Quotes About Tudors

She didn't feel she had the fortitude for all those Tudors, they were so relentlessly busy – all that bedding and beheading.

From my experience of shooting 'Tudors' on the island of Ireland, you cannot predict the weather.

I wasn't setting out to write a documentary; if I had, I would have done it in a completely different way. I was asked to write a drama that would appeal to a big audience in America that had no knowledge or interest in The Tudors at all.

Similarly, while the Tudors are often recalled in terms of a historical enmity with Spain, this too is history written with hindsight: the Armada did not take place until a generation after Elizabeth became queen.

I screen tested for 'The Tudors' in N.Y. That was my first experience of N.Y., being flown here to screen test with Jonathan Rhys Meyers. So I have very, very fond memories of New York - New York helped give me my first big break.

I've got no problem with getting history wrong for a purpose - Shakespeare often got things wrong for a reason. But it's the randomised arrogance of ignorance of 'The Tudors.' Shame on the BBC for producing it.

Rather to my surprise, I found myself genuinely indignant at the suggestion that murder was to be reintroduced as a means of political advancement for the first time since the Tudors, and even more indignant that the legal and political establishments in all their forms - which included, at that stage, the police - were going to cover up the whole episode. In the event, it turned out that my anxieties were unfounded, as Thorpe was totally innocent of all charges brought against him.

Every schoolboy turned over the final page of Richard III with relief, because now at last the Wars of the Roses were over and they could get on to the Tudors, who were dull but easy to follow.

The Tudors' is terrible history with no point. It's wrong for no purpose.

Two hundred years before, in the days of the Tudors, Bloody Queen Mary had used the conveniently open space to burn Protestants to save their souls, and her sister, Elizabeth, had in turn used it to burn an even greater number of Catholics, because that's what royals did with people they hated.

We have far too many Tudors. Henry VIII is far too over-rated. He's become the ultimate brand name, like the Marks & Spencers of a high street of British history. I'm more interested in King Herod.

It is difficult to know how the Tudors actually spoke because we're going back before Shakespeare; much of the drama from that period is courtly, allegorical.

Everything in 'The Tudors' is initially based on my historical research, and the fact is that the most unlikely scenes were the ones which were probably most based on reality. I prefer to be as real as possible, and there is so much of that story that you just can't make up.

A man called William Dalyvell, a follower of Merlin and King James, is put into the Tower. He has been spreading a prophecy that the King of Scots will swoop down from the north, expel the Tudors and rule two kingdoms. He also says he has seen an angel. In former ages this would have been a cause for congratulation, but times being what they are, Dalyvell is put on the rack.

England has enjoyed fifty years of peace. This is the Tudors' covenant; peace is what they offer.

As with the Trojans or the Tudors, there are many evergreen stories that we come back to again and again. I think history documentaries are as much about the present as they are the past.