The Queen of the Year

Henry V. Catherine Howard was the wife with whom Henry had the greatest age gap.

Like Jane Seymour, she had been made in waiting to his previous queen.

Her motto was non-autrovolante choulousienne, no other will but his.

But like her cousin Anne-Rillin, Catherine Howard was beheaded on Henry V. orders

for allegedly committing adultery. Unlike Anne, she received no trial and was condemned by a parliamentary

act of a tinder. And she has not come off well in recent years. Historians have caught her a good

time girl, a natural tart, a stupid, over-sexed young woman and an empty-headed wanton.

But not today's guest. Gareth Russell is the author of one of the very finest recent biographies

of any of Henry V. its wives. His book is young and damned and fair. The life and tragedy of Catherine

Howard at the court of Henry VIII and I asked him to join me to give me his judgment on Catherine.

Gareth, thank you so much for joining me today to talk about Catherine Howard. I love

your book so it's such a treat to talk to you about her. Let's start with the thorny beginning,

the question of when she was born. So what's the evidence for her birthday and how did you figure

out what you thought was the most likely date? I spent a lot of time looking slightly in

the Duke Humphrey Library at Oxford because it's where a lot of the wells are kept and that's

where you find a lot of this really good information about who was leaving what money to who or

our people's names cropping up. A lot of people will know that really in the 1990s and the early 2000s,

there was a theory that was quite popular that she was born in 1525, which would mean she was 14

or 15 when she married Henry VIII. Fortunately that doesn't seem to be true actually. The most likely

date of birth seems to be 1522 and I did that by looking at the wills of her grandmother Isabel.

Her husband Sir John also looking at some family records but crucially a report from the French

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