The Tudor Way

In this episode, Tony Robinson sets off on a 45-mile hike through the beautiful countryside of the Weald in Kent and the Downs of east Sussex to discover the area's rich and surprising Tudor heritage. At the impressively preserved Penshurst Place, author Philippa Gregory helps Tony relish the fate of the Grand Duke of Buckingham at the hands of the young Henry VIII. From there, he travels up what used to be secret paths to Hever Castle. Henry's saucy courting of the Boleyn girls at Hever comes as perhaps no surprise, but Tony travels on to find out how the monarch's reign brought not just fame and disaster to the women who caught his eye, but also wrought huge social, political, and industrial change to the country - and especially this area. Before finishing in the town of Lewes, where he relives one of the more brutal monastic dissolutions, Tony will have uncovered treason in Henry's court, discovered how the Weald's iron ore deposits made it the industrial heart of Tudor England and he'll have seen the ruthless extent of one man's ambition - Thomas Cromwell.