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Queens, Kings, and Dastardly Things
Christmas Special: What was the Worst Royal Christmas Ever?
Season 2, Ep. 11
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Robert and Kate are back with a dastardly Christmas Special in which they are exploring royal Christmases from yesteryear... did Queen Victoria really invent Christmas? Were Tudor children whipped on Christmas Day? And could there be any Christmas worse than Elizabeth II's Annus Horribilis? Listen to find out!
Hosted by Daily Mail columnist and royal biographer Robert Hardman and historian Professor Kate Williams, each episode delves into the juiciest parts of royal history from eras past, and present... but mainly past.
Hosts: Robert Hardman and Professor Kate Williams
Producer: Ben Devlin
Researcher: Tom Sankey
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Bella Soames
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Hosts: Robert Hardman and Professor Kate Williams
Series Producer: Ben Devlin
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Content Editor: Joseph Palmer
Executive Producer: Bella Soames
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76. Grace Kelly: Hollywood Princess
33:28||Season 3, Ep. 76Grace Kelly had it all: beauty, an Oscar, Hollywood stardom and a glittering career ahead of her. Then she married a prince.Robert Hardman and Professor Kate Williams revisit one of the great celebrity fairy tales of the 20th century: the marriage of Grace Kelly to Prince Rainier of Monaco. But behind the wedding-of-the-century photographs lay a rather more complicated story.From Grace’s battles to make it in the decidedly sleazy world of 1950s Hollywood to an extraordinary royal courtship – involving Aristotle Onassis, Marilyn Monroe and even a young JFK – they explore how an American movie star found herself transformed into a European princess.There was also a price. Grace was required to give up acting, provide a $2 million dowry and even undergo a fertility test before the marriage could go ahead. Yet the woman who surrendered her Hollywood career would ultimately transform Monaco itself, bringing glamour, money and international respectability to the tiny principality.So was Grace Kelly’s marriage really the fairy tale the world was sold or did becoming a princess cost her far more than anyone realised?
75. The Bayeux Mysteries!
28:29||Season 3, Ep. 75The Bayeux Tapestry is one of the most famous works of art in the world: nearly 70 metres of kings, battles, betrayals and bloodshed. But how much of the story it tells can we actually believe?Robert Hardman and Professor Kate Williams unravel the extraordinary 11th-century embroidery that turned the Norman Conquest into a medieval propaganda epic. Who commissioned it? Why was it probably made by English women? And did Harold really die with an arrow in his eye?There are mysteries in the margins too, including the enigmatic Aelfgifu, Halley’s Comet and a surprisingly large number of naked men.And then there’s the remarkable survival of the tapestry itself. From revolutionaries who nearly used it as a wagon cover to Napoleon and the Nazis, it has repeatedly come within a whisker of disappearing altogether.Nearly a thousand years after the Battle of Hastings, what can the Bayeux Tapestry really tell us about 1066, and about the people who wanted history to remember their version of it?
74. The Aragon Girls
24:59||Season 3, Ep. 74We’ve had the Boleyn girls. Now meet the Aragon girls: two sisters born into perhaps the most powerful royal family in Europe, whose lives would take very different but equally extraordinary turns.Robert Hardman and Professor Kate Williams head to Renaissance Spain to meet their formidable mother, Isabella of Castile: warrior queen, patron of Christopher Columbus and, with Ferdinand of Aragon, architect of a new Spanish superpower.Her youngest daughter Catherine would become Henry VIII’s first wife, an educated, politically astute queen who proved considerably harder to get rid of than Henry expected. But Catherine’s elder sister Joanna faced an even darker fate. Married to Philip the Handsome and heir to Castile, she was declared insane and shut away while first her husband, then her father and finally her own son ruled in her place.So was “Joanna the Mad” really mad at all? Or was one of Europe’s most powerful women simply the victim of the men who wanted her throne?
73. Tudor Season: The Bloody End
32:44||Season 3, Ep. 73Wives, bloodshed, war: the end is approaching for Henry VIII, but England’s most notorious king is not going quietly.In the final part of our epic journey through Henry’s life, Robert Hardman and Professor Kate Williams meet his doomed fifth wife, Catherine Howard, and discover how a convenient change in the law helped send another queen to the scaffold.Then comes wife number six: the clever, glamorous Catherine Parr, who proves more than capable of managing the increasingly ill-tempered king, but still comes perilously close to becoming wife number three to lose her head.There’s war with Scotland, another invasion of France and catastrophe at sea as Henry watches his beloved Mary Rose sink before his eyes.So, as the curtain finally comes down on Henry VIII, what are we left with: Renaissance prince, murderous tyrant or a king whose desperate obsession with producing a son changed England forever?
72. Tudor Season: Monstrous Henry
27:58||Season 3, Ep. 72Henry VIII finally has his longed-for son. So why isn't he happy?Continuing our Tudor season, Robert Hardman and Professor Kate Williams explore one of the most dramatic chapters of Henry's reign. Within days of Anne Boleyn's execution, he's married Jane Seymour. At last, the Tudor dynasty has its male heir, but the triumph is heartbreakingly short-lived.Then comes Henry's next great gamble: the disastrous marriage to Anne of Cleves, the humiliating first meeting that became the stuff of legend, and the spectacular downfall of Thomas Cromwell. Along the way, discover why the Dissolution of the Monasteries transformed England forever, how Henry's relentless pursuit of power reshaped the nation, and why his search for the perfect wife was becoming ever more desperate.By the end, another teenage bride is waiting in the wings, and Henry VIII's most tyrannical years are only just beginning.Hosts: Robert Hardman and Kate WilliamsSeries Producer: Ben DevlinProduction Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
71. Tudor Season: The Queen Killer
27:41||Season 3, Ep. 71He broke with Rome. He defied the Pope. He turned England upside down to marry Anne Boleyn. Just three years later... he sent her to the executioner's block.In this gripping third episode of our Henry VIII series, Robert Hardman and Professor Kate Williams unravel the extraordinary rise and devastating fall of England's most fascinating queen, Anne Boleyn.From the birth of the future Elizabeth I and the execution of Sir Thomas More to Henry's wandering eye, Anne's disastrous miscarriages and the ruthless conspiracy that sealed her fate, this is one of history's greatest political thrillers.Was Anne really guilty of adultery and treason? Or was she simply the victim of a king who had already decided she had to die? Join us as we explore the evidence behind one of the most shocking Royal stories in British history.Hosts: Robert Hardman and Kate WilliamsSeries Producer: Ben DevlinProduction Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
70. Tudor Season: Anne Boleyn
30:14||Season 3, Ep. 70One king. One controversial romance. One decision that would change England forever.In the second episode of our Henry VIII series, Robert Hardman and Professor Kate Williams chart the extraordinary rise of Anne Boleyn, the brilliant, charismatic courtier who refused to become the king's mistress and instead demanded a crown.As Henry's obsession deepens, Catherine of Aragon fights to save her marriage, Cardinal Wolsey's world begins to collapse, and England edges towards an unprecedented break with Rome. Was this really a love story? Or was Anne Boleyn simply the catalyst for a revolution Henry had already begun to imagine?From glittering Tudor pageantry and secret courtship to political intrigue, religious upheaval and one of history's most consequential marriages, discover how the pursuit of one woman transformed the English monarchy forever.Hosts: Robert Hardman and Kate WilliamsSeries Producer: Ben DevlinProduction Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
69. Tudor Season: Rise of a Tyrant
27:08||Season 3, Ep. 69Six wives. Beheadings. A tyrant on the throne. You think you know Henry VIII... but that's not where this story begins.In the first episode of our Tudor season, Robert Hardman and Professor Kate Williams go back to the making of England's most infamous king. Discover why Henry was never supposed to wear the crown, how the death of his older brother changed history forever, and why Catherine of Aragon may have been the greatest queen England never truly appreciated.From the glittering Tudor court and the spectacular Field of the Cloth of Gold to the tragedy that shaped a dynasty, this is the untold story of the young Renaissance prince, long before Anne Boleyn, the break with Rome and the bloody legend of Henry VIII.Hosts: Robert Hardman and Kate WilliamsSeries Producer: Ben DevlinProduction Manager: Vittoria CecchiniExecutive Producer: Bella Soames
68. Rebel Princess: The Patty Hearst Story
21:12||Season 3, Ep. 68Kidnapped, blindfolded, locked in a cupboard for weeks and then caught on camera during a bank robbery. In the second part of our look at America's closest thing to a royal dynasty, Robert Hardman and Professor Kate Williams unravel the astonishing story of Patty Hearst, the newspaper heiress whose abduction by a revolutionary gang became one of the most sensational crimes of the twentieth century.Was she brainwashed into joining her captors? Or did she willingly cross the line from victim to outlaw? From ransom demands and armed robberies to one of America's most controversial trials, this is a story that still divides opinion today.And, in an extraordinary twist worthy of Hollywood, discover how the woman once branded a terrorist ended up years later as an unlikely dinner guest of the future King Charles III.Hosts: Robert Hardman and Kate WilliamsSeries Producer: Ben DevlinProduction Manager: Vittoria CecchiniExecutive Producer: Bella Soames