Quotes & Sayings About Tudors

Even their contemporaries felt that the relationship of Elizabeth and Robert transcended the details on practicality. There had to be some explanation for their lifelong fidelity, and those contemporaries put it down to 'synaptia', a hidden conspiracy of the stars, whose power to rule human lives no-one doubted: 'a sympathy of spirits between them, occasioned perhaps by some secret constellation', in the words of the historian William Camden, writing at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Theirs was a relationship already rooted in history and mythology. And that moment when Elizabeth heard she had come to the throne encapsulated much about their story. If our well-loved picture of Elizabeth's accession is something of a fantasy - if the reality is on the whole more interesting - you might say the same about our traditional picture of her relationship with Robert Dudley. — Sarah Gristwood

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. — Hilary Mantel

It wasn't that we didn't know history. Even if you only count the real world, we knew more history than most people. We'd been taught about cavemen and Normans and Tudors. We knew about Greeks and Romans. We knew masses of personal stories about World War II. We even knew quite a lot of family history. It just didn't connect to the landscape. And it was the landscape that formed us, that made us who we were as we grew in it, that affected everything. We thought we were living in a fantasy landscape when actually we were living in a science fictional one. In ignorance, we played our way through what the elves and giants had left us, taking the fairies' possession for ownership. I named the dramroads after places in The Lord of the Rings when I should have recognized that they were from The Chrysalids. — Jo Walton

London matters to me because it's the center of what I do for a living and has been since Tudor times. — William Monahan

In the forest you may find yourself lost, without companions. You may come to a river which is not on a map. You may lose sight of your quarry, and forget why you are there. You may meet a dwarf, or the living Christ, or an old enemy of yours; or a new enemy, one you do not know until you see his face appear between the rustling leaves, and see the glint of his dagger. You may find a woman asleep in a bower of leaves. For a moment, before you don't recognise her, you will think she is someone you know. — Hilary Mantel

This building fool could only be Bess of Hardwicke, a woman whose name is seldom seen in print without the word "redoubtable" in front of it. I wondered if anyone ever called her redoubtable to her face. I redoubted it. — JoAnn Spears

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. — Natalie Dormer

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. — Michael Hirst

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

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. — Michael Hirst

Though the leaves fall from the trees like brown tears, for him everything must be as green as fresh grass, as white as May blossom, as if to convince us all that the seasons are upside down and we are all Tudors now. A — Philippa Gregory

There's a part of my heart that forever has Anne Boleyn written on it, who I played in 'The Tudors.' — Natalie Dormer

I grew up in a small town in Ireland and didn't know any actors. I never thought it was a viable job. It wasn't until I was on 'The Tudors' that I realised it was a possibility. — Katie McGrath

The first Elizabeth film was an absolute travesty historically. It really was sloppy. Things like 'The Other Boleyn Girl' and 'The Tudors,' people's perception is distorted because of these. It matters to me as a historian, because I spend my life trying to get it right. — Alison Weir

One of the great advantages of
having a library,your eminence,
is that it is full of books. — Michael Hirst

When I did 'The Tudors,' there was massive information available and a ready-made market. — Michael Hirst

The Tudors hated to be wrong, and therefore never were. — Jeane Westin

When I see a fan coming over, I can't help but make an assumption about what they want to talk about. A middle-aged American woman will head over, and I think, 'Game of Thrones.' Turns out it's 'The Tudors' or 'Elementary' or 'The Hunger Games.' It's always a surprise. — Natalie Dormer

We are not telling Tudor history; we are creating ' Wolf Hall ' from novels, which are already a rereading of Tudor history. — Damian Lewis

The king greeted the document (the Collectanea) not so much as a drowning man greets a straw but as he might a rescue party from outer space. — Eric Ives

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

Strangely, the thing I listen to 75% of the time, when I'm exercising with my headphones on is English Tudor/Elizabethan music, so music from about 1450 to the early 1600's. — Tod Machover

The thing people don't understand about an army is its great, unpunctuated wastes of inaction: you have to scavenge for food, you are camped out somewhere with a rising water level because your mad capitaine says so, you are shifted abruptly in the middle of the night into some indefensible position, so you never really sleep, your equipment is defective, the gunners keep causing small unwanted explosions, the crossbowmen are either drunk or praying, the arrows are ordered up but not here yet, and your whole mind is occupied by a seething anxiety that things are going to go badly because il principe, or whatever little worshipfulness is in charge today, is not very good at the basic business of thinking. It didn't take him many winters to get out of fighting and into supply. In Italy, you could always fight in the summer, if you felt like it. If you wanted to go out. — Hilary Mantel

Around thrones the thunder rolls. — C.J. Sansom

Ann Boleyn...a Renaissance Audrey Hepburn in a little black dress. — JoAnn Spears

I always felt that the boiled potato, not the tudor rose, should be the national emblem. — Ilka Chase

I love to drive. My present to myself from 'The Tudors' was a red Mazda MX5 hard-top convertible. I loved that car, and also what she represented - my first success. — Natalie Dormer

I think that all of them must have lost their minds and have forgotten everything we were to each other. I said that they were no sisters to me, that I would forget them. But they have gone further than this: they have become my enemies. — Philippa Gregory

If we still advise we shall never do. — Elizabeth I

The fate of peoples is made like this, two men in small rooms. Forget the coronations, the conclaves of cardinals, the pomp and processions. This is how the world changes: a counter pushed across a table, a pen stroke that alters the force of a phrase, a woman's sigh as she passes and leaves on the air a trail of orange flower or rose water; her hand pulling close the bed curtain, the discreet sigh of flesh against flesh. — Hilary Mantel

'The Tudors' was ground-breaking in the sense that it did ruffle the feathers of classical historians and alter the way people did period drama at the time. — Annabelle Wallis

The Tudors, I don't even know if I had a family back then. — Karl Pilkington

The Tudors") "I walked away thinking, well, if I don't get the job, it doesn't matter - I've kissed Jonathan Rhys Meyers! — Natalie Dormer

With 'The Tudors,' I had a huge amount of material, I mean so many books and so much stuff about what they really said. So, in a way it was kind of trying to strip it out and find the stories inside all this material. — Michael Hirst

If you help load a cart you get a ride in it, as often as not. It gives him to think, how bad people are at loading carts. Men trying to walk straight ahead through a narrow gateway with a wide wooden chest. A simple rotation of the object solves a great many problems. — Hilary Mantel

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. — Auberon Waugh