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 VIII's Queens.

It was just the excuse I needed to bring together the most illuminating interviews about them from the not just the Tudor's 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 VIII's wives.

First up then, the wife to whom Henry was married for twice as long as all the others put together a woman much underrated and much maligned Catherine of Aragon in this episode we'll hear from Doctors Theresa Arranfeit, Emma Kihil Maron,

Michel Beer, Sean Cunningham, Owen Emerson, Charlotte Boland.

I'm Professor Suzanne Ellipscombe and this is not just the tutors. Of all Henry VIII's

Henry VIII's wives, his first, the one we know as Catherine of Aragon,

was the one most obviously born to reign. At the time of her birth in 1485,

she was the fifth child of Isabel of Castile and Fernando of Aragon,

an infante or princess of the house of Trastomara. She was named Catalina.

Catalina's parents were pretty fearsome. They were responsible for expelling the Jews from Spain, founding the

Spanish Inquisition to deal with apostate Christian converts, and after a decade-long

war conquering the final Islamic territory on the Iberian

Peninsula, Granada.

They also financed Christopher Columbus.

But Catalina's grand illustrious upbringing against the background of such warfare and religious

tumult should not fool us into thinking that the young Catalina went unloved. She got all of her mother's attention.

Dr. Theresa Aron Fight.

She was an infanta.

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