Hello everyone and welcome to the History of England episode 256 The Boy King.

May I take a moment to self-advertise again this time to ask you to sign up for membership

to the History of England. To do so gives you immediate access to a library of now around

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our way of donating as it were. Or indeed both. Just go to the website at thehistreofingland.co.uk

and hit become a member. It's a doodle. So gentle listeners, to misquote the levelers there is one

way and that's your own. Except when it comes to the reign of Edward VI where that is simply

not right. In the reign of the Boyking there is only one way for any respectable historian to start,

indeed for any shed bound teller of the historical English story to start. And that is to Bimone.

It is to Bimone that Edward VI is in many ways similar to Coronation Chicken or BLT or Pronon

Mayonnaise which is to say his reign is sandwiched. Sandwiched between the far better known and

talked about reigns of Henry VIII and Mary, bloody or otherwise, and therefore he is ignored.

Walk into the crowded pubs on a Friday night ladies and gentlemen and listen to the conversation

and you will find the name of Edward VI entirely absent as the beer flows and the Pronon Mayonnaise

is gulped. The weakness in the statement is of course that it's a racing certainty you

won't hear Mary or Henry mentioned either, but you know the slightly more chance of that

happening. One of the problems of course is that generally speaking Edward was rubbish at

...