I so enjoy his presentations. It was a privilege to see his series years ago. I am so happy he has emerged again to provide us with his historical research and knowledge. I also have to say I love is voice and narraration.

Now I have that Carly Simon song stuck in my head... albeit with your better grammar instead of her lyrics.

Basically what I was thinking too.

@Fredrik Larsson *"extemporate"* ... think I'll add that to my dictionary!

I agree. He also achieved this in his television series on the wives of King Henry VIII. It felt immediate, exciting and contemporary.

I don't know about Arthur, but I am very happy about Henry, what he does for the world. He is, I think, important for the idea of Europe as a diverse continent of free nations

I don’t know what you two are on but what you have said is complete garbage! Henry was nothing but a greedy wasteful pig of a king, not even a real warrior like his father and grandfather Edward! He spent the wealth his father Henry VII had accumulated and was broke until after the dissolution of the monasteries whereby he effectively stole and plundered their assets which was duly spent on himself and a series of mostly failed military campaigns! The English reformation was a joke, a half hearted self serving political exercise on the foundation of list and greed, and I say half hearted because right up until his death Henry was still essentially a devout Catholic! And last but not least 72,000 people were put to death under his tyrannical reign….2% of the population of the time! The missed opportunity was Arthur not this malignancy!!!

@@Tawny6702 I completely agree with you. Is it really 72,000 people he put to death? Staggering. I guess we would not have the numerous films, documentaries and tv box sets about Arthur’s reign and his divorced and executed wives as we have with Henry. A villain sells well.

@@Tawny6702 Have you been reading Meyer's The Tudors? That's a smashing book. The point I think was that Henry in his youth, so handsome and strong and charming, accomplished both academically and in sports and marshal skills, would have been thought a far better potential King than Arthur, who was by contrast rather sickly and unprepossessing. When Henry came to the throne in 1509, for a while it was reckoned that the new Camelot had arrived. Henry was praised to the rooftops and for a while things really did seem to be shaping up very well. So given how Henry was looked on at the time of Arthur's death, depending on how Arthur's reign turned out of course, historians today might well lament that Henry wasn't the older son. I've a book which speculates however that had Arthur lived and become King, Prince Henry might well have become a rebellious interfeering trouble-maker who met a similar end to his great uncle George Duke of Clarence. Of course in the scenario that Arthur lived, we wouldn't know how Henry would waste the many gifts given to him by fate, being a lazy, greedy, feckless, tyranical, unjust, dishonest, mass-murdering and thoroughly disgusting monster. In short more-or-less a complete travesty of everything a King should be. Those who had even heard of Henry, even if he had become a rebel and been executed, would have said things like, "If only he'd been the elder son and become King. He would have had the opportunity for all his gifts to flourish and been a magnificent monarch."

On the other hand, no Elizabeth, no King James Bible, no Glorious Revolution? That butterfly has jet packs on its wings.

Happy Thanksgiving to you! Love the uk 🇬🇧

Read Dorothy Dunnett on the Douglas woman.

Add Robert Tombs to your list.

The rebel county of Cork.. So ardently referred to by republican Irish supporters .. was so named because it backed Perkin Warbeck and not because of any attitude in it's former stance against British presence in Ireland.

He spoke well of you.

E.g?