frigging cousin, for goodness sake, my god.
• 53:32
  SPEAKER_04: Like, you know, did no one talk about her?
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_04: Did no one say, actually, you remember your cousin Anne?
• 53:38
  SPEAKER_04: Um we haven't talked about this, but she she got hair cut off by him.
• 53:43
  SPEAKER_04: Um I I always wondered, like, Jane Seymour must have been like shitting it.
• 53:49
  SPEAKER_04: She really must have.
• 53:50
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, yeah.
• 53:51
  SPEAKER_04: Like, there must have been a part of her that was like, what has happened?
• 53:54
  SPEAKER_04: What have I done?
• 53:56
  SPEAKER_04: Like, you know, it's true.
• 53:57
  SPEAKER_04: Because actually, when you look when you look at the evidence, all of the Seymour faction wanted rid of Anne, but they didn't want her killed.
• 54:06
  SPEAKER_04: And in fact, I think they were quite horrified when she was.
• 54:09
  SPEAKER_04: And they they must have been thinking, shit, like, oh my god, like exactly.
• 54:18
  SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm I'm convinced that Jane Seymour died like in you know, after childbirth just because it was such a relief, like, okay, there's a boy.
• 54:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I can't, you know, it's just such a oh like a culmination of stress and fear.
• 54:31
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like it just I think ended her life.
• 54:34
  SPEAKER_04: Um, I'm I'm gonna go on my terms.
• 54:37
  SPEAKER_04: Exactly.
• 54:38
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, okay.
• 54:39
  SPEAKER_01: Well, well, just to wrap this up, I kind of want to go full circle kind of back to Heaver Castle.
• 54:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um, obviously, generations of success and of downfall, and like you said, just so many stories, not just with the balloons, but but everything that there is.
• 54:57
  SPEAKER_01: So after all is said and done, what really happened to the balloons after Anne's downfall?
• 55:05
  SPEAKER_04: That's a really, really good question.
• 55:07
  SPEAKER_04: And it's something that doesn't really get explored um visually on film.
• 55:13
  SPEAKER_04: You know, it it tends to be um you tend to get Anne's execution and then a nice little sort of pick me up at the end, usually in text form saying, but Elizabeth became queen.
• 55:27
  SPEAKER_04: Um, you know, it's kind of like a bittersweet pill uh that we're offered to swallow at the end of that horrific act.
• 55:35
  SPEAKER_04: Um in reality, uh we don't know much about what happened to Mary Boleyn, but we do know that she thrived in the shadow of the crown in the way that Anne and George uh fell under it.
• 55:49
  SPEAKER_04: Um so she probably did the best out of all of the Baleins.
• 55:54
  SPEAKER_04: We do know that there's something of a reconciliation with her father.
• 55:57
  SPEAKER_04: Um, Mary had been sent away in disgrace for marrying for love, um, uh William Stafford.
• 56:04
  SPEAKER_04: Um, but we do know in Thomas's will that he has left her lands, actually, some lands at Heaver, not the property though.
• 56:12
  SPEAKER_04: Um, so that that very much suggests, as Laura Mackay's amazing research revealed, that there was that moment of reconciliation.
• 56:22
  SPEAKER_04: Um, in terms of Thomas, I think he was a completely broken man.
• 56:26
  SPEAKER_04: I think like George um was his pride and Anne was his joy, and um they were both snatched away, and you chiefly find him at Heaver going forward.
• 56:39
  SPEAKER_04: He only attends court when he's obliged to.
• 56:42
  SPEAKER_04: One of those occasions is Edward's christening, um, which is probably the last time that he saw his granddaughter Elizabeth.
• 56:50
  SPEAKER_04: Um, and she probably just thought he was a man in the crowd.
• 56:54
  SPEAKER_04: Um that there's something really tragic about what happens to Thomas, and Elizabeth also.
• 57:01
  SPEAKER_04: We know that shortly before Anne is executed, that she's worried about her mother's health.
• 57:05
  SPEAKER_03: Sure.
• 57:06
  SPEAKER_04: And she was astute, she dies in 1538.
• 57:10
  SPEAKER_04: Um, but there is kind of a nice encore, we can't overlook it, you know, all of that's a bit depressing, and of course, Elizabeth does become queen, um, and a badass queen too.
• 57:25
  SPEAKER_04: Um uh and and Mary's relatives become queens too.
• 57:33
  SPEAKER_04: Um our our late queen is a direct descendant or was a direct descendant of Mary Boleyn, right?
• 57:40
  SPEAKER_04: And her son, our current king, King Charles, is also a direct descendant.
• 57:46
  SPEAKER_04: But when William inherits the throne, he's a double Boleyn because Diana was also a direct descendant from Mary Boleyn.
• 57:53
  SPEAKER_04: So there's probably never been a more Boleyn monarch uh in the wings waiting to sit on the throne.
• 58:01
  SPEAKER_04: So um it's kind of it's kind of a success story, do you know what I mean?
• 58:06
  SPEAKER_04: Um yeah, yeah.
• 58:08
  SPEAKER_01: That's awesome.
• 58:09
  SPEAKER_04: It's a it's uh a nice ending to quite a grisly end for uh uh the stars of the show, I would say.
• 58:17
  SPEAKER_01: I love ending on a positive note.
• 58:18
  SPEAKER_01: Normally, our podcast does not end on a positive note.
• 58:21
  SPEAKER_01: No, the opposite, in fact.
• 58:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it normally ends a little bit bloody.
• 58:26
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 58:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but but this has been so fabulous.
• 58:29
  SPEAKER_00: You know, thank you so much for uh obviously interjecting a lot of the recent stuff that has come out about uh Thomas Cromwell's book of hours and you know letting us entertain all of our fangirl questions about Heaver Castle and the Boleyn family, um, because it's just such a treat for us.
• 58:44
  SPEAKER_00: This is, I mean, this is what we love.
• 58:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's our favorite part of everything that we do in this show.
• 58:49
  SPEAKER_04: We could not be warm up more welcome.
• 58:51
  SPEAKER_04: It's been such a such a joy joining you, and um, I've enjoyed myself thoroughly.
• 58:56
  SPEAKER_01: Well, thank you.
• 58:57
  SPEAKER_01: So everybody definitely go check out Dr.
• 59:00
  SPEAKER_01: Owen Emerson's books, especially his latest Holbein's Hidden Gem, Rediscovering Thomas Cromwell's Lost Book.
• 59:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you are on what you're on everything, you're on Instagram, you're uh well YouTube, I don't know.
• 59:13
  SPEAKER_01: Where are you?
• 59:14
  SPEAKER_01: You're everywhere.
• 59:15
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I'm usually uh at Dr.
• 59:18
  SPEAKER_04: Owen Emerson, and yeah, I'm on TikTok, Twitter.
• 59:22
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, you've mastered it.
• 59:23
  SPEAKER_04: You name it.
• 59:24
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah.
• 59:27
  SPEAKER_00: I keep trying.
• 59:28
  SPEAKER_00: That's a bit young for us.
• 59:29
  SPEAKER_00: We're trying our best.
• 59:30
  SPEAKER_04: It's crazy, it's crazy, it's wild.
• 59:34
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so so much.
• 59:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um Dr.
• 59:37
  SPEAKER_01: Emerson, any final words?
• 59:40
  SPEAKER_04: Uh not guilty.
• 59:45
  SPEAKER_01: Perfect.