Henry & Anne: The Lovers Who Changed History

Episode 1 (1x1)

Air date: Feb 20, 2014

his week, Susannah explores the extraordinary seven-year courtship of the royal couple, from their first meeting at a royal banquet to their marriage seven years later. She delves into their backgrounds and personalities, searching for the triggers – personal and political – that would lead to their passionate falling in love, asking what was it about Anne that made Henry prepared to pursue her for so long and to risk both his own and his country's future to win her? Susannah's first destination is Anne Boleyn's childhood home at Hever Castle in Kent. Inside this atmospheric country house, Suzannah finds Anne's Book of Hours, a religious text in which the future queen wrote the prophetic phrase: "The Time Will Come". From Hever, Suzannah heads to France and the Château de Blois, where the young Anne was once a lady in waiting to the French Queen, Claude. Suzannah discovers that Anne would have met some leading Renaissance figures (Leonardo da Vinci was a regular guest) and would have emerged more sophisticated, witty and intelligent. But was she also ambitious? And hungry for love? From the fashionable French court, Suzannah heads to the decadent English court of Henry VIII. At Hampton Court, she meets Tom Betteridge who explains how Tudor courtship worked, and how passion could so quickly kindle in the young king's sexually charged royal court. Next Suzannah heads to the Victoria & Albert Museumin London, home to a tiny gold dog whistle that is said to have been Henry's first gift to Anne. The idea behind it was that if she whistled, he would come. Suzannah also discovers the frustrated ardour of the love-sick king in his passionate letters to Anne. At the British Library, Suzannah is thrilled to see another Book of Hours in which Henry and Anne have written messages of love to each other. Anne's message is under an image of the Angel Gabriel telling Mary that she will have a son, a clear message to Henry who wanted a male heir more than anythin