Hello everyone and welcome to the History of England, episode 243, a Chooal for womanhood.

Before I start, let me briefly remind you that I am a proud member of the Agora Podcast

Network, a smorgasbord of independent podcasters. To find out more, go to agorapodcastnetwork.com

and this month our biography of the month is American biography by the lovely Tom Dele,

so hop along and see that. Last time we heard about the death of one of England's most influential

and talented public servants, Tom Oskronwell. Whether or not you think he was a brutal hatchet man

or high-minded visionary. We also heard the rather sad story of Anna Cleves,

dragged over to England for a marriage that ended almost as soon as it started, leaving her all

alone and abandoned in a foreign land and yet coping with it all really rather elegantly.

This week is the start of a two-parter on the life and times of Catherine Howard.

I confess I had absolutely meant this to be a one-parter and yet gentle listeners I got

carried away with the intrigue, excitement, tragedy of it all. If you don't know the story very

well and would like to understand more, there's a really good book that came out relatively recently

by a chap called Gareth Russell, it's called Young and Damned and Fair, the life and tragedy of

Catherine Howard at the Court of Henry VIII. If you go to my website, thehistoryofingland.co.uk

you can find a review of said book and a linked bite if you wish from UK or US Amazon as you choose.

Just to frame the episode as well, a very quick bit about the story is associated with Catherine.

Essentially the traditional narrative has been one of distaste for Catherine,

mixed with sympathy for her situation, the story of a sort of airheaded, sexually promiscuous party

animal who nonetheless didn't deserve to die with her life unlived. Alongside that traditional

narrative is the idea of a second manipulative monster, the third Duke of Norfolk, who is supposed

to consciously hatch the plot to use its attractive niece to ensnare the king and to thereby gain power

...