WITMORE: We can’t seem to get enough of the Tudor dynasty in all of its soap opera twists. But to really know the Tudors, you have to look past the famous names and racy plot lines twist. They felt that their riches, their land holdings were a blessing, and therefore, they very often—I mean obviously not universally, there were greedy people in the 16th century too—but very often they felt that their land came with an obligation to the people who farmed it, to the people who lived on or around their holdings. Tudor charity and Tudor philanthropy are quite an inspiring subject. Scene One: 17 November 1558, London. In the early morning, Mary I lies dying at St James Palace. By evening, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Cardinal Reginald Pole, has also died – a momentous day for Catholicism in England. BARBARA BOGAEV: Well, the first and maybe overarching point that you make in your book is that Tudor England, as most of us think of it from depictions in popular culture, is a myth and a huge distortion. So if you had to choose one thing, what do we get most wrong?

Lucy Wooding’s Tudor England: A History is a beautifully written account of the society, culture, and beliefs of the Tudor period. Along the way, she punctures many of the stubborn myths that clinging to the period and its headlining figures. The Times of London called it, “A classic in the making.”Wooding’s book covers all the juicy drama of the Tudor nobility, but she argues there’s only so much you can learn about the period by following the ups and downs at court. To get a real sense of what life was like, you have to get out in the streets and in the fields. She opens her book with a chapter about the almost mystical connection Tudor people felt to the land that they inhabited. Yeah, there’s not quite so much drama in Henry VII, [who] does well. And in fact, that figure at the end of Richard III, you know, Henry of Richmond appearing, he’s a curiously unsatisfactory character.

I mean, if you look at late 16 th-century culture more generally and the way that women are depicted in ballads, as well as in plays, as well as in poetry, you don’t really get the overriding impression that women were quiescent, submissive, and silent. Far from it. From the Folger Shakespeare Library, this is Shakespeare Unlimited. I’m Michael Whitmore, the Folger director. Lucy Wooding teaches history at Oxford University and is the author of a biography of Henry VIII. So, you know, you could be the son of a… I mean, like Shakespeare, you could be the son of a glover or you know, somebody else in trade. And you could still get an extraordinary education. These are the difficult-to-articulate disputes that baffled me as a bright-eyed undergraduate. While a lesser work would lose its way in a forest of difficult and often contradictory scholarship, Wooding is refreshingly clear and balanced. Tudor England is so well-cited that it’s easy to recommend to someone trying to get up to speed with current historical debates, but it’s also far from dry – liberally scattered with grisly tales and memorable digressions into everything from gardening to the theatres. At the start of this period before the Reformation, you also have a way of looking at the world which sees sacrality. Which sees, you know, spiritual meaning and indeed spiritual power invested in material things.BOGAEV: Yeah. It sounds as if it was a time of great income disparity, you know, prosperity as well as widespread poverty, or fear of poverty. It sounds very familiar actually, and I know you caution often against making great parallels between modern times and Tudor times. But between immigration and plague and political instability and income inequality, it’s hard not to. He’s distancing himself from his father. He therefore sort of buys into this idea that his father was miserly and a bit oppressive. BOGAEV: Okay, moving on to Bloody Mary: Henry’s daughter and the first queen of England. You say that only in recent years have we realized that we may have been almost completely wrong about her. What have we so missed the mark on and why?

BOGAEV: Well, in terms of our royals, at least we’ve arrived at the Early Reformation. And this is where we get into another of what you describe as the “great myths of the Tudor period”: that it’s all about the Reformation, not, as you put it, the richness of religious life at this time. Tell us what we’re getting wrong in focusing so much on the Reformation.So, his primary motivation is to fix his marital problems. He does need to get rid of Catherine because it becomes clear to him that their marriage is just not blessed by God, so he must have done something wrong. He is, I think, genuinely in love with Anne Boleyn. Who is, of course, a very fascinating creature herself, and is also a highly intellectual, highly educated, and very pious individual who’s interested in some of the same, humanist ideas about religion. BOGAEV: Hmm. Well, is this why you think, Henry VII didn’t get his own Shakespeare play? I mean, he does appear just at the end of Richard III as Richard’s successor after the Battle of Bosworth Field. But that’s it. Shakespeare didn’t take him on. I absolutely do not believe that reputation is the same thing as representation and must ponder how I in any way conveyed such an impression. I briefly consider subsequent reputations because I think they tell us something about how later societies viewed, appropriated and contested these rulers. That may have something also to say about their contemporary images but it is manifestly not the same thing. This extract from the book looks at the food that the Tudors ate, from sturgeon and quail at the table of Henry VIII to the trenchers of pottage of ordinary people.