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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. Queen Anne is one of those monarchs whose reputation seems to

arrive before she does. If you ask people what they know about her, you're often here the same things repeated,

that she was sickly, overweight, emotionally needy, easily led by favourites,

and somehow overshadowed by the more dramatic figures who came before and after her.

She doesn't, at first glance, look like a ruler for a grand or transformative age.

And yet, when you linger a little longer, Queen Anne starts to look very different indeed.

This is the woman who ruled Britain through near constant war,

who oversaw the creation of Great Britain in 1707,

who attended cabinet meetings more diligently than any monarch before or since, even when she was in pain,

exhausted and barely able to stand. Her reign sits at a crucial moment in our restoration series.

We've already traced the upheavals of James II and the experiment in shared monarchy under William and Mary.

Anne is the last Stuart to sit on the throne

...