http://www.copperlily.com/AboutRayWinstone/HenryVIII.html

I didn’t see it myself, but it looks like it was cashing in on the gangster chic of the early 90s in the UK – Gay Ritchie was in his prime, back then.

Funnily enough, Ray appeared in the movie Beowulf last year in which his proudly porky, pot-bellied body was rendered more, er, Rhys-Meyers, by CGI.

http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-images/Film/Pix/pictures/2007/07/25/beowulf460.jpg

By the way, ‘The Tudors’ which has an Irish Henry, was made in Ireland, by an Irish production company – primarily, it seems, for Showtime in the US, a country which of course has a large Irish-Catholic demographic. Perhaps that’s why it sometimes seems to take a rather romantic view of Catholicism.

Which reminds me: about five years ago there was another BBC ‘Henry’ bio. This Henry was allowed to get fat, only the actor playing him was trying his damnedest to turn him into a 16th Cen. Tony Soprano!

The Henry series was followed by Glenda Jackson’s equally superb ‘Elizabeth R’. These two series, along with the 12 part dramatisation of Churchill’s ‘Marlborough, a Life’, set a standard for historical drama that hasn’t really been equaled until the recent John Adams series.

Henry may be the most interesting political and religious figure of the Renaissance. He was, of course, the second son, and prior to Alfred’s death had actually considered taking Holy Orders and becoming a scholar-priest like his famous tutor (again, no pun!), Erasmus. The dispensation he received to ‘lay with his brother’s wife’ was granted, for 50,000 ducets, by the notorious Alexander VI, a.k.a. Roderigo Borgia. All Europe knew that Borgia had sired a child by his own daughter, Lucretia, and Henry was on sound theological ground in assuming this voluptuary pontiff had exceeded his authority and that his marriage to Catherine of Aragon was indeed incestuous. But for the fact that the current pope, Leo X, was being held under house-arrest by Catherine’s nephew, the Emperor Karl, this most staunchly Catholic of princes would have obtained his divorce and history would have taken a remarkably different turn.

I read “History Of The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire” as well as Plutarch’s and Suetonius’ biographies of the Roman emperors as a youth, and Augustus is described as almost utterly vile with very few redeeming qualities. But you’re right about Augustus’ portrayal in “Rome”. So let me make an ammendment: they overemphasized his qualities to a hyperbolic degree, while desmphasizing his vileness to an extreme. For instance, when he becomes consul and makes that speech in the Senate, the show portrays him as being filled with confidence and assertveness. In reality, Suetonius in his “The Twelve Caesars” describes him as being trembling with anxiety and fear before the Senators. Then there is an episode that happened when he was 11. He gave one of his family rings to a slave so that he could clean it. The slave also worked the kitchen, and by an accidet he let the wring slip into the boiling oil. Well, the boy made the slave dip his hands inside the boiling oil to pick the ring as punishment, instead of throwing the oil away to pick it. What a nasty bastard.

I guess the reason why Augustus was portrayed in such manner is because the show was made by HBO, a pay-per0view American channel that catters to a mostly upper middle-class, conservative audience which still values Republican values greatly. Showing Augustus raping little boys for fun, ordering the execution of his cousin and genociding wholesale populations just doesen’t make for good T.V. Yo be accurate, they should have portrayed him as less talented and deeply flawed – which he was. That would actually be more politically correct, since we live in an era when being vastly superior to common people in intellect, courage, fortitude and determination is extremely unpopular: you are not supposed to be that much better than average, because the greatness is too dangerous and generates too much instability.

P: Once again the breadth and detail of your reading impresses. I thought though that “Rome” did present Augustus as something of a cold and rather ill fish, even if they didn’t perhaps fill in all the details. But, yes, it is perplexing that today’s TV and film does tend to render the great men of history as either metrosexuals you would want to shag or decorate your home with, or unfathomable supermen that you would probably want to keep a wide berth from.