Historian Tracy Borman chose an unusual wedding venue: the Tower of London, where Anne Boleyn and Thomas Cromwell are buried. Explaining her decision to marry her husband Tom there, she says: “The Who’s Who of Tudor England are buried in that chapel. You might say that’s not very romantic, but it is for me.
“I’d just written my biography of Thomas Cromwell and he’s buried there, as is Anne Boleyn and Thomas Moore [both were beheaded] and two queens of England.” Of her 2015 wedding, she adds: “It was the most magical day. Two of the Beefeaters were my ushers, so the photos were great.”
New TV series and Danny Dyer discovery
A new series of Tracy’s long-running Channel 5 show Inside the Tower of London starts in the autumn. She has also appeared in numerous documentaries, including The Fall of Anne Boleyn and most recently Stonehenge: Secrets of the New Stone, with actor Jason Watkins.
She was in an episode of Who Do You Think You Are? helping the actor Danny Dyer discover that he was related to Henry VIII’s close adviser Thomas Cromwell. “It was one of the most memorable days of my whole career,” Tracy says. “He was fantastic. What you see is what you get with Danny Dyer; he is as he appears to be on television.
“I loved seeing how much Cromwell’s story resonated with Danny. Cromwell wasn’t born to greatness. The son of a blacksmith, he became the most powerful man in England. I ended up learning about Cromwell through Danny’s eyes. It was a two-way street and he was wildly entertaining, very funny and very enthusiastic.”
An obsession with the Tudors
Now 54, Tracy, who is also Chief Historian at Historic Royal Palaces and a bestselling author, says her fascination with the Tudors began as a schoolgirl. She says: “Not a day goes by when I don’t think about the Tudors. It’s definitely an obsession. It’s my ambition to get through a whole day without saying ‘Anne Boleyn’. I don’t think I’ve managed it in nearly 40 years.”
She’s taking the drama of the period on the road in October with a major new theatre show, Tudors on Tour - which she promises has plenty of rock ‘n’ roll pizzazz. She says: “It will have a rock band on tour feel to it. It’s not just me standing on stage giving a talk - it’s a proper show, so there’ll be film footage, props and ‘80s pop music. It’s fun, informative, engaging and interactive. It will appeal to GCSE and A level students. But it’s not just for history enthusiasts, it’s aimed at people who like an entertaining evening out.
“People say ‘oh, I hated history at school because it’s all about dates.’ I’m aiming for this to be the very opposite of dull. There are so many fascinating, comedic and tragic moments with the Tudors. It’s got all the drama of a Netflix show.”
Family life and modern parallels
Tracy and Tom, who share their house in south west London with daughter Eleanor - named after a medieval queen - and dog, Cromwell, admits her family are not quite as passionate about the past as she is. She says: “I would happily spend my holidays wandering around historic sites, but I have a teenage daughter, who sort of likes history, but would rather be on a beach, so compromises have to be made.
“I frequently get eye rolls. At the moment, she’s doing her GCSEs. She’s studying Elizabethan history, but she won’t let me help her, because she says ‘it’s not the sort of history that you know mum.’ I’m often put firmly in my place by my daughter.”
She elaborates: “I always thought that if I had a daughter, I’d call her Elizabeth, because Elizabeth I is my all-time favourite Queen. But she’s actually named after Eleanor of Aquitaine.”
Tracy, who grew up in Lincoln, developed her obsession with the Tudors - who ruled England and Wales from 1485 to 1603 - when she was studying for her A levels. She says: “It was all thanks to my history teacher, who lit up the Tudor world. She had portraits of the Tudor court around her classroom and she told stories. She brought them to life”
Insisting human nature doesn’t change much through the centuries, Tracy, the author of biographies of several key Tudor figures, including Anne Boleyn and Elizabeth I, as well as bestselling writer of historical novel The House of Boleyn, likens Henry VIII to a soap king and compares the Tudors to the Kardashians. She says: “It’s the soap opera that keeps me coming back; the endless drama and the larger-than life personalities. So much happened during this 118-year period.
“It transformed England from a medieval kingdom to an early modern state. It’s for good reason that they are still so popular. You have the King who marries six times, the Virgin Queen, it’s the age of the Armada and Shakespeare; there’s so much going on.
“The Tudors were the celebrities and trendsetters of their day. They were aspirational. People thought - ‘if only we could be like the Tudors,’ just as young women today try to be like one of the Kardashians. Nothing really changes.
“And just like the Kardashians, the Tudors were the people that everybody wanted to know about. Everybody wanted to know what the King was having for breakfast, or what Queen Elizabeth I was wearing. She was said to have 6,000 dresses in her wardrobe.
“The Tudors were big fans of self-portraits, which were their equivalent of the selfie and Elizabeth passed a law controlling her image, so it was illegal to produce a portrait of her that she hadn’t sanctioned. It was a brilliant tactic and I think she would have been the Queen of Instagram today. She would have been all over social media with the filters.”
Tracy is keen to use social media to introduce history to a younger audience. Admitting she’s ‘obsessed’ with the award-winning West End musical Six, a modern day retelling of the lives of the six wives of Henry VIII, she continues: “That surely takes the prize for making history cool,.
“It was written by two Cambridge history graduates, so the history is pretty impeccable, but it’s like The Spice Girls meets the wives of Henry VIII. It’s brilliant and I have to confess I’ve seen it 12 times. I’m a groupie of Six the Musical!”
Tudors on Tour opens at Buxton Opera House on October 1. For tickets and information on all venues and dates go to: www.tracybormanlive.co.uk
