How Poets Spoke Truth to Power

Summary

Not Just the Tudors — "How Poets Spoke Truth to Power"

Host: Professor Suzannah Lipscomb
Guest: Professor Catherine Clarke
Date: December 4, 2025

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Episode Overview

In this captivating episode, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb interviews Professor Catherine Clarke, author of A History of England in 25 Poems. They explore how poetry has served as a vehicle for truth-telling, resistance, and the shaping of national identity from the 16th to the 17th centuries. Discussing five poems, the conversation delves into coded messages, subversive voices, and how poetic works reflect both personal and political anxieties, desires, and fantasies.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Why Poetry? Why 25 Poems?

• Poetry as Time Travel:
  Lipscomb opens by noting poetry’s unique way of connecting emotions across eras:

  “A poem offers us the possibility of direct, even access to the imaginations, experiences and feelings of people in the past... They are, in fact, a way of time traveling.” (02:05)

• Choosing the Poems:
  Clarke sought poems spanning from the earliest conception of England (8th century) to 2022, giving space to diverse voices — class, gender, ethnicity, and even childhood.

  “I wanted the poems to let us listen in to very different and diverse voices and perspectives.” (04:37)

• Why England?
  Englishness is often constructed in poetry (the “Sceptred Isle,” “green and pleasant land”) but not necessarily triumphal.

  “Poetry is intersecting, intimately involved in forming these imaginaries of England and in troubling them as well.” (05:55)

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2. Sir Thomas Wyatt’s “Whoso List to Hunt” — Love, Politics & Danger

• The Poem and Its Double Meanings:
  The famous poem, long believed to reference Anne Boleyn, operates in code, navigating courtly politics and love:

  “It’s possible to read this poem [...] as a smoking gun. But... that’s not necessarily the most interesting question to ask. It's doing coded, secretive work.” (08:33 / 08:48)

• Translation as Disguise:
  Wyatt adapts Petrarch, twisting context and symbolism, possibly to shield himself:

  “Does that allow him to hide behind another ‘I’? Is that a guise, a disguise, a cloaking...?” (09:53)

• Biblical and Classical Allusions:
  The hind’s collar (“Noli me tangere, for Caesar’s I am”) references both scripture and Roman myth, hinting at forbidden or politically dangerous desire.

  “There could be a connection.” (14:51)

• The Peril of Words:
  Poetry acts as both confession and armor—vital in a court where new treason laws criminalized certain speech, thought, or even imagination.

  “Treason is a crime that can be committed through words, through writing, through imagination, through craft.” (17:45)

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3. Anne Askew’s Newgate Ballad — Faith as Resistance

• Context:
  Askew, proto-Protestant martyr, left her poem and writings after interrogation (and torture) for heresy in 1546.
• Theology as Defiance:
  Her rejection of transubstantiation and calm rationality under torture are foregrounded.

  “She’s bold, she’s resolute, but often quite defiant and sardonic...” (22:49)

• Gender Politics:
  Askew uses both the armor of masculinity (opening the poem as a ‘knight’) and the strategic humility of femininity in her interrogations.

  “She deflects our attention away from that [her suffering body].” (24:48)

• Plain Speaking:
  The plain, ballad form—popular among the people—stands in contrast to courtly or metaphysical verse, asserting honesty and accessibility:

  “A ballad, it’s the kind of poetry of the street, it’s popular poetry.” (29:27)

• Risk and Otherness:
  Her pointed critique of Henry VIII in plain ballad terms was dangerous under the Treason Act.

  “‘I saw a royal throne where justice should have sit, but in her stead was one of moody cruel wit...’ Nobody has said that better.” (34:11)

• Radical Empathy:
  Clarke wrestles with whether modern readers can—and should—empathize fully with someone writing joyfully towards death:

  “I found it hardest to get close to her in terms of empathy, because this poem... she writes of her joy and her hope and her delight, anticipating that.” (35:28)

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4. Shakespeare’s “This England” — Myth and Satire

• Lines from Richard II:
  The iconic “sceptred isle” passage is now read as a patriotic poem, but in context is both eulogy and lament.

  “It depends where you end your excerpt... The speech begins... like panegyric... but it’s only later... there’s a dark turn.” (41:49)

• Inventing Englishness:
  The poem perpetuates the myth of England as a divinely-imagined island (excluding Scotland and Wales), linking poetry and politics:

  “England is not an island and never has been. So this imagery... elides the existence of other polities... it’s a political and rhetorical trick.” (44:47)

• Political Dynamism:
  The speech becomes politically dangerous or comforting, depending on historical moment. Essex staged the play pre-rebellion to imply critique of Elizabeth I.

  “It still has that power to praise, but also to be really biting satire and challenge and provocation.” (47:47–50:05)

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5. “Bum Fodder” (Alexander Brome) — Satire, Scatology, and Street Politics

• Popular Satire:
  This mid-17th-century broadside gleefully mocks the Rump Parliament with toilet humor—a bottom-up (literally) critique of power.

  “Poetry isn’t always about court and courtiers... This absolutely is... of the street, of popular culture.” (52:20)

• Poetry for the People:
  Printed as disposable, cheap broadsides, these ballads reached both lower and middling classes for entertainment and political expression.

  “Tools of social networking and building alliances and community, and a really crucial part of building that sense of a sustained and continued Royalist community.” (56:18)

• Transformation & Survival:
  Even throwaway poems can survive—this one makes it into 17th-century anthologies and now into Clarke’s “25 Poems.”

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6. John Dryden’s “Annus Mirabilis” — Rebuilding England’s Capital

• Optimism Amid Catastrophe:
  Dryden’s poem reframes the disasters of 1665–66 (plague, fire, war) as the precondition for London’s glorious rebirth.

  “Rebranding it as the Year of Wonders... is this genius twist from John Dryden, and he’s reimagining those terrible events... as a kind of crucible... out of which comes this tested, purified Greater London of the future.” (60:38)

• Personification of London:
  The city appears as a damaged but ultimately elevated female, whom the world courts. The metaphor echoes the politics (London’s relationship to the monarchy) and deepens the myth.

  “He’s using that feminized imagery to tell a story about the relationship between London and Charles II... London is becoming this powerful, coercive, imperial centre, but Dryden is imagining it as just this desirable maiden with its lovers, eager to please.” (63:13)

• Eyewitness/Imaginative Reportage:
  Despite vivid, pseudo-journalistic description of the fire, Dryden wasn’t present; his poetry blends news and myth.

  “His whole account of the fire is kind of secondhand... And I do wonder whether that is what allows him to so readily move from the historical reality to using the Great Fire as this metaphor.” (62:09)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Poetry’s Slipperiness:

  “...there’s a sort of deliberate, elusive quality to poetry, isn’t there?”
  – Lipscomb (09:21)

• On Treason and Words:

  “Treason is a crime that can be committed through words, through writing, through imagination, through craft... at this moment, ideas that might exist in the mind and the imagination can become treasonous and words become uniquely dangerous.”
  – Clarke (17:45)

• On Henry VIII:

  “I saw a royal throne where justice should have sit, but in her stead was one of moody cruel wit.”
  – (Anne Askew’s Ballad, 21:48, quoted and admired by Clarke & Lipscomb at 34:11)

• On Satirical Poetry:

  “Who doesn’t love 21 stanzas of bum, poo, and fart jokes? But it is also really political poetry.”
  – Clarke (54:25)

• On Empathy and the Past:

  “Poetry can bring us into this kind of close encounter, this close encounter...”
  – Clarke (37:45)
  “That isn’t to erase their otherness...”
  – Lipscomb (37:22)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Poetry as Time-Travel & Selection: 02:05–06:50
• “Whoso List to Hunt” & Coded Love: 07:05–19:20
• Anne Askew’s Ballad on Martyrdom: 19:54–38:20
• Shakespeare’s “This England”: 39:09–47:47
• “Bum Fodder” and Royalist Satire: 50:05–58:10
• Dryden’s “Annus Mirabilis” and the Fire of London: 58:50–65:43
• Closing Reflections on Poetry’s Power: 65:43–66:17

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Conclusion

With wit and intellectual rigor, Clarke and Lipscomb demonstrate poetry’s capacity to bear witness, challenge power, encode subversion, and even reshape history’s myths. Whether in the voice of a Tudor courtier, a martyr, a satirist, or a laureate, poetry stands as both an archive and an argument—a “time machine into history.”

By focusing on diverse forms, voices, and registers, the episode deftly interweaves the earthy and the sublime, the public and the personal, highlighting how poets, famous or forgotten, have always spoken truth to power.

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For further reading:
Catherine Clarke’s A History of England in 25 Poems (referenced throughout the episode).

Transcript

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[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Hello, I'm Professor Susannah Lipscomb, and welcome to Not Just the Tudors From History Hit the podcast in which we explore everything from Anne Boleyn to the Aztecs, from Holbein to the Huguenots, from Shakespeare to samurais relieved by regular doses of murder, espionage and witchcraft. Not, in other words, just the Tudors, but most definitely also the Tudors.

Prose can be read quickly, but poetry must be savored, drawn out on the tongue. And in that slow, meditative moment between writer and reader, there is the possibility of a connection that is far more than cognitive a deeper magic that seems to link the emotions of humans over time. A poem offers us the possibility of direct Venus access to the imaginations, experiences and feelings of people in the past. They are, in fact, a way of time traveling, of going inside history into individual moments as well as grand historical events into love and war, loyalty and resistance. Today's guest has therefore made the clever deduction that it might be possible to tell the history of a nation through, in the case of England, 1300 years of poetry. This does not necessarily mean writing a triumphal narrative. It is possible to heed the coded and covert messages that poems carry and hear the sometimes subversive voices of those who might be on the edges of society. It is a bold and exciting way into history, and it is the brainchild of Catherine Clarke, professor at the Institute of Historical Research, Visiting professor of English Literature at the University of Southampton and Director of the Victoria County History of England. Professor Clark has just published a new book called A History of England in 25 poems. We're going to look at five of them together, taking us through the 16th and 17th centuries. I'm Professor Susannah Lipscomb and this is not just the tutors from history hit.

Professor Clarke, welcome to the podcast.

[Catherine Clarke]

Oh, it's lovely to be here, Goss.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

You are a busy person. Professor of the Institute of Historical Research, assisting Professor Director. What is the Victoria County History of England? Just where?

[Catherine Clarke]

Oh, great question. So the name is a bit misleading, but it is the longest running place based local history project in the UK, possibly the world. It was founded in 1899, dedicated to Queen Victoria, which is how it gets its name, but its aim is to write the history of every place in England from the very earliest times to the present day. And it's still going strong in counties right across the country.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

That's wonderful. So you're situating yourself in thinking about the history of England and in various ways intertelling that history. And of course, the most pressing question to the reader of your book, I felt anyway, is why these 25? How ever did you choose 25 poems?

[Catherine Clarke]

So you've worked out correctly that of course I spend a huge amount of my professional life sort of searching for England and unpicking English history. Choosing the 25 was tricky, but it was also a complete joy and delight. I had a few really key ambitions and aims. One was that I wanted the poems to take us right through a sweep from the moment when the idea of England is just first being invented. So our earliest poem is from Dark age in Northumbria in the 8th century, right up to the most recent poem in 2022. Another ambition was that these poems would take us to different places, right across England, and then really crucially, that they would let us listen in to very different and diverse voices and perspectives. So there's men, there's women. There are people of different social status and different social classes, from the courtly to a. A laboring class woman working in domestic service, voices of color. There's a poem that's written by a child, by Lewis Carroll when he was 13 years old. And I think I love the way you kind of captured the magic of how poetry can give us a different way into history. A part of it is the intimacy of those different voices.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

And for those who are listening to this in Wales or Scotland, why England?

[Catherine Clarke]

Yeah, it's a really good question. What I think readers will discover in the book, that there is this very legible tradition in poetry of making imaginaries of England. In fact, one of the key touchstone poems we'll probably talk about a bit today. This Sceptered Isle from Shakespeare's Richard ii. But you might also think of the English pastoral imaginary, the idea of the green and pleasant land that we know from Blake's Jerusalem, but actually goes back as far as Bede in early medieval England and beyond. So there are these iconic images of Englishness that are shaped by poetry, and poetry throughout those 1300 years is intersecting, intimately involved in forming these imaginaries of England and in troubling them as well. Now, of course, Wales and Scotland have their own different mythologies and imaginaries and poetic traditions, but this is very much following through that English thread.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Okay, well, let's crack on then. We're gonna start with one of my favorite poems of all time, which is a happy place to start. Whoso list a Hunt by Sir Thomas White.

[Poetry Reader (Whoso List to Hunt)]

Whoso list to hunt I know where is an hind but as for me elas I may know more. The vain travail hath wearied me so sore I am of them that farthest cometh behind. Yet may I by no means my wearied mind draw from the deer. But as she fleeth afore fainting, I follow, I leave off. Therefore sithens in a net I seek to halt the wind.

Who list her hunt I put him out of doubt as well as I may spend his time in vain and graven with diamonds in letters plain There is written her fair neck round about no li me tangere for Caesar's I am and wild for to hold, though I seem tame.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

What is this poem ostensibly about? Catherine?

[Catherine Clarke]

Susanna, you will know very well that there has always been endless speculation over whether Thomas Wyatt had an affair with Anne Boleyn. And that speculation started within his lifetime and within Anne Boleyn's lifetime. And it still continues today. And it's imagined in historical novels and TV and speculated over by historians.

It's possible to read this poem whoso lists to hunt, I know where is in Hind as a smoking gun. And I suppose the first question that I bring to this poem is, is it a smoking gun? Does it give us a clue about a potential relationship, sexual relationship, affair between Thomas Wyatt and Anne Boleyn? But I'll say straight away, I think actually that's not necessarily the most interesting question to ask. And it's doing loads more exciting things. It's going undercover, it's doing coded, secretive work. And like many of the poems across these two centuries, it's showing us the danger of making poetry and political context what can be said, what can't, and how poetry can kind of negotiate, navigate that.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Yes, I mean, that really is the heart of it, isn't it? Because poetry has a kind of deliberate doubleness. It can be saying one thing and actually meaning another, or it can appear to say something that it is not. And particularly when you've got the voice of the poet, the eye of the poem cannot necessarily be considered to be the poet himself or herself. And so there's a sort of deliberate, elusive quality to poetry, isn't there?

[Catherine Clarke]

You're absolutely right. And I think this poem is really tricksy and it's kind of so many different things at once, and it's very difficult to pin it down. So in the poem, Wyatt is using the metaphor of the hunt hunting this beautiful hind that he never seems to be able to catch. Lots of others are chasing this beautiful hind as well. And he's coming last and he's frustrated, but he just can't give up. He says it's like trying to catch the wind, but he just. He's full of this kind of unrequited desire that he can't let go of. Now it's written, you said in the first person, I. And this expression of intense, unrequited desire is what's often linked to his potential relationship with Anne Boleyn. But there's so much trickiness here because actually this poem is a translation of a poem by Petrarch, the Italian humanist poet, with a few interesting changes that we might talk about. And this is kind of. This is Renaissance style translation. So it's quite free. Wyatt is making it his. But does that allow him to hide behind another eye? Is that a kind of a guise, a disguise, a cloaking that allows him to get away with telling the truth about his relationship with Anne or Is it just as you're suggesting he's telling someone else's story? Or the other question is, of course, just because something's in a poem doesn't mean it happened in reality. And that's one of the slippery and fascinating things about doing history through poetry, because it can tell us just as much about people's desires and fantasies and fears and imagination is about what really happened. So this could be about an imagined affair, imagined erotics that never actually happened in real life. But there are these really interesting clues in the Petrarch that Wyatt picks up and plays with that give us hints that maybe Anne Boleyn is somewhere in the frame.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Yes, I mean, this is slightly cheating to bring in another of Wyatt's poems. But you've just reminded me of a line from Mino, John Points in which he says, my points. I cannot frame my tongue to feign to cloak the truth for praise without desert of them that lust all vices to retain. And I have this sense here that he says he cannot cloak the truth, he cannot feign, but actually he really can. So let's talk about then, this, what Susan Brigdens called the high and creative art of imitation that happens in this period. How is he transforming, muting his source, the Petrarch?

[Catherine Clarke]

So there are some really subtle differences, but they could be quite meaningful. First of all, in the Petrarch, it's this very intimate encounter between the lover and his beloved. It's almost mystical. It's just him and the beloved in Wyatt's poem. I think what's often overlooked in this poem is it's quite laddish. You know, it begins with this. Anyone else up for it? You know, I know where is in hind. And it's. It's this really laddish image of, you know, anyone who wants come and have a go. And that's astonishing, actually, if you think about the conventions of courtly literature and the chaste woman on her pedestal. This is not that. And the hind that's being described here is wild, the word wild for to hold. And obviously all kinds of kind of sexual connotations around that. Another detail that I think is quite nice is that in the Petrarch, the hind wears a collar around her neck, engraved and decorated with diamonds and topazes. And topaz's is symbolic of chastity. But Wyatt's hind that he is hunting just has the diamonds, no more topazes. So you kind of think, oh, are these little clues that we could pick up on?

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

And what the engraving says is also very important.

[Catherine Clarke]

Ah, so Important. So in Petrarch's poem, he's referring to a kind of a classical Italian myth that Caesar had a herd. Is a herd the right word? What's the collective noun for deer?

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Anyway?

[Catherine Clarke]

He had a herd of these spectac particular white deer. But generations after Caesar's death, they were still there in Rome wearing these collars that said, I am Caesar's. I belong to Caesar. And so the hind, this. I mean, it's a great pun, isn't it? The deer and the deer one. I mean, it doesn't take much digging to work out what upright sting with language. But this deer, this deer one, wears a collar that says, do not touch me noli me tangere. For Caesar's I am so hands off. I belong to the most powerful man. Which, of course, again, the resonance is pretty clear there in terms of, you know, this is a poem that is probably written around the time when Henry is becoming increasingly interested in Anne. Perhaps there's still a bit of a moment of ambiguity. Perhaps Wyatt could still be deceiving himself. This is if it does connect with his relationship with Anne. But, you know, there's a pretty clear indication there that they're. There could be a connection.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Interestingly, there two biblical allusions, none of Tangarou, which is what in the Vulgate Bible, Jesus says to Mary Magdalene when she comes across him in the garden after the resurrection, do not touch me. But then for Caesar's I am. Reminds me of the moment where Jesus says, give to Caesar. What is Caesar's in terms of taxes? So there's a kind of tribute to be paid. So there's something numinous about the hind, but also a tribute that must be paid to the central authority, to the emperor or to the king.

[Catherine Clarke]

Yeah, I love that. And of course, you know, that association with Mary Magdalene is not without its own different shades of meaning in this period, because there's already that tradition that she might be a prostitute, might be a fallen woman, in the language of the time, that, you know, she might be having a sexual affair with. With Christ. So all of that is at play. And I love your idea that there might be something there that give unto Caesar, something there about power and prerogative, different kinds of power. I mean, one of the readings that I suggest of this poem is that it's very easy to interpret it as all about Anne Boleyn. But actually, across Wyatt's writing, we see other kinds of preoccupation. And one of those preoccupations is with rivalry with other men. And you Know, maybe that is really at the heart of this poem, this kind of sense of which we've seen as other work as well, tension, rivalry, resentment, disgruntlement, you know, when courtly relationships sour and there are betrayals. And you already spoke, I think, really astutely about these processes of cloaking. And we've talked about Petrarch, we've talked about biblical references in this poem. But, you know, another major work that Thomas Wyatt writes is his translation of the Biblical Penitential Psalms, which, again, like these biblic references, kind of seems beyond reproach in terms of voicing from the Bible, but it allows him to complain about his enemies and his troubles and those who are around him, all through the language of David in the Biblical Psalms. But it gives that cover. So, you know, I think this question of disguising and cloaking is really at the heart of what's going on.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

So interesting to think about, as you said, poetry undercover, because, of course, there would have been love affairs at the court. You know, they're people, they're humans, they're quite young humans. There's going to be lots of that going on. But this is also a court that talks of love when it's actually talking of politics. And words, as you write in your book, could be treason by this point in time under the 1534 Treasons Act. So how is Wyatt using the license that poetry gives him to explore these ideas, do you think?

[Catherine Clarke]

Yeah, certainly he is. And I think you just mentioned the Treason act of 1534, which is so important because it just shows how the stakes are being raised in terms of the power of words, that this is a moment when the act says that it's high treason to maliciously wish, will or desire by words or writing or by craft, imagine, invent, practice, or attempt any bodily harm to be done or committed to the king, the queen. And thereas, that is really quite shocking language, isn't it? Because it's. Treason is a crime that can be committed through words, through writing, through imagination, through craft. I mean, that very kind of medieval and Renaissance word for kind of making and skill and artifice. So it's a moment when ideas that might exist in the mind and the imagination can become treasonous and words become uniquely dangerous. So I think what Wyatt is doing, I do think he's dealing very deftly in these cloakings, this coded language, but he's constantly treading this kind of edge land, this march between reality and imagination, between what can be said and what can't be said, between dealing in Recognizable textual illusions that are beyond reproach. I mean, you know, Petrarch, you know, respected figure of the Italian, Italian Renaissance. The Bible, the Psalms. Absolutely fine to use these texts, but it's the way that he is ventriloquizing his own desires and political motivations through these.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Okay, let's move on to look at another poem. This is Anne Askew's the Ballad, which Anne Askew made and sang when she was in Newgate from 1546. So Anne Askew was arrested, interrogated under torture, and ultimately burnt at the stake in July of 1546, but left behind her a written record of her interrogation, her examinations, and two poems, including this one composed in Newgate prison in London while she awaited her execution.

[Poetry Reader (Anne Askew's Ballad)]

Like as the armed knight appointed to the field. With this world will I fight, and faith shall be my shield. Faith is that weapon strong, which will not fail at need my foes. Therefore among therewith will I proceed, as it is had in strength and force of Christ's way it will prevail at length. Though all the devils say nay, Faith in the fathers old obtained right wiseness, which make me very bold to fear no world's distress. I now rejoice in heart and hope Bid me do so, for Christ will take my part and ease me of my woe. Though, sayest Lord, whoso knock to them wilt thou attend? Undo therefore the lock and thy strong power send.

More enemies now have I than hairs upon my head. Let them not me deprave, but fight thou in my stead. On thee my care I cast. For all their cruel spite I set not by their haste, for thou art my delight.

I am not she that list my anchor to let fall for every drizzling mist my ship substantial. Not oft use I to write in prose, nor yet in rhyme, yet will I show. One sight that I saw in my time.

I saw a royal throne where justice should have sit. But in her stead was one of moody cruel wit. Absorbed was right wiseness as of the raging flood. Satan in his excess sucked up the guiltless blood. Then thought I, Jesus, Lord, when thou shalt judge us all, hard is it to record on these men what will fall. Yet, Lord, I thee desire for that they do to me. Let them not taste the higher of their iniquity.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Shall we first of all talk about the reason for Anne Askew's execution and the theological engagement she shows in this poem and her other writings?

[Catherine Clarke]

Yeah, so I think we're all familiar with this context. So this is following Henry VIII's break from Rome. We know all the reasons for that, the establishment of it, of the English Church. But I think, as we all know, Henry was still very conservative in matters of religious belief and teaching and Catholic doctrine. And as a kind of proto Protestant, Anne Askew did not believe in the doctrine of the transubstantiation. So she did not believe that in the sacrament of the Mass, the bread and the wine literally turned into the body and blood of Christ. She talks about them as a token of remembrance. She is very reverent about the sacrament, but she doesn't believe in that literal change, which I think for many of us today might sound like such a technicality, but of course was, you know, a major tenet of belief. And she. What I love about Anne Askew, she. She's bold, she's resolute, but often quite defiant and sardonic in the way she stands up for her views. So when she's under interrogation and she explains, no, these, these are just bread and wine, but they are tokens, she says, well, look, if you leave the bread of the Mass in a cupboard for three months, when you go back to it, it'll be mouldy. And so I do not believe it can be the body of our Lord. And she has these wonderful kind of reasoned and evidence and a very logical. It's almost in a very logical process of debate as she talks through her reasoning. But she stands by her position, as you say, Susanna, under interrogation from some of the grandest, most powerful, most learned figures in the land who are always trying to catch her out. But she stands her ground.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

And they're doing so using torture, which is illegal at the time, for various different reasons, not least because she's a woman. How does she position herself as a woman? How much is she pressing against the limits of what was permitted to women to say?

[Catherine Clarke]

So I think she uses gender in really interesting ways. So we know that in her life she was absolutely pushing the boundaries and kind of breaking the rules for women, really. So, you know, she was married, she was divorced, she continued to use, use her maiden name of Askew. By the time she was arrested, she had been living in London and effectively she had taken on the, again, illegal role of being a woman preacher. You know, she really is kind of pushing the boundaries, but when she's being interrogated by these great men, she'll repeatedly say, well, I'm. I don't know, because I, you know, I'm a woman, I can't speak to that. Or they tell her that she's breaking the rules of debate, because she's kind of tying them in knots. And she says, well, as a woman, I wouldn't know those scholastic rules of debate. Or they're trying to get her to incriminate others or to say something. And she says, you know, Solomon says, you know, there's nothing more precious than a woman's silence. And, you know, she absolutely runs rings around them. I think one of the very interesting things with the poem is the ballad that she wrote in Newgate is it begins with a very masculine image, actually, despite that real leaning into her femininity in the interrogations, she begins by, you know, as the armored knight appointed to the field. With this world will I fight, and faith shall be my shield. Which does sound like, you know, she's somehow really positioning herself as almost a kind of masculine figure there. But of course, you will recognize that she's dealing again in that biblical imagery, putting on the whole armor of God. And, you know, she's, again, she's dealing in biblical illusion, but she's very alert to gender. I think what's quite interesting is that those who record and then circulate and transmit and disseminate her words and her story are also interested in gender. And one of the things that troubles me about Askew's story is the way that some of her, and, you know, let's be clear, quite unreliable narrators and editors have quite a prurient interest in her identity as a woman. That imagery of, in the words of one of her editors, a very young and dainty female body being broken on the rack. And Anne is really clear in her writing. She deflects our attention away from that. But there are others who will use quite pruriently the graphic imagery of her suffering, broken female body for their own ends. And that, I think, is really troubling.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Yes, that's really interesting because it reminds me of a lot of the work that's been done on writing about women who were enslaved and the sufferings they underwent. And the fact that we tend to only have accounts of these from the point of view of the white male punisher or A Spectator. And the extent. The question Sadie Hartman poses, to what extent we're complicit when we view it from that perspective. And perhaps the editors of Askew's examinations or the editor is perhaps performing a similar kind of transgression.

[Catherine Clarke]

I think you're absolutely right. And I think there is a. For me, there's a kind of queasiness in reading the text and being drawn into that role of a voyeur or a spectator and being complicit in some way. Of course, there is an extra complication that these texts are. They're written to valorise and to codify Anne's identity as a martyr. And of course, if you're writing a passion narrative and a martyrdom narrative, you have to have that graphic representation of bodily suffering, because in that, you know, late antique, medieval, Renaissance Christian tradition, that suffering is part of what makes you a martyr and a saint. So there are different kinds of dynamics going on here, but I think it is problematic and I think there are many ways in which, working with Anne Askew myself, I found myself confronting ethical questions about how I was engaging with her, about respecting the agency that she chooses for herself, respecting what she wants her words to do, and some of the ways in which I felt that, you know, as a modern day historian coming at the text from such a different kind of context that I might be in a way misreading her words, much as they are revealing and take us into the historical context and moment, are we doing with Anne Askew's words what she would want us to do with them?

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

The poetic form that she's chosen is a ballad. What can we read into that?

[Catherine Clarke]

Yeah, so that's really important. So a ballad, it's the kind of poetry of the street, it's popular poetry, it's the people's poetry. It's not, you know, think of the metaphysical poets writing around this time and you know, the kind of. Or we've been talking about Petrarch and the flowering of Renaissance poetry. That's all your kind of really highbrow poetry. A ballad is not for the learned, it's for the ordinary people. It's a very simple poem. There are three beat lines, it's an ab rhyme scheme, it's very simple, very sing song. And I think there's something, first of all very disarming about that, very accessible. But also it's actually very deliberate and we could say political in its own way. So Annescu tells us about confronting the glorious words is her phrase, the polished glossy words and rhetoric and dangerous eloquence of her interrogators who are trying to trap her. And actually, you know, in the 16th century there is concern about eloquence. You know, it's not an uncontested concept, you know, the dangers of manipulative, persuasive language. And she resists that and she presents herself as plain speaking in her interrogations. And in this poem, in this baptism ballad, she's absolutely representing herself as straightforward, plain speaking, she says in one of the verses. Not oft you sty to write in prose, nor yet in rhyme. So she's really identifying as this plain speaking, ordinary woman. But that really gives the ballad this kind of power and weight, a special kind of authority. Just plain speaking, straightforward. It signifies as an honest expression of faith. Now, of course, you and I might kind of want to ask questions about the careful artistry that goes into shaping that simple, unadorned expression of faith, but it's hugely effective. And you know, Anne's words did circulate in broadsides after her death. They did have that popular reach.

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[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

That plain speaking extends to matters that are political. The way she depicts Henry viii, we're still in the temporal period in which the Treasons act applies, is pretty risky, isn't it?

[Catherine Clarke]

Yeah. Obviously she did kind of pay the ultimate price for this, but it's absolutely explicit. I think, really I saw a royal throne where justice should have sit, but in her stead was one of moody cruel wit. I mean, what an incredibly. What a brilliant characterisation of Henry viii. One of moody cruel wit. Nobody has said that better. And I think what's quite interesting in the later stanzas of that po, she does use language that could work on two levels. It could be very symbolic. She talks about, you know, devils around her and evil. Is that a kind of psychomachia, kind of drama between, you know, God and the devil, heaven and hell, kind of imaginary abstract story? Or is she. Are those metaphors for the courtiers, the great men, the churchmen who are around her? Yeah, I mean, she is.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Is.

[Catherine Clarke]

She's really bold and powerful in those words.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

And the other thing that you draw out about this is the way in which her engagement with her faith presents us with something quite other to ourselves and enchanting. We might expect despair, but we find here hope, empathy, even delight. Tell me about that.

[Catherine Clarke]

Yeah, well, I think this is really astonishing and you began, Susannah, by saying a bit about the power of poetry to kind of forge these direct, intimate, immediate connections between us and people in the past. And I think that is the magic of poetry. And, you know, this is a history book, but it uses poetry to take us into these moments of intense empathy with people in the past. Out of all the poems in the book, much as I am in awe of Anne Askew and really admire her, I found it actually hardest to get close to her in terms of empathy, because this poem written, looking ahead to death, to execution, not any execution, but burning at the stake, she writes of her joy and her hope and her delight, anticipating that. And I just couldn't go there imaginatively. I mean, I think even people of faith would find that a very hard journey to follow on. And. And, you know, one of the questions I was asking myself, and I'm explicit about this in the chapter of the book, because I think it's really important. One of the questions I'm asking is Anne's really clear about what she wants her poem to do. I think she wants to direct us away from the world, to direct us to God, to inspire our faith and our hope and trust in God. I'm using her words in this book as a window into history, to take us into the world at a particular moment in time. And. And there's a discomfort there for me as a historian that, you know, am I doing a disservice to Anne Askew? Is this a kind of willful misreading of her text? This is a woman who. She was burned for these words, and I'm using them in a way very different from what she would have intended. But I think it does also feel a huge privilege to be able to share her voice further. A voice that might not be known to many people and to. Yeah. Share the power of her words.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Yes. And by doing so, you draw attention to her ideas and you tell us something about the nature of the Reformation in England and the nature of the sort of otherness of the past. I'm all for thinking of people in the past as being just as human as ourselves, you know, and we often fall foul of that, but that isn't to erase their otherness.

[Catherine Clarke]

Yeah, I think that's absolutely right. And in the book, I write about how doing history through poetry can model radical empathy. And I think the whole point of that is that it's not necessarily connecting with people whose lives, whose contexts of material daily living, and crucially, whose worldviews and emotional landscapes and imaginaries are the same as us. Often they are remotely different. They are very, very strange to us. But poetry can bring us into this kind of close encounter, this close encounter.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

With one last question. I want to ask you then. How sure can we be that these are her own words?

[Catherine Clarke]

So this really is the million dollar question, and there is some uncertainty about that. So some of the lines towards the end of this poem are very similar to another poem written by a man in this period. And Askew's editors have such an active role in how her texts are parcelled up, packaged and transmitted that we can't be totally sure. And I think, for me, this is part of the kind of leap of faith we sometimes have to make in these earlier centuries in terms of locating women's voices and women's stories.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

The next poem you've chosen is one that I think is going to be pretty familiar to most People, this England, from Richard II by William Shakespeare, from around 1595.

[Poetry Reader (This England and Annus Mirabilis)]

This royal throne of kings, this sceptered isle, this earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, this other Eden, demi paradise, this fortress built by nature for herself against infection and the hand of war, this happy breed of men, this little world, this precious stone set in a silver sea, which serves it in the office of a wall, or as a moat defensive to a house against the envy of less happier lands, this blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England, this nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings, feared by their breed and famous for their birth, renowned for their deeds as far from home for Christian service and true chivalry as is the sepulchre in stubborn jury of the world's ransom. Blessed, blessed Mary's son. This land of such dear souls, this dear, dear land, dear for her reputation through the world, is now leased out. I die pronouncing it like to a tenement or pelting farm. England, bound in with the triumphant sea, whose rocky shore beats back the envious siege of watery Neptune, is now bound in with shame, with inky blots and rotten parchment bonds, that England that was wont to conquer others hath made a shameful conquest of itself.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Catherine, these are lines from a play, but they've broken free of the play. How and when did this become cited as a poem in its own right?

[Catherine Clarke]

So, yeah, these lines are already being anthologised as early as 1600, and I think many of us encounter them in a context that is broken free from its moorings in the play. And that's why, really, I felt it was legit to include this in an anthology of poetry, because this does stand alone. It's one of those texts that is endlessly anthologised, that in past generations people have often been asked to rote learn at school. And it is such a touchstone for thinking about imaginaries of England and Englishness. Of course, the fact that it's often encountered, broken free from the rest of Shakespeare's play, Richard II is a bit of a problem because it means that sometimes we misunderstand exactly what this text is doing.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

So let's try and talk a bit about what it is doing. Is it a poem of praise or is it a poem of warning?

[Catherine Clarke]

I think it depends where you end your excerpt, doesn't it? If you're creating an anthology, so you can make it either. And I think, actually that's a really important point, that poems don't just have one meaning, they can be used by different people in different historical moments to do different things. And this poem is just such a great example of that. So this is John of Gaunt giving a deathbed speech in Shakespeare's Richard ii. And this is a lament for the collapse of the country under Richard's tyrannical, corrupt, despotic rule. And, of course, Shakespeare is interested in that because, you know, he sees this as part of the backstory that led to, you know, the greatness, the rise of the Tudors. But the speech begins sounding very much like panegyric. And those are the most famous lines, I think. This royal throne of kings, the sceptred isle, demi paradise, other Eden. These are all phrases that actually we encounter often, even unmoored from this short text itself. They've kind of entered the lexicon, I think, of Englishness. But it's only later, when there's a pivot in this speech and we hear John of Gaunt start to talk about this dear, dear land, dear for her reputation throughout the world is now leased out. I die pronouncing it. And so there's a dark turn there where he's lamenting the corruption and the collapse in England. So actually, this iconic imaginary of the delightful Scepter's Isle is actually all there in the context of lament and satire.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

And critique, and yet it has been used so much as one of praising England's isolation and exceptional destiny.

[Catherine Clarke]

Absolutely. And I think one of the interesting things about this text is that we often think of it as kind of ur text, as foundational, as a point of origin. But actually, the kind of imaginary it's dealing in goes back hundreds of years before Shakespeare. So we can trace it back to the Middle Ages, we can trace it back to Geoffrey of Monmouth, back to Bede, even back to the British monk Gildas writing before Bede. This imagery of a delightful island that, you know, there's something very seductive about that image of an island, the idea that somehow it's predestined to have its own identity. Of course, what is going on here that your listeners will have picked up on is there's a huge sleight of hand because England is not an island and never has been. So this imagery of this sceptred isle quite slyly and perniciously elides the existence of other polities of Scotland, of Wales. England kind of expands to fill the whole island to give a sense of something divinely ordained by geography, by the sea. But actually, it's a political and rhetorical.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Trick, and it's a kind of colonial trick, as well, isn't it?

[Catherine Clarke]

Yeah, absolutely. So it's a kind of, it's a trick in terms of internal colonialism. And I think when we talk about colonialism, we often think of it in modern global contexts. But of course, England's first empire was within the island of Britain in the Middle Ages, and that's the kind of context that we're seeing behind this, but also part of this tradition of England, the island. So, you know, one of the medieval expressions of the this written by Geoffrey of Monmouth has Brutus arriving in Britain. It's sort of after the fallout of the end of the Trojan War, and he's had a prophecy from the goddess Diana to go and set up a new country. And of course, Brutus becomes Britain. You know, that's the link. And Diana says it will be this great new nation that bounds will never confine. And this idea that being surrounded by the sea, actually, you know, England, the island, very slippery, reaches out to everywhere. And it sort of legitimizes that expansion and empire and colonialism that comes later.

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[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

We ought to talk about time as well, because this is sort of mid-1590s. But it's ostensibly the words of a man speaking in the 14th century. And the historical context of the play's performance is also Relevant. Can you join those dots for me?

[Catherine Clarke]

Yeah, yeah. So we've talked a little bit already about, you know, Shakespeare's Tudor politics, looking back to the story of Richard ii, what's going on in that play and what we see kind of in microcosm, in the. This septodile speech, you've got this kind of double exposure. So we're in the 1590s and that's where it appears in my book. But it's also telling us this story about centuries earlier, about the Middle ages, about the 14th century. And I think there's one particular staging in that later period that tells us something about how the story of Richard II and Shakespeare's play is being understood in that Tudor context. So we know that Shakespeare's play was staged in February 1601 in London by Robert Devereux, the Earl of Essex, who of course was not at that point best pleased with Queen Elizabeth, was disgruntled, had suffered various kind of financial and personal disappointments and failures, and he procured a performance of the play of Richard ii. And you can imagine in that context, we think about how those work coming out of the mouth of John of Gaunt might speak. They are incendiary, they're no longer about Richard ii. They are speaking to a country in ruin, a corrupt monarch, to the need to depose the head, wearing the crown, I suppose. And so this was staged in February 1601 as a kind of precursor to what Essex hoped would be a rebellion, of course, a rebellion that. That did not succeed, that never happened. But the staging of the play was a key piece of evidence, if you like, in the trial of Essex and his co conspirators and of course, you know, ended with the execution of Essex and others. So I think that gives another sense of how the meaning of a text can change over time. You know, it's been used so many times since. We can all think of, you know, examples of when, you know, this scepter dial has been used in kind of political or propagandist context. It still has that power to praise, but also to be really biting satire and challenge and provocation.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Talking of satire, let us move from the sublime to the ridiculous. We're going to a poem attributed to Alexander Brom, which is called Bum Fodder or Waste Paper proper to wipe the nation's romp with, or your own from 1660. And we're going to hear a portion of the poem.

[Catherine Clarke]

Yeah, you can't really 21 whole stanzas of bumpoo and far jokes be a bit too much.

[Poetry Reader (Bum Fodder)]

Free quarter in the north is grown so scarce that Lambert with all his men of Mars have submitted to kiss the parliament's arse, which nobody can deny. If this should prove true, as we do suppose. Tis such a wipe as the rump and all's foes could never give to old Oliver's nose, which nobody can deny. There's a proverb come to my mind. Not unless unfit, when the head shall see the rump, all be shit. Sure, this must prove a most lucky hit, which nobody can deny. There's another proverb which every noddy will jeer the rump with and cry, hoddy doddy, Here's a parliament, all ass and no body, which nobody can deny. Tis a likely matter the world will mend when so much blood and treasure we spend and yet begin again at the wrong end, which nobody can deny. We have been round and round, about, twirl, and through much sad confusions hurled, and now we are got into the arse of the world, which nobody can deny. Then let a free parliament be turned trump, and ne' er think any longer the nation to mump with your pocky, perjured, damned old rump, which nobody can deny. Tis a pitiful pass you men of the sword have bought yourselves to that the rump's your lord. An arsy versie must be the word, which nobody can deny. Our powder and shot you did freely spend, that the head you might from the body rend. And now you are at us with the butt end, which nobody can deny.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

So this is satirical. It's certainly scatological. It's not necessarily great poetry. So why is it important? What's the context of its production?

[Catherine Clarke]

I want to pick up on what you said about not being great poetry, because I think it's really important, just to be clear that this is not a greatest hits book. It's not the 25 best poems in English. There are, you know, treasured and cherished poems in here, but these are the poems that tell the most exciting and interesting stories about their moments, that are the best kind of time machines into history. So this is here partly because it is not great elite literature, because poetry isn't always about court and courtiers. Poetry isn't always about the finest writers and the most beautiful words. Poetry can sometimes be of the street of popular culture. And this absolutely is. So this is a broadside ballad. This was how Bumfodder first existed. And actually, that is the joke that's in the title of the poem. Bumfodder so Bumfodder or waste paper so you imagine the culture of broadside ballads in early modern London. Cheap, disposable. If you had a penny in your pocket, you could buy a loaf of bread or a quarter veil or a broadside ballad. So it's really accessible, it's democratic, you don't even need to be able to, because you know your maker, buy one and you'd learn the words and you'd remember it, but it'd probably have a picture on a lot of broadside ballads, really accessible. Millions of these were produced, they were, they transmitted news, entertainment, the kind of viral memes of early modern England. And the rump is one of those memes, and we'll say more about that, I'm sure. But this was disposable literature, broadside ballads, and when they'd been read, they were put to other kinds of uses, used for kindling on the fire, wrapping things, or indeed wiping the bums of early modern England and being dropped down the privy. So bumfodder bumf, it's what you wipe your bum with. And the poem is kind of making a joke that it's setting out to wipe Parliament's arse. It's a satire on Parliament, but also when you're done with it, you might use it to wipe your own.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

And in fact, the world gone arcy versi may now be my new favourite.

[Catherine Clarke]

Expression to describe the world turned upside down, isn't it? Yeah. It's also, I'm willing to bet the only poem you'll ever read that rhymes Magna Carta with Magna Fata as well. I mean, it's just, it's brilliant. But I mean, it's funny. Even my, you know, my 10 year old son loves this one because, you know, who doesn't love 21 stanzas of bum poo and fart jokes? But, but it is also really political poetry. It's funny, but it's political satire. So the other bum, the other rump, as well as your own, that you might use your broadside to wipe is the rump Parliament. So it's the kind of the arse end of this Parliament, this fag end parliament that has dragged on through the interregnum, the rump Parliament, those members of Parliament who were left after Pride's Purge in 1648 of all those who'd been opposed to regicide, to the execution of Charles I. And this Parliament has, it's been in and out in various shapes and forms over the following years, losing any kind of authority, losing numbers. I mean, it's keeping up with, you know, when it's being kicked out when it's being recorded. It's really tricky. But at this Moment in early 1660, it looks like the end might be in sight. The rump Parliament might be out for good. The army is involved in kicking it out. So this poem is about giving the Parliament a good kicking, a good wipe, and you just get this real sense that for the Royalist community enjoying this poem, the Royalist audience, they can kind of see light at the end of the tunnel. And there's a kind of playfulness and joyfulness in that, even after what have been traumatic years.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Given that this is in a broadside, who should we imagine the intended audience to be?

[Catherine Clarke]

So there are different kinds of broadside ballads. There are the Black Letter Ballads, so called, because they're printed in what we might think of as sort of a black Gothic script, and they often have woodcut illustrations as well. This is actually what's known as a white letter ballad. So the black letter one's absolutely kind of on the street in the muck and the dirt of early modern London streets. White letter ballad, yes, some of that too, but also these often circulated in the rooms of houses of a kind of middling and upper middling sort. So these are tools of, if you like, kind of social networking and building alliances and community, and a really crucial part of building that sense of a sustained and continued Royalist community in these difficult years. The interesting thing with Bumfodder is, even as a white letter broadside ballad, it was still ephemeral. It wasn't designed to last, you know, hence the Bumfodder joke. But poetry can do unpredictable things and it's had these really interesting afterlives. So in 1662, this gorgeous, beautiful, gilt decorated book is produced called Romp Songs, and it gathers together some of the entertaining, funny, not always funny, but royalist propagandist satirical poems on the interregnum and the Rump Parliament. And Bumfodder is included in that. So we see this really unexpected and unforeseeable journey from, you know, the streets and the privies of early modern England to this beautiful prestige book. You know, the copy that I used is now in the special collections of University of London Library.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

And.

[Catherine Clarke]

And, you know, as you pointed out, it's now one of these 25 telling the story of England. Who could have guessed?

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

And I love the fact that it is doing that because it absolutely shows us the ways in which poetry can speak of very earthy matters and yet can engage at that quotidian level with the story of politics at the Time and how it was viewed for those by those living through it. We're going for our last poem, not the last in your book, of course, but the last in the 16th and 17th centuries that we're going to discuss. To, again, complete change of register here, which could be indicated by the title, which is in Latin, Annus Mirabilis, which is by John Dryden from 1667. It's a very long poem, 304 Stanzas.

[Poetry Reader (This England and Annus Mirabilis)]

So here's an extract, methinks already from this chemic flame I see a city of more precious mould, Rich as the town which gives the Indies name With silver paved and all divine Fine with gold already laboring with a mighty fate she shakes the rubbish from her mounting brow and seems to have renewed her charter's date which heaven will to the death of time allow. More great than human now and more august New deified she from her fires does rise her widening streets on new foundations trust and opening into larger parts she flies before she like some shepherdess did show who sat to bathe her by a river's side, not answering to her fame, but rude and low, Nor taught the beauteous arts of modern pride. Now, like a maiden queen she will behold from her high turrets hourly suitors come the east with incense and the west with gold Will stand like suppliants to receive her due. The silver Thames, her own domestic flood, shall bear her vessels like a sweeping train and often wind as of his mistress proud with longing eyes to meet her face again. The wealthy Tagus and the wealthier Rhine, the glory of their towns no more shall boast and seine that wood with Belgian rivers join shall find her luster stained and traffic lost.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Now, Annus Mirabilis is a year of wonders or miracles, which is a strange thing to write just after the Great Fire of London. How does it conceptualise the Great Fire?

[Catherine Clarke]

Yeah, so I think that's the kind of. That's how it grabs you, really, with that astonishing title, that this has been a terrible couple of years, 1665 and 1666, you know, there's been war against the Dutch, the Great plague of summer, 1665 into 1666, the Great Fire of London. So rebranding it as the Year of Wonders, or Year of Miracles is this genius kind of twist from John Dryden, and he's reimagining those terrible events, really, as a kind of crucible, a kind of ordeal, out of which comes this tested, purified Greater London of the future. So it's a key moment in terms of really the making of London that we know today, which is powerful, wealthy, but also voracious, coercive, all those kind of complexities. And it's a moment when that is being visioned by Dryden. It's being written into existence before it's yet being built after the fire in bricks and mortar.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

And it feels like it gives us an eyewitness account of the fire, doesn't it?

[Catherine Clarke]

Oh, yeah, the account of the fire is amazing. I mean, some of it is very metaphorical and almost. It's almost like a horror film talking about the fatal birth of the fire and like a monster creeping, an infant monster and then devouring and growing. Some of it's quite spooky, but then, you know, really kind of reportage style, actually talking about, you know, what's being done to try and put out the fire.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

So.

[Catherine Clarke]

So sending buckets to the hallowed choir, so running to the chancel of churches where buckets of water for putting out fires were kept, cutting wooden pipes that run to houses to release water, mounting ladders to fight the fire. So really kind of reportage style. But that, of course, is also a trick. So Dryden isn't in London himself when the Great Fire is happening. He's in Wiltshire, out in the country. And his whole account of the fire is kind of. Of secondhand. It's from the reports that he is being sent in Wiltshire. And I do wonder whether that is what allows him to so readily move from the historical reality to using the Great Fire as this metaphor. For he uses the metaphor of alchemy, imagining the fire as this magical moment that makes a wondrous new London.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

It's extraordinary optimism in the face of the circumstances, really. One of the interesting things is that he personifies London as female. Tell me how you think we should understand that choice.

[Catherine Clarke]

Yeah, so that's a long established tradition. And, you know, the relationship between London and the monarch has always been tricky and had always been tricky up to this point through history, you know, crucial in terms of support for the monarch. And so that relationship between the monarch and the city was often understood in terms of the Bride, the city, the Bride and the King also, you know, medieval walled cities and London had spilled well outside. It's a walled extent by this point, but still there's that sense that a walled city can be a metaphor for maidenhood, for virginity. So it also kind of that enclosure that also lends itself to the metaphor of the maiden bride being presented to a monarch. Now, what Dryden is doing really interestingly here, first of all, he's using that feminized imagery to tell a story about the relationship between London and Charles ii. Charles ii, who, you know, unlike the useless mare, comes to London's aid as its savior and rescuer. And we might think of the relief at the bottom of the London monument that depicts quite a sexy London, I'm gonna say, you know, sort of swooning, her clothes, her garments falling, her hair loose, and Charles ii, her saviour, reaching out. You know, there's this kind of erotic dimension to the way the relationship between the abstract, feminized London and Charles is represented. But Dryden is also using this image of London, the woman, to show her transformation. So he says that before the fire, she was like some rustic shepherdess who sat beside the waters of the Thames to bathe. So plain, simple. There's still a sense of beauty and desire there. I always think of those Renaissance paintings of nymphs and peasant women, you know, bathing by water. You know, it's always a kind of erotic image offered up for the male gaze. So there's that kind of sense of desire. But then after the fire, as she is rebuilt and as you say, Susannah, he's writing this before the rebuilding has actually happened. But what he's imagining is she becomes a maiden, queen and suppliants and lovers will come from all over the world to prostrate themselves, to woo her, to offer her what they can. And of course, that's such an interesting twist on, you know, actually, London is becoming this powerful, coercive, imperial centre, but Dryden is imagining it as just this desirable maiden with its lovers, eager to please.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Well, we have covered love and tyranny, heresy and patriarchy, myths of nationhood and their undermining bum fodder and the under, or perhaps I should say backside of politics, the gap between ideas about what London could be and what she actually is. And that's just five of your 25 poems. Thank you so much for coming on to give this alternate way into thinking about history through poetry, which has been so fascinating. It's been an absolute joy.

[Catherine Clarke]

It's been such a pleasure. Susanna, thanks so much for having me.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

And thank you so much to our poetry readers for this episode. George Sharpley, Hannah Dawson, Matt Lewis and my producer, Rob Weinberg. Thanks also to Amy Haddow, who edited this episode, and thank you to you for listening. We're always eager to hear from you, so do drop us a [e-mail] and I look forward to joining you again for another episode of Not Just the Tudors from history hit.

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