Anne Boleyn | Why Anne is Still Living Rent-Free in our Heads | 4

British Scandal

Wondery

Scandal, Alice Levine, Great Britain, Society & Culture, Exhibit C, British, England, History, Matt Forde, Documentary

4.5 • 6.5K Ratings

🗓️ 23 July 2025

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Was Anne Boleyn a victim of Tudor tyranny or a master player in the Royal Court? Historian Dr Suzannah Lipscomb joins Alice and Matt to unravel the enigma of Henry's most controversial queen: her magnetic appeal, her dramatic fall, and why - 500 years later - we're still captivated by her story.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	From Wondery, I'm Matt Ford.
0:08.6	And I'm Alice Levine.
0:10.4	And this is British Scandal. So Anne Berlin, the second wife of Henry VIII, she changed the course of English history.
0:30.3	She sparked a religious revolution and was executed after less than three years on the throne.
0:35.4	But was she a schemer, a victim, a reformer or all three?
0:40.1	Alice, what is your overall impression of Anne?
0:43.0	I guess my overall impression is that all of those things can exist at the same time and lots of
0:48.3	other things as well. She was strong, smart, defiant. She absolutely had a nasty side. But don't we
0:54.1	both, Matt? Don't we both? I don't mean me and her. I mean me and you. We saw the same sort of scheming from Cardinal Walsy and from Thomas Cromwell. I think what makes Anne different is, of course, that she was a woman doing it, and that was pretty remarkable and definitely dangerous. And a part of the narrative that's so pervasive that we've talked a lot
1:12.2	about this series is that she was a scheming seductress, whereas actually I think that she just
1:16.5	adapted to her surroundings, she figured out how to survive. Yes, maybe she played the players.
1:22.4	But also, lest we forget, potentially, she was also just in love. It's very hard to sort fact from fiction.
1:29.1	What is myth? What is rumour? Well, there are certainly a lot of Ambellin myths out there.
1:33.8	And to get to the truth, today we are joined by one of the country's foremost experts on Tudor history.
1:39.8	Dr. Susanna Lipscomb is a historian, broadcaster, author and the host of the hugely successful, not just the Tudor's podcast from History Hit. Susanna Lipscomb is a historian, broadcaster, author and the host of the hugely successful,
1:45.3	not just the Tudor's podcast from History Hit.
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