History Cafe

True history storytelling at the History Café. Join BBC Historian Jon Rosebank & HBO, BBC & C4 script and series editor Penelope Middelboe as we give history a new take. Drop in to the History Café weekly on Wednesdays to give old stories a refreshing new brew. 90+ ever-green stand-alone episodes and building... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episodes

# 40 Henry VIII: Pope Clement, Katherine, Anne and Florence

July 15, 2026 • 36 mins

After years of negotiation and confrontation, Pope Clement VII was heard swearing unpapally over Henry VIII’s divorce. And no wonder. The history of Henry’s pope is a murky tale of code-breaking and ruthless sieges that involves Michelangelo and Machiavelli and a great deal of double-dealing. Pope Clement was trapped between a rock and a hard place: the only way to save his Medici family’s city of Florence was to ...

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# 52 Anne Boleyn - Henry VIII's MacGuffin

July 8, 2026 • 44 mins

Most of what we think we know about Anne Boleyn turns out to be later invention, with no historical basis. We argue that she was a MacGuffin: she was necessary to the way things turned out for Henry, but unimportant in herself. We’re not even sure he was in love with her.

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# 51 Marrying Anne Boleyn, the best of a bad job - Ep 6 Henry VIII: the king, his wife, his lover, the French

July 1, 2026 • 30 mins

The Ambassadors painting by Hans Holbein reveals the French horror at Henry’s decision in January 1533 to defy the pope and get remarried to a pregnant Anne Boleyn. But since Henry couldn't get an annulment he had no choice. No big-time European princess would marry him. With the Spanish seriously weakened by war, Turkish invasion and protestant revolt in Germany, and Henry’s French allies now needing him more than he d...

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# 50 No more menage à trois - Ep 5 Henry VIII: the king, his wife, his lover, the French

June 24, 2026 • 28 mins

In a dynamite French document from August 1530, still overlooked by historians, the King of France offers to send troops to England to defend Henry VIII against the Spanish. No French government before or since has ever promised to send troops to defend England. Does this explain Henry’s sudden move in August 1530 to go on the offensive against Rome and the clergy in England?

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# 49 Like an episode of the Borgias - Ep 4 Henry VIII: the king, his wife, his lover, the French

June 17, 2026 • 33 mins

31 May 1529: Faced with France and Spain doing a deal and leaving England in the lurch, Henry races against time to begin his divorce trial in London, and then pulls the plug just before a verdict is reached. Meanwhile the pope and his cardinals are double-crossing each other.

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# 46 Missions Impossible - Ep 3 Henry VIII: the king, his wife, his lover, the French

June 10, 2026 • 32 mins

1527: The pope is a prisoner of the marauding Spanish in Rome and yet Henry sends his man Knight on a madcap mission to ask Pope Clement VII for permission to marry a young woman he is already sleeping with. It’s the first of a whole series of crazy errands, asking the pope for the impossible. Does Henry have a hidden agenda?

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# 45 The Jilting of Princess Mary - Ep 2 Henry VIII: the king, his wife, his lover, the French

June 3, 2026 • 32 mins

Did Henry break with Rome in order to seize power over the wealthy, ubiquitous church in England? We find that the dates don’t add up. Instead we look at why in June 1525 Henry promoted his illegitimate son Henry Fitzroy over the head of his heir Mary. And why Charles V broke off his engagement with 9 year old Mary to marry a Portuguese princess instead.

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#44 Anne Boleyn did not hold out on Henry - Ep 1 Henry VIII: the king, his wife, his lover, the French

May 27, 2026 • 31 mins

In 2010 a document from 1527 was found in which Henry VIII admits to the pope that he is sleeping with the woman he wishes to marry instead of, or as well as, his Spanish wife Katherine. Very little of the traditional story can be believed. It’s Katherine who matters in the story of Henry’s Reformation, not Anne.

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#39 Newton and the Occult - Ep 2 Was Newton the last of the magicians?

May 20, 2026 • 44 mins

Having considered the arguments in favour of defining Sir Isaac Newton as an early 'scientist', we now consider the other side of the coin.

Newton’s best-known breakthrough – the identification of gravity – belonged not to the latest tradition of European Cartesian rationalism, but to a very English strand of occult philosophy. In fact it was only because Newton worked in this tradition that he was able to think o...

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#38 Newton the Alchemist - Ep 1 Was Newton the last of the magicians?

May 13, 2026 • 36 mins

The short answer to the question, ‘was Newton the last of the magicians?’ is, yes …. And also … no. Newton and alchemy turn out to be ‘a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.’ We toss a coin and take a heads-and-tails approach. In this podcast we argue that the alchemical experiments he undertook had nothing to do with magic. Newton’s alchemy now looks to historians like good s...

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#123 Pissing on bagpipes - Ep 5 Shakespeare and the Groundlings

May 6, 2026 • 45 mins

Was Shakespeare a Catholic? We examine the evidence and then ask whether his audience would have compartmentalised the world into Protestant, Catholic or alchemical. Wasn’t their world full of magic? In his last solo play, The Tempest, a white magus, Prospero, tells the audience that it’s up to them to make good things happen, to create a ‘brave new world’ in which everyone can be reconciled. Is this Shakesp...

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#122 Queen Elizabeth's Toyboy - Ep 4 Shakespeare and the Groundlings

April 29, 2026 • 41 mins

The Earl of Essex, it always used to be said, was an airhead. Elizabeth’s swaggering toyboy who posed as a military genius. And yet Shakespeare took the young Earl of Essex seriously, portraying him as Henry V in early performances in 1595. It riled Essex’s rival at court, the Queen’s Chief Minister, Robert Cecil, so much that he ensured English history plays were banned.

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#121 The naked King Lear - Ep 3 Shakespeare and the Groundlings

April 22, 2026 • 37 mins

Shakespeare confronts homelessness with his aging king, reduced to beggary. He makes the audience ask what it would be like if it was you who found yourself out of house and home, shivering and hoping someone would give you their cloak. Is it not, Shakespeare asks, an outrage to blame the poor for their condition?

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#120 'Hang, beg, starve' - Ep 2 Shakespeare and the Groundlings

April 15, 2026 • 39 mins

We reveal the real-life factional feud that inspired the Montagues v Capulets and which makes the groundling audience so angry. It’s London. 1595. Life is tough. It’s wet and cold and only three years ago 20% of the population died of the plague. And it’s not fair. The rich can commit murder, duelling in the streets, and get away with it. While young apprentices are hanged for arguing over the price of a fish beca...

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#119 'Fair is foul and foul is fair' - Ep 1 Shakespeare and the Groundlings

April 8, 2026 • 35 mins

Nothing is what it seems? We, poor Londoners, paying our penny to stand at the Globe in 1606 would agree with that. With Robert Cecil’s government relentlessly pumping out fake news around the Gunpowder Plot, it’s not at all clear who the real criminals are. As Macbeth, murderer of a Scottish king, is overtaken by the evil of ambition we begin to see that our Scottish king James is also in danger. Doesn’t the ambi...

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#96 Extortioners and hatchet men - Ep 5 What Wars? What Roses?

April 1, 2026 • 29 mins

Henry VII invented the idea of the Wars of the Roses and the notion that he alone could end them. With a comparatively weak claim to the throne he found a novel way to deal with the nobility - through extortioners and hatchet men. He could only get away with this because the Black Death had fatally damaged the status of the nobility and caused the rise of the small independent farmer. Feudalism in England and Wales was over…...

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#95 Murder in the Tower - Ep 4 What Wars? What Roses?

March 25, 2026 • 29 mins

One common-girl-denies-king-until-he-marries-her, two kings, three royal murders in the Tower, and the Queen's mother accused of witchcraft. Just about standard for late 15th Century England and Wales. (R)

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#94 'Political gangsterdom' - Ep 4 What Wars? What Roses?

March 18, 2026 • 35 mins

By the time Henry VI finally lost the last bit of England's French Empire in 1453 he could no longer go to war in France to occupy and enrich his nobility. This small, interrelated and bickering group, cooped up in England with an agricultural depression settling in, now resorted to what the historian Michael Postan long ago (in 1939) famously called ‘political gangsterdom.’ (R)

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#93 'A plague on both your houses' - Ep 2 What Wars? What Roses?

March 11, 2026 • 31 mins

Why was the 15th century in England and Wales so violent? It certainly wasn’t York v Lancaster, white-rose v red-rose rivalry. Monarchs were useless but that’s not unique to the 15th century. So what was it that defined this period? It has everything to do with the plague… (R)

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#92 'Welcome traitor!' - Ep 1 What Wars? What Roses?

March 4, 2026 • 28 mins

Why do we know so little about medieval history? About England and Wales in the fifteenth century? The Wars of the Roses (Lancaster v York) lasted 4 months not the traditional 85 years. Even the roses were (mostly) inventions. And was it even medieval? The execution of the King’s chief minister as a traitor in 1450, by sailors dissatisfied with an ineffective king, was shocking. It revealed that the common people believed the...

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History Cafe

Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}# 40 Henry VIII: Pope Clement, Katherine, Anne and Florence

.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}# 52 Anne Boleyn - Henry VIII's MacGuffin

# 51 Marrying Anne Boleyn, the best of a bad job - Ep 6 Henry VIII: the king, his wife, his lover, the French

# 50 No more menage à trois - Ep 5 Henry VIII: the king, his wife, his lover, the French

# 49 Like an episode of the Borgias - Ep 4 Henry VIII: the king, his wife, his lover, the French

# 46 Missions Impossible - Ep 3 Henry VIII: the king, his wife, his lover, the French

# 45 The Jilting of Princess Mary - Ep 2 Henry VIII: the king, his wife, his lover, the French

#44 Anne Boleyn did not hold out on Henry - Ep 1 Henry VIII: the king, his wife, his lover, the French

#39 Newton and the Occult - Ep 2 Was Newton the last of the magicians?

#38 Newton the Alchemist - Ep 1 Was Newton the last of the magicians?

#123 Pissing on bagpipes - Ep 5 Shakespeare and the Groundlings

#122 Queen Elizabeth's Toyboy - Ep 4 Shakespeare and the Groundlings

#121 The naked King Lear - Ep 3 Shakespeare and the Groundlings

#120 'Hang, beg, starve' - Ep 2 Shakespeare and the Groundlings

#119 'Fair is foul and foul is fair' - Ep 1 Shakespeare and the Groundlings

#96 Extortioners and hatchet men - Ep 5 What Wars? What Roses?

#95 Murder in the Tower - Ep 4 What Wars? What Roses?

#94 'Political gangsterdom' - Ep 4 What Wars? What Roses?

#93 'A plague on both your houses' - Ep 2 What Wars? What Roses?

#92 'Welcome traitor!' - Ep 1 What Wars? What Roses?

Popular Podcasts

# 40 Henry VIII: Pope Clement, Katherine, Anne and Florence

# 52 Anne Boleyn - Henry VIII's MacGuffin