Hunting the Falcon: Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn and the marriage that rocked Europe

The 'Queens in Context: Women in 16th-century Europe' lecture series (of five lectures) takes as its inspiration our current exhibition Six Lives: The Stories of Henry VIII’s Queens, which chronicles the representation of Katherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves, Katherine Howard and Katherine Parr throughout history and popular culture.

This lecture series places the queens in their wider historical context within the society of 16th-century Europe, and is delivered by historians, academics and authors, giving their insights into a wide variety of related topics. From uncovering the lives of ordinary Tudor women, to shining a light on the powerful individuals connected to the queens, the series offers the chance to engage more deeply with the history of women’s lives and legacies in this fascinating period.

This lecture is the fifth in the series but can also be booked separately.

The story of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn is one of the most remarkable in history: a long courtship followed by a shotgun wedding and then a coronation, ending just short of three years later when a husband’s passion turned to such malevolent hatred that he simply wanted his wife gone. Missing from most accounts is how the turbulent nature of Anne and Henry’s relationship was tied almost completely to the major events of international politics at one of the great turning points of British and European history. This was a marriage that convulsed not just a nation, but a whole continent.

In this lecture, John Guy and Julia Fox explore the most infamous of Henry’s marriages, drawing on new archival documents, startling artefactual discoveries and reinterpretations of long-misunderstood sources, to unearth the truth of these two extraordinary lives and their tumultuous times.