A little later than scheduled, on 8 or 9 July 1535, Henry VIII set out from Windsor Castle in Berkshire on what would become one of the longest and most politically significant progresses of his reign: the 1535 progress. Anne, still the king’s ‘most dere and entierly beloved lawfull wiff’, was at his side, as …
In the early hours of the morning, on 25 January 1533, the slight figure of a woman made her way by flickering torchlight along the King’s Privy Gallery at Whitehall. Outside the window, blackness enshrouded the privy gardens below. She heard the night owl screech out its territorial cry, penetrating the stillness of the icy, …
This week I am revisiting Hever Castle in Kent, the childhood home of Anne Boleyn. I went along on a very chilly winter’s evening, by special invitation, to see Hever Castle dressed for Christmas. We are going to go inside to meet with Owen Emerson, House Manager at Hever, and hear all about some very …
Let me introduce you to one of the most beguiling cities of Tudor England: Calais. In the first half of the sixteenth century, Calais was the only jewel of English sovereignty that remained as part of the French mainland. It was a remnant of the vast empire of England’s Plantagenet dynasty; a dynasty that had …