A queen knelt, a sword flashed, a dynasty shifted.
This episode looks at how and why the execution of Henry VIII’s second wife became one of the most iconic, mesmerising moments in British history.
Professor Kate dives straight into the charged final minutes of the execution, peeling back the myths, the melodrama, and the emotions of that fatal walk to the scaffold.
Anne hoped, right up to the last, that the King might intervene. She rehearsed her courage. She made jokes. She forgave people she absolutely did not need to forgive. And as she stepped onto that scaffold, there were rumours that she harboured a tiny ember of belief that Henry might still call it all off.
And then there’s the Frenchman: the swordsman from Calais, specially imported because he had a reputation for doing the dreadful job swiftly, silently… and with a trick. A trick that meant Anne Boleyn may not even have known the exact second her life ended. A trick that changed the choreography of English executions forever.
Kate and Robert break down the politics, the theatre, the psychological games, and the shocking tenderness of those last moments.
Hosts: Robert Hardman and Professor Kate Williams
Series Producer: Ben Devlin
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Bella Soames
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