How Hot Was Henry VIII?

Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society

History Hit

Scandal, Sex, Education, History, Society

4.8 • 2.1K Ratings

🗓️ 22 August 2025

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

With SIX wives, Henry VIII must have had something going for him, right? Was he handsome? Charming? Intelligent? Just plain powerful?

In this episode, Kate is joined by Professor Suzannah Lipscomb, host of our sister podcast Not Just the Tudors. They discuss the vanity of Henry VIII, his sporting prowess, and his injuries. Listen to discover just how terrible this Tudor king smelt.

This episode was edited by Tim Arstall and produced by Sophie Gee. The senior producer was Charlotte Long.

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Betwixt the Sheets: History of Sex, Scandal & Society is a History Hit podcast.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello everyone, it's me your host, Kate Lister. I'm just jumping in before the episode to ask you for a little favour.
0:07.6	If you are enjoying betwixt, and I hope that you are, we'd love it if you could vote for us for the
0:12.5	Listeners Choice Awards at the British Podcast Awards. If you follow the link in the show notes,
0:17.9	it should take you to the place you need to go and it would mean the world to us. We were shortlisted last year, and the one before that, and the one before that.
0:27.8	We were so close, and it just made us want it even more. I think we can do it this year. Right,
0:34.5	on with the show. Hello, my lovely betwixters, it's me, Kate Lister. You are you, I am me and you are listening to Betwicks the sheets. But before I can let you go any further, before I can let you proceed, unwarned and unarmed, I do have to tell you, this is an adult podcast spoken by adults to other adults about adult things and an adulty wake of a range of lots and a British and you've been adults too. And if you can't say yes to all of those things,
0:56.8	you have no business being here, you're just holding up the show. Right, let's get on with it.
1:06.5	Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who is the fairest of them all? Well, if you had been knocking around
1:12.6	in the early 16th century, the answer to that question might well have been, King Henry the 8th.
1:17.7	No, I'm not joking you. When he first came to the throne, he was a hot tea. Over six foot tall,
1:24.8	a strapping lad worked out pretty much all day long,
1:28.2	Auburn hair and beard. Even the people that didn't like him were forced to concede how good
1:32.4	looking he was. He was a straight up royal beefcake. He knew it, everyone else knew it,
1:39.2	and what's more importantly for the time, they thought that God knew it as well. Henry
1:43.2	was a very, very vain man.
1:46.1	And that's fine if you have the goods to back it up. But as Henry grew older, things began to go downhill quite rapidly.
1:55.0	His health was seriously affected. His weight ballooned. He was not the strapping beefcake that he was in his youth.
2:02.3	And how did he handle that?
2:05.1	Well, joining us today to talk all about Henry the ape's vanity is the one and only,
2:09.7	the utterly marvellous, Professor Susanna Lipscomb.
2:12.6	So let's get our cod pieces at the ready betwixters, and let's find out just how vain Henry was.
2:21.5	What do you look on a man? Oh, money, of course.
	...

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