大象传媒

The first of five programmes marking the 500th anniversary next month of the coronation of Henry VIII that exoplore lesser known aspect of the man. Henry was a hypochondriac before the word was invented, with some good reason. He was, though, the first monarch to recognise the need for a qualified medical profession. He gave the first royal charter to the Barber Surgeons and ordered an astronomical clock for Hampton Court so that he could measure his well-being by the stars. The historian Dr Elizabeth Hurren explores parts of the palace that reveal his preoccupation with health - his own and the public's - the herb garden, the astronomical clock and an area even the king could not enter, the birthing suite where his pregnant wives were confined. She considers, too, the famous after Holbein portrait of the king which protrays a man in the peak of health and at the height of his powers, but, reveals too some of the health troubles that were to plague him.