You can't really be proud of yourself if you don't know your history.

Those were the words of Nelson Mandela

and the foundation of a new podcast from the Times and the Sunday Times, your history.

Join me Anna Temkin, Deputy Abitri's editor of The Times each week as we

explored the astonishing lives that have shaped our own lives.

Your history, available wherever you find your podcasts. Six wives, six lives, six lives, about whom we think we know everything. But beyond their mostly doomed marriages to Henry VIII,

and in many cases tragic ends,

here were six women who shaped history

in their own unique ways.

The National Portrait Gallery in London is hosting a new exhibition called Six Lives,

displaying the images that have shaped our perception of Henry the 8s Queens.

It was just the excuse I needed to bring together the most illuminating interviews about them

from the Not Just the Tudors archives.

Across six episodes I'll also be exploring some of the latest research and

speaking to the curator of the National Portrait Gallery's exhibition

Dr Charlotte Boland to paint an even fuller portrait of each of Henry the 8's wives.

In 2023 I visited Vienna's Kuntz Distorisher Museum hoping to see Holbein's great portrait

of Jane Seymour, Henry the 8's third wife. It was out on loan and I resorted to buying a picture

of it cut into a puzzle of a thousand pieces from the gift shop. Jane remains a relatively elusive Queen. To attempt to understand her is to piece

together a puzzle. In this episode I'll be speaking to some of the historians who have

tried to do so,

Dr Elizabeth Norton, Dr Aidan Nori,

...