Dan Snow's History Hit - Not Just the Tudors Lates: Elizabeth I on Screen - The Historians’ Verdict

Episode Date: September 7, 2022

What do you get when you bring together five top historians in a room with bottles of Prosecco to debate Elizabeth I on screen? History with the gloves off - our first Not Just the Tudors Lates! Taking as her starting point the new series Becoming Elizabeth - now streaming on STARZ - Professor Suzannah Lipscomb is joined by Dr Joanne Paul, Jessie Childs, Alex von Tunzelmann and Professor Sarah Churchwell to explore how television and films have depicted the year 1547 when - following the death of Henry VIII - a complex web of relationships determined the course of British history. *WARNING! There is some strong language in this episode*The Senior Producer was Elena Guthrie. It was edited and produced by Rob Weinberg. Audio extracts from Becoming Elizabeth courtesy of STARZ.If you'd like to learn more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe to History Hit today!To download the History Hit app please go to the Android or Apple store.

Hi there, History Hit fans. Let's let you know about another podcast we've got. Not Just the Tudors, with Professor Susanna Lipscomb. You know when I'm walking down the streets, you know what most people ask me? What's Professor Susanna Lipscomb like? So, you can find out for yourself, I say. Listen to her flipping podcast. It's right here, available wherever you get your pods. Not Just the Tudors. You know what that's about?

The Tudors, but Not Just the Tudors. She talks about the Aztecs. She talks about the Yuan Dynasty, the Ming Dynasty, the Mughals. She talks about the Aztecs. She talks about the Yuan dynasty, the Ming dynasty, the Mughals. She talks about everything that's going on in that wonderful age, the Renaissance, that remarkable age of growth, beauty, tragedy, terror, and transformation, the 16th and 17th centuries. You've got to go and check it out, folks. Go and listen. For all of your Tudor and Tudor Plus requirements. Get involved in Susanna Lipscomb's podcast,

not just the Tudors, wherever you get your pods. Today, we're going to be exploring one complex year in English history when a web of relationships determined the fate of the country. It's the 28th of January 1547 and Henry VIII has just died. His immediate successor is his son by Jane Seymour, now King Edward VI and only nine years old. But Henry also left two other children to be provided for. There was Mary, his daughter by Catherine of Aragon, who was now a grown woman of 31, and there was his middle child, his daughter by Anne Boleyn, who was Elizabeth, a girl of 13 years old. Henry's death meant that his widow, Catherine Parr, was now free to marry the man she loved,

Thomas Seymour, who was Edward's uncle, And Edward's other Seymour uncle was now plotting to make himself de facto ruler during the young king's minority. And it's at this tumultuous moment in English history that a new series by stars called Becoming Elizabeth begins. And so with that as an excuse and luring them with the promise of wine, I have a group of wonderful historian friends joining me here to talk about that series, to talk about putting Elizabeth I on film and what really happened in 1547. Welcome to the first of our Not Just the Tudor Lates, history with the gloves off. On my panel, I have two leading Tudor historians who have both been on the podcast before. Dr. Joanne Paul is Senior Lecturer in Early Modern History at the University of Sussex and the author of The House of Dudley, A New History of Tudor England, which was chosen

by the Times as one of the best books of summer 2022. Jessie Childs is the author of Henry VIII's Last Victim, which won the Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography, and God's Traitors, Terror and Faith in Elizabethan England, which won the Penn Hesel Tiltman Prize for History. Her latest brilliant book is The Siege of Loyalty House. And they are joined by two historians who have thought about how to put history on screen and what history on screen tells us about the age that produces it. Alex von Tunzelman is a historian and screenwriter. She is the author of five books, most recently Fallen Idols, 12 Statues That Made History, which was shortlisted for the Wolfson Prize for History.

Her first feature film, Churchill, starred Brian Cox and Miranda Richardson. And Professor Sarah Churchill is a cultural historian and literary scholar and the author most recently of The Wrath to Come, Gone with the Wind and The Lies America Tells. She is also professor in American literature and chair of the Public Understanding of the Humanities

at the School of Advanced Study, University of London. And I'm sure with this group and this show, the language might get a little fruity. Well, I can't wait to talk about this with you. Thank you so much for coming. I thought that we should probably confine our comments with the series to sort of episodes two to three so that we don't give away any spoilers. But can we do some quick fire stuff first can you tell me a historical drama that really works for you and alex you're not allowed to say anything that you've written but anyone else can um jesse what do you think i'm the worst person to ask because i hate period dramas i don't watch them and that's why i was kind of oh god i'm not sure we should be doing this but um that's actually why I liked it. Okay, okay, we'll come to that.

Alex? I actually was a pretty big fan of the Tudors, so there we go. Controversial opinion. Very controversial, but I think it hugely increased historical interest in the Tudors, which historians like, and what a relief to see it being sexy,

and well, you know, I think we can talk about this new drama also in the same. Jo, what do you like? I mean, I'll agree with some parts of the Tudors, well, you know, I think we can talk about this new drama also in the same. Jo, what do you like? I mean, I'll agree with some parts of the Tudors, actually. And, again, I'm ready to be atted on Twitter for saying it. But, actually, I thought some parts of it were really nuanced. Like the portrayal of Thomas More I thought was really, really balanced. The fall of Anne Boleyn stuck really close to the sources.

But I think the historical dramas that I really like are ones that try to riff on the historical material. So Marie Antoinette, for instance, where they're using the material, but using it as a jumping off point rather than trying to recreate. And then we become really aware of where they've failed. I think a really great recent example of that is The Great.

The Great series, which absolutely does that that kind of takes the tone even further very dry very funny but nobody's really pretending that i'd like something like the return of martin guerre which is like completely you know it's a historical account put on screen they've got natalie zeman davis as a historical consultant filling in the gaps i'm a bit of a purist i reckon well i mean it's also wonderful but you see historical drama can be all these things I'm going to inject something surprise surprise Americanist and also something a little bit literary because I do think that some of the American history series are terrific I'm thinking of John Adams in particular with Paul Gemetti which I think is really really good but also I want to bring literary historical

drama into this and indeed literary historical comedy because it doesn't all have to be drama, just because it's a period. But I'm with Joe in that I really like historical takes that are irreverent and recognize that because you're never going to get everything right, you're never going to please everybody. And because it is fictionalized by definition, you may as well start to explore what that means. And so I'm thinking a personal favorite, which again, I might get added for, but I just love it. And I will take whatever's coming my way is The Last Mohicans, where we discovered that Daniel Day-Lewis could be hot, which was news. And they're actually discovered that many aspects of The Last Mohicans, which is, let's admit, a deeply boring novel, and I've taught it. So I know how boring it is as a novel. But I think what's interesting about it is that it connects as a film for all

of the kind of swashbuckling and sexiness of it and the way that it updates gender roles in ways that were really, really fun. But it connects with some deep historical truths where it does that, that fictionalizing to get at some deeper truths and some deeper mythical truth, which is also something that I'm always interested in. Okay. And this series, Yes, No Answer, did you enjoy it? Jessie, I think we know. Yes. Yes and then no. Parts. Yes. So to the non-Tudor? Jessie, I think we know. Yes. Yes or no? Parts. Yes. So to the non-Tudorists first, I mean, obviously for some of us this is a busman's holiday,

but for you guys, did you follow it? Was it possible to keep with the story? Was the exposition kind of smuggled in enough? I thought it was. I thought they did a pretty good job of that. It's hard to do. And with these sorts of Tudor subjects, a lot of people, of course, are looking for for and they've got a little tick list of the

characters that they're going to see in a Tudor show for me watching it I'm not necessarily bothered about who every minor character is I was actually slightly worried when it started there were so many words on the screen explaining what was happening almost your sort of Star Wars crawl I thought oh god how much am I going to have to remember is this going to be hard but actually they zeroed in quite quickly on the kind of central group that you would care about, the king's children, and you know, the kind of group around them, the Seymours and so on. And I think you could get a grasp on that very easily without really having to have any context around that. Sarah, what's your opinion?

What I really liked about it was that it was focusing on characters, certainly at the beginning, who are less familiar from those of us who have a more superficial knowledge of the period. And so it wasn't just exactly the same relationships that I've seen replayed before. And focusing on the Seymours, as you say, is actually, for those of us who have a passing knowledge, is a different angle. I definitely found that at the beginning I was checking out Wikipedia just to contextualize myself, particularly at the beginning, weirdly. My husband came in and he said, why do you have the subtitles on? myself, particularly at the beginning, weirdly, my husband came in and he said, why do you have the subtitles on? And I said, well, it's actually really interesting because I find that the kind of modern delivery of names and things I'm just not quite familiar with, I kept feeling like I

was maybe missing something. And I could tell that it was quite witty and I wanted to make sure that I wasn't missing anything. So I actually did have the subtitles and I had Wikipedia at the beginning just to anchor myself. But that was just me being geek geeky I didn't have to do that and I could definitely have enjoyed it it definitely works on its own terms just get geek out if you want to yeah always my view so as you said Alex it starts with this kind of like these opening captions that set it in a moment in time it's England 1547 as you go lots of things we're told and obviously this is totally thrilling to me because I've written a book about this and yes, Henry VIII was heavy in that casket

and all the rest of it. But the point is that it's saying that it's set in historical time. So what liberties is it taking with history? Jo? It has to take some, right? Because history is complex. There's a lot going on.

So they're playing with timelines quite a bit. They're also condensing the cast. At one point it's mentioned that the Seymours have 10 children. The Dudleys have 13. They have cut that down significantly. But all of that makes sense. You have to do that sort of thing in order for an audience to be able to, as you say, sort of hook in and understand. I was just trying to imagine what it would look like if you had the Dudley's and here's number 12. Septimus. I think actually a lot of people who don't know what we studied and called the mid-Tudor crisis, and it was supposed to be the less fun bit between Henry and Elizabeth,

it's the best part. And I think a lot of people, when they look up what's authentic and what's not. This is the Lady Jane Grace stuff, for those of us who are ignorant. The whole thing that we're watching. From the death of Henry to the accession of Elizabeth is sort of the mid-Tudor crisis. Because of harvest failure and inflation and rising costs and rack renting and war. And all the political stuff going on. You know, very volatile.

But I think a lot of people, when they look up the facts, they're actually going to be surprised. I think it's about sort of 90% plausible. And I think you're going to be like, oh my god, did that really happen with a lot of things? Certainly the whole Elizabeth and Seymour story and even just that wonderful first scene with the dogs licking the blood. So it's Henry VIII's blood from the

leaking casket and he's been dead for three days and they kept it quiet. So that's plausible. He hasn't been embalmed yet. And he's been dead for three days and they kept it quiet. So that's plausible. He hasn't been embalmed yet. So it's going to be leaking all sorts of stuff. Plus he was morbidly obese anyway. There's a source from Gilbert Burnett.

So it's a hundred year old source, more than that. He says that this is what happened. And there's also a biblical echo, which I love from the Old Testament, the Book of Kings and it's Ahab, that sort of tyrannical king who was married to the idolatrous Jezebel, and he was destined to have his blood licked by dogs. And actually,

the prophecy goes further and says that his posterity should also be eaten by dogs. So I don't know if they knew that, but it's kind of a cool beginning. There's also the story that goes around about his corpse exploding, isn't there? And it goes around about William the Conqueror and a number of other people, I think, as well. Yes yes on the way to Zion Abbey wasn't it which again is relevant because that was one of the abbeys and the monasteries that he dissolved so there's a lot of retribution going on so can I come in there though because as I said I'm a yes but no and the reason that I was a yes but no on it is that I loved all of that stuff at the beginning because it rang true partly because of its implausibility which makes you think they got this from somewhere.

They're not just making up random details. I actually feel that even for somebody who doesn't know the period, that the liberties it starts to take with the history that even somebody like me knows. I made it through episode five or six, and I'm not going to plot spoil, but just to say that it starts to go into what I would describe as just more kind of modern romance territory. And it leaves behind all of that historical specificity, at least to me. That's why I feel like we have to have a round two of this because I want to know if I'm right. But certainly I know I am with some of it around Elizabeth's relationship with Seymour. But the question really of Elizabeth's power is one that is, I think, very, very interesting in the beginning. And then I think it kind of loses its way. And for me, that is about historical fidelity. And that's why I said yes, but no, because I and then I think it kind of loses its way. And for me that is about historical fidelity

and that's why I said yes but no, because I actually think it shifts and kind of loses its grip. I mean, clearly the thing that these things always do or try to do is to become historically evocative and it does that in the look of the thing. Shall we remind ourselves? Shall we have a little clip? What is it like? What?

The wedding night. Why would you ask me that? I'm sorry, but I have no order, sisters. Why would you ask me, Jane? Please. They came to me. To our house, after the Lord Thomas was arrested. They questioned me. They hoped I would say that you and your...

You want me to stand here and tell you what it's like to be held by a man? To see him naked to undress in front of one and let him touch you I'm afraid you'll have to use your imagination for I do not know if you thought you were lying on my behalf you'd be relieved to know that you were not I owe you nothing

what do you think about the casting of this one? Sensational. Yeah. I don't think there's a dud, actually. I think it's amazing. I think Tom Cullen is brilliantly predatory. I think Jessica Raine is fantastic.

Can we just say a bit more about Tom Cullen? Let's not move along that quickly. He's entirely plausible. I can totally see a 14-year-old girl reacting exactly as she did. I think he's charming. He's entirely plausible. I can totally see a 14 year old girl reacting exactly as she did. I think he's charming, he's attractive, he's gross as well. I mean, he's all of it. He's beautifully, I think he shows all sorts of nuances

and just, yeah, he grooms beautifully, if that's not a boxy word. And as you said, we could all imagine that she might have been persuaded. I mean, it's not entirely ridiculous, is it? And I think that's really important because, you know, that story is so difficult to handle. It's one that I think for modern audiences is, you know,

a bit of an immediate uh about it. And actually, if you sort of understand, yeah, but he was really hot, it was very difficult, she was 14. You know, you're not in any way excusing him or excusing that behaviour, but you are showing, as you say, the plausibility of why she was drawn in in that situation you know you're making that understandable for a modern audience it's quite hard to place that from yeah yeah I definitely want us to talk loads more about that casting though otherwise I love Bella Ramsey as Jane Grey and it's really exciting to see a Jane Grey not only one filled with her own sort of intelligence and agency and ambition,

but also one brought in so early in the story. Because when we tend to see Jane Grey on film, it is just in 1553 with the succession crisis, maybe when she gets married a few months before, but it's very recent to all of that. And to see her as part of the household at Chelsea and those relationships that she has built, I think gives a depth to her character, which hopefully we'll see paid off at some point. Can I speak up for Alicia von Rittberg? Because she is the Elizabeth who is becoming Elizabeth.

And I think she's tremendous. She's not an actress that I've seen before. And she's German. She pulls off, I think, the English beautifully. But beautifully but she also I mean we were saying a second ago about how charismatic Tom Collins performance is and I completely agree and with all of the layering and complexity of it but she has to hold her own she's not in every scene but she has to be the focal point in a way that you believe and I think that she has also enormous charisma and matches him and you do believe that she's this compelling figure and you can see her becoming the queen that she becomes in your imagination and that they're not

just surrounding her because she's the daughter of a king. And I also want to speak up for Ramla who is a tremendous Mary. She's given interviews saying that she wanted to show that Mary had a sense of play and that she loved her clothes and that she wasn't just this doer figure that we've inherited. And I think, you know, when she is mighty, you knew that Romula Gray, that's no surprise that she was going to carry this off. But man, she does it beautifully, I think. I literally had a question written down here that says, Sarah, do you think that Alicia holds her own as Elizabeth?

I would add on that with Alicia. I kind of, she was the one I kind of initially thought, she literally lacks lust and she speaks too high. And then I kind of thought, actually, no, as you say, she's becoming Elizabeth. I'm projecting the Elizabeth we think of is masculine. She has her mask. She's quite artificial. She's quite stylized. She's untrusting. She's careful of her reputation. All these things that as the series progresses, you see that she becomes.

So I think it's beautifully done, exquisitely done. I also really want to speak for Oliver Zetterstrom, who plays Edward VI, because he's very young and the dynamism he brings to that role, I have not seen that done in that way, that he channels his father. I mean, you can see it and they say it at some point, you're just like your father, but well before then I was thinking,

my God, it's like watching a young Henry VIII. And I think that is such a strength of the show, is allowing all these characters, intelligence, agency, wit, which actually you normally don't get. They get kind of, especially Jane Grey, especially Edward, you know, just, meh, there's just a fill-in before. And there's a point of historical interpretation as well, because generally speaking, we portray Edward as being weak.

And actually sickly from the business. Always sickly. Always sickly. And actually, historically, we now know that that's not the case. He was very, very powerful in at least his own mind. There were limitations on how much power he could actually exert. But we tend to see them, as you say, presented as victims. And it was so nice to see there are people being victimized in this show, but they aren't just victims. There's so much else going on with them. And the Edward

portrayal, I think, is so close to, as Susie says, what we know about him. He knew his own mind, and if anything, teetered towards the zealot and the tyrant, as opposed to this sort of weak, sickly boy that we often see. I'm so glad you said it because I think some people watching it are going to think, oh, this is Joffrey from Game of Thrones. I think Joffrey is based on... But that's the way it is. George RR Martin minds this history and that is exactly right.

It's coming from there. And Sansa is Elizabeth. Absolutely. There's one scene where Seymour is talking about the falcons are plucking out his own feathers because he has this internal sore and the internal sore is his brother. Somerset's telling the story. Yes, Edward Seymour.

Sorry, yes. And I kept thinking, are they going to follow that up with the true source bit, which is Edward saying to the Imperial Ambassador, he is like a falcon and people have been plucking him all his life and tearing him in four. But from now on,

he's going to pluck them and tear them into quarters. And I hope that that's a foreshadowing of another scene. If not, it's still very cleverly picking up as an authentic source. And again, it's another example of them, yeah, not taking themselves too seriously, being quite quite playful being confident with the sources and not being yeah and I really don't like period dramas when they're just so authentic and it's just boring half the time and it doesn't work because you need structure and condensing time and space and so yeah I thought

that was neat. Hilary Mantel says that she often uses words that appear on the record in a different context because she believes that people rehearse them first. They try them out in different situations. So that's where you see those sort of things coming up at different places in her novels. And you've kind of got that here. If you know the records, they're peeping through. But I'm going to play devil's advocate for a second.

If you're watching this to get a historical education, where are you going to learn some powers? And does it matter? Don't this to get a historical education where are you going to learn some powers and does it matter and does it matter don't watch this is a historical education i mean there are fine books by several people around this table that people can read if they want a historical education historical drama is fiction because fiction is fiction and it's really important to understand that for starters but if you do get very interested by this indeed there are some fine books available so with you i mean you've written about this alex you've thought about putting history in film you're a screenwriter right so do you not think that screenwriters have moral responsibility to the past not really no i don't actually i think they have a responsibility

to produce the best script they can for whoever is paying for it. That is their responsibility. Now, if they choose, they may have their own feelings about how they treat the past. But, you know, I do think that actually that's not your job as a screenwriter. That's our job when we're being historians. And so I have two jobs, screenwriter and historian. I'm both poacher and gamekeeper. And that's why social media is so good because you can put that out there. I think Annie Rees, the showrunner, has been putting out after each episode, this is true, this isn't true.

And so people who want that, who want to fact check everything, can. And that's the joy in research more, as you say. Can I, without disagreeing with Alex in the macro sense of what you're saying, which I completely agree with and as I'm a literature professor, so absolutely here to defend fiction's right to be fiction.

But I think there is a howler, even from my point of view as somebody who doesn't, I mean, the least expert here. And to me, it's also to this point about what the limits are, which is it takes the series until episode five, I think, to even raise the possibility that Elizabeth might have to enter a political alliance

and that she might actually not have sexual autonomy and not be able to choose her own partner in life. Now, anybody who has a passing knowledge of political alliances at the time knows the daughter of a king, obviously. And we're hearing about the political alliances of Mary, Queen of Scots, so we're hearing about the people that this is true of,

but somehow Elizabeth is exempt from it. And she has this very modern understanding of her own options in life. And that actually increases as the story goes on. So to the point about why are we watching it? I felt like, why are you writing it? If you just want her to be a 21st century heroine, then just write a 21st century story. Like the thing that to me is interesting about this is imagining somebody with all of Elizabeth's intelligence and power and agency from a 21st century perspective, where we understand and respect a woman's right to all of those things. And then imagining all of the conflict that she would feel, experience, and have to fight with all of the forces of patriarchy and politics around her.

So where is all of that stuff? Because that surely is part of becoming Elizabeth, is her understanding of her own political role and then her resistance to the ways in which she's a political pawn. But they don't even get around her being a political pawn until it's nearly over, and it seems to come as a shock to her that she might be one. I disagree. I think at the end of episode two,

when we have the fleabag moment, I wanted to ask you about that. And she looks at the camera, and she's basically saying, I choose Protestantism. I mean, the truth is she chose it before her father died. Clearly. I mean, more than Catherine Park. But I'm talking about marriage in particular.

Okay, but politics and religion. But this is the point. But I'm talking about diplomatic alliances, right? The fact that she would be expected. They're entirely interlinked. You guys are the experts. But I'm trying to say something distinct here about there's this assumption of sexual agency as an individual that she can marry at will. And that's the stuff I'm talking about. Of course, it interlinks with religion and all of the ways in which those political battles are, as you say at the time, all knotted up. But that there literally is not a conversation around the possibility that she might ever be married against her will. And she seems to just assume that she can marry who

she wants for most of the series. So Jo, you're the expert. Come in and back me up. I mean, I am a bit because I do think that in order to show her becoming Elizabeth, they take her too far away from where she ends up. She is far too surprised by far too many things. And in a historical drama, I think part of at least the sort of the real history and the job of historical consultants and so on is to help the suspension of disbelief. Right. Where you're not going, why is there a Starbucks cup on the table that's taken me out of it? And I do think that there are moments in the series that take you out of the history by pushing her too far, both, I think, a little bit modern, but also just naive

in a way that it seems to me that she is too ignorant of very, very obvious things. And I feel like that's the point about the boundary between fiction and history is like, to me, is like, why bother writing this whole thing about this character who's so interesting and then start to leave

the interesting stuff behind? So at the beginning, I think it does it beautifully, but I think gradually it starts to fall away. And then there's this sense in which they just kind of lose interest

in all of the complexities of the period, which to me are why you would want to do it in the first place. So do you think, there are a couple of things going on. One, I do feel like the Becoming Elizabeth, obviously, there's the character arc. And it's a character arc I think we've seen before. I think we saw it in Shekhar Kapoor's Elizabeth.

It's just happening later. But also, I think that they're very keen to reflect modern sensibilities with regard to women in the past. And perhaps that means they don't engage deeply enough with patriarchy. They don't let us feel the weight of patriarchy. This is part of what I'm getting at, yeah. And I just don't think it's necessary to make Elizabeth more ignorant in order to show those sensibilities about women. Women were fighting against patriarchy in all sorts of interesting ways. There are a lot of women cut out of this

that are doing really impressive things in the court and Elizabeth was terribly canny. Now what you could show is that most of her learning was book learning. You know she was reading Tacitus, she was reading Cicero, and maybe she's just not good at applying that. She's the wrong kind of intelligent. She's emotionally immature at this stage. Which is fine, but she still knew that she'd have to get married. She's like, she's her world.

Yeah, fine, and I haven't got to episode five yet. But I think with the Thomas Seymour, I mean, the sources show that she was naive, she was emotionally immature, or at least that she was groomed and she defended him. It's not like he raped her or he sexually abused her in a very obvious

direct way. I mean, there was grooming, wasn't there, and it was subtle. As far as we know from the sources, and I have to be careful here, but, you know, there was laughter and there was embracing and it wasn't full-on resistance. I suppose what I can hear is when we're talking about they could have done this, they could have done that,

this could have been told in this way, I just do have a bit of sympathy for the screenwriters because I can just hear the studio notes saying, but we don't understand. How do we know how she felt at the time? Can we imagine how a modern audience would feel? We've really got to connect to people. So I can hear, yeah, they do that voice.

So I can just kind of hear all those notes coming to the writer of this show. And I think it's very difficult to resist that kind of pressure from networks and studios and so on to make it relatable, which means putting it in this modern form. A clip about one of the early ones about Thomas and Elizabeth I'm sorry. Sorry of grace. I

Shouldn't be in here. I'm sure I shouldn't be either You outrank me. I don't believe I outrank anyone really I Mean surely those are Frank have some power I mean, surely those of Frank have some power. Well, you're a big craving power, Princess. We'll have to keep an eye on you. No, I just... like to be able to make decisions in my life.

Ah. Well, I'm quite sick of decisions myself. Quite overwhelmed by them. Your father died and every door has just been flung open. How the hell am I meant to know which one's a walkthrough? There's death behind a lot of them. There's death behind all of them, sir. Eventually. Sorry.

What on earth are you sorry for? The King is dead. No. No, no. No, he's not. That's the thing with kings. The old one breathes life into the new. And is then forgotten. I don't believe any of us are going to forget your father. Yeah.

Clap me round the face as if I were a schoolboy. They had all those rings. Even my face cannot forget your father. Memories. Memories keep a man alive. So few of him, though. Every lord and lady out there knew him better than me. Every servant, too.

His children stand knowing least about him. I believe that too of all children. You learn much more about your parents after their death than you ever did when they were alive. And as for kings, Lord, we only know the truth of kings in a hundred years when their actions' consequence can truly be seen. Cool. I mean, so intelligently written, but also so brilliantly acted.

I mean, the two of them go through a full arc each in that scene, and you can see, really conveys, yes, Thomas Seymour, manip shit but elizabeth is not a complete victim there you know she keeps a bit of herself doesn't she she doesn't completely give in there is a bit of a dance going on and she stops him in his tracks at one or two points and there's a clever again there's a clever foreshadowing and she goes i want to make decisions for myself and later on when she's queen she's very very, very famous for her answers, answerless. So again, I think it's very clever

the way they're sort of hinting to the people in the know, like, I can't catch that. And then it doesn't matter if you don't. And it may even be purely coincidence, but I thought that was neat. I think there are some wonderfully elegant, witty, and indeed I might even say poetic lines at various points in it.

And that I think is one of the best written scenes so far of the whole show. And the bit where as he walks in, he says something like, the lady has a taste for power. It's practically a Shakespearean line, right? It's just fabulous. And there she is in the room. And then as you say, the acting of it is tremendous as well. The way that when she stops him, that he registers the sexiness of that and that's how they build the sexual tension between them is that actually he's surprised by her so

he's coming in for her power and he's actually discovering that he finds her personally attractive and that that's part of what complicates the story which is certainly what makes it more modern and humanizes all of it but I think that the writing in some of those scenes really really deserves a call-out. The gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research from the greatest millennium in human history. We're talking Vikings, Normans, Kings and Popes, who were rarely the best of friends, murder, rebellions, and crusades. Find out who we really were

by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. I want to ask you how you feel about this relationship. So the bottom line is that there is a lot of evidence for what they put on screen as happening in practice. for what they put on screen as happening in practice. Although the evidence comes from Kat Ashley, who is Elizabeth's servant and who is basically trying to cover her back and say she suspected terrible things of him all the time. Here, it seems a kind of unusual take in this age, in that they are romanticising it.

And clearly, an important decision has been made with regards to two things. One, we're told she's 14. It starts when she's 13 in practice. And two, the actor is 28. The fact that actually Seymour was 38 and in practice these two actors are probably like nine or ten years apart makes it all seem much more palatable than if you've got a 13-year-old playing the part. I mean, how would we feel about it if they'd chosen an actor who was 13 yeah a lot more uncomfortable I mean it's a testament and a credit to the actors that we still feel uncomfortable when they look like they could just about be a plausible couple but it's a problem isn't it you can't cast a 13 year old girl

and have that done to her so I don't know what you do I mean I suppose you could cast an 18 year old girl or 17 year old. It's a tricky one. It also makes the dynamic between Elizabeth and Mary very, very different because they look like quite close siblings whereas Mary was 17 years older than Elizabeth in reality. So their dynamic is very different. It's far more maternal.

But yeah, I don't know how you would fix that. But I think it's a bold decision in the sort of Me Too age to allow for Elizabeth to be not quite consenting, but not consenting. To allow that complexity. And so there's a question, I mean, obviously, in our minds, 13, 14-year-olds, a child can't possibly consent.

In their minds, you could marry at 14, although they did tend to leave consummation until about 16, didn't they? I mean, the rules were 12 for girls and 14 for boys, wasn't it? Yeah, as you say, in reality, if that happened, and that would tend to happen only with sort of high-born royals or aristocrats, they would nevertheless wait for a bit and they would have sort of proxy weddings

where you might touch the leg or something and then you'd wait for consummation for a few years. On the other hand, it's not as it is now and later. I mean, certainly people would get pregnant and have babies earlier margaret bothard exactly but she is rare in that time to have had a child at 13 yeah and she's often used as oh well you know obviously it happened well it did happen but there was condemnation of that when it happened it physically affected her for the rest of her life and so when they call el a child and Catherine Parr, when she's rightfully ripping in to Thomas Seymour,

says, you know, she is a child, I think that they would have had that sort of reaction. I definitely agree with that, but I think it's slightly greyer just because the difference would be more marginal. Or at least it wouldn't be so absurd for Duke of Norfolk, for example, to have a much younger wife, which is not to say that that doesn't happen now, obviously. There's lots of examples.

But I don't think it was frowned upon quite so much. But I agree with you that apart from the odd outlier, you would not have people getting pregnant or having sex at 13, really. So we've talked about the characterisation of Edward, talked about the characterisation of Elizabeth. Two people I'd really like to talk about, Catherine Parr, I'm looking at you, Jessie, and Jo, the Dudleys. If only we had an expert on the Dudleys. So we wanted to know your opinion on the Dudleys.

I love the Dudleys in this. A, I'm excited that they're there. Because they often are. I mean, take the example of the Tudors. They go right up to the end of the reign of Henry VIII into the start of Edward, and they're not there. No Dudleys. No Dudleys as far as the eye can see.

Dudley erasure. Oh, it's awful. A brass erasure. And John Dudley was second in command to Edward Seymour. And we see him in this. And I think the actor playing John Dudley brings this wit, this sort of dry, sarcastic, laid-back attitude to everything that's going on,

and this deep friendship with Seymour, which is incredibly important because, spoilers, that falls apart in a very bloody way. So it's really fantastic to have him in it and to have his military connections also played upon. I think that's really important. Don't you think he's a little nice in it? That's what I was thinking.

I don't have a picture in my head of John Dudley being a nice person. I think he could be a very nice person. Joe loves the Dudleys. Not all the Dudleys. It's not a favouritism, I swear. Maybe a little bit. But no, I mean, one of his biggest sort of flaws in life is he was too forgiving of people. He tended to find them and then bring them back into court. I mean, that's what he does with Seymour. Exactly. He does it over and over again with Fitz Allen as well.

So this is something that he does. I don't think he is as ruthless as he is often portrayed. And so I'm glad to see a slightly softer Robert Dudley. Robert Dudley. I mean, I've only gotten to episode three, so there hasn't been much Robert yet. There's more Robert. I'm looking forward to more Robert.

More senses than one. Can we watch that now? I like his earring. The earring is great. They are playing with his later portraits with the earring and how they dress him in general.

We don't know how much of a relationship there was between Robert and Elizabeth at this stage, but they probably would have known each other. I mean, the Dudleys are one of the most significant families at court, and we know how much they were dedicated to each other later in life. He probably was a straight

talker. That's sort of what he's doing in the first few episodes. But he was probably also more ambitious than they're showing here, at least far did you have thoughts on Catherine Parr Jessie because it's an unusual depiction of her it is and for that reason I loved it I mean she's always the blue stocking isn't she she's the published author she's the reformer she's sensible and then you have this sort of aberration when she does just sort of lose the plot you know she's been sexually repressed with Henry VIII for such a long time. And finally, she gets Thomas Seymour, who she loved beforehand and wanted to marry before she married Henry. And so she sort of completely lets herself go. There's one detail I really loved about that. The fact that they were ignoring the servant was in the room. I was like, that feels really plausible.

And also just the wit of she'll be in mourning and then they're shagging. I just, oh, it's so funny. I loved horny Catherine Parr. Didn't see that coming. Again, it's a different take, as you say, from the usual one and that was so enjoyable, actually, to kind of go, oh, God, she was quite young and she was quite horny. Exactly.

Because she did go and marry Seymour and have this, so, as you say, quite plausible, right? And it's brilliant, you know, bright, intelligent women aren't asexual. Exactly. Imagine that. Wow. quite plausible right and it's probably you know bright intelligent women aren't asexual can i ask a question about katherine park because we were talking about some of the beautifully turned lines and bits of dialogue and you're saying some of them actually come from the historical record and one of my favorite lines in it is katherine's and i wonder now from you're saying that whether there's a source to it and it it is also about Lady Jane because there's a bit where Elizabeth says to Catherine, you told Jane Grey that the lesson that you need to know in life is that you just have to decide who's using you or who you're going to use. And then Catherine Parr says, no, that was the child's lesson. The adult lesson is who do you want to think is using you?

Yeah, I think that's an interpretation, but certainly she gave a lecture on reputation to Elizabeth when she banished her. Right. And I think, again, that's a beautiful interpretation and clever. It's a terrific turn. I've slightly mutilated it, but it's a terrific turn the way they do it. And it's a great scene, that one.

It's also riffing a bit on Tacitus, and so that sort of Tacitian secretism, you know, and playing people's worst intentions and self-interest and all of that, I think comes through very nicely. And it's represented in that line as well. I think Jessica Raine is magnificent. Yeah, she's terrific.

I mean, she's so plausible. And she's, again, yeah, she's so Machiavellian and calculating. You sort of see desperation flickering in her eyes. She wants to keep Thomas and she wants to keep power and she wants to keep status. And if the way to do that is to enable Thomas to groom Elizabeth, she will do that.

Now, whether that is entirely authentic or not, it's a very plausible interpretation. But also that she can, at the same time, as all of that, still love Elizabeth and feel maternal feelings for her at the same time. And all of that complexity can coexist. And as a performance, I agree, she pulls all of that still love Elizabeth and feel maternal feelings for her at the same time. And all of that complexity can coexist. And as a performance, I agree, she pulls all of that off. You believe that she could feel all of those conflicting feelings. Can I just say that that reminded me

of something I wanted to say a second ago that I really like about it as well, in that at the beginning, when Edward VI becomes king, and in some of the scenes that we talked about earlier, where they talk about the king is dead and what happens with the new king. They're very, very careful about that transition because what you see is the time passes, then Edward VI is king. And they do talk about him as the king and he starts to realize that he's the king,

but everybody else starts to realize he's the king too. And there are these wonderful couple of episodes where everybody's still talking about Henry, but it's actually Edward. And they remember to do that transition, which I thought was really beautifully done. In the course of that transition

he says I'm the fucking king. Should we talk about the spirit? What do we think about the fact that there are quite a lot of F-bombs?

Is this just Game of Thrones influence on historical drama? It's more succession I think isn't it? It's Logan Roy there's not quite a fuck off

in the way he does it. Beautifully done. And I don't really have a problem with, I mean, if we're being sort of pedantic about the language, fuck was used as a verb, not so much for emphasis at the time. That doesn't bother me because, as you say, you sort of need to have tricks and ways of being authentic

but not sort of ye olde England. There are occasional moments where it sort of feels a bit like my husband talking to my teenage daughter's friends. Throwing in a swear word. And I feel every now and again it's slightly forced and a little bit desperate and a bit trying too hard but most of the time I don't and actually you know again Aniris is such a cool showrunner she's young and she's cool and that's how she speaks and I kind of like she's throwing herself into it and it doesn't bother me from a historian's point of view just occasionally they're just you know not such well-placed fucks regardless of which word they're using i definitely think that they were swearing up a storm though in

the tudor court they loved the word shit i work a little bit on thomas moore and i mean he says it's all the time and not just just the word shit, but descriptions of shit and where shit goes and where shit comes out of. And I fully believe that they were going around, you know, especially in heated moments, they were swearing. And you've picked up on an important thing, which is actually kind of sometimes greater verisimilitude takes us further away from the story.

So if you did have them going around going, you know, God's life. Exactly. First it would be comic, but it would also actually be like, what? Yes.

Yes. It just wouldn't get you into it. Yeah, the emotion. You'd be too busy thinking, now I'm watching a historical film. Yes. With some very mammoth language. Exactly.

And then you would also be wondering how bad is that word? Because you wouldn't actually be able to register it. You'd actually be working harder at translating it. Yeah. So they do the active translation so that you don't have to. Yeah, exactly. Because you'd be trying to work out. There's one insult I'd like to have heard there, which is my favourite,

and quite common, which is a turd in your teeth. Brilliant. And also it tells you so much about why they need a toothpick. Oh, my God, but it's so usable. How could they not? I mean, it's no good. Oh, God, let's hope it's in the final episode. We haven't seen the final episode.

So when we watched that scene, we were going to think about lighting and location. How do you think they are telling us how we're supposed to read it? What clues are they giving us? Do're supposed to read it what clues are they giving us do you know what i mean how they're using lighting and things i think the lighting here is really innovative that's something i really want to talk about a bit because it's quite different from what we've seen in previous adaptations if you go back all the way

to the glenda jackson elizabeth are you know kind of on the tv which is now over 50 years old it is so bbc films 1970s you know it's a great big set lit totally brightly every corner of it fully illuminated very sort of stage show in that way and this becoming elizabeth i think the lighting here is only possible because camera technology has improved so much right it's fully lit with candles and fireplaces and all that there is actually pretty much no artificial lighting in those dark scenes and yet you can see it it's not one of these super dark historical dramas we're peering at the screen and that's because the technology has got so good and i think that's really innovative with justin chubbuck directors really kind of pushing that as such a new way to

and i think probably i mean historians can jump in here who know about the Tudors, but for me that felt much more intimate than previous versions, but also possibly much more kind of as it might have looked, I suppose. Yeah, absolutely. One thing I would say is just a little nod to Wolf Hall because they did that too. But I found that too dark to see sometimes. Exactly, too dark to see. Even a couple of years ago, right?

And also maybe the TVs have improved. I mean, everything is improving, right? But I literally struggled to see what was happening there. So I get that they were trying to do it. They tweaked it. Do you not think there's a danger? I do think it's accurate, and they're recreating that moment. But do we read it differently?

Do we read candlelit as romantic? Do you know what I mean? As opposed to sort of standard. There's something shadowy, of course. Conspiratorial. Well, exactly. It creates, I think, an atmosphere. The Tudors were very interested in this metaphor of shadow.

Robert Dudley is at one point called a master of shadows. And I think it plays into that idea of so many things happening in little corners and people having their own agendas. And that you couldn't know or see everything that was going on. I mean, that sense of, you know, Elizabeth, but all of them trying to find their way in this dark, difficult, shadowy world full of conspiracies in them, you know, and all of this, is very reinforced by that visually. We see through a glass darkly. But it does slightly go back to the swearing in the sense that our senses are heightened by it because we're used to light.

So is it a bit ye olde? Because to us it's slightly as, you know, it's, oh, that's very Tudor. Whereas to them, they would have, you know, seen, you know, that's the way it always was. They had lights, they'd have turned on. But we also don't get very many sunny scenes. We saw one outdoor scene

and there's a few of them. And there are scenes indoors that take place during the day, but they aren't very bright scenes. But I loved that one of the scenes was, like, full rain, because we don't think about Tudor clothes in the rain. There was snow as well. So that just sort of difficulties of living.

And actually also, the clothing seemed really good. It seemed spot on. And the moment when we got her going down to her shift, her smock, and that's basically naked in Tudor terms. Oh, naked in Tudor terms. Can we talk about naked sex? We sure can, because it's one of my bugbears. Because, you know, historically...

Actually, it was something that I appreciated. I mean... It's another pork book. We're just going to sit over here and just giggle like chummy. Go on. But one of my bugbears in historical dramas is showing people who are naked having sex because there was no central heating.

They were in like a castle. Do you have any idea how cold that would have been? I actually really appreciated that in some scenes I could see the character's breath indoors. A lot of scenes, actually. Yeah, which I did appreciate. Thank you for acknowledging it was damn cold, you know, at all times. But yes, then, of course, we do cut to some naked sex.

Some naked sex. Like, God, why would you have done it? It was absolutely freezing. It wouldn't have been erotic. It would have been horrible. On top of the blankets and everything as well. Yeah, but you know, I mean, to be fair, first episode, opening thing, you've got to have some tits.

I mean, you know, you've got to get the people watching. I mean, I think there's equal opportunity nudity, given that it's television. It's a good point. For those who like to look at naked men, and I am not assuming who likes to look at naked men, but for those among the human race who like to look at naked adult men, there is a fair amount of that also on offer. There is. So, Sarah, you have recently in your latest book examined one film, Gone With The Wind, and you've given it this sort of analysis in terms of how it sets up cultural myths and how it speaks to the period in which it was created as a film, as a book. So if you were to take those skills and deploy them to this series,

what would it tell you about the period in which it's been created? I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr. Eleanor Yonaga. And in Gone Medieval, we get into the greatest mysteries, the gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research from the greatest millennium

in human history. We're talking Vikings, Normans, Kings and Popes, who were rarely the best of friends, murder, rebellions, and crusades. Find out who we really were. By subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit.

Wherever you get your podcasts. It's a really interesting question. I often think that about those kinds of historical dramas is they tend to say as much about the period in which they're made often more because it is an act of historical projection. It is about finding your preoccupations in the past. And so Gone with the Wind is a perfect example. It's about the American Civil War, but it's made in the 1930s. And it's actually about the 1930s in all kinds of important ways.

I think we actually already know what this one's about. We've been talking about it because it's our moment. We instantly went to what this one's about. It's about me too. That's what it's about. It's about grooming. That's what they found as their hook. And that's how they're telling the story. This is the story that preoccupies us, which is this question about sexual agency and about boundaries and about the complexity of that,

the ways in which it is not binary and that permission is complicated and that agency is complicated and all of that. And this is a that agency is complicated, and all of that. And this is a story that's very, very interested in that. And it increasingly is focused on that relationship between Elizabeth and Thomas to play out that dynamic. So I may, you know, in later years, I might look back on it and see something that we're missing. Because that's the other thing about historical perspective, of course, is you look back on it, you think, actually, in 2022, we were totally obsessed with X, and we didn't know it. But by definition, we don't know

it. But the one we know is that one. And it's front and center to us. And that's why we're talking about it. So do you think that you have learned anything new? And I mean this to the Tudorists as much as the non-Tudorists about the period from watching this? Has it kind of given you insights into the past that historical records can't show? Or has it animated those records for you in a different way? Well, as I've said, I don't think historical drama is ever a history lesson. I don't think you should approach it like that. I don't think that's what it's for. It's for pleasure.

I think we've clearly proved that we all do, though. Well, we have different ideas about pleasure. Exactly. Or maybe you enjoy pedantry, which, let's be honest, we all do. Love a bit of pedantry. But, I mean, on the other hand, I would say what it did for me was actually make me much more interested

in Edward and Mary and actually Jane Grey than I have previously been because it really fleshed out those characters and whether or not one can dispute it, well, that doesn't matter.

I mean, the point is what it did was send me, indeed, straight to Wikipedia to go, oh, did that really happen? There are other sources. Exactly. There are?

Damn. But, yeah, oh, did that really happen? There are other sources. Damn. But yeah, no, of course. But when you start, and I think that's what we all do. Just to check what's the relationship. Just look at a diagram. What's the family tree? How does this fit together? Did this happen?

And hopefully that is the beginning of peaking some historical interest in that. I mean, of course, I wouldn't quote any of it as necessarily factual but those were characters that I had I guess a certain quite cliche view of from my own kind of a-level history and actually I felt oh okay so potentially there's a really very different take on this and that to me is quite interesting that means I would be much quicker to pick up books on them than I might have been before watching it, I suppose. Yeah, I think that's exactly right.

I think the present informs the past just as much, if not more, than the other way around, and it always has. You know, whether you're talking about sort of ISIS and religious terrorism and etc., or war, and now looking at war currently. I mean, my last book was about a siege, and I'm kind of looking at real-life sieges going going on and it sort of makes it so much more vivid and yeah I think the whole dysfunctional siblings and family you suddenly I kind of knew that they were brought up together

in Hertfordshire but I never sort of you also treat them as discrete different arenas and they did move around a bit and we're not even entirely sure that Lady Jane Grey was always there at the same time, are we? But it does make you think in a succession way and I love that. And I love the, as he was saying about sort of Henry VIII is not there, but he is there, the key and the blood and the referencing of the king. And that's sort of very, when Logan Roy goes in succession.

I haven't seen the last series, but I imagine it's going to be like that. It's just this lowering, menacing, patriarchal presence. And I think it just makes you see things differently. And just to add on to that, what you said at the beginning about the mid-Tudor crisis and these sort of boring middle monarchs in this period that we have. I mean, that is part of what's so interesting about it is you have three, arguably four, monarchs together in the same space with these complicated relationships that aren't as conflictual as we might think that they are, that there are actually, there's some real love and affection there. But that's what this period

of time, I think, really holds as a potential for us. And I think that this program has really used, to the best possible way, this period as these three and a half monarchs really coming together. Poor Jane. Yeah, she's arguable, arguable. And we don't usually get that. And so as a representation, I think, of this mid-Tudor period, it really, as you say, animates it. What about you, Sarah? Well, I agree with everything and exactly it's one of those great shows I think are the ones with the great stories are the ones that

kind of take your head and gently turn it to another angle and you just see something out of the frame that you had never noticed before and you look at the story in a different way and I think it absolutely does that in the ways that these guys have said so beautifully and I completely agree as a total non-expert and I want to know what you think I mean I'm good because we haven't been able to ask you like dissected questions in the same way so what's your take on it it was revelatory to me to see the relationship between Thomas and Elizabeth presented in such a way that you could see it from more than one perspective because of course we're very keen to say this is grooming and we see it from our modern perspective and we want to be clear that this is

sexual abuse and obviously by definition grooming always from the point of view of the person being groomed is seen as romance so we have both those perspectives and we can see why she might have been taken in and i think that's quite I mean, it obviously makes statements about what happened between them that we can't be sure. In fact, I probably think it's not what happened. But all the lead-up to those moments is historical. Anyway, I just thought that was an interesting perspective on it. And, yeah, I mean, I loved seeing Edward with character and verve.

And I think we're due the sort of Mary that you see here because Mary has so often been depicted, brilliantly played by Kathy Burke in Chekhov's Elizabeth, but, you know, it's an aberrant, unnatural... You know, she's in these dark, swathed spaces. There's a dwarf at her court, which of course is... Yeah, exactly. I mean, historically accurate, but it's all designed to contrast with the bright white screen where you've got Elizabeth suddenly dancing around with her hair loose in pastel colours and flirting with men.

And, you know, so there's that kind of frigidity versus womanly. Inherent misogyny in that. Inherent misogyny. And here we've got a different version of Mary, which is really important too. And what do you think about Catherine Parr as somebody who writes about all of Henry's wives? important too. And what do you think about Catherine Parr as somebody who writes about all of Henry's wives? There is a real question in the sources about the relationship with Thomas and Elizabeth is the extent to which Catherine is complicit. Because according to Cat Ashley, there were a couple of times when Thomas appeared early in the morning in Elizabeth's rooms when Catherine was with him. And so tickled to the girl in bed and there also is holding her yeah when he cups the dress off her

which happens in the gardens and i've always wondered is she holding her as in this is horseplay is she holding her to protect her is she holding her down like the words holding are really capacious and so the answer is i think it gives us different ways of reading catherine parr i don't think she's probably quite so let-me-help-you-out, but on the other hand, she's a great support to these children when they're young. I'm undecided what I think about Catherine Parr in this depiction, but I think it raises some questions. That's why it's so good, because we don't know, ultimately.

We can only read the sources that we're presented with, and that's why I think Anne of Rees is completely justified in everything she's sort of come up with. I think there's an extent, and I'm not saying this just to make the historian's head spin, although I actually think the historian's present will completely understand what I'm saying here. But in terms of the popular mythology of it,

the Tudors are a kind of franchise, a bit like Marvel. You know, in that the way we reach to them, make films about them from different aspects, different ones are stars at different times. But handily for TV and film people, copyright free. Because it all happened so long ago. Life rights are long gone. Who cares?

You can just make it. You can jump in and you can make your own thing of it. And that can be anything from, you know, Glenda Jackson, very sort of serious. It can be Tudors having full fun. It can be Blackadder. It can be all sorts of different takes on it. But it is a kind of cultural franchise. You know, we're reaching to them as we might reach to iron man and captain america

but in a historical sense and retelling those stories and i do think that every generation retells those tudor stories in a different way that reflects its own preoccupations and interest i don't quite know how to answer the question you asked sarah as well about you know what does this say about our period but i'm pretty sure somebody in 15, 20 years will have a lot to say. We'll have a different take, absolutely. Because what you just described, Alex, is the process of mythologizing, right? Is that this is what mythology looks like. That's why it sounds like Marvel Universe is because these are mythical characters. We've mythologized them to such a degree. They've become types. And that's why it's so interesting when these two things can happen. One is that the historical fact can explode it.

So that, to Susie's point, I didn't know that about the holding. I didn't know that that was the word in their head, that ambiguity in it. I wish they had actually said that in the script, because the ambiguity of that is beautiful. As you say, why is she holding her? What's the motive there? You can imagine benign motives and malicious motives, right? And everything in between. But it's all mythologized. So then the fact explodes the mythology. And then in between. But it's all mythologized.

So then the fact explodes the mythology. And then that's the fun of doing this kind of thing. It's why I love doing fact versus fiction. Not because the fact is more important than the fiction, but because the interaction between them is what I think really gets at the truths of how we understand our own lives. Can I just say, just wait till they find out about the Stuarts.

Oh, God. So much less mythologized, though. I mean, I guess Bonnie prints Charlie, but that mythology doesn't hold in the same way. It's just as interesting. Nobody cares about the Jacobites. No, but they need to. Sure, we can maybe...

They all need to read Jesse's book. They need to. Of course. It's a good little drop-in, isn't it? Very, very good. But I don't think it has the same resonance. Yeah, but just wait till they do. That's a topic for another day.

That's the next one. Absolutely. Well, thank you, all of you. It has been an absolute pleasure. Thank you for your time. Well, thank you for the invitation and the Prosecco. Cheers. Thank you.

Cheers. you you