More Rosebud - Love Letters

0:00Marvelous, original, remarkable, energizing, M-O-R-E, Moore, Rosebud. We're ready for you. Yes, that's me, Giles Bradworth, and my friend and producer, Harriet Jane Moore.

0:34Wait, Giles, sit on the chair. Oh, yeah. Sit straight on the chair. It's not good for your back to be skew with all the time. No, you're all right. No. Oh, yeah, that's good. Oh, you should. We should have recorded that. I have. Oh, you are? Oh, Lord. Are we going to play this out to the people? Let them know. No, I'll put it through an edit, won't I? But I can put that bit in if you want to have me bossing you about. I don't mind. I think people should know what's going on. Yeah. People say to me, Giles, you say it's just you and Harriet. The team, there'll be a recording team. People doing the lights.

1:02I say, yeah, there is a team. It's Harriet. Harriet does the lights. Harriet does the recording. Harriet fixes the microphone Harriet tells me everything what to do turn your chair do you think you should swivel a little bit so you're sort of facing me because what worries me is you yes you sometimes perch I don't think that's good for your back well it's because I I like to sit on the edge of my seat to give my all to the recording we care we do seriously we do care it is genuinely just the two of us and my wife Michelle's godson Alec he helps out particularly getting us onto youtube which we now are yes can i ask you a quick question before we start yeah are you engaging your core yes that's it you've just done it perfect try and sit like that not how do i have to breathe you have to breathe but just lift lift and try and engage your abdominal muscles and don't slouch and then the weight you're just going to look 10 years younger.

2:04I'm wanting to look 10 years younger, to be honest with you. You know I'm trying to lose weight. Exactly. And I've lost five pounds as we speak. So quite a few more to go, nine to go, until then I lost the stone. You're doing really well, Charles. I'm doing okay. Early days. But the whole regime has to be eat less and move more and move in the right way. Yeah, and engaging your core is all part of it. Engage my core. I hope all the listeners have got their cores engaged while they're listening. Unless you're lying in bed listening to this. Yeah, in which case you are allowed to relax. Well, shall I begin?

2:35Yes. Welcome to the first of our Rosebud Valentine's Day episodes. We're celebrating the 14th of February with a special episode that may touch on my diaries, but is a bit different because I think we're going to talk today about love in general and love letters in particular. But I know before we start, there's bits of housekeeping that you want us to do. Harriet, am I right? Yeah, yeah. We want to talk about the Rosebud family a little bit, don't we? Because it's growing. Yeah. Which is fantastic. The Rosebud family, well, if you're listening, really you're a member of the Rosebud family. But if you want to officially be a member of the Rosebud family, it'll cost you.

3:15That's the long or the short of it. We've decided to have a subscription service in addition to our normal Tuesdays and Fridays sent to you with our love. You can also join the family where you get extra things, such as, what extras do they get that they're liking? They get an episode every Sunday, a special Rosebud Family bonus episode. Yeah. And that's sometimes us going on a trip down memory lane or us just looking at our diaries and gossiping. And every other Sunday they get, well, me reading The Candlelight Murders, my Victorian murder mystery, which I'm pleased to say people are really quite liking.

3:52Brilliant, Charles. Which is fantastic. Yeah. And they're going to be special events. There may be a show coming up. And if you're part of the Rosebud family, you will be the first to hear about it. To become a member, what do they do? They go to www.patreon.com forward slash Rosebud. P-A-T-R-E-O-N dot com forward slash Rosebud. And then it explains to them what they do. Yes. And they can sign up for a month or for a year. And there's a modest subscription, I imagine. Exactly. It's£4.99. and we should say it's plus VAT. Yes. Yeah, well, there we are. That's why we're doing so many bonus episodes because we want to give people really good value for money, don't we?

4:33That's what I want to do. That's good news. Should we play a clip? Let's play a bit of The Candlelight Murders. I think we should to get people in the mood so they can see what they'd be getting. Ooh, a bit of the murder mystery. No spoilers. I won't play a bit with the spoilers. Oh, okay. Here goes. The Candlelight Murders. This is me reading, well, you'll hear what it is. It was dark, heavily curtained, hot as a furnace, and fragrant with incense. As the man adjusted his eyes to the gloom, he saw, by the light of half a dozen guttering candles, stretched out on the floor before him, the naked body of a boy of sixteen, his throat cut from ear to ear oh very exciting that's the candlelight murders for you i wonder what happens next to find out join the rosebud family patreon.com forward slash rosebud people get in touch with us though don't they from around the world they do at hello at rosebud podcast.com hello at rosebud podcast.com it's a lot to absorb who have we had an email from this week we've heard from kate bridger in canada who's a regular emailer hello kate thanks so much this is a really really funny email so i think people are going to like this and it's going to get us in the mood for love which is the theme of today's show it says dear giles and harriet you spoke in the last diaries episode about not wanting to have a tryst on a sleeper train well perhaps after you hear my story, you may decide otherwise.

6:12Oh, intriguing. A long, long time ago, as in back in my 20s, I'm now 71. I was on a sleeper train from Stockholm to Copenhagen. There were four berths in our carriage. The lower berths were occupied by a young and very frisky couple who clearly couldn't go to sleep without copulating first. I was on one of the upper bunks across from a very handsome Swede. We were both very aware of the activity beneath us and did a fair amount of eye rolling and giggling behind clenched fists. When the train arrived at Copenhagen at around 5am we got chatting and decided to enjoy an early morning breakfast beside a fountain in the city.

6:55I was on my way to Austria, he was on his way to Greece for a holiday. We talked for a couple of hours. It was all ever so romantic and we planned to meet up again back in Stockholm after his holiday. We actually became engaged as a result of this chance meeting on a hot and airless sleeper train. Sadly the engagement fell apart when he came to visit me in Canada where I live but for a few months it was one of the most romantic and magical times in my life. So don't poo-poo those sleeper train trysts. As always, I continue to love Rosebud. Thank you. Love, Kate. I love Kate's story. Isn't it great?

7:39But it's fabulous. It's so evocative. And it's reminded me of a moment on a bunk. I knew you'd have something to say. When I was still a student, I think, but 20 or more, I went to a crime conference. I was interested in prison reform, as you remember. Anyway, there was a girl on the course. And could we have been sharing a room? Somehow, though, the pair of us ended up sitting on top of a bunk, cross-legged and knee-to-knee, in our sort of pajamas late at night. And we began talking about prison reform and ended up talking about our lives. And we sort of fell in love. And that's really the end of the story.

8:36But I've not forgotten it. Wow. And it was very real. Like Kate actually says, don't poo-poo this. It was special. It was magical. My brief encounter, I think it was just that one evening, we were staying at the conference together, but we didn't keep in touch. And I'm now remembering being on a train somewhere in the north of England. I feel somewhere like going from Manchester to Accrington. I can actually picture the train I'm on. I'm sitting in a window seat and there's a girl on the platform. Must be a larger station than Accrington because I can see a buffet behind it and maybe a bookshop or something.

9:16It's a busy platform. And the girl is standing there and the train is delayed. And we caught each other's eye as the train was about to move. And then it stopped. And we just looked at each other for maybe three or four minutes. But I fell in love with her. And I'm convinced she fell in love with me. Oh my goodness, Charles. And then the train moved off. Watch out if you make eye contact with Charles Brandreth on a train. He'll still be going on about it six years later. But what I'm telling you, and I don't think I've ever mentioned that to anybody before this very moment, is that it feels real to me now.

9:53It was real to me then. Yeah. And though, of course, it was just a passing fancy. That's the phrase, isn't it? A passing fancy. The intensity of it, and though we didn't speak, there was a window in between us. No words were said. The train moved off. I have no doubt at all that in that moment that I fell in love with her, she fell in love with me. Gosh, if she's listening, get her to write in. I would like her to write in. Who is this woman on the platform? Well, I told you about the girl from Queen's University, Belfast, didn't I? Oh, Giles, stop. Didn't I? How many of these people? I did tell you about that, didn't I?

10:27And how somebody... I have told you this story. Probably. The same sort of period, I went to Belfast to take part in a television debate with the Reverend Ian Paisley. Yeah. It sounds a bit unlikely, but it was about the sort of Protestant-Catholic divide. And I met this girl, and I only saw her that one evening, but I've never forgotten her. And last year, or maybe the year before, so we're talking literally almost 60 years later, I'm signing books, and somebody comes up to me, and I hear their voice. I say, where are you from? They say, Belfast. Oh, and I say, I left my heart at QUB, meaning Queensland, really well fast.

11:15And the man said, I know. She's a friend. I'm going to cry now. I know. She's a friend of mine. And this girl from nearly 60 years ago still remembers this moment. And I'd not been in touch with her, but via this friend of hers, she's obviously talked about it like I'm telling you this story. Isn't that amazing? that these brief, intense encounters can happen. Oh, I know, because Philippe, one of my many, obviously, brief encounters from France, visited, turned up at my parents' house 20 years later. 20 years later, oh, that's a bit much. I know, and my dad said, oh, Philippe came, he's wonderful.

11:58And I thought, oh God, I don't know if I want him to be turning up at my parents' house. Was he in his 30s then? I think he was in his 40s. Oh, my God. Yeah, so maybe it was 30 years later. Oh, dear, he was coming to claim the baby. He thought he'd fathered his head. He was still holding a candle for 16-year-old Harriet, yeah. But I think that's lovely. I think it's a bit much. I don't know. I mean, if you're listening to this and you recognise what we're talking about, obviously if you're Philippe, do get in touch. Can I ask you a question? Yeah. If you were honestly portrayed in the lower bunks and there were people in the bunks above, of, you wouldn't have sex, would you?

12:36I mean, I think that's really bad behaviour. It is poor behaviour. Yeah. But sometimes one is overwhelmed. Yeah, you get carried away, but it's pretty bad. I mean, I have a friend, I won't name him because he's, the name may be familiar to some people, who I'm afraid used to get so carried away that he or the girl on a train would disappear to the toilet. On the loose. But I think that's better than doing it with people above you, right above you. But I couldn't do it. Oh no, people do it on the plane, don't they? in the Mile High Club. I've heard about that. I've heard about that. It's too cramped.

13:09It's down. It's not, I mean, anyway. Yeah, it's not very romantic. It's not very romantic. No, but I can understand it. And clearly, I mean, they were making funny faces, etc. But in its own funny way, it got them going. It did, yeah. These two. So there you go. Yes, thanks for that, Kate. I draw the line to doing it on the underground. We don't want... The underground. nookie on the tube as far as i'm concerned is not on i've never seen that thank goodness i've never seen any sexual activity on the tube my friend the other day told me she was in a library in cambridge and came across two people doing it in the in the stacks in the stacks that is the sort of thing something that happens in a movie yeah and which section are they in it was in the science One of the science libraries.

13:58Oh, that is interesting. Probably the biology section, Giles. But you don't think of the scientists doing that sort of thing, do you? I know. Well, I think they might be more raunchy than the English graduates. They are absolutely the ones suspicious of. My wife always told me that. Where are the scientists? And it's the plain ones. The ones you think have got the glasses and the spots. They are. They're the worst. According to Michelle, many years ago, she would observe this. Interesting. so love letters is our theme for the day shall I tell you since this is supposed to be a diary episode shall I tell you the story in full about Chrissy yes I think I may have mentioned her to you before but I'm going to tell everybody about Chrissy now I mean essentially Chrissy this is going back to my school days she was a girl with green eyes long warping hair perfect mouth an amazing way with words she was a sister of a girl in my class as you know remember I went to B-Dale's co-educational boarding school in Hampshire.

14:58And when our relationship began, she was 18 and I was four years her junior. You were 14? Yeah, so it seems. She was no longer at school herself. She was out in the big wide world. But one weekend, she came to B-Dales to visit her sister and happened to see the school play T.S. Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral, in which I had a walk-on part as one of the monks. I'd not heard of Chrissie and had no idea who she was until two or three days after the performance when I received a ten-page letter from her that began, My dearest darling Giles, I saw you in the play on Friday and I have to tell you that I am now in love.

15:40Don't laugh. This is real. This is true. This is beautiful. This is odd, I thought, but not unpleasant. She enclosed a photograph taken in a nightclub in Beirut. this was the 1960s I can show you this photograph Harriet, it's in one of the boxes in the basement and an invitation to me to write back and share with her my hopes and dreams and innermost, innermost thoughts I did write back I have no idea what I said because I didn't keep a copy of my letters, but I have kept every one of the hundred and more increasingly intimate letters notes and cards she sent to me over the next two years she wrote wonderful letters full of energy, excitement, sunshine and sex.

16:28I came of age with Chrissy. She described her body. She anticipated mine. Now and again she scrawled an erotic doodle in the margin. She was. She was a fabulous correspondent. I can show you some of the erotic doodles. Oh gosh. Yeah, they're quite fun. Yeah. She's sitting up in bed topless. Oh, Chrissy. Chrissy. One day. Cramps. One day when I was 16, this will please you that I'm now 16. One day when I was 16, I was lying on my bed in my dormitory reading when a boy came in and said, your friend Chrissy is in the quad. She wants to see you. In two years. You've never seen her. Chrissy and I, we'd never met.

17:19Beirut was a long way from Hampshire. Well, I hesitated. it. Another message came up. I got up, I combed my hair, I brushed my teeth and went down into the quadrangle. She was there, alone, looking irresistible, looking irresistible, even more lustrous than her photograph. I recognised her at once, of course. She didn't recognise me at all. Within three minutes, we'd worked out that the young man she had wanted to correspond with had been another of the monks in murder in the cathedral chrissy's sister had identified me by mistake chrissy had been writing to the wrong guy i never heard from her again oh so i have got chrissy well poor me i feel sorry for chrissy i've got she's been sending topless pictures of herself sitting up in bed to some filled squirt from 4b called charles brandon she didn't realize she did the boy was she embarrassed the boy she well i think she was clearly the boy she thought it was who was much better looking than me called mark was two years older so he was 16 when she was 89 was 14 uh and anyway so she she turned up it was a traumatic experience for both of us because for me i suddenly realized that i was not the object of desire that i thought i'd been every single woman on a train platform but one woman had seen me briefly in a school play had wanted to pour her heart out to me and and as it were i had this kind of erotic correspondence with her by proxy.

19:02Like Serrano de Bergerac. Yeah. And it was the wrong dude. But you were the right dude in that she enjoyed corresponding with you and kept writing back. So you're obviously doing something right. But in her mind's eye, she had somebody else. Yeah. But does that matter, Giles? I don't know. I mean, did you get lots of love letters when you were a girl? Yes, I think I've, I actually had a whole bag of them, which I now do not know what's happened to them. but um dig them out for next valentine state we'll have a i don't think i know where they are what i do have is probably quite a lot of emails you know by the time i was writing love letters there were love emails so i've got things that oh they are you probably can never delete you know they're good they're in some sort of cloud in elon musk's server farm do you think he gets turned on by reading possibly yeah they're probably quite pretentious but yeah no i mean i i I used to love a long email correspondence.

20:00What kind of a love letter do you think Lord Byron would have written? Lord Byron. Mad, bad, dangerous to know. I've got one in front of me. Shall I give you a love letter from Lord Byron? I bet it's very rugged. Well, let's see. This is Lord Byron, the great poet, writing to Teresa Giccioli in 1819. So this is a love letter from 207 years ago. my dearest Teresa my destiny rests with you and you are a woman 18 years of age and two out of a convent I wish that you had stayed there with all my heart or at least that I had never met you in your married state but all this is too late I love you and you love me at least you say so and act as if you did so which is a great consolation in all events but I more than love you and cannot cease to love you think of me sometimes when the Alps and Ocean divide us but they never will unless you wish it Byron Gosh, what, she's in a convent and married and in love with Byron and she's only 18?

21:13Yeah Gosh, she's had a lot going on Oh, I've got one for you to read here, Harriet It's from Zelda Fitzgerald to F. Scott Fitzgerald and I think it dates from 1920. Oh, that's a good era, isn't it? F. Scott Fitzgerald, a wonderful writer, of course, wrote The Great Gatsby. Okay, Mrs. Zelda. Should I do this in an American accent? Oh, I'd love that. I don't know if I can, actually. It's not as good as your Australian accent. I look down the tracks and see you coming. I'm not going to do it. It's too much. Zelda Fitzgerald to F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1920. I look down the tracks and see you coming and out of every haze and mist your darling rumpled trousers are hurrying to me.

21:56Without you, dearest, dearest, I couldn't see or hear or feel or think or live. I love you so and I'm never in all our lives going to let us be apart another night. Oh, this is nice, isn't it, Giles? It's like begging for mercy of a storm or killing beauty or growing old without you. I want to kiss you so and in the back where your dear hair starts and your chest. I love you and I can't tell you how much. Goofo, you've got to try to feel how much I do. How inanimate I am when you're gone. I can't even hate these damnable people. Nobody's got any right to live but us and they're dirtying up our world and I can't hate them because I want you so.

22:43Come quick, come quick to me. I could never do without you if you hated me and were covered with sores like a leper if you ran away with another woman or starved me and beat me i would still want you i know lover lover darling your wife oh that's nice isn't it giles it is nice did it last what happened to that relationship i don't know i hope it did gosh let's find out we ought to find out this is winston churchill later Prime Minister writing to his wife Clementine in 1935 My darling Clemmie in your letter from Madras you wrote some words very dear to me about my having enriched your life I cannot tell you what pleasure this gave me because I always feel so overwhelmingly in your debt if there can be accounts in love it was sweet of you to write thus to me and I hope and pray I shall be able to make you happy and secure during my remaining years, and cherish you, my darling one, as you deserve, and leave you in comfort when my race is run.

23:55What it has been to me to live all these years in your heart and companionship, no phrases can convey. Time passes swiftly, but is it not joyous to see how great growing is the treasure we have gathered together amid the storms and stresses of so many eventful and to millions tragic and terrible years. It's a beautiful letter because it's written in 1935 and there is Churchill, aware already, I think, that he's a world figure and aware that they have had all this at a time when the Depression is going on, the Great War happened, when millions died. It's a really, really nice letter, John. Well, he had a wonderful way with words.

24:38His speeches were extraordinary. His memoirs are extraordinary. He just knew how to write. Well, I'm going to dry my tears now. When you go to films, are you a bit of a, do you weep? Oh, I'm terrible. I didn't see, I don't think I saw any of E.T. I watched E.T. when I was about nine. I spent the entire film under the seat of the cinema, totally inconsolable. My poor family just trying to sort me out. Yeah. That's not really a film. Maybe it is. He's in love with E.T. Is he the character? It's a film about losing your, about being away from home and losing your parents. Yeah. Well, of course. Yeah.

25:20I meant romantic films, actually. Oh, do I cry in romantic films? Yes. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I can't think of a last one. I mean, that film, the one that I really wept in, it's such an awful heartstrings film. It was Love Story. Do you remember that? I do. It's about a couple and she's dying. Oh. Or you can't actually watch something like that without crying. Have you seen Casablanca? Yeah. Humphrey Bogart. Yeah. It's a great film. I only saw it recently. Really? The first time. Yeah. And oh, it was wonderful. Yeah. I mean, I must say I like a love story with a happy ending. I do. I mean, one of my favourites is the 1944 version of Pride and Prejudice with Laurence Olivier and Greer Garson.

26:03Oh, I haven't seen that. Oh, it's a beautiful comfort movie. I tell you my favourite film, which is a love story, is When Harry Met Sally. Oh, yes. And that's a happy ending. And I cry. I love crying at happy bits. I always cry at happy stuff. Happy and all sad. Yay! Now, we're going off now to queue. And this is really interesting. This is the Love Letters exhibition, which carries on for quite a while, doesn't it? Till the middle of April. Good. So people should go to it. We found it really fascinating. And also, it's looking at love letters from unusual angles. It's not just obvious love letters.

26:36so I think this is a very intriguing thing it's love letters that are in the National Archives aren't they so they are for some reason of historical importance to the extent that somebody thought to keep them for all these hundreds of years and then the historians there have dug them out put them in an exhibition where will my archive end up well I know if my wife has a way in a skip but you know the love letters from Chrissy they're all in a box in the basement they could be in an exhibition in a hundred years time I'm in queue, Giles. Who knows? Woo! It's a bit unlikely. Off we go. Yes. Oh, hey, hold on.

27:14Cue the queue. Ha ha! Brilliant, Giles.

27:25I'm really excited, Harriet. You have brought me to the National Archives at queue. I have. Do you know why I'm excited? No. It's because I can say, queue the queue. Ha ha ha. And I am excited because you brought me to this exhibition of love letters. I have. Which could hardly be more appropriate. No. And you're going to introduce me to somebody quite special now. I am. Sean Cunningham. Sean Cunningham. On the briefing notes, they said he was head of collections. He certainly is. We always go to the top. The head honcho is here. And what's he got to show us? He's going to talk to us about a couple of letters, which I think are two of the most interesting letters in this exhibition.

28:04It's an exhibition of love letters. That's covering love in a very broad sense, isn't it? Yes, there's some very interesting ones here which are associated with the royals and how in the past royal romance was also problematic. Very problematic for some people in that they lost their heads over it. But also some records we've recently found which kind of throw some light on medieval love and the practicalities of falling in love. And also possibly people who aren't in love with arranged marriages, because I imagine in the case of royal marriages, they were diplomatically organised. That's right.

28:41So maybe the two parties may have fallen in love as time went by, but certainly when they met, they might necessarily have been in love. Well, that's definitely the case with Robert Dudley and Elizabeth I. Robert Dudley and Elizabeth I. We have the handwriting. I'm actually looking, what I'm looking at is that, could that be the handwriting when it says his last letter? I think that probably is her writing on that letter, yes. So I'm looking, as we speak, at a letter that didn't have envelopes in those days, did they? So it was folded. And it says his last letter, which suggests she kept it because this was a special person in her life.

29:16Let's hear a bit of Robert Dudley's letter to Queen Elizabeth I.

29:24I most humbly beseech your majesty to pardon your poor old servant to be thus bold in sending to know how my gracious lady doth, and what ease of her late pain she finds, being the chiefest thing in this world I do pray for, for her to have good health and long life. For my own poor case, I continue still your medicine, and find that it amends much better than with any other thing that hath been given me. Thus, hoping to find perfect cure at the bath, with the continuance of my wonted prayer for your Majesty's most happy preservation, I humbly kiss your foot. From your old lodging at Rycote this Thursday morning, ready to take on my journey, by your majesty's most faithful and obedient servant, R.

30:18Leicester. He added a postscript. Even as I had writ thus much, I received your majesty's token by young Tracey.

30:34We know who Elizabeth I was, because we've seen the movies. Who was Robert Dudley? So he was a childhood friend of Elizabeth. He was the son of a courtier, John Dudley. He became Duke of Northumberland and was responsible for putting his daughter-in-law, Jane Grey, Jane Dudley, attempted to get her on the throne and possibly did for nine days. So he was executed for that. But Robert Dudley was one of his many sons, and he was locked up in the Tower of London as a result of this attempted coup against Queen Mary, where he met Elizabeth. She was locked up as well. And that's where their long-term friendship began.

31:10But this is a movie. In a sense, you've got these two young people. How old were they when they were both in prison? Possibly about ten years old, eight to ten years. So these young people, and of course, because he is a gentleman, a lord, and she is a princess, I imagine they're not in cells with rats and damp on the walls. No. There are carpets. There are servants bringing in meals. That's right. And there would be time when they could converse, maybe play chess together, walk along the ramparts together, and a friendship could develop. And how long were they in prison together? Only for a few months.

31:43I think Robert was in for about a year and a half. Elizabeth was in for a couple of months. But from that moment, they have a connection. And when Elizabeth becomes queen, the gifts begin to flow. So suddenly you get a reflection on how their friendships developed. And then he's made master of the horse, and he gets Kew House near here, which obviously was very close to the hunting ground for Richmond Palace. So immediately they're in the same kind of physical space, and she demands that he spends time with her. So it's almost like husband and wife relationship, but of course he's married. At the age of 18, he goes off to Norfolk and marries a young girl called Amy Robsart when he's about 18 as well, and she's the same sort of age.

32:21So this is quite complex. Do we know at its height how intimate they were, what their relationship was? We get little clues because that letter that we have at the end, his last letter, was part of a bundle she kept. in a little casket by her bed. And when it was rearranged, those letters were put into date order. So we can see their friendship because there was a little code they had. She called him eyes. And whenever they wrote a double O in a word. Yes, it's in this letter. And it's in many other letters as well. He uses it over the word look. There are two O's and these little eyebrows above to indicate their eyes.

32:58Of course, rumour has it that he might have been a spy anyway. So it could be, I am your eyes and ears. Eyes and ears. Is that possible? Well, she has that amazing dress of the eyes and ears around the time of the Armada. So this is clearly another role he has. He is a close confidant of hers, a very deep friend, but he's also watching everybody else at court and passing back what he's hearing and seeing. So it wasn't because Robert Dudley had just lovely eyes that she called him that? No, I think he had a bit more to him than that. Or doing peekaboo. Here I am, and Bobby. She gave him Kenilworth Castle.

33:30Oh my, she gave him Kenilworth Castle. So he has Kenilworth Castle and he sets up these amazing entertainments for her when she's travelling around the country in the summer on her progresses. He's famous for hosting these lavish parties because he can't often be at court, but she's very reluctant to have him away from her because she has this strong connection and he kind of feeds and sustains her when he's around her. And it's difficult for her to manage the times he's not there. So even though he's married, she makes Amy Robsart, Amy Dudley, stay, come to the house in Oxfordshire. She sends her away Well basically but she does unfortunately fall down the stairs and break her neck in September 1560 Amy does?

34:10Yeah His wife? Yeah Who did that? I mean when I made the movie I'm afraid that's going to be a key moment Elizabeth the first trips her up Well Well they're both at Windsor but in the 1580s Robert's enemies create this pamphlet of defamatory stories about him and his wife and the queen and one of these stories is that the two of them have had her murdered so that Elizabeth can marry Robert. And obviously at that moment she could marry him because he's a widower and she's never been married. But the scandal of Amy's death kind of squashes all possibility of that marriage actually happening. Fascinating.

34:43It's an amazing thing because obviously she did die and we've got the coroner's inquest here into her death which gives a verdict of misadventure rather than suicide which was suggested as well as a way of escaping this horrible situation she's been put in where she can't be with her husband and her husband is effectively married to the queen. And she doesn't see him. So 1560, he's a free man, but the Queen won't marry him. But there's no denying their intimacy, the very fact that she keeps these letters when she dies there in a casket at her bedside. That's right. And what does this last letter, his last letter, what does it reveal to us, this letter?

35:18It reveals not a lot in terms of hard facts. It's written at the time of the Armada. So he has been helping her in Essex set things up to resist the Armada. His last long letter is written from Gravesend in July, where he's basically geeing up the soldiers, getting ready for her famous Tilbury speech, where she presents herself as England's... Having the body of a Wigand-Wirr. So he's behind all of this. And then he's been in Holland for the previous five years, working on the other side of the channel to resist the Spanish, who are basically the rulers of the Netherlands as well at this time.

35:55And he comes back and he's exhausted. And I think, they think, the historians think he might have got malaria. And his last letter is written from a house of his in Oxfordshire when he's on the way to the spa at Buxton to take the bath, to take the salts and to try and improve his humours and his health. The Buxton spa that's still there. And he dies very suddenly. He writes this letter as a kind of very fond but general recollection of his relationship and how he kisses her feet in admiration and all of this. So it's a kind of last statement of his affection and connection. Did he know he might die?

36:35It's a bit cryptic, but he says, I'm ready for my journey. So it could be his journey to Buxton, but it could also be his last journey. Lovely. Oh, you're very good. What's the next one going to be like? We can go to Catherine Howard if you want. Yes. More royals. Oh, I love it. We love the royals. We love the royals on Rosebud, don't we? We certainly do. Even period royals. And this is a Tudor royal you're going to give us next? Yes, it's Catherine Howard, one of Henry VIII's wives, but in many ways the least well-known, the youngest certainly, the greatest victim of court politics and manipulation.

37:10Which one was she in the pegging order? She's the fifth one. Good. I have to do the verse all the time. No one wants to be the fifth wife, do they? Oh, I don't know. Especially of Henry VIII. Can I say one of our most popular guests was the great Sir Gary Oldman, and Giselle his fifth wife is a marvellous person but he didn't behead his previous well some of the things I've heard no he certainly did not he did not no but there were troubles along the way yeah he would acknowledge that but you must have had a sort of sense of dread being Henry VIII's fifth wife I think so he had six wives how do we remember them divorced, beheaded, died divorced, beheaded, survived and can you remember what their names were?

37:55You're the historian. So Catherine of Aragon Yes. And then Anne Boleyn Anne Boleyn And then Jane Seymour Jane Seymour And then, where are we? Anne of Cleves, yes And then Catherine Howard And then Catherine Parr How long did Catherine Howard last? Only a couple of years Oh dear And she was possibly as young as 15. Oh, no, we don't approve. And Henry was, what, 49? Oh, she's very sad. Late 40s. And this letter's part of the reason for her demise, isn't it? It is. It's a chance of survival again because it was basically discovered in one of her alleged lover's papers as part of the interrogation into unravelling what the situation was with Catherine and her previous sexual relationships before she married the king.

38:47Excuse me. You just told me she was 15 at the time. Fast and loose in the Tudor period, unfortunately. No, but that, I mean, gosh. I mean, with her music teacher. Music teacher from Streatham called Thomas Mannix. But also these are allegations. You know, the king is trying to build a case against her. Yeah. And obviously as part of that he's going to say that she is not virtuous. Do you know music teachers get it really in a bad way, don't they? I think they've got form, music teachers. I don't know that you can say that, Harriet. Oh, come on. I mean, wasn't there someone at B-Day? Yeah, there was.

39:21Exactly. Well, yes. Yeah. And at my prep school, too. Yeah, and for a while I was very keen on turning the music over for the organ, the man that played the organ at school. Yeah, I'd sit next to him and I'd turn the page when he got to the end. Well, you were making the running then. Well, I was, yeah, but, you know, he was inviting me up there to turn those pages. That's as far as it went. Now we're going to hear some of this letter from Catherine Howard to Thomas Culpepper, the letter which was later used as evidence against her by Henry VIII to justify her execution.

39:58Master Culpepper, I heartily recommend me unto you, praying you to send me word how that you do. It was showed to me that you were sick. The witch thing troubled me very much till such time that I hear from you, praying you to send me word how that you do, for I never long so much for a thing as I do to see you and to speak with you. The witch, I trust, shall be shortly now. That which doth comfort me very much when I think of it, and when I think again that you shall depart from me again, it makes my heart die. To think what fortune I have that I cannot be always in your company. Yet my trust is always in you, that you will be as you have promised me.

40:46And in that hope I trust upon still, praying you that you will come when my Lady Rochford is here. For then I shall be best at leisure to be in your commandment. And thus I take my leave of you, trusting to see you shortly again. and I would you as with me now that you might see what pain I take in writing to you yours as long as life endures Catherine Well Catherine's a victim of the fallout from Thomas Cromwell's execution the Anne of Cleves' marriage the disasters that Henry had in 1539, 40, 41 so she's put forward by her uncle Duke of Norfolk as the next bride for the king Obviously young, vivacious, she already has a reputation as being a beauty, but also a pawn of these political relationships.

41:36And the Howers are clearly wanting to assert that vacuum, that gap of power around the king to become the leading family again, having been in this position before. So promoting your young niece to be the king's wife, what could be better? And who is Thomas Calpeter? So he's a groom of Henry's chamber, a household servant, an ambitious man who wants to get on. she's probably in Yorkshire with the King on his summer progress they do a lot of travelling around away from London in the summer when the plague flares up and lots of people start dying in the city so they often have a summer progress and Henry's in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire and this is probably where this letter is written Catherine to Culpepper it can be read as a love letter it's showing a connection again and an attraction but basically I think it's inching towards saying you promised to look out for me, please don't tell anyone the details of what you found out.

42:32So it's a kind of subtext of desperation. She knows in her heart what her past is, but now she knows someone else has found out about it. So this is written when she's actually the queen. What age did she become queen? Well, we don't really know when she was born, so we don't know how old she was, but she's clearly around about 19 or 20 when she's executed in 1542. so she's very young but she's desperate now she knows what's happened to Anne Boleyn another of the Duke of Norfolk's nieces and she's writing in this letter about Lady Ruchford, Jane Parker who was married to George Boleyn so the connections are still there in the in-laws as well and she's using all of these people to try and safeguard her position as the king is about to find out what she's been up to so this is an obvious moment of terror for Catherine.

43:25And when the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, goes to interview her in the Tower, we have another letter from him to the King saying, you know, I've been to speak to her. She's completely distraught. She can't even talk. She's hysterical and desperate because she knows what happened to Anne. So this is part of this story of a young woman caught up in politics, which suddenly descend on her shoulders. And she's trying to find a way through it all. Just before you rightly say these allegations do we know that she is guilty of any of this? We don't because it as with well she's not tried in the same way Anne Boleyn is which is not a state trial from her peers because Anne Boleyn was a countess in her own right so she was tried as if the House of Lords were sitting but in the Tower of London.

44:13Catherine was tried by a tander so tried through Parliament so it's a it's an act that condemns her so she doesn't really have a right to reply. We will be getting that record through when the parliamentary archives are open to users so we'll be able to dive a little bit deeper into how all these records tell this story in more depth. So the allegations are always what the king wants to happen. It's so tragic. I feel awful for her. It's a sense of the king's determined outcome being realised. He just makes history suit his own. But I'm appalled also she shouldn't have a mother or a sister or anyone to say, you've got to stop all this.

44:56I think that's where the politics of the Howards kind of come into play and you can really see how that overrides any normal sensibilities about what's appropriate and what's suitable for this kind of, I guess, project that they have. Did she have any children? No. Her head was removed before any of that happened. How quickly was her head removed? On the 13th of February, 1542, so about a year after a lot of these events were coming to light. So she was in the Tower for quite a while, and I think Cranmer was appalled by the situation, was desperate to find a way through it, but again you see the monstrous presence of the king behind everything, looking for the outcome he wanted.

45:43What's fascinating about these letters that you have, of course, is that they are a way of opening up an extraordinary story like this. So it's a very complicated love life that this poor girl had that culminated in her death. And this is just one letter in that complex story.

46:07Next, Harriet, we're meeting Vicky Iglikowski-Broad. She's the chief curator of the exhibition. And we're going to talk to her about two of the more modern love letters in this collection. We've got a letter from the First World War, a love letter from a sweetheart to her love who is in France fighting. Yeah, so this is a letter between Hetty to William Crawford. We're going to hear a little bit of it now. number eight wrenches court tarvin road chester 29th of january 1917 my dear will i now take great pleasure of answering your kind and loving letter well dear will i'm glad that you're keeping quite well the same as i am at present except another cold it nearly starves you to death at queensberry i should be glad when the weather gets warmer it is a hard struggle to get out of bed these cold mornings but I'm afraid I should never get out of thought if you were there.

47:06Well dear Will, I'm glad that you love me. I want your love because I love you. I often think of you and all that passed between us but never mind dear Will, I am not sorry. I only wish that you were here now. I often long for you, I should love to see you. I don't know when I shall see you again but I do hope that it will be very soon. Well dear Will, I think it was very good of you to say that you couldn't do as you like without thinking of me first, but you could dear Will because you know I have no claim upon you. But still, I shouldn't like to think that what passed between you and I would pass between you and someone else.

47:42But I trust you dear Will. Well Will, my brother has gone back to France on Friday night. I had a letter from him today, he landed at Folkestone quite safely and I hope that he will be spared to come back of course. We know that many will have to give their lives yet before this war will end, but my one prayer is that they will never take you i should be broken-hearted if they were to take you well dear will i don't think there's much more to tell you this time now be a good lad and i'll be a good girl you won't half have to love me when you come over again will we'll have to make up for lost time dear will right soon we'll now draw to a close with heaps of love and kisses yours hetty it's very touching yeah it's also interesting the way this community there was so much correspondence that the system of getting letters back from the front to the home country was clearly quite efficient absolutely and i think uh just essential it was essential for morale and for for everyone at home or uh on the front line um to have that kind of method of communication and And so I think it was absolutely prioritised, even in those tough kind of circumstances of war.

48:52And so I think it really shows the importance of personal correspondence. And I think it's moving to think that this is one example, but it really would have been replicated in homes across the country. And so we see this one personal insight, but actually we can imagine that really widespread at the time. Do we know their ages? Do we know his rank? Do we know more about it than this? I don't actually have the detail of their ages or his rank but I certainly know he was on the Western Front he was with a unit that actually was serving at the Western Front William sadly died of wounds and the unit moved just shortly afterwards so really it was kind of it could have gone another way it's it's kind of with these moving records and letters and these emotional sentiments it feels like it was so close to a different outcome and yet it could have gone a very other way i mean when you say that i mean she's there saying come home we hope you'll not be taken i thought you meant taken by the enemy but actually it means taken by god so he dies he does die do we know when he dies um so 1918 um and the letters go up that we have go up to 1917 over kind of the period of a year.

50:06So we see this kind of intense emotional connection over time. And how do you have the letters here? It's a good question. So it's not something we would normally hold. They're actually in his service record. But they're in his service record because he actually had a very difficult life growing up. And so we know that his mother's died when he was young. His father left the family and all the siblings, I think five siblings, were displaced to different people. and he was raised by an uncle. And the uncle gets sent these letters that were gathered from his possession after he died. The war office traditionally would send them back to the next of kin.

50:46But the uncle actually then tries to send them to the king with his medals and says, we thought you would want this in recognition of his service. And it doesn't stay with the king or it doesn't even reach the king. It goes back to the war office and into his service record. so we know that the records it's a really rich series of records it's the kind of personal insight we don't tend to have from these kind of things but it's also interesting to see that process of trying to get that recognition and then those items then ending up in the service record Lovely Yes, the last one we're going to look at is the letter from Charles Cray, the father of the Cray twins Yeah, yeah, which I think is...

51:32For those who are listening internationally, who may not know who the Kray Twins were, they were notorious gangsters, led murderous lives, though Barbara Windsor, the actress who went out with one of them... Of course she did. She told me, Charles, don't get them wrong, they only ever murdered their own. Well, that's pretty much what... I mean, he doesn't even, obviously, their dad, is trying to say, they're lovely young boys. So really what you're telling us is your collection is about love in the most, in the broader sense. There's traditional, you know, love, as in a love affair, a romance, but there's also more complicated love.

52:11And also there's family love. And this is the unlikely letter from Charles Cray, father of the Cray twins. And who is it sent to? So this is found in a file for the Central Criminal Court. So it's very much in criminal records. It's being sent to the courts in testimony for them, defending them. So absolutely love in places that we wouldn't expect it. So this is a letter sent to the judge of the Old Bailey saying, my sons are good lads. Yeah, it's a character reference. Yeah, I don't know why I'm putting on this voice. I never met him. I don't know what he sounded like at all. He sounded just like that.

52:46I think he possibly, he was in stent. Sunday, November the 4th, Mr. Seacray, 178 Valance Road, Bethnal Green, E2. Dear Sir, may I respectfully submit this appeal to you from a father pleading for his son. It is my firm belief that he was intimidated in this brawl, more out of curiosity than in intentions of committing any violence, of which he was innocent, I am fully convinced. If you will at least believe me that they are the most respectful and good-natured lads anybody could wish to meet, so kind to my wife and I and everybody in their thoughts and actions and only willing to help anybody.

53:31Sir, could you realise as I that the separating of these boys could be a vast setback in the future of their young lives? So I appeal to you, sir, with your kindness and far-reaching thoughts and vast experience. If you will only deal with him as lenient as you possibly can, he would compensate your leniency by remaining a good citizen as ever. They are at present in a good business, with every chance of making good. Can I appeal to you again for a chance to enable this ladder mine to lead a moral and good life? hoping my appeal may receive your kind consideration and mercy. I am, sir, yours faithfully, Mr C.

54:17Cray.

54:23What is interesting about that is it rings true from people I've known who knew the Crays. No, seriously. My wife, Michelle, and I had a friend called Noel Davis, who went for dinner in Soho one day to be greeted. The crays were going to be there. And everyone said, how charming. One of them was, I think, supposed to be slightly mad. The other was very normally charming. And he arrived. And as they were coming down the street, there was a cray at the door of this club. And it was coming, went up, saw the cray. and then this figure fell back with a razor wound right across their face. So Noel actually witnessed a Kray attack.

55:09Gosh. But it was against somebody else in another gang. So apparently in polite society, they were absolutely adorable. Charm itself. So their dad was right. What did he call them? Respectful. Yeah, respectful, good-natured. Respectful and good-natured. Well, there you are. go to the National Archives and hear it for the Cray Twins. Vicky, what have you learned about love and life from being the senior curator on this exhibition? I think I've learned that love touches all kinds of people and is kind of expressed in all kinds of ways. So familial, friendship, lust, kind of conventional romance, courtly love.

55:54There are so many different kinds of expressions of love but it's ultimately very human and even between records that cover a span of 500 years we can see the connections of those emotions across that time and in all sorts of kind of places

56:13I loved that expedition to Kew thank you very much for taking me there and the exhibition of love letters at the National Archives goes on until mid-April I think yeah till April the 12th so So our thanks to them for letting us make that happen. This, of course, is just the beginning of Valentine's week. It isn't until the end of the week. You're making a whole week of it, Giles. We are. Because, as you know, when I was a boy, I did do a lot of falling in love. Yeah. Sometimes with people I knew. Sometimes with people I just heard about, seen photographs of in newspapers. Or people, well, historic figures like Joan of Arc.

56:49Yeah. Glamorous people. and one of my principal childhood loves came about in the 1950s when I saw a film. The film was Gigi. Because I was a Francophile, I was at the French Lycée, I went on holiday to France, I knew the novel Gigi written by a great French female writer called Colette. And a musical version of this story was made by Alan J. Lerner and Fritz Lowe. famous for writing My Fair Lady. And they wrote this musical, Gigi, which was a huge success on stage and even more successful as a fabulous film. The older man was played by Maurice Chevalier. Louis Jordan was the younger man, incredibly attractive.

57:38But there was a girl in it who played Gigi called Leslie Caon. And I don't think I'd ever seen anybody quite so beautiful. She was in the story. I think she's still a schoolgirl, and I was certainly a schoolboy quite a bit younger when I saw her, and I fell in love with her. So she, in my mind's eye, when I was a child, would have been my Valentine. And I have to tell you, Harriet, that Leslie Gow is alive and well, and that we had mutual friends. And through their good offices, I got in touch with Leslie Gow, and she kindly invited us to go to her apartment in London, where she lives, and she's in her 90s now, but as brilliant and beautiful as ever.

58:28So my Valentine gift to myself was spending time with Leslie Caron, and it's our Valentine's gift to the world, talking to Leslie Caron about her extraordinary life. So that's on Friday. That is. That's our Valentine's Day episode, isn't it? It's lovely. What will you be doing for Valentine's Day, Giles? Looking at a photograph of Leslie Caron. Oh. But would you be doing anything with Michelle? Oh, sorry. Oh, yeah. What I'll be doing for Valentine's Day is I'm going to see a show in London, because that's where we are at the moment, called Fallen Angels by Noel Card. It's at the Monier Chocolate Factory.

59:06It stars Janie D, who's another of the people that I love. In fact, I'm working out now that I can hardly meet anyone, but I don't immediately fall in love with them. So that's my Valentine's Day treat for Michelle. what valentine's day treat have you got in store for leon i don't know actually i need to get something organized i'll get you it's probably be the waitrose dine-in for two that we're advertising on the podcast actually not a bad idea they are good those do you get him a card oh yeah yeah good um we can choose it over lunch oh yes what am i doing oh i'm going to a party that night the 14th both of us are going so there'll be lots of both of you are going for got to say yeah yeah honestly these modern couples they don't do much together it seems that's the secret but the point is we hope you enjoyed our episode we hope you'll enjoy leslie cow and we hope if you've got someone to give a valentine's card to please do or if you're somebody who sends yourself a valentine's card why not at school we used to agree with friends i'm not i don't think i'm going to get any valentine's cards this year if i send you one will you send me one?

1:00:13Yeah, that's nice. Because we were a boarding school and the pigeonholes, you wanted your pigeonhole to be full of Valentine's cards. So feel free, if you don't have anyone, if you've got a pet, send your pet a Valentine's card and you can do one from them to you because you know they want to send you a Valentine's Day card. They do, yeah. If you don't think you're getting a Valentine's card, don't worry, we're here. Roses are red, violets are blue. This is Giles and Harriet and we love you. cue the music cue the music

1:01:32That's this week's More Rosebud with me, Giles Brandreth, and my friend and producer, Harriet Jane. It's produced by Harriet, and I turn up too.