Pod Insights British Scandal Anne Boleyn | Why Anne is Still Living Rent-Free in our Heads | 4 About this episode Was Anne Boleyn a victim of Tudor tyranny or a master player in the Royal Court? Historian Dr Suzannah Lipscomb joins Alice and Matt to unravel the enigma of Henry's most controversial queen: her magnetic appeal, her dramatic fall, and why - 500 years later - we're still captivated by her story.
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Transcript 6,626 words · 11 speakers
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0:00 Alice Levine? Audible subscribers can listen to all episodes of British Scandal ad-free right now. Join Audible today by downloading the Audible app.
0:14 Matt Forde? From Wondery, I'm Matt Ford.
0:16 Alice Levine? And I'm Alice Levine.
0:17 Matt Forde? And this is British Scandal.
0:32 Matt Forde? So Anne Boleyn, the second wife of Henry VIII, she changed the course of English history. She sparked a religious revolution and was executed after less than three years on the throne. But was she a schemer, a victim, a reformer, or all three? Alice, what is your overall impression of Anne?
0:50 Alice Levine? I guess my overall impression is that all of those things can exist at the same time, and lots of other things as well. She was strong, smart, defiant. She absolutely had a nasty side. But don't we both, Matt? Don't we both? I don't mean me and her, I mean me and you. We saw the same sort of scheming from Cardinal Wolsey and from Thomas Cromwell. I think what makes Anne different is, of course, that she was a woman doing it, and that was pretty remarkable and definitely dangerous. And a part of the narrative that's so pervasive, that we've talked a lot about this series, is that she was a scheming seductress. Whereas actually, I think that she just adapted to her surroundings. She figured out how to survive. Yes, maybe she played the players. But also, lest we forget, potentially, she was also just in love.
1:33 Alice Levine? It's very hard to sort fact from fiction. What is myth? What is rumour?
1:38 Matt Forde? Well, there are certainly a lot of Anne Boleyn myths out there. And to get to the truth, today we are joined by one of the country's foremost experts on Tudor history. Dr Susanna Lipscomb is a historian, broadcaster, author, and the host of the hugely successful Not Just the Tudors podcast from History Hit. Susanna joins us next.
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3:30 Matt Forde? Susanna, welcome to British Scandal.
3:31 Speaker 04 Thank you for having me.
3:32 Matt Forde? Anne is one of the most talked about women in history. What is it about Amber Lynn that you were particularly interested in?
3:39 Speaker 04 I think that she is a woman who provoked an enormous change in our history. And she did so, not strangely through being beautiful, but through being charismatic and intelligent and the sort of person who attracted people to her. And that's just fascinating.
4:01 Alice Levine? Can you give us an idea of how Anne's image has changed over the years?
4:06 Speaker 04 Yes, I mean, so when she was alive, the British public, English public at the time... Was largely opposed to her. I mean, there were women shouting abuse at her and calling her a Jezebel for breaking up the relationship between Catherine of Aragon and Henry VIII. And she stayed in that mode for quite some time, although in the late 16th century, of course, her daughter was on the throne and so then she became a bit of a Protestant heroine.
4:35 Speaker 04 Over time, it shifted. I mean, she was seen sometimes as Henry's great romance. By the 19th century, they'd gone all prudish again and Anne was the devil incarnate. But this fact that her coming to the throne coincides or creates the circumstances of the creation of the Church of England has always been a bit of a difficult legacy. And what's really interesting is when you get to the 20th century and you see depictions in films, I mean, the first film that featured Henry VIII in English, The Private Life of Henry VIII, passes over Anne Boleyn really quickly and depicts Catherine Howard as the great love of Henry VIII's life. And then you've got Anne of the Thousand Days in 1969, which is portraying it as this torrid love affair and how they loved each other the same
5:17 Speaker 04 on one day only. And since then, I think she's really been the source of fascination. And now more and more, people kind of almost see her as a proto-feminist, that she was carving the way for women like her daughter to reign. So she's become this extraordinarily magnetic character. Now it's difficult to find someone saying a bad word about her.
5:41 Matt Forde? It's quite a recent turnaround then in her reputation. For hundreds of years, she was seen in a negative light. So is it unfair to say that without those films in the 1960s, people still might have a negative view of her?
5:55 Speaker 04 I think that there was a mixed kind of legacy because for so long, she had been the person who had also sparked this change in British politics and society, which is the creation of the Church of England, which is seen as a kind of breakaway from Europe, for better or worse, and is the beginning of ideas of... Britishness and patriotism that gets associated with empire and, you know, yada, yada. So I think that there's a sense that her legacy was always mixed, but I think she becomes a romantic heroine from the 60s onwards.
6:35 Alice Levine? It feels like a very contemporary tactic to throw accusations at Anne to rubbish her name, in this case incest and adultery. What is the validity of those accusations?
6:47 Speaker 04 Well, they're almost certainly false. We can look at the indictment, it's all that survives of her trial, and we can see the list of things that she's charged with. And even now, at a distance of 500 years, we can disprove three quarters of them because we can say, Anne wasn't in the location you're saying she was in. But there were rumours going around about Anne's behaviour, and to make it seem as if it wasn't the king's failing, because in the 16th century, if a woman committed adultery, it was thought to indicate her husband's lack of sexual dominance. And you can't have that accusation being thrown at Henry VIII.
7:26 Speaker 04 So the accusations against Anne have to be so fantastic, you know, she slept with five men and one of them was her brother, that of course Henry wouldn't have been able to satisfy her. It's so over the top and so exaggerated that even in itself it indicates that it's not true. And then, of course, there's the fact that Anne, before she died, swore that she was innocent on peril of her soul's damnation. She was a woman of great faith, and if she thought she was about to meet her maker, that's not the moment that she was going to lie.
7:57 Matt Forde? And of all the accusations against her, like many women in history, she was accused of being a witch. Is there any evidence from the time that she may have ever indulged in witchcraft?
8:08 Speaker 04 Well, actually, this is one of those sort of... Great fables of history because Henry did say, we have this report in French, so it's written by a man called Eustace Chapuis, who's the imperial ambassador, and he's writing down what Henry said, except he's only got it third or fourth hand. So if somebody has said to him that somebody said, that somebody had heard Henry say, that Henry had been attracted to her by sortileges, so that's by sorcery. But the way it's used, it could mean that Henry was saying that Anne had enchanted him, that she'd bewitched him, in the way that we use the phrase today to mean, you know, you're just really drawn to someone
8:51 Speaker 04 and you feel like you don't know what's come over you. I think we call it falling in love. So that's the only accusation of witchcraft, because it's actually not in the charges against us. She's only charged with, only charged with adultery, incest and conspiring the king's death. And that last one is important because it's the only one that's actually treason. So in terms of evidence of Anne being involved in witchcraft, absolutely zilch, nothing.
9:15 Alice Levine? It's hard to sort a fact from fiction when it comes to descriptions of her as a person, sly, manipulative, scheming, on the other hand, enterprising, self-preservational, and maybe that she was genuinely in love. Who was Anne actually?
9:31 Speaker 04 I think it's hard because we have relatively little information about her interiority. So we have seven letters that survive from her. We've got loads of love letters that Henry wrote to her, and none of hers back survive. And so into that gap, we've written all sorts of things. So when Henry says that he, you know, he wishes that he could be hers body and soul, generations have read into that, that she's being a bit of a cock tease, basically. She's leading him on and not taking him to bed. And I think that says a lot about the person reading those letters, rather than actually what it says about Anne. So
10:13 Speaker 04 that kind of can be portrayed as her being sly and manipulative and ambitious and wanting him to marry her before they go to bed. You know, it could well be that both of them decided to wait until they could have a legitimate heir, because that's what they wanted, that's what Henry really required. And there's no contraceptive that's either appealing or works at this period of time. So if you want to make sure that you're going to be able to marry and not have a child outside wedlock, there's only one way of doing that, which is not to have sex. When it comes to Anne, what we do see is we see her putting forward people that she supports. So these are religious positions, but to understand what this means, we have to get inside the thinking of the time, which is that what we call Protestant, what they might
10:57 Speaker 04 have called reformed or evangelical or new thinking was like the kind of cutting edge thought of the day. It was the most exciting range of ideas going around and Anne had become really interested in these things when she was in France. And when she comes back, she wants to put to the front people who are advancing this new way of thinking and who are kind of stick in the mud, doing things the old fashioned way. She's trying to get innovation and change and these exciting ideas to come to England. We do know that about her. Whether she was actually in love, this huge question, we don't really know. We've got, again, Henry's letters that say she gave him this beautiful diamond with
11:37 Speaker 04 a woman inside a ship like a damsel tossed on the seas and she gives him a note with it that he says explains everything, but he doesn't say what it was. So we don't know. So so much of the time when it comes to Anne, we're kind of guessing at what she felt and we're reading into what other people said about her. And a lot of the time, people have got really polarised views about her. So it's so hard to say. That's why we end up with this kind of dichotomy, I think.
12:07 Matt Forde? And just thinking about Henry for a second, what do those letters reveal about him? Because doing this series, actually, it's slightly perhaps, maybe not changed our opinion, but developed it a little away from just this tyrant to someone who was actually quite emotional, quite easily influenced, a bit soppy. Is that fair?
12:29 Speaker 04 Yes, it's totally fair. Although just having a cast of our eyes around the globe today, I think it's entirely possible to be emotional and a tyrant at the same time. So in fact, I think almost if you indulge yourself that much, if you think of yourself in those terms, it almost makes it worse. But so Henry's letters, they start in French, which is kind of the courtly love language they both speak, where he's saying he wants to be her. Courtly Lover, which is this kind of game they play at court where a man chooses a lady whom he serves and he gives her gifts and he
13:09 Speaker 04 writes her poetry and sings her song and she's required to respond with kind of kindness. So it's in this guise of the of chivalry and courtly love. But they gradually get more earthy and they get into English after a while. And I don't think you need to read between the lines too much to see that they become quite sexual in their allusions over time. But he's very much saying that he's been struck for a year by the dart of love and that you know, he signs off one letter saying H R for Henricus Rex autre cher, you know, he's not looking for any other and he puts her initials in a love heart. I mean, this is this is full blown stuff. I mean, he's he's definitely fallen hook line sinker.
13:54 Speaker 04 So he's he is very emotional and sentimental. And actually, what's really interesting about Henry VIII, I think, is that we see him as this man of great appetites, which he would adore. Actually, he would love that we'd think of him like that. But he was quite sentimental. His real problem is that he wants to marry everyone he falls in love with. If he'd just been happy to take Anne as a mistress, things would have been rather different. I mean, even the Pope is kind of amazed that he doesn't. So so we'll just we'll just have her as a mistress. It's like, oh, I want to marry her. Oh, okay. Weirdo.
14:28 Alice Levine? You mentioned the narrative about Anne's ambition. Is there anything to point toward the idea that this scheme to become queen was there from the offset or certainly from her early years?
14:40 Speaker 04 Not really, no. I mean, there's a letter written when she was thirteen, which is in rather bad French. She's just learning to spell in French. She writes back to her father saying how excited she is to come to the court because she's been trained up to go back to serve Catherine of Aragon. She becomes one of her ladies. And she says, you know, she would be so honoured to have such a high person speak to her. I mean, this isn't the sort of language of someone who's scheming from a young age to take that woman's place. And so.
15:15 Speaker 04 That's it really, then we have, then she comes back to court when she's in her twenties. And Henry probably notices her when she's twenty five, twenty six, not immediately on her arrival court, because at that time he's having an affair with her sister.
15:29 Speaker 04 But later, you know, he notices her and falls in love with her. And if anything, I think we can probably read some resistance on her part. I mean, she's seen what's happened to her sister, she probably doesn't want to get involved with the king, but I don't think you have much choice at this time. If Henry's eye falls on you and you're at the court, it's what you have to do.
15:53 Matt Forde? Looking at when Anne first caught Henry VIII's eye, why do you think Anne stood out to him more than some of the other women in his orbit?
16:02 Speaker 04 Well, Anne had spent seven years on the continent, so a little time in what is now Belgium and then in France, travelling all around France. She had beautiful French, in fact, she's described as being more like a natural born French woman, and this is by a French man, so you know, this is the highest compliment he could possibly pay. And she has the kind of courtly manners that come with that, so she knows how to dance. She's very witty and one thing that Henry and Anne seem to share, and we have small indications from her, quite a lot in those letters from him, is that they love wordplay.
16:41 Speaker 04 They love puns and being witty in their conversation and metaphor and that sort of delicious conversational foreplay seems to be part of what's going on between them. So I think there's something in her quick wit and in her manners, her sophistication, a kind of cosmopolitan glamour that attracts him.
17:05 Matt Forde? So she's a sort of beautiful, French feminine Tim Vine?
17:12 Speaker 04 I know, Tim, I think he'd be really flattered by that. I'm not sure she was beautiful, though, because she had dark hair and she had, I guess, what we would say is quite a tanned complexion. Everyone says she's got a long neck and sparkling dark eyes, they give her that. But at the time, they liked very pale skin and blue eyes and blonde hair. And so she doesn't fit the stereotype of beautiful in the age. If she's beautiful, she's beautiful despite not fitting what they think is beautiful.
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18:43 Alice Levine? Moving on then, from the courtship to her ultimate demise, how much do you think misogyny shaped the charges brought against Anne in court?
18:53 Speaker 04 I mean, they're fundamentally misogynistic. I mean, they're about Anne probably wielding too much power. I mean, we don't know exactly what happened. My reading of the evidence is that Henry becomes convinced that Anne has betrayed him in some way because of rumors going around and orders Cromwell to look into it. And one of the sources, one of the ones produced closest to the time, says that Cromwell is told that it will be... On pain of death, if the charges he's brought against Anne are false. Because there's this old principle in law, Lex talionis, which is if you accuse somebody of something and it turns out not to be true, you'll suffer the punishment that they would
19:38 Speaker 04 have suffered. And so rather loads the dice. I mean Cromwell's going to find evidence. One of the first things he does is he takes this young man at the court who's probably got learning disabilities of some sort. He's called Mark Smeaton. He's a musician. He's always referred to just as Mark, rather than by his surname or by a title of any sort. And he's also provided for at Bush of court, which means he's fed at the court's expense. And the other people who get this are the fools at the court and the children of the court. So I think there's something vulnerable about him. And he's arrested by Cromwell and possibly tortured, certainly interrogated, and then confesses to having sex with Anne
20:22 Speaker 04 three times. And it's the only person who confesses. And so it kind of taints everything that follows and means it seems irresistible to presume her guilt. But the charges that have been thrown at her are precisely because of a thing that attracted Henry to her. So Henry's been attracted to her because she's so witty and she's at the centre of this world of courtly love talk. And Anne carries on doing that as queen. But when she's queen, it's suddenly now dangerous because maybe it's not directed just at Henry. Maybe it's
21:01 Speaker 04 directed at other men. And Henry quickly becomes envious. And also, of course, she doesn't do the thing that would have saved her, and this is not in her control, but she doesn't have a son. And she has miscarried a son a few months prior to these stories starting to get out. And I think that Henry.
21:27 Speaker 04 Having loved her so much, having moved heaven and earth to be with her, waited seven years to be with her, changed the faith of the country to have her, just feels such an extraordinary sense of betrayal. That's how I read it. Some people think it's a coup staged by Thomas Cromwell. I'm not entirely convinced by the evidence of that. But I think that in the end, the charges against her are precisely those that will most attack her as a woman in the 16th century, which is to go to the heart of these questions about honesty, which in the 16th century for women is linked to sexual chastity.
22:01 Alice Levine? And it really feels like at the time as well, there was the implication that there was some agency in miscarrying, you know, that that was something that you had control over, or at least that you could be blamed for.
22:14 Speaker 04 Yes, and I think this is about a lack of understanding about how the female body works. So at the time, they thought that a woman had to orgasm in order to conceive as well. So you can imagine that if someone got pregnant after rape, they, it couldn't be rape. So they have really strange ideas. They haven't discovered ovaries yet, you know, they don't, they don't know how, how the body works. And yet I would say that it's interesting how the language still permeates through to today. You find so many people saying Catherine of Aragon or Amberlin failed to give Henry a son, like it was something that they could have done better on.
22:58 Matt Forde? And do you think Anatole consciously resisted or even rebelled against gender norms of her time, or was she just navigating them as best she could?
23:06 Speaker 04 I think that she is navigating them. I think that she is doing the utmost that can be done within the framework that she's in. So as queen, she's exercising her power as much as she can in certain regards, like appointing people into positions of power. But of course, she's having to appoint men, but that's the sort of power that a queen or a woman can exercise at the time. It's by elevating men to do the things that you wish you could do yourself.
23:41 Matt Forde? From our modern perspective, we might underestimate how deeply held people's religious views were in this period. So what role did religion and superstition play in Anne's rise and fall?
23:53 Speaker 04 So I think that her faith was actually one of the things that attracted Henry to her. And that seems a little counterintuitive today because it's not how we think about faith. But as I was trying to argue earlier, it's this, these are the cutting edge ideas. So she's gone and come back with these brand new ideas about things and Henry's, to an extent, interested in them. She apparently gives him a book by William Tyndale, whose translation of the New Testament has been banned in England. But this book is called The Obedience of a Christian Man. And in it, it says that it's shameful for princes
24:35 Speaker 04 to be under the authority of popes. And Henry is supposed to have said, this is the book for me and all kings to read. It's almost like she gives him the idea, maybe you could be head of the church instead of the pope. Maybe you could have all the power and you wouldn't have to defer to anyone else. Wouldn't that be nice? So she is providing him with the kind of intellectual ballast to support his ambitions. And so faith is really important at this time. I think it's impossible to imagine this period without understanding that it is the warp and weave of everyone's everyday life. There may be atheists at this point in time, but there's been a debate among historians whether it was conceptually possible to be an atheist at this time. I mean, you know, it's so much part of how
25:20 Speaker 04 everyone sees the world. And superstition is absolutely caught up with that. In fact, the word superstition is just a kind of judgmental word because it's forms of faith that the Orthodox Church doesn't accept as orthodoxy. But
25:37 Speaker 04 You know, magic is essentially practised by the church as well. Bread becomes Christ on a table at church on a regular occasion. In essence, everyone believes the supernatural infuses the natural at every turn. And this is an age where this is particularly relevant because of these changing ideas about how you are made right with God, and this sense that they're living in the end days, that the second coming of Christ is coming, the apocalypse is coming, you've got to act now because your time will soon be up. So there's a kind of urgency to ideas about faith at this time, and Anne is really at the thick of it.
26:16 Alice Levine? One of the elements of Anne's story that is sometimes minimised is that she was really shrewd, she was a powerful political player. Do you think ultimately what happened was that she flew too close to the sun?
26:27 Speaker 04 So after Anne's death, we know that Jane Seymour became involved in disputing with Henry what to do about the dissolution of the monasteries. She begged him to restore the abbys. And Henry is reported as saying that she should not meddle in his affairs, and pointing out what had happened to the last queen. And so it gives us this impression that actually Anne probably had had a lot to say about political and religious matters, and that in some ways, Henry had found that a bit much, perhaps.
27:10 Speaker 04 Certainly, he didn't want Jane repeating that pattern. I mean, I think Jane Seymour is definitely a rebound relationship. I mean, Henry's chosen somebody who is like Anne's antithesis in many ways. Perhaps that's unfair, perhaps here we see some evidence of her showing agency. But I think that when it comes to Anne, she has been someone who really has demonstrated her political nous, and that she has shown her ability to get involved in the most pressing questions of the age. And potentially, in an age that really only respects men when it comes to this field, it's been a little too much for a man like Henry.
27:56 Speaker 04 I don't know whether it's about punishing a woman who'd overstepped. Perhaps it is.
28:02 Speaker 04 It comes because she hasn't delivered the goods in terms of a son as far as Henry's concerned. But also, I think, because he becomes convinced that she has betrayed him. And he's given everything for her, and how could she do this to him? Because, you know, the opposite of love is hate. You know, it's the this fact that he becomes so deeply worked up about her death. I think testifies to his actual strength of feeling for her.
28:39 Matt Forde? And is there any evidence or suggestion that at the 11th hour, he might have had doubts or voiced doubts, or that there was any chance that she might be spared?
28:49 Speaker 04 She thinks she will be. So when she is on the scaffold, this is really kind of chilling. She looks over her shoulder several times because she's expecting a messenger to ride up from the king with a pardon and that this was all staged. Because she hasn't had a chance to talk to Henry. She gets arrested on the 2nd of May. This is the morning of the 19th of May, she's to be executed. And in that time, she hasn't had a chance to put her case to him. And I think she thinks perhaps this is all a grand exercise in showing off his power. But of course, he's not going to kill her. But he does.
29:31 Speaker 04 I think that if anything, because of the cognitive dissonance around destroying the woman he loves, Henry doubles down. So we have accounts of him writing a tragedy which says that Anne has slept with over 100 men. And he tells his daughter Mary, by Catherine, and his illegitimate son Henry, by Bessie Blount, that Anne had planned to poison them. So we also get this. Narrative around her absolute evilness. And this is all just preposterous nonsense, but I think it's Henry doubling down because otherwise what he's doing is too awful to contemplate.
30:16 Alice Levine? Thinking about Anne's legacy today, I wonder how much of her being vilified is down to who the authors of her history have been. I'm thinking about the kind of oppositional framing of Anne versus Catherine, for example.
30:30 Speaker 04 Yes, you're absolutely right. One of the major sources that always gets quoted about Anne is a man called Nicholas Sander, who was writing later in the 16th century. He was a Catholic. He's writing under Anne's daughter Elizabeth, who of course is famously a Protestant, whom he hates. And he writes all sorts of awful things. He says that Anne is the product of Henry VIII and Anne's mother, Elizabeth Berlin. He's the one who says that Anne has got a sixth finger on one hand, that she's got this goitcha around her neck, that she is someone who commits adultery and incest. I mean, he rubbishes her reputation
31:10 Speaker 04 in every way. But those things come up again and again in stories about Anne, even today. And they're written by one of her enemies, who is writing 50 years after her death, and they're complete nonsense. So I think absolutely how Anne's story has been told has completely shaped the version that we have of her today.
31:33 Matt Forde? You've described Anne before as the most significant queen consort England has ever had. What do you think her story tells us about women and power then and now?
31:42 Speaker 04 I think it tells us that women, at a time when they ostensibly had no power, had a lot more power than we give them credit for. That power is hard to chart in the sources that are available to historians, because those sources record interactions in Parliament or are letters between men, whereas this power that women wielded generally was something that was off record.
32:12 Speaker 04 So I think when we look at the past, we have to anticipate that women were women and were just as strong willed as they are today in the past. They weren't subdued and muted, even by the circumstances of living under a patriarchy. And I suppose today we're starting to allow women their voice. I say starting to, I mean, I still think we've got a long way to go. It's completely different. We have all sorts of political power and we can take leadership roles and we can broadcast our voices like this.
32:49 Speaker 04 But I think that in lots of circumstances, we will still see women vilified in exactly the same way as Anne was. We still see a woman's sexual reputation being the first thing that a woman is humiliated by. And I think that it's really worrying that after 500 years, that rumours can still destroy women in the public eye very quickly before it even gets to any matter of evidence or trial.
33:28 Speaker 04 I don't know if you agree, but that's how I think that we see Anne's story still having ramifications today.
33:37 Alice Levine? Definitely, and I wonder if there is some sort of catharsis in hearing about Anne's story because of that relevance. So if it's possible, Susanna, what is the biggest lesson we could take from Anne's story?
33:51 Speaker 04 I mean, the most simplistic one, but still worth paying attention to, is that women pay a price to exercise power. I think that we also have to understand that
34:07 Speaker 04 Women are more complicated and more interesting than the ways that we characterise them as being. We so easily depict women as being beautiful but airheaded, or having to be unwomanish in order to advance. And we can't hold intention that a woman could be brilliant and intelligent and charismatic, yet also perhaps not be nice all the time, and perhaps occasionally say things about other people that are really unreasonable. Because human beings are complicated, and we so want to boil everyone in the past down into
34:51 Speaker 04 something that is just one-dimensional, or even perhaps two-dimensional. But we need to allow them all three of those dimensions, and we need to allow even women we admire in the past to sometimes not have been great, but to imagine that they got where they were because they had so much going on. And I think Anne is one of those people. I think she was brilliant, and I want people to be interested in everything we know about her thoughts whilst also accepting that she wasn't perfect.
35:25 Matt Forde? Susanna, this has been a treat. Thank you so much for joining us.
35:29 Speaker 04 Thank you for having me.
35:32 Matt Forde? Huge thanks again to Suzannah Lipscomb for illuminating us about the life of Anne Boleyn. Alice, what have you got for us next time?
35:40 Alice Levine? Only one of your favourite things in the whole wide world, Matt. Do you want to guess?
35:46 Matt Forde? Oh, ham sandwiches?
35:47 Alice Levine? No.
35:48 Matt Forde? Chips?
35:49 Alice Levine? No, it's not. It's in fact your one true musical love, Oasis.
35:55 Matt Forde? Oh my god. Have you got me tickets?
35:58 Alice Levine? No. But we are going to revisit an absolute banger of a series. Two brothers who went from sharing a bedroom in their mum's house in Manchester to becoming one of the most successful British bands of all time. And their feud was almost as famous as their talent. It is the Gallagher brothers, Noel and Liam.
36:15 Matt Forde? Oh my god. Mad for it.
36:17 Alice Levine? If I recall, it was that series that got you out of hospital and back to work.
36:23 Matt Forde? So what is this series going to do for me? I'm going to be immortal at the end of it.
36:32 Speaker 07 Ghosts aren't real. At least, that's what journalist Tristan Redmond always believed. Sure, odd things happen in his childhood bedroom, but ultimately, he shrugged them off. Until he discovered that he wasn't alone, that everyone who lived thereafter him also had bizarre experiences they couldn't explain. And it gets even weirder. It just so happens that his wife's great-grandmother was murdered in the house next door. Is this ghost somehow connected to her murder? He decides to go where no son-in-law should, digging up a cold case and asking questions that nobody wants answered. Like, could his wife's great-grandfather have gotten away with the perfect crime? This is a podcast about family secrets, overwhelming coincidence, and the things
37:16 Speaker 07 that come back to haunt us. For the best bingeable series like Ghost Story, listen to the Audible True Crime Podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Audible subscribers can get all episodes early and ad-free right now. Join Audible in the Audible app or by subscribing on Apple Podcasts.
37:32 Speaker 08 In the summer of 1881, US Army Lieutenant Adolphus Greeley and 24 other men embarked on an ambitious scientific mission to the northernmost reaches of the Arctic. But despite several triumphs of discovery, the men would soon face tragedy. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of the podcast American History Tellers. We take you to the events, times, and people that shaped America and Americans, our values, our struggles, and our dreams. In our latest series, after Adolphus Greeley and his men arrive at their destination more than 1,000 miles above the Arctic Circle, they get to work collecting scientific data and exploring the frigid landscape. But when resupply ships fail to reach them two summers in a row, they're forced to set out on a desperate search for rescue, and not all
38:17 Speaker 08 of them will make it home. Follow American History Tellers wherever you get your podcasts. Audible subscribers can binge all episodes of American History Tellers' Greeley Arctic Expedition early and ad-free right now. Join Audible in the Audible app or by subscribing on Apple Podcasts.
38:39 Matt Forde? From Wondery and Samizdat Audio, this is the fourth and final episode in our series, Anne Berlin. British Scandal is hosted by me, Matt Ford.
38:47 Alice Levine? And me, Alice Levine.
38:48 Matt Forde? For Samizdat, our producer is Redzi Bernard. Our assistant producer is Louise Mason. Our senior producers are Joe Sykes and Dashya Lisitsina. Our engineer is Jai Williams. For Wondery, our senior producer is Theodora Leludis and our senior managing producer is Rachel Sibley. Executive producers for Wondery are Estelle Doyle, Chris Bourne and Marshall Levy.
39:24 Speaker 09 For decades, two legendary brands fought for the hearts of American bikers: Indian Motorcycle and Harley-Davidson. The battle looked a lot like Coke versus Pepsi or Ford versus Chevy, but tastes changed and Indian didn't adapt fast enough. The icon all but died. Then came the Con Men, the Dreamers, a string of spectacular failures that kept Indian in the grave, until one company finally got it right. This is the story of an improbable revival and the reignition of an old rivalry. Hey, I'm David Brown, the host of the podcast Business Wars. In every season, we bring you the true stories behind the companies that shape our world. Indian's new owners are going all in, but an existential crisis looms. Can Indian and Harley recruit enough younger riders to survive?
40:07 Speaker 09 Make sure to follow Business Wars wherever you get your podcasts. Audible subscribers can binge all episodes of Business Wars early and ad-free right now. Join Audible in the Audible app or by subscribing on Apple Podcasts.
40:19 Speaker 10 Dr. Seuss's Cat in the Hat and Fish are back for a whole lot of wonderfully whimsical fun. What happens when you switch bodies with your best friend? Discover a caveman frozen in ice? Or make an alien so angry, he threatens to destroy the planet? Find out in season two of the Cat in the Hat podcast. The Cat and Fish are travelling the world in the great catastrophic cacophony cruiser, meeting genies, clown professors, cave trolls and extraordinary characters along the way. With clever wordplay, imaginative rhymes, original songs and stories celebrating curiosity, empathy and creative problem solving, every adventure brings something new to discover.
41:02 Speaker 10 It's a world of wonderful words, big imaginations, and plenty of heart for the whole family. Listen to the Cat in the Hat podcast wherever you get your podcast. Audible subscribers can binge all 20 episodes early and ad-free right now.
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