For centuries, the reputation of Queen Catherine Pa, Henry VIII's sixth wife, was as today's

guest has put it, little more than a royal nurse made to her ailing husband, a pious,

plain-faced prude who preached Protestantism and was kind to Henry's children. Such a characterization

is wildly inaccurate, and entirely fails to capture the life of this active, strong-willed

and outspoken Queen, whose story contains personal peril, clandestine romance, war, political

intrigue, and jealous husbands. She was a great patron of the arts and the reformation,

significant general during Henry VIII's time in France and the first Queen of England

to write and publish her own books, as well as the first English woman to publish a work

of prose in the 16th century. Today's podcast will make you think again about this vital

and fascinating woman. To rehabilitate Catherine Pa, I'm delighted to be joined by Dr. Susan

E. James. Dr. James is the author of two biographies of Catherine Pa, Catherine Pa,

the making of a Queen, and Catherine Pa, Henry VIII's last love. She's also published

on the feminine dynamic in English art and women's voices and chewed the wheels amongst

other things, and those are both fascinating subjects I hope we might be able to come

back to on the podcast one day. But today our subject is Henry VIII's last Queen, and

her tumultuous, extraordinary, and ultimately tragic life.

Dr. James, it is a great pleasure to see you and to have a chance to talk about this

wonderful woman. The picture that we are often given to Catherine Pa is that she's

kind of written off as a Staudi widow who knows Henry VIII in his do-tage. In summary,

why is that unfair? Why is it unfortunate? Well, it's unfortunate because it's the complete

opposite of what she actually was. This was a woman who went in one year from being an

obscure Yorkshire housewife to the region of England, and that's no mean feat, especially

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