Latest National Archives podcasts

There have been several podcasts added to the English based National Archives website over the last few weeks:

Tudor trials: Confessions from the Star Chamber
http://media.nationalarchives.gov.uk/index.php/tudor-trials-confessions-star-chamber/

Medieval records specialist Euan Roger gives us a taste of the kinds of disputes dealt with by the Star Chamber, one of the highest Tudor courts.

The tens of thousands of Star Chamber records kept at The National Archives reveal a wealth of information about Tudor life. In this podcast, we uncover a few of the more unusual cases put before the King’s council, including a murder cover-up, a child maintenance complaint, and a marital dispute.


Jane Austen: from beginning to end
http://media.nationalarchives.gov.uk/index.php/jane-austen-beginning-end/

To commemorate the bicentenary of Jane Austen’s death in 1817, Professor Fiona Stafford delivered a talk on Austen’s life and work at the The National Archives, where Austen’s original will is held.

Fiona Stafford is a professor of English Language and Literature at Somerville College, Oxford, specialising in Romantic literature from Keats and Wordsworth to Austen. She is editor of ‘Emma’ for Penguin and ‘Pride and Prejudice’ for Oxford World’s Classics, and has written on many aspects of late eighteenth and early nineteenth century literature, including ‘Brief Lives: Jane Austen’.


A tormented Tudor queen’s treasonous ‘love letter’
http://media.nationalarchives.gov.uk/index.php/catherine-howard-thomas-culpeper/

In this episode, Neil Johnston and Christopher Day discuss a letter written by Catherine Howard, the fifth wife of Henry VIII, to Thomas Culpeper, a groom of the King’s Privy chamber. The document was part of a body of evidence collected against Catherine and Culpeper that ultimately led to their execution. It is now preserved at The National Archives.

Here Neil Johnston explains how it is crucial to examine this letter in the context of Catherine’s sexual past in order to understand how the queen accused of living “an abominable, base, carnal, voluptuous, vicious life” was effectively blackmailed into a path of action that led to her untimely death.

Chris

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