This script has been lightly edited for clarity.

Jace Lacob: I’m Jace Lacob and you’re listening to MASTERPIECE Studio.

Romance. Heresy. Betrayal. Execution. Few stories in history measure up to the innate drama of King Henry VIII and his six wives. Although almost 500 years have passed since Henry’s reign, this is a story that has become immortal. 

In 2015, MASTERPIECE first aired Wolf Hall, director Peter Kosminsky’s adaptation of late author Hilary Mantel’s historical novels Wolf Hall and its sequel, Bring Up the Bodies. This adaptation recounts King Henry’s divorce from his first wife, Katherine of Aragon, his tempestuous marriage to Anne Boleyn, and the rise of his right-hand man, Thomas Cromwell. 

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King Henry: Who says I shouldn’t employ the son of an honest blacksmith? Everything that you are, everything that you have will come from me.

For stories as old as this one is, truth often takes a backseat to myth as facts fade into convenient narratives. But with Henry and Anne Boelyn, it’s incredible just how much historical detail is readily available. And yet, there are still many mysteries lurking in the shadows. To ensure his film was as historically accurate as possible, director Peter Kosminsky worked closely with a team of historians who advised him on everything from clothing and set design to customs, manners, and dining etiquette. 

Ahead of an upcoming adaptation of Mantel’s third Cromwell novel, The Mirror and the Light, coming to MASTERPIECE in 2025, production researcher Kirsten Claiden-Yardley takes us behind the tapestry to discuss working on Wolf Hall, and teases fact from fiction in this monumental historical drama. 

Jace Lacob: And this week we are joined by Wolf Hall historical advisor Kirsten Claiden-Yardley. Welcome.

Kirsten Claiden-Yardley: Thank you.

Jace Lacob: You are an Oxford educated historian, researcher, author, and historic buildings consultant with a particular interest in 15th and 16th century British history. Why do you think that this period in English history particularly resonates with us today? It’s got to be more than just a nursery rhyme about Henry VIII’s six wives.

Kirsten Claiden-Yardley: I mean, the nursery rhyme certainly helps for being easily memorable. But I think that there’s a lot of drama, there’s a lot of tragedy, of joy, and big sweeping changes, political, religious changes, but also a lot of emotions that we recognize still today. So, you have love, lust, greed, ambition, anger, betrayal, things that even though the people might sound a bit different, look a bit different in their dress, but we can empathize, I think, with what they’re feeling as they work their way through what’s a really confusing time of history.

And it’s also a period where we know a lot of “what” happened, but there’s still quite a few gaps in “why”. Why did people do things? Who was the main motivation? Was Henry being manipulated? Was he driving things? How much did Anne Boleyn influence or not influence religious change? So, I think it gives a lot of scope, for people to come at the period with a new take on the people and the events.

Jace Lacob: So, “Divorced, beheaded, died. Divorced, beheaded, survived.” As a historian specializing in Tudor history, is this rhyme reductive or even accurate?

Kirsten Claiden-Yardley: So, there are two slight problems that I have with it. One, the ‘divorced’ is not quite legally accurate for the medieval period and Tudor period. It makes sense to our understanding now of marriages and ending them, but it wasn’t really a concept that existed at the time. What they actually did was an annulment. So, you said that the marriage had never been legitimate, it was null and void, it was as if it had never happened. And that has a big impact on things like the royal succession.

So, a divorce in the modern sense wouldn’t necessarily have excluded Mary and then Elizabeth from inheriting the throne, but because it’s a marriage that never happened, they become illegitimate children. So then can they inherit the throne? And that becomes a big issue, not just in Henry VIII’s reign, but later in his son’s reign, in Edward VI’s reign. And I also feel it’s not really something that comes under Wolf Hall, the TV series, but the rhyme sort of does Anne of Cleves a little bit unfairly, because in some ways she’s the longest survivor of them all. So, she comes under “divorced”, but she actually outlives everybody else in the rhyme, and Henry.

Jace Lacob: So really, “Annulled, beheaded, died. Annulled, survived, beheaded, survived.”

Kirsten Claiden-Yardley: Yes, that would be more legally accurate.

Jace Lacob: But less…

Kirsten Claiden-Yardley: Less catchy.

Jace Lacob: Yeah, less catchy, a bit more cumbersome. So, take us back a decade. You were hired as a production researcher on Wolf Hall, the adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s Tudor novels, working closely with director Peter Kosminsky. How did that opportunity come about and what did that role entail?

Kirsten Claiden-Yardley: At the time I was doing my DPhil research, which is Oxford PhD, and I think it was probably Peter Kosminski himself or one of his assistants had got in contact with my supervisor with quite a specific question to do with, I think it was to do with Anne of Boleyn’s accent, when she came back from the French court, how French would she have sounded? And at the same time, they said that they were looking for someone who could help them out with questions on a more regular basis.

So, he suggested that I might be interested. I said, yes, that sounds really interesting. And after that, my job was basically to answer whatever queries Peter might have. So, who are people? What events are going on where? How does Tudor government work? These kinds of broad questions that don’t necessarily appear, you know, you don’t see the impact in the show necessarily, but it helped him when he was putting together his vision for the show.

And then also more specific questions about, do we have descriptions of particular events? Are there portraits? Are there drawings? Anything to create sort of as realistic a representation of Tudor England and the events as possible.

Jace Lacob: I want to step back a bit and ask you as in your role as a historian, what is the role of authenticity in costume dramas, particularly historical costume dramas? Does art have an obligation to, and I’m using air quotes here, to “get it right”, or are television dramas or novels like Wolf Hall a way to view our past through the prism of art?

Kirsten Claiden-Yardley: It’s a very interesting question, and one that people have very strong opinions on. I think I fall into the category that I don’t expect total authenticity from my costume dramas. I don’t think it’s realistic because there’s things that we don’t know because the sources aren’t there. There are things that we do know, but they just don’t work with storytelling. In terms of making a TV show, you’ve got issues of pace, of practicalities like budget, where can you film, what can you make?

And I can understand why a novelist needs sometimes to fill gaps, tweak things a little bit to make their story work and their interpretation. And I think you need to have that flexibility a bit, otherwise I don’t think you could tell interesting stories that engage people. And the question then is, where do you draw the line? How much is it okay to change? And I think Wolf Hall does a good job of it, in that the core structure of what events happen when, Hilary Mantel hasn’t really messed with that at all. In terms of how it looks, you can believe that the story is playing out looking like this, and you can believe people’s actions and motivations. But it is ultimately still her interpretation, obviously then filtered through the actors and Peter Kosminski, and not everyone’s going to agree with it.

Jace Lacob: With Wolf Hall, we’re not only adapting the real-life world that Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn moved through, but also adapting Hilary Mantel’s novels. How much of this period can we draw from based on first-hand accounts like diaries?

Kirsten Claiden-Yardley: Things like diaries are pretty much non-existent in this period. So, a big thing that we’re missing is that internal voice written down for private purposes. We’re a lot more dependent on correspondence and then by chronicles. So, early versions of histories of the time period, often written immediately at the time, or a few decades later by someone who has spoken to somebody who was there. But a lot of it is kind of formal. And maybe you’ll have a little bit of personal correspondence and emotion at the end of letters. But it can be quite businesslike.

We have letters from The Imperial ambassador, Eustace Chapuys, who appears in Wolf Hall. He writes at great length back reporting on what’s going on in England. So, his letters are a great resource, but obviously you have to be aware that sometimes he’s reporting what he’s heard, and he has a slight bias in that he wants to believe that things are good for the Spanish interests and the imperial Holy Roman Empire interests. What else do we have? Edward Hall is a quite well-known chronicle. He covers all of Henry VIII’s reign and earlier time periods. For Wolsey, there’s a biography written by George Cavendish, who was a member of his household, who writes a biography and Cromwell features in it a bit.

So, we’ve kind of got all these things that we can pull together. The big thing that we’re missing is Thomas Cromwell’s letters that he’s sending to other people. And I know Diarmaid MacCulloch has written a biography of Thomas Cromwell in the last five years I think, his theory is that basically, the copies that are kept of Cromwell’s letters were probably destroyed around the time of his fall. So essentially, we’ve got what people write to him, and sometimes we get lucky, and maybe they write it on the back of the letter that was sent by Cromwell out, and they write on the back and send it back, so you’ve got the copy of Cromwell’s letters.

But most of the time, you’ve only got one half of the conversation, and the half that we’re missing is the half with Cromwell’s voice in it. Which obviously for Hilary Mantel and for Wolf Hall is, I guess, both a problem and an opportunity.

Jace Lacob: I was going to say, you can turn that into an opportunity and create this character in the void of having that documentation and that voice. So, I want to set the stage a little bit here. When we come into Wolf Hall‘s first episode, Henry’s on the throne. He’s married to Katherine of Aragon. They have a daughter, Mary. What is going on in England and more broadly in Europe at this time?

Kirsten Claiden-Yardley: In England, we’re at the period where Henry VIII has met Anne Boleyn. He’s also beginning to realize that he’s probably not going to have a son with Katherine of Aragon. They’ve got their one daughter. They did have a son who lived for a short while. She’s had a number of miscarriages and she’s getting older. And the problem that Henry’s facing therefore at this time is that his regime is lacking stability. And the Tudors are a very new dynasty.

Henry VII had become king in 1485. His claim to the throne was very weak. As much as anything, he took the throne by conquest, by winning the Battle of Bosworth, rather than because he had the strongest claim to be King of England. And Henry needs a son, because that brings you the most stability.

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William Brereton: He has one child born in wedlock.

Duke of Norfolk: Mary? The talking shrimp?

Henry Norris: She’ll grow up.

Duke of Suffolk: We’re still waiting. Her head is the size of my fingernail. And a woman on the English throne flies in the face of nature. A woman can’t lead an army.

Cromwell: Her grandmother did.

Kirsten Claiden-Yardley: A daughter throws up all sorts of fundamental issues that people grapple with at the time, you know, can a woman who is supposed to be subject to her husband, according to their beliefs at their time, how can she rule over men? How can she rule a whole country? And what happens if she does marry?

If she marries a foreign prince, do they then become ruler in England? Does England become part of that foreign country? Would she be better marrying someone from the nobility, but then you’re sort of taking someone who’s a subject and raising them up? And these are all the problems that actually do get grappled with later, under Mary I and Elizabeth I, when they do actually become queens after all.

But people are very uncomfortable about it and for Henry, who’s only the second king in his dynasty, it is really, really important to him that he has a son so that his dynasty can continue, it can be strong, England can keep its place on the international stage. So that’s kind of where they are domestically, I would say.

And you’ve also got the beginnings of rumblings around religious reform have started to emerge in Europe. So, 1517 is when Luther makes his big statement of his theses that he pins up on the door. Evangelical religious thoughts are beginning to spread. And in the mid-1520s, evangelicals are forced to go into exile from England. That’s when William Tyndale, who’s doing the English translation of the Bible ends up abroad around that time.

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Jace Lacob: The Reformation is itself a huge subject and you touched on what’s happening sort of in Europe with Martin Luther. But in Britain, Henry wants a divorce, the Pope won’t grant him one, Rome is exerting a very oversized influence on England. What are the specific pressure points, the driving forces in Britain that lead to the English Reformation?

Kirsten Claiden-Yardley: The English Reformation is I would say quite idiosyncratically driven by Henry, really. And it doesn’t quite fit into some of the trends in the European Reformation.

Jace Lacob: Which are more theological, I would think.

Kirsten Claiden-Yardley: Yes. So, for Henry, he finds himself in alignment with evangelicals in terms of what he wants. So, he wants his divorce, and the Pope isn’t giving it to him. Even Luther thinks it’s a ridiculous idea that he should annul his marriage to Katherine of Aragon. So, he’s not making much ground internationally.

So, that kind of opens the way for ideas that have been evolving in Europe and from people like William Tyndale again, on how much power should a king be able to exert on religious matters in his own kingdom. Can you have bishops who have sworn oaths to both the pope and the king? Where does their loyalty lie if there’s a conflict of interest? Who do they side with? Are people, on the clerical side, are they promoting the interests of the papacy, or sort of a foreign interest, at the expense of the supremacy of their monarch?

And so, these are issues that have been thought about and talked about. And perhaps Henry is feeling a bit more open to them because he can’t get his divorce or his annulment. And he has a couple of other issues going on as well in that Henry VIII is generally chronically short of money. He has quite a lavish lifestyle, he likes wars, he is trying to build up a navy, and his taxation in England has to be approved by Parliament, and Parliament doesn’t really like approving taxation in peacetime. So, the fact that there’s money going out of the country, is another area where it’s in Henry’s interests to instead pass legislation, which means that taxation on clerical income is coming to him instead.

So, you have all these reasons why Henry is wanting to take some of the power and some of the wealth that the church has. But theologically, he stays quite traditionally minded.

Jace Lacob: So, obviously he breaks with Rome. He achieves his goal of divorce/annulling his marriage. He’s made the head of the Church of England, which helps consolidate his power. He dissolves the monasteries and takes all of that and is able to use all of that. How did Henry’s break with Rome affect his relationship with his nobles? And how many chose to remain Catholic rather than convert to Anglicanism?

Kirsten Claiden-Yardley: It can be very difficult to tell at this time period. And to a large extent that is because it is so confusing what’s going on and sometimes Henry’s counselors are simultaneously both persecuting and sort of prosecuting traditional conservatives for being treasonous for threatening his supremacy at the same time as they’re prosecuting evangelicals for being too radical.

So, it can be very difficult to judge where exactly people lie in their beliefs. People get quite good at hiding it. I would say most of them conform. There are very few noblemen who are so conservative that they get executed for it. Other than that, most of the nobility are happy to take land from the monasteries, frankly. Even the ones where you go, I can sense that this person tends more conservative in their religion, they’re still taking land from the monasteries. They are grabbing it if they can. The Duke of Norfolk, for example, Thomas Howard, the Duke of Norfolk, is generally thought to be on the conservative side with his religion. He’s not a fan of the new religion, and he’s not a fan of everybody being able to read the Bible, but he tries to save the local priory where his family are buried, he tries to have it converted to a college or a parish church before it gets fully dissolved. But you can bet he’s still taking land.

Jace Lacob: Wolf Hall charts Thomas Cromwell’s rise to power from a virtual nobody to Henry VIII’s powerful fixer. There are pretty broad themes of social mobility here at a time of a deeply stratified society and Cromwell is presented as a bit of a social climber, albeit a rather sympathetic one. Do you feel that Cromwell’s presented in a different light here than in other portrayals where he’s largely depicted as a villain and more as a hero?

Kirsten Claiden-Yardley: Definitely, and I think that was one of the big things with Wolf Hall when the books came out is this much more sympathetic portrayal towards Cromwell than earlier versions. And I think the one that comes up most is Cromwell in comparison to Thomas More. Thomas More has sometimes previously had the more favorable depiction against Thomas Cromwell, and Wolf Hall kind of flips that and presents us with a different perspective on him, and I think it sort of goes back a little bit to some of the things about authenticity and the accuracy, that not everybody is going to agree with this version of Cromwell.

But I think it’s important that this possibility has been raised, that a more sympathetic look at how he’s raised himself up, and a less, sort of, as you say, villainous kind of view of him. It’s this very silent portrayal, almost. He’s watching, there’s a lot of facial reactions, and you’re getting the sense that he’s not entirely easy with some of the things he’s doing. And I think that helps us sympathize with him a lot more as he does things like bring about Anne Boleyn’s execution and the execution of the five men alongside her, which it is very easy to see him as a villain. And I think Mark Rylance does a good job of making us feel sympathy for him, or empathy for him, whilst he’s enacting this sort of betrayal and the taking down of six people.

Jace Lacob: Lady Rochford accuses Anne of having an affair with her own brother, George, who happens to be Lady Rochford’s own husband.

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Lady Rochford: My husband George is always with Anne.

Cromwell: He’s her brother. It’s natural.

Lady Rochford: There’s nothing natural in George. And nothing is forbidden. I’ve seen them kiss.

Cromwell: Brothers may kiss their sisters—

Lady Rochford: His tongue in her mouth, hers in his.

Jace Lacob: What’s truly shocking to me are the trial proceedings and interrogations that follow in the wake of those accusations. Would Anne and George have had to defend themselves in court without any defense lawyers?

Kirsten Claiden-Yardley: Yes, they would. And this is nothing to do with them. It’s not anything targeted specifically at them. It’s not Cromwell being vindictive. It’s not Henry being mean. It is criminal law procedure at the time.

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William Brereton: Read me your charges. Put them to me, one by one. The places, the dates. I’ll confound you.

Kirsten Claiden-Yardley: This is a treason trial, they are not allowed a defense lawyer, and I think they’re not allowed witnesses either. All they can do is stand up and defend themselves, and it would be the same for anyone else at the time. It’s not specific to them. And it does seem very harsh to our eyes now. That is how it went at the time. That was the legal procedure.

Jace Lacob: Anne’s execution by beheading is intended to be a small mercy, because it is a quick death. And she gives a speech on the scaffold and talks about, “For a gentler nor a more merciful prince was there never.” What is her intention here? Is it biting irony or is she looking to save her daughter?

Kirsten Claiden-Yardley: To a certain extent, it’s scaffold tradition. If you look at most of the scaffold speeches given by people executed at the time where we’ve got the records of them, they will say variants on the similar theme. There is always this idea that Henry is not a bad person, Henry is not a bad king, they are the ones who’ve sinned against or trespassed against him.

So, I don’t think that it’s her making some sort of sarcastic or pointed comment. And as you say, there is an element of protecting the people who are left. You can’t save yourself, but you want to do what you can for your family, you don’t want to cause them more trouble by creating a last-minute scene. So, in that sense, her speech is quite what you would expect at the time.

Jace Lacob: Wolf Hall ends on a rather ominous note, with Henry embracing Cromwell for helping him deal with the Anne Boleyn situation, freeing him up to marry Jane Seymour. But while Henry is happy, jubilant almost, Cromwell’s expression is dark and foreboding. Given the history between these two, how should viewers read Cromwell’s expression?

Kirsten Claiden-Yardley: I personally read it in that kind of sense of we’re being encouraged to not just judge him as a villain by showing this sense that he’s not quite happy with what he’s done. He knows the extent to which people were or weren’t guilty. And this is actually something even now people still debate. People have differing opinions on the guilt of Anne and the men who were accused alongside her. And there’s this sense as well, I would say, there’s a sense of what has he opened up, going forwards. Now there’s a precedent for executing a queen, there never has been before. I think he says that at one point in the trial scene, we’ve never tried a queen before, never executed a queen.

It emphasizes the idea that people can be taken down in this way. I think earlier on, Anne had said something about, what’s been made can be unmade. And, obviously, it’s then turned back on her, but it does apply to Cromwell too. And I think that’s coming back to this thing about what Hillary Mantel’s story and Mark Rylance’s expressions have done in presenting this particular interpretation of Cromwell as a complex and conflicted character.

Jace Lacob: I want to drill down on that as our final question. The Cromwell that we do spend six episodes with in Wolf Hall is very different to the man that Simon Schama described as, “A detestably self-serving bullying monster who perfected state terror in England and who regularly engaged in torture to suit his aims.” As a historian, how do you ultimately reconcile these two very different portrayals?

Kirsten Claiden-Yardley: It is very difficult, and I think it becomes more difficult as we head on beyond this first season of Wolf Hall. So I will be interested when we get to how they are portraying Cromwell and his expressions and stuff as we go into season two, because I think it becomes a lot harder then to reconcile some of the actions that he takes against people, the sort of dissolving of the monasteries and everything, because earlier on in his life he kind of seems quite reasonable.

He has a wide circle of friends. He has people from abbots and priors, and people are writing to him fondly and reminiscing about good times that they’ve had together. But I think what happens is that, in my personal opinion, he has to have an element of ambition and ruthlessness in him, because I don’t think you can thrive to the extent he does at Henry VIII’s court without that.

CLIP

Cromwell: This business of Thomas More. I don’t doubt his loyalty to Rome nor his hatred of your majesty’s title as head of the church, however, legally, our case is slender. It won’t be easy.

Henry: Do I keep you for what’s easy? Do you think I’ve promoted you for the charm of your presence? I keep you because you are a serpent. Do not be a viper in my bosom. You know my decision. Execute it.

Kirsten Claiden-Yardley: And I think as he grows in confidence, that side of him is able to come out more. So, I think there’s a danger in getting sucked in too much to being entirely sympathetic to him. And I think when you look at the men who thrive at Henry VIII’s court, they all have this ruthless streak, and for a lot of them, there’s this element of how far can you push it before you’re the one that people turn on and you fall back down? It’s a dangerous place to play, Henry VIII’s court.

Jace Lacob: And we will find out more in The Mirror and the Light when we pick up with Thomas Cromwell. Kirsten Claiden-Yardley, thank you so very much.

Kirsten Claiden-Yardley: Thank you for having me.

Next time, as the rebroadcast of MASTERPIECE’s 2015 production of Wolf Hall comes to a close, we offer you a chance to look back and relive the drama with a special podcast recap episode of the series as a whole. 

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Cromwell: Now is the time for you to become the king you should be, the sole and Supreme Head of your kingdom.

Be sure to tune in next Sunday, December 1st for a recapping of major plot points, historical details, and character arcs. Until then, long live the king?