History Cafe

By Jon Rosebank, Penelope MiddelboeHistory

History Cafe episodes

July 29 #125 The torrid affair - Ep 2 Columbus - legend and loser
Nobody believed Columbus could reach the Indies (Asia, home to the Grand Khan). So why did Ferdinand and Isabella back him? The answer is all tied up with a torrid affair.
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33 min
July 22 #124 Columbus was invented in 1777 - Ep 1 Columbus - legend and loser
Columbus the romantic hero is a myth created in 1777 by the Scottish historian Revd William Robertson. It hit the big time with Washington Irving’s biography 50 years later. Tales of lone scientific geniuses were becoming popular and Columbus had been snapped up by rebellious American colonists waving their newly minted Declaration of Independence. But the historical research was hopelessly flawed. Columbus had been wrong about pretty much everything.
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30 min
July 15 # 40 Henry VIII: Pope Clement, Katherine, Anne and Florence
After years of negotiation and confrontation, Pope Clement VII was heard swearing unpapally over Henry VIII’s divorce. And no wonder. The history of Henry’s pope is a murky tale of code-breaking and ruthless sieges that involves Michelangelo and Machiavelli and a great deal of double-dealing. Pope Clement was trapped between a rock and a hard place: the only way to save his Medici family’s city of Florence was to refuse Henry his divorce and split Christendom.
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37 min
July 08 # 52 Anne Boleyn - Henry VIII's MacGuffin
Most of what we think we know about Anne Boleyn turns out to be later invention, with no historical basis. We argue that she was a MacGuffin: she was necessary to the way things turned out for Henry, but unimportant in herself. We’re not even sure he was in love with her.
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45 min
July 01 # 51 Marrying Anne Boleyn, the best of a bad job - Ep 6 Henry VIII: the king, his wife, his lover, the French
The Ambassadors painting by Hans Holbein reveals the French horror at Henry’s decision in January 1533 to defy the pope and get remarried to a pregnant Anne Boleyn. But since Henry couldn't get an annulment he had no choice. No big-time European princess would marry him. With the Spanish seriously weakened by war, Turkish invasion and protestant revolt in Germany, and Henry’s French allies now needing him more than he does them, Henry’s long game to get the Pope on side against the Spanish is now in extra time. Henry is free to make himself head of the Church in England. See the painting at the National Gallery, London.
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31 min
June 24 # 50 No more menage à trois - Ep 5 Henry VIII: the king, his wife, his lover, the French
In a dynamite French document from August 1530, still overlooked by historians, the King of France offers to send troops to England to defend Henry VIII against the Spanish. No French government before or since has ever promised to send troops to defend England. Does this explain Henry’s sudden move in August 1530 to go on the offensive against Rome and the clergy in England?
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29 min
June 17 # 49 Like an episode of the Borgias - Ep 4 Henry VIII: the king, his wife, his lover, the French
31 May 1529: Faced with France and Spain doing a deal and leaving England in the lurch, Henry races against time to begin his divorce trial in London, and then pulls the plug just before a verdict is reached. Meanwhile the pope and his cardinals are double-crossing each other.
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34 min
June 10 # 46 Missions Impossible - Ep 3 Henry VIII: the king, his wife, his lover, the French
1527: The pope is a prisoner of the marauding Spanish in Rome and yet Henry sends his man Knight on a madcap mission to ask Pope Clement VII for permission to marry a young woman he is already sleeping with. It’s the first of a whole series of crazy errands, asking the pope for the impossible. Does Henry have a hidden agenda?
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33 min
June 03 # 45 The Jilting of Princess Mary - Ep 2 Henry VIII: the king, his wife, his lover, the French
Did Henry break with Rome in order to seize power over the wealthy, ubiquitous church in England? We find that the dates don’t add up. Instead we look at why in June 1525 Henry promoted his illegitimate son Henry Fitzroy over the head of his heir Mary. And why Charles V broke off his engagement with 9 year old Mary to marry a Portuguese princess instead.
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33 min
May 27 #44 Anne Boleyn did not hold out on Henry - Ep 1 Henry VIII: the king, his wife, his lover, the French
In 2010 a document from 1527 was found in which Henry VIII admits to the pope that he is sleeping with the woman he wishes to marry instead of, or as well as, his Spanish wife Katherine. Very little of the traditional story can be believed. It’s Katherine who matters in the story of Henry’s Reformation, not Anne.
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32 min

About History Cafe

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True history storytelling at the History Café. Join BBC Historian Jon Rosebank & HBO, BBC & C4 script and series editor Penelope Middelboe as we give history a new take. Drop in to the History…