Nancy Dell'Olio chooses the life of Lucrezia Borgia
Great Lives
BBC
4.2 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 21 April 2016
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Nancy Dell'Olio champions Lucrezia Borgia, a Renaissance woman who was much maligned.
Lucrezia Borgia was the Pope's daughter and, over the centuries, her name has been a byword for poison, incest and intrigue. Novels, television series, plays and an opera have been written about her. But was she just a victim of malicious gossip that vastly exaggerated her actual misdeeds?
Nancy Dell'Olio explains why she identifies with Lucrezia Borgia and with the help of historian Sarah Dunant attempts to debunk some of the myths.
Produced by Perminder Khatkar.
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2016.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Great Lives is a download from Radio 4. We hope you enjoy what you're about to hear. |
| 0:05.0 | She was the Pope's daughter. Over the centuries, her name has been a byword for poison, incest and intrigue, and she was considered one of the most ruthless Italian |
| 0:15.7 | Renaissance noble women of her day. Novels, TV series, plays and an opera have all been made about her. |
| 0:24.3 | Nominating this week's great life is Nancy Delolio. |
| 0:27.9 | Nancy, are you having a laugh? |
| 0:29.6 | A shocking woman by so many accounts. |
| 0:31.9 | Why in heaven's name have you picked Lucretia Boja? |
| 0:35.0 | Well of course from a controversial woman like I am. I pick up a controversial |
| 0:41.0 | very controversial. |
| 0:42.0 | Two shocking women. Well rather shocking but definitely |
| 0:44.1 | leftly. Well we're still talking here after more than 500 years we talk about |
| 0:49.2 | Lucretia and she definitely was a great renaissance woman and I love her life and I like her controversial. |
| 0:57.0 | Life and I consider a controversial figure. |
| 1:00.0 | Yes you are. |
| 1:02.0 | Absolutely. It's a compliment. So the accusations of incest and poisoning, do you not care about that? |
| 1:10.0 | It's not that I don't care. We don't have proof that that I don't think there was no incest that for me one of the greatest |
| 1:17.6 | personality female personality in our history and she was a woman she was a youth by incredible family. |
| 1:25.6 | Nancy she lived by her wit and by her beauty. Do you identify with her? |
| 1:32.0 | In a way that I always admire women, |
| 1:38.0 | they are strong personality, women that are, that are, that had a difficult life and make it their way true. |
| 1:45.0 | In this way, yes, she was incredible, beautiful, and intelligent and very smart. |
| 1:51.0 | Even today, we have, we can see in our society. People can't cope |
... |
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