his week, Susannah explores the extraordinary seven-year courtship of the royal couple, from their first meeting at a royal banquet to their marriage seven years later. She delves into their backgrounds and personalities, searching for the triggers – personal and political – that would lead to their passionate falling in love, asking what was it about Anne that made Henry prepared to pursue her for so long and to risk both his own and his country's future to win her? Susannah's first destination is Anne Boleyn's childhood home at Hever Castle in Kent. Inside this atmospheric country house, Suzannah finds Anne's Book of Hours, a religious text in which the future queen wrote the prophetic phrase: "The Time Will Come". From Hever, Suzannah heads to France and the Château de Blois, where the young Anne was once a lady in waiting to the French Queen, Claude. Suzannah discovers that Anne would have met some leading Renaissance figures (Leonardo da Vinci was a regular guest) and would have emerged more sophisticated, witty and intelligent. But was she also ambitious? And hungry for love? From the fashionable French court, Suzannah heads to the decadent English court of Henry VIII. At Hampton Court, she meets Tom Betteridge who explains how Tudor courtship worked, and how passion could so quickly kindle in the young king's sexually charged royal court. Next Suzannah heads to the Victoria & Albert Museumin London, home to a tiny gold dog whistle that is said to have been Henry's first gift to Anne. The idea behind it was that if she whistled, he would come. Suzannah also discovers the frustrated ardour of the love-sick king in his passionate letters to Anne. At the British Library, Suzannah is thrilled to see another Book of Hours in which Henry and Anne have written messages of love to each other. Anne's message is under an image of the Angel Gabriel telling Mary that she will have a son, a clear message to Henry who wanted a male heir more than anythin
It was an extraordinary turnaround. To win Anne as his bride, Henry had pursued her for seven long years and gambled both his own and his nation's future. Yet 1,000 days after he married her, he had her executed. What had happened? Did the fault lie with Henry or Anne? Or was their love simply doomed from the start? To find out, Suzannah visits all the key locations where their drama was played out, including Thornbury Castle, where the couple spent ten happy days in 1535. Now a hotel, the castle is the only place in England where guests can pay to sleep in the same room that Henry and Anne once occupied. Drawing on contemporary descriptions and portraits of Henry, Suzannah digs deep into the character of the Tudor king, building a picture not just of what he was like, but how he wanted to be seen. She also charts the key influences on Henry's life and character at the time – the death of his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, the failure of Anne to deliver a male heir and the huge political pressure on him at home and from Europe after his break with Rome. Often overlooked but perhaps most important of all was the severe head injury he sustained in a jousting accident, an injury which may explain how a charming and charismatic young man became a cruel tyrant. Suzannah's quest to understand Anne leads her back to the 20th century and recent royal history. She meets Princess Diana's former private secretary, Patrick Jephson, who imparts some interesting and revealing comparisons between queen and princess, despite the gap of almost five centuries. Anne's tragic story ended with a trial for treason, infidelity and incest. Suzannah visits the Tower of London, where Anne was executed and is buried, and returns to Hever Castle, the family home where she spent her childhood. Here Suzannah sees for the first time a prayer book, which Anne reputedly had with her in the Tower and in which she wrote what can be read as her own heart-rending epitaph.
