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Hello, I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb and welcome welcome to Not Just the Tudors from History Hit,

the podcasts in which we explore everything from Anne Boleyn to the Aztecs,

from Holbein to the Huguenots, from Shakespeare to Samarise,

relieved by regular doses of murder, espionage and witchcraft.

Not in other words, just the Tudors, but most definitely also the Tudors.

Prose can be read quickly, but poetry must be savoured, drawn out on the tongue.

And in that slow meditative moment between writer and reader,

there is the possibility of a connection that is far more than cognitive,

a deeper magic that seems to link the emotions of humans over time.

A poem offers us the possibility of direct Venus access to the imaginations,

experiences and feelings of people in the past. They are, in fact, a way of time-travelling,

of going inside history into individual moments, as well as grand historical events,

into love and war, loyalty and resistance.

Today's guest has therefore made the clever deduction that it might be possible to tell the

history of a nation through, in the case of England, 1300 years of poetry.

This does not necessarily mean writing a triumphal narrative. It is possible to heed the coded and covert messages that poems carry, and hear the sometimes subversive voices of those who might be on the edges of society. It is a bold and exciting way into history, and it is the brainchild of Catherine Clark, Professor at the Institute of Historical Research, visiting professor of

English Literature at the University of Southampton, and director of the Victoria County History

...